Just to remember you shortly again. The Earthdawn Kickstarter project by FASA, which was launched on January 14th 2014, reached these stretch goals:

• GM Screen
• Travar: City of Merchants
• ED 4E Companion
• Elven Nations
• Questors

After release of the Player's and the Gamemaster's Guide in 2015 it was in early January 2016 when information about next sourcebook Travar: The Merchant City was revealed.

It was Allen Farr who wrote an article on G+ to inform about the work, the story and background to develop the the book.

Travar: The Merchant City
Now that Travar is in the development pipeline at FASA Games I thought it was only fair to let you all know about it. Hopefully when it is closer to publication there will be a few previews that can be unleashed. Until then…
The Cover:
The Cover layout isn’t finalised yet, but there should be enough there to give you a good idea of what it will look like when it’s finished……..

Read the full article HERE

The following info should be taken with care:

Several rumours can be found on the net about the release date of the book, like this one here from the FASA Earthdawn forum:

If you didn't fund the Kickstarter project to get a copy of the book, you already could pre-order the book at frpgames.com. There they speak of an estimate February, 2016 release……

English

In a recent post at the FASA Earthdawn forum were initially the detailed stats of a Bone Spirit requested. As the discussion went on, Mataxes was so kind to released a part of the Spirits chapter from the not yet released Earthdawn 4th edition Game Master Guide.

"The linked PDF has the information necessary to create bone spirits, taken from the spirits chapter of the ED4 GM Guide."

The 5 page PDF file provides strength stats for Ally Spirits as well as descriptions of Spirit powers.

The provided statistics are guidelines and serve to form a general baseline for spirits of that type. Since each spirit is a unique entity, the gamemaster should feel free to modify these values to suit the needs of his game. The powers listed for a spirit are only the most common examples.

Deutsch

Nachdem der englischsprachige Auszug aus dem Game Masters Guide im FASA Earthdawn forum veröffentlicht wurde, kommt Ulisses mit dem deutschen Gegenstück daher und beschert damit der deutschen Community Informationen zu Geistern und ihren Kräften. Als Beispiel sind ausserdem die Statistiken für einen Knochengeist als Verbündeten enthalten.

Die angegebenen Spielwerte sind Richtlinien und dienen als allgemeine Grundlage für Geister der jeweiligen Art. Da aber jeder Geist ein einzigartiges Wesen ist, kann der Spielleiter diese Werte gerne so modifizieren, wie es zu seinem Spiel passt. Die für einen Geist angegebenen Kräfte sind nur die am häufigsten vorkommenden Beispiele.

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.

Update June 14th 2015

The PDF file "Chapter 2 - What has come before" is no longer available at FASA. When the file becomes available again, it'll be linked here again.

While we're still waiting for the Earthdawn 4th Edition Gamemaster's Guide, one part of it fans were really asking about was shared by FASA Games. The part explaining the events leading to the current Earthdawn 4th Edition timeline.

Yes, that's right. If you missed the latest FASA Games update on their blog here is the link to the Chapter 2 ("What Has Come Before") from the coming Gamemaster's Guide, in which you will find the revised history chapter, covering the events of the war and how the current political situation in Barsaive came to be.

• Chapter 3: The Land and its People
• Chapter 11: Spirits
• Chapter 12: Dragons
• Chapter 13: Horrors

Good news everyone! According to the new update on the Earthdawn 4th Edition kickstarter project, the official PDF release of the Player's Guide is just round the corner.

A little less than a dozen pieces of art are missing. The PDF should be released by the end of January. Once the electronic version is out, FASA will give it a week to cover some additional bugs, typos etc. Then it will be sent to the printers. The print version should be available in February.

As for the Gamemaster's Guide, unfortunately it's way behind schedule. Josh is polishing the rules section, Morgan Weeks (aka Panda) is working on the magic items chapter. The rules for thread items are not going to change, but the items will be revised, and there is going to be some additional advice on using magical treasures in campaigns and adventures.

The work is also being done on additional material concerning managing fights, and opponents stats, especially armor values. During game sessions Josh saw that because of the new Armor-Defeating Hits rules the fights with high-armored opponents tend to be much longer. So this is going to be handled, and the armor values of the opponents are probably going to be lowered, at least those which are too high.

