Earthdawn was released by FASA corporation back in 1993, yes 22 years ago! The former FASA corporation may not be confused with todays FASA Games inc. the current publisher of Earthdawn 4th Edition.
At that time, during the marketing phase to publicize the RPG Earthdawn, some promotional flyers were published.

Earthdawn flyers

As a long time fan I have already heard about these flyers and already had a look at them.

But as I read a few weeks ago a post on G+ by Chris Hussey about an Earthdawn Release brochure, I was stunned.

After all these years of Earthdawn 'tracking' I hadn't even heard about this promotional release brochure. So guess how surprised I was when I started to read it.

Earthdawn Release Brochure

The Earthdawn Release Brochure was send out to game shops and publishers before Earthdawn was released to spread the word about the new upcoming roleplaying game Earthdawn.

The cover says it all:

FASA's new game is a secret......
Until next month

The 40 pages contain various basic information about the setting of Earthdawn, a timeline of historic events is included, character archetypes and a great story called 'The merchants gift' can be found in there.

But the thing is that not everything in that brochure was final, it is more like a draft preview of the development of Earthdawn.

Example?

I guess every Earthdawn fan knows about the most well known saying about the Namegivers of Barsaive. But the original paragraph is a little bit different in this historic brochure and reads as follows:

The trolls raid the dwarfs,
the dwarfs dislike the elves,
the elves have no patience with the humans,
and the humans war with each other.
- But everyone hates the Atlanteans.

Who? The Atlanteans? Well, what later became the 'enemy' called the Therans was originally called 'Atlanteans' and shows again that not everything was final and done during that time.

Another chapter of the brochure for example introduces character archetypes like 'Warlock Warrior' or 'Troll Viking', which later became the discipline named 'Sky Raider' when Earthdawn was finally published.

There are many more small finds on the history and the development of the world of Earthdawn in that brochure. So I can really recommend to read this 'ancient' document of Earthdawn history.

When looking at that small piece of history of Earthdawn I realized how long this game exists and what a journey the RPG Earthdawn went thru to be published now in its 4th Edition.

And to be honest, you can already feel the potential of the story and the world of Earthdawn to become a great RPG when reading sentences like:

You and your friends are heroes of the age, masters of this magic. Some of you are proficient in the martial schools of magic; at your will you can bend the tissues of your very flesh, forge it into a living armor able to withstand sword blows. Some of you have mastered control of natural forces and can draw fire from the air and send it hurtling at your enemies.

Earthdawn is often referred as one of the role-playing games with the greatest potential. Because of its setting, the story of the world and because of its magic system. I think you can get a small glimpse on the time of origins of Earthdawn when reading through this brochure.

When the brochure was released in 1993 I guess no one expected the game of Earthdawn to last this long and become what it is today.

Links

• Read the brochure online @Scridb
• Download the Earthdawn Flyer #3 as PDF (mirror) 
• Download the Earthdawn Release Brochure as PDF (mirror)

Disclaimer

Original Earthdawn content copyright 1993-2015 FASA Corporation, FASA Games, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission. Any use of copyrighted material or trademarks in this article should not be viewed as a challenge to those copyrights or trademarks.