Why is everyone trying to get me to play Earthdawn?

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 7:07 pm

Yeah, I know that troll-riding is cool, I've only ever once played a non-windling. Though I've read the namegiver's companion and many other ED books, I can't recall ever reading something like "be careful of the dungeons you design if there are windlings about" like I said.

And we just use notebook paper for our sheets.

Kot · Post by **Kot** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 7:28 pm

I'm not saying it was. That would be silly to assume, since most GM's managed to learn game logic. Besides, most Kaers and Citadels were built with minimum space, since that needed a lot of resources.
But even in a cavernous location, with lots of space to fly around GM's have one great equalizer in Earthdawn. Shadowmants. They should be windlings racial enemy.

I've spend my younger years designing, improving and drawing character sheets for ED on paper. *sigh* But then we started playing it, and one of the players made neat sheets in OpenOffice. We're improving those all the time, though. Maybe I should make a translation?

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 8:05 pm

Make a translation.
And doodle some art on them too ^^

As for people liking math: we need such people to balance people who do fluff only.

Kot · Post by **Kot** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 12:42 am

Okay, I'll do that. You don't want me doodling on those. Really. I have no talent whatsoever in drawing. Crude map handouts is as far as I can go.

K · Post by K » Wed Jan 25, 2012 4:26 am

Earthdawn's setting was the main flaw. They really should have gone more generic since they had a better core system.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 6:12 am

@Stahlseele: Hmph... Never noticed that one. Now those blue SR dwarves from Germany start to make sense... Sinister, sick, silly sense.

Short people who live in the forest, wear different coloured fur hat/leggings; and woad; sounds an awful lot like smurfs to me.

Making them suddenly a lot more appealing, now that I have some potential understanding of what they are.

I'd probably place them in deep/dark/undisturbed forest(s), make them some sort of small homonid-shaped creature, and let them use woad/blue war-paint.

I'm not sure how close that is to the original source material, but the furry leggings/kilts/cloaks and peaked, conical/phallus hats; seems plausible for people wearing animal furs and hides. Mostly because such materials can be made into durable kilts, and impressive pirate hats pretty easily. So, Smurfs are legging wearing, peak-capped, warriors

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 7:33 am

K wrote:Earthdawn's setting was the main flaw. They really should have gone more generic since they had a better core system.

Its been close to a decade since I read the 1st Ed. of Earthdawn but I don't recall much that could be ported into your own setting without much explanation rules wise. The biggest issue would be the dangers of spell weaving without a matrix which I thought was a pretty good method of keeping casting under control.

For those who read it more recently, is there anything that would truly stop you from turning it classless an just letting people select talents that suited they're concept? I'm sure some might require a minimum circle level to acquire but other than that and the hitpoint talent?

Kot · Post by **Kot** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 2:40 pm

K wrote:Earthdawn's setting was the main flaw. They really should have gone more generic since they had a better core system.

So, you thing making a crappy dnd ripoff would be better? Really? No comments here, I'm trying to cut on the flamewars recently.

@Ckafrica: The game world. Disciplines are part of the setting(of how magic works), not just arbitrary mechanics. And they're not 'classes' per se, more like a way of life along the Adept's Path. Disciplines are more like 'prestige classes' that demand you to take a certain point of view and philosophy first, and bunch of cool abilities second, at least that's how I see them (after reading the Adept's Path rulebook, and later ED3 rulebooks it was implemented in).
ED3 lets you choose non-disciplinary talents yourself. One per Circle, but that's a big choice though. It lets you customize your Path enough.

@Judging__Eagle: Medieval Frisians had that kind of hats.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 3:11 pm

That was really the main difference between SR and ED and games like D&D and GURPS: the systems were designed to work with and support the setting; if you change either, things get wonky. I was pretty rabid for many years about people trying to port SR to GURPS or Savage World settings, or Earthdawn as a setting for D&D.