Last, you can look at some new art preview. I really like the Laubenstein's t'skrang :)

It feels weird. To be writing this post. After such a wonderful introduction by Mordom (thanks, man!). Which I did not deserve. It also feels weird, because I kept you, the readers of this blog, so long waiting for my first post. Sorry. Most of all, it feels weird, because I would have never expected to be writing here or anywhere on the net about me being anyhow involed in translating and publishing a Polish edition of Earthdawn...

All right. Enough about me. Yes. That's right. Germany is not the only country getting a translation of the new Earthdawn 4th Edition books. Poland is also on the list. And it's official!

Fajne RPG (or Cool RPG if you translate the name into English), a Polish RPG publishing brand, created by three Polish RPG publishers (Kuźnia Gier, Gramel, Gindie) has officially announced it is planning to publish Polish Earthdawn 4th Edition books.

To accomplish this heroic task the publisher will launch a crowdfunding project. Depending on the success level (or number of successes if you prefer ED4 mechanics) two, three or more books will be published. Of course, like in every crowdfunding project there is a chance of failure. But in this case I'm full of optimism that everything is going to be all right. And Poland will have it's own Earthdawn 4th Edition...

And when I say it's own I really mean it! Fajne RPG announced that the layout of the Polish Earthdawn 4th Edition books will be different from the original. What is more the books will also have additional material, written by Polish authors.

The translation/editing team has already been assembled. The man resposible for the whole project is Piotr "Ramel" Koryś, owner of Gramel Publishing, publisher of Savage Worlds settings ("Nemezis", "Beasts & Barbarians") and Line Editor at Pinnacle Entertainment Group. Other people involved inlude names or nicknames you might know from the old EDPT and RedBrick forums or the new FASA Games forum. All Earthdawn fans. Loving the game.

The target for the Polish Earthdawn 4th Edition is first quarter of 2015. It's a big project but I hope we will make it on time. So may the Upandal be with us (other Passions are also welcomed).

And that's it for today!

Hope we meet again soon and may the Passions be with you :)

The International Gaming Days “SPIEL ‘14” took place from Oct. 16th – 19th at Essen. Like every year many RPG publishers were on site.

The German DORP-TV made various interviews with German as well as International publishers and for Earthdawn fans most interesting, with FASA (namely Ross Babcock) and Ulisses Spiele, the German publisher of Earthdawn.

Here’s the first interview with Ross from FASA:

The second interview with Michael Mingers from Ulisses Spiele was held on German. The "Earthdawn part" starts at 11:10 minute.

Wir werden erstmal warten mit eigensprachlichem Material, das nur auf Deutsch erscheinen wird, bis die Grundregelwerke rausgekommen sind. Was aber auch noch geplant ist, ist eigenes Deutsches Material, sowohl im Quellenbuch Bereich, wie auch Abenteuer, als auch NEUE ROMANE BZW. KURZGESCHICHTEN!!

 

Yes Earthdawn had a lot of miniatures back at the time when Heartbreaker produced them. I think it it were 53 to be exactly! At this article over here were 101 Earthdawn miniatures introduced on the blog.

But now back to the Kickstarter project that was initiated by Impact! Miniatures. FASA granted Impact! Miniatures permission to produce miniatures for Earthdawn. To do so, they acquired the original masters to create new molds and make new miniatures like those from Heartbreaker.

There’s one special thing to keep in mind when backing this project:

Rather than force our backers to take a specific set of miniatures that might have some they desire and some they do not.  The different reward levels give you a number of points to spend on the figurines. You select a reward with the number of points that you desire and then when you complete the pledge manager you will be able to select exactly the miniatures you want and only the miniatures you want to spend your money on

Head over to the Kickstarter page to find out more about the miniatures, their size, the stretch goals and the pledge levels that are available.

Here’s a short interview with Ross Babcock from FASA made by Markus from Ulisses Spiele (German publisher)

 

Daten, Zahlen, Fakten

Hier noch ein kleiner Hinweis für deutsche Earthdawn fans, die oftmals mit den Konvertierungen der Amerikanischen Längemaße und Einheiten zu kämpfen haben. Ulisses hat dazu ein paar Daten, Zahlen und Fakten zusammengetragen.

Several Earthdawn news were published during the recent weeks. So I thought it's time for a short roundup over here. 

But first a short question:
I once had a series running on the blog called "Earthdawn World Wide", where various countries with their specific Earthdawn fan community and products (be it fan or official translations) were introduced. And as I see now a "new" Earthdawn Edition rising, I wanted to ask you all, if you've heard sth. from any publisher of your country who is planning to publish the new 4th Edition material in your language?

