A few days ago FASA published their plans about the future of Earthdawn. The announcement of Earthdawn: Fourth Edition coming in 2014 was made:

For the past twenty years, Earthdawn has built a loyal fan base as an original and engrossing fantasy gaming experience. As the game enters its third decade, we are taking the opportunity to update the game, revisiting the core systems to find a balance between the game’s legacy and more recent developments in game design.

Yiha, what else can I say, that’s some great news for the upcoming year! If you didn’t read the news yet: FASA Games News

One of the first comments I read about the announcement, that was send to me by Sethariel, was the G+ post of Carsten Damm. Dammi commented on the publication and the plans of FASA, but more interestingly, he shared an overview of the plans the old team had, when he was still “involved”.

Involved, that’s a good word to mention something here about Earthdawn in general. Earthdawn had, in my opinion, always had or still has, a great fan community and is often mentioned as one of the best settings of high fantasy RPG’s that are out there.

The countless fan creations for Earthdawn show that FASA makes the right move to involve the fan base by announcing a Kickstarter campaign to fund the development and the artwork production of Earthdawn Fourth Edition core books:

In preparation for the release of the Player’s Guide and Gamemaster’s Guide—currently slated for Summer 2014 release—plans are under way for a Kickstarter campaign in early 2014 to fund the printing and new artwork for the core books.

DID YOU READ IT? NEW ARTWORK!!

But still, I am cautious when it comes to Kickstarter, it always depends on the good advertising of the project and on what you can get. But nevertheless, the announcement of the plans about publishing Earthdawn Fourth Edition shows again that things are moving forward in the right direction.

A follow up article to answer some questions about what can be expected, the time jump and about the Kickstarter project, was released by Josh Harrison at the FASA blog. Oh by the way the discussion on the FASA Earthdawn forum about the news can be found here and here.

All that said and read, I am positive that 2014 will liven Earthdawn up again after the “stagnation” due to the recent change from RedBrick to FASA.