Kot · Post by **Kot** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 4:32 pm

That's also what I was doing for some time. Then I decided you can easily make a 'convention conversion' of ED to Savage Worlds. Just name 'bennies' Karma Points, and don't worry about anything else. With all those dice used SW is like 'Earthdawn lite' rules, perfect to introduce players to Barsaive, and prepare them for the Step system.
As for dnd conversions, I'd disembowel myself if my Wizard would have to prepare spells, and be able to cast only a handful per day... =='

K · Post by K » Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:59 pm

Kot wrote:
K wrote:Earthdawn's setting was the main flaw. They really should have gone more generic since they had a better core system.
So, you thing making a crappy dnd ripoff would be better? Really? No comments here, I'm trying to cut on the flamewars recently.

Pretty much.

I mean, they did too much faux-grimdark elements like the Horrors and the blood elves and that just turned people off. I was way into playing elves at the time when I did Earthdawn and my first response was "well....shit. Guess I'm never playing an elf in this game."

I also felt really oppressed by the Cthulhu rip-off "Horrors." You really have to be in a certain frame of mind to want to mix the hopelessness of Cthulhu mythos horror with heroic fantasy.

Not just that, but being a toolbox for people to make their own campaign worlds is just going to get a lot more traction. Generic fantasy doesn't have to be boring, but it seems every time I see a fantasy RPG world book it seems they go way too far in trying to be different and edgy at the expense of being adaptable to recognizable stories, and to no one's surprise it never gets read.

I mean, worlds like Final Fantasy have a shit-ton of fans even if they conform to a lot of fantasy tropes, and I never see them being criticized for being "too DnD" or "too LotR" or "too Diablo" or too anything really.

"Generic fantasy" doesn't even exist as a real thing, but it does get bandied about by weird setting designers as a reason for why they make unsuccessful settings.

Heck, Monte could have stolen the fantasy RPG market if he'd just made his Arcana Unearthed books into a real fantasy setting with classes like "Warrior" and "Mage" that people could sink their teeth into, but instead he ended up with a slightly better system that was pulled down by a "not-generic fantasy setting."

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 6:41 pm

K wrote:I mean, they did too much faux-grimdark elements like the Horrors and the blood elves and that just turned people off. I was way into playing elves at the time when I did Earthdawn and my first response was "well....shit. Guess I'm never playing an elf in this game."

Not for nothing, did you actually read the rulebook? You can't actually play a blood elf straight from the main rulebook; they weren't introduced as playable characters until many sourcebooks later. It's the equivalent of deciding not to play a elf because drow exist. Not to knock you or anything, it just...sounds like you didn't actually read the book. People bitching about things without knowing what they're bitching about is sort of a pet gripe of mine.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 7:06 pm

It's been a long time and my experiences with Earthdawn were pretty brief....but couldn't the step system be made to have very similar functionality and be a lot more intuitive by revising it to a model like Feng Shui where each step is some constant N and then you add the roll of one positive die and one negative die to it.? That way, the average is always the N on the character sheet and the designer can have that N scale up or down with level/circle as steep or as gentle as they like.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 7:08 pm

K wrote: Heck, Monte could have stolen the fantasy RPG market if he'd just made his Arcana Unearthed books into a real fantasy setting with classes like "Warrior" and "Mage" that people could sink their teeth into, but instead he ended up with a slightly better system that was pulled down by a "not-generic fantasy setting."

He could have "stolen" the market? I think I hear the hyperbole police coming to take you away...

I agree that his crappy fantasy setting made Arcana Unearthed/Evolved worse, not better.

K · Post by K » Wed Jan 25, 2012 7:23 pm

Ancient History wrote:
K wrote:I mean, they did too much faux-grimdark elements like the Horrors and the blood elves and that just turned people off. I was way into playing elves at the time when I did Earthdawn and my first response was "well....shit. Guess I'm never playing an elf in this game."
Not for nothing, did you actually read the rulebook? You can't actually play a blood elf straight from the main rulebook; they weren't introduced as playable characters until many sourcebooks later. It's the equivalent of deciding not to play a elf because drow exist. Not to knock you or anything, it just...sounds like you didn't actually read the book. People bitching about things without knowing what they're bitching about is sort of a pet gripe of mine.

Yes, I did read the book and the blood elves in the setting made me not want to play an elf of any kind in the setting, even if you can't understand that. Maybe I just didn't want the eventual "Mirror Match" fight to be against masochistic versions of my character, or maybe I just felt that it ruined the whole elven backstory. This was all two decades ago so I can't be expected to remember it perfectly.