German Earthdawn page online

Yes, you might already have heard that the German publisher Ulisses Spiele grabbed the rights to publish German Earthdawn books. The German Earthdawn page of Ulisses is now online at http://www.ulisses-spiele.de/sortiment/rollenspiele/earthdawn/.

Interview

+Morgan Weeks and +Josh Harrison gave an interview about Earthdawn 4E moderated by Jim Pinto for AetherCon:

 

Example characters by Morgan

The recent project of +Morgan Weeks is to publish several example characters for Earthdawn 4th Edition.

So far Morgan released the following example characters on his blog:

• T’skrang swordmaster
• Windling Swordmaster
• Troll Skyraider
• Elf Sky Raider
• Elf Archer
• Windling Archer
• Ork Cavalryman

The characters have full stats for 8th circle chars and are designed for 4th Edition rules.

Epic character generator – new races

The epic character generator received two new races. The Anthro Cat (male and female) and Ork male packs are now available for the program.

As I just saw at the Earthdawn Kickstarter page, the project funded more than $80.000.

This means that:

The Elven Nations book will be added to the reward offers and as an add-on, in both PDF and print options.

The Earthdawn Kickstarter campaign has raised more than 700% of it’s original goal at the time of writing this article! The finish line is ahead and if you’re still hesitating to make your pledge, I can tell you that there are only 3 days left to support one of the best high fantasy RPG’s that are out there.

 

FASA and the developers have introduced a lot of stuff during the recent weeks since the Kickstarter project started. So I want to provide a short link overview of what information, interviews and previews concerning the Kickstarter project have been released so far. Just for the case you’re still hesitating cause of the lack of information……

Unlocked stretch goals:

• Travar: City of Merchants sourcebook unlocked
• Free GM Screen for pledges of physical books (softcover or hardcover!)
• ED4 Companion

Released previews:

• Revised talents list (forum discussion can be found here)
• Artwork preview #1
• Artwork preview #2 and a preview of the revised Archer Discipline
• Spell preview

Interviews:

• Horrors of the new Editions with Josh Harrison
• A word from Morgan concerning various topics like reducing the complexity of the game
• Josh’s interview @ ainitcool.com
• Josh’s interview @ diehardgamefan.com

I guess these links sum it up pretty good about what information was spread during the last weeks. But I still want to add some additional information that could be interesting to you. I cite it here from various sources, be it comments of the Kickstarter campaign, G+ or forum posts.

We'll release the PDFs as soon as the layout has been through blueline, a month or so ahead of the physical books. Josh Harrison says the Players and GM's Guides are currently scheduled for release in August, Travar for October, and the Companion for December, with the usual disclaimers about risk and acts of the Passions and so forth.

The FASA Games web store has been updated with all the KS pledge levels. If you'd rather work by Paypal than credit card, you can now get all of the merch from the KS, and we'll count the sales in the web store KS category toward the KS pledge total for stretch goal unlock

All backers who pledged for softcover or hardcover editions of the books will receive a free GM screen. We'll put all the tables and charts you need on one side, and full color art on the other, on a fold-out cardstock screen. This includes a 16-page booklet of pregenerated gamemaster characters and other useful material. We will add the GM screen to our online shop and product line once the KS reward copies have shipped. Yes, we're adding a PDF version of this to the PDF Everything Bundle.

Of course the overview makes no claim of being complete. But I hope some of the info is helpful to make your decision to select a pledge and support the project.

Finally I can only recommend to have a look at the Earthdawn FASA Games Forum to read about the latest discussions and debates.

The Earthdawn Kickstarter campaign is live and after a short period (1 day), already reached it’s goal of $10.000!! Hell yeah!

Now, twenty years after its initial release, a new edition is in development under the FASA Games banner. In addition to revising and polishing the game rules, this new edition of Earthdawn will update the setting, putting in place a new status quo for players to explore. The goal is to make the game more accessible and friendly to players unfamiliar with Earthdawn and its history.

The delivery dates for the pledges is set to Aug/Sep 2014. All the information about what you still can pledge for, can be found on the project’s Kickstarter page.

If you have already played some previous Earthdawn editions, you might be wondering, what changes in the new Earthdawn 4th Edition. For this reason Josh Harrison released 4 Earthdawn 4th Edition previews so far on the FASA Games Blog.

• Fourth Edition – Preview #1
• The Beastmaster – Earthdawn Fourth Edition Preview
• Earthdawn Preview – More Discipline Changes
• Earthdawn Preview – Looking back at the war

You still want to know more?

Josh Harrison, Earthdawn line developer held an ED Q&A session at rpg.net’s chat yesterday and the log of the session was released at GMshoes’s office.

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.

Read the news? The most recent Earthdawn news can be read at Loremerchant.com and on Google+:

Josh Harrison has been offered and has accepted the Line Developer position for Earthdawn. I wasn’t able to find an official announcement @ FASA, but I think Josh doesn’t spread the news without reason.

I am honestly excited to read, that one guy of the “Crew” takes the position of Earthdawn Line Developer. His long relation to Earthdawn makes him a great choice and brings a fresh breeze to the Earthdawn Revised Edition (as far as I can judge...). I wish him all the best in his new position and am looking forward to further Earthdawn news, when things are ready for announcement. But for now: Earthdawn lives and maybe great things are looming @ FASA.

Update

The “who’s who” article at FASA officially confirms the news.

These days Earthdawn celebrates its 20th birthday. Earthdawn was introduced at GenCon 19th August 1993 and since then we saw various Earthdawn editions, many sourcebooks and several publishers which took command of the Earthdawn product line……..

Nevertheless it is one of the few great high fantasy RPG’s out there, with a great setting, complex stories and great adventures. 20 years, where fans all over the world got connected cause they play, played, want to play or simply heard of Earthdawn where “the heroes of today are the legends of tomorrow” – King Varulus III of Throal.

Birthday present?

Well, I got there two final quizzes for you, which were created with the help of Sethariel (thx).

Final quizzes, right! I had quite a bunch of Earthdawn Quizzes on the blog now which can be found at the quiz section.

It’s been a while since the last Earthdawn quiz was published and to give this series a good ending, these last two shall take you on a small journey of 20 years of Earthdawn. Enjoy.

 

 

The first annual Earthdawn Appreciation Day was recently announced by the EPIC RPG Blog for June 14th.

So how can you participate and what is this about? Tilton explains it:

On June 14th we will be celebrating one of the best Role-Playing Games to ever be produced (In my opinion). How can you participate? By creating some new and fun content for Earthdawn and posting it to your blog, G+ or by emailing your submission to me at epicrpgblog@gmail.com on June 14th.

You can win some prizes that are sponsored by FASA and, to (maybe) inspire you, a list of some topics for your blog post/submission for June 14th is provided too:

Create new original content for Earthdawn (Including Savage Worlds and Pathfinder editions). This can include, but is not limited to:

• Thread Items
• Adventures
• Artwork
• Card Games
• Charts & Tables
• Cities
• Equipment
• Horrors
• Maps
• Monsters
• Mundane Flora and Fauna
• Namegivers
• New Disciplines
• New Sections of the Map (South Africa, Antarctica, Atlantis, Lemuria, Mu, Australia, North/South America, Greenland...The Moon, Mars?)
• New Settings (Using Earthdawn Rules in a new setting)
• New Talents
• NPCs
• System Conversions (Earthdawn Setting in different ruleset)

So what about you? Got some unfinished ideas or additional content for Earthdawn? Simply tell Tilton you’re in over here.

Steven Black has posted a short encounter shard at FASA. It is made for Novice level (Second to Fourth Circle). The shard was, as mentioned in the article, inspired by an article about Living Root Bridges. This is hopefully one of many shards to come.

Adventure Goal: Getting the group involved. One potential goal is that the group needs to cross either the Servos or Galanga River and hears rumors about a bridge in the area from local natives.

The full shard can be found at FASA’s Articles page.

FASA has recently announced “March M-m-m-m-mad-madness Earthdawn Sale!”

Here’s a short look at the announcement:

Regardless, we have a bunch of Earthdawn books sitting in our warehouse looking for a new home. So we're doing something that we don't do often. FASA Games are pleased to present our March M-m-m-m-mad-madness Earthdawn Sale!

As long as stocks last, or until the end of March -- whichever happens first! -- prices have been m-m-m-m-massively reduced across our Earthdawn Third, Revised, Pathfinder, and Savage Worlds Edition game lines.

Read the full announcement over here.

The sale can be found on the FASA Games Online Shop.