I mean, the whole point of doing the "good race and cosmetically different evil race" is to metaphorically highlight the good and evil parts of the race as a whole. I guess I was turned off by that in the setting the "dark side" of the elven race was that they were masochists.

That being said, drow actually make me want to play an elf more in a standard DnD setting. Drow are just arrogant and chaotic and into dark magic, and that fits really well metaphorically with a dark side of the elves that would be fun to play.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 7:41 pm

I think you have D&D drow confused with the Dark Eldar, but that's okay. Whatever floats your little boat.

K · Post by K » Wed Jan 25, 2012 8:20 pm

Ancient History wrote:I think you have D&D drow confused with the Dark Eldar, but that's okay. Whatever floats your little boat.

No, I don't. The fact that you think anyone could confuse them says a lot about how little you know about either.

Thanks for letting me know I can ignore you now.

Kot · Post by **Kot** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 8:49 pm

K wrote:I mean, they did too much faux-grimdark elements like the Horrors and the blood elves and that just turned people off. I was way into playing elves at the time when I did Earthdawn and my first response was "well....shit. Guess I'm never playing an elf in this game."

As Ancient wrote, blood elves are antagonists. They're NPCs who survived at the cost of their 'humanity', turning into twisted and corrupted versions of their former glory. The Blood Wood and elven court itself are antagonists. There is no 'drow complex' in Earthdawn, sorry. Want to whine about it? There should be a dnd thread somewhere.

K wrote:I also felt really oppressed by the Cthulhu rip-off "Horrors." You really have to be in a certain frame of mind to want to mix the hopelessness of Cthulhu mythos horror with heroic fantasy.

_Postapocalyptic_ high-magic _heroic_ fantasy setting? Hello? Besides, the Horrors were already established by Shadowrun, I think. Plus all that 'rain of jaguars from the sky' Mayan motif. Besides, Horrors are not 'invincible' as the Mythos pantheon. Even Verjigorm, The Dark One, 'mother' of all Horrors and ultimate badass who snacks on great dragons can be defeated. Yes, in an epic final battle with great dragons helping the 15-th circle Adept characters, but it can be done.
Fighting them is hard, and possibly deadly, or worse, but that's what Heroes do in Earthdawn. They're default bosses or mid-bosses at least, but still killable.

K wrote:Not just that, but being a toolbox for people to make their own campaign worlds is just going to get a lot more traction. Generic fantasy doesn't have to be boring, but it seems every time I see a fantasy RPG world book it seems they go way too far in trying to be different and edgy at the expense of being adaptable to recognizable stories, and to no one's surprise it never gets read.

Believe me, Earthdawn gives you just that. Every campaign is different. Even if they cross-over, and are GM'ed by the same person(and I speak from experience). If you have imagination, knowledge and GMing skills, you can easily work in the setting frame. If you need a generic 'we have elves, dark elves, light elves, shady elves, and elvish elves living in an elven forest in an elven empire' setting, sorry. That's not the game.
This one tries to do something more, building a world that's logical and fun to explore. Remember, that Earthdawn is the answer to the question "How did the previous magic era look like" from Shadowrun. Guess why it doesn't carter to the 'generic fantasy with dark elves' public.

K wrote:I mean, worlds like Final Fantasy have a shit-ton of fans even if they conform to a lot of fantasy tropes, and I never see them being criticized for being "too DnD" or "too LotR" or "too Diablo" or too anything really.

FF is a video game. Don't compare videogames to tabletop roleplaying games.

K wrote:Yes, I did read the book and the blood elves in the setting made me not want to play an elf of any kind in the setting, even if you can't understand that. Maybe I just didn't want the eventual "Mirror Match" fight to be against masochistic versions of my character, or maybe I just felt that it ruined the whole elven backstory.

No, you didn't read it. Just skimmed it. You again confuse s&m drow with blood elves. Blood elves _don't_ feel pain, because they are in pain all the time. Just like you don't know that you're breathing. Besides, if you really read the whole book, you know the reason for their state. And playing a 'normal' elf in Earthdawn isn't about whining how the Blood Wood was lost and looking for Blood Elves to blame...

Summarizing: you're whining that ED is 'too sophisticated' and a 'generic fantasy' (read: bullshit setting that falls apart at any attempt of logical analysis) would be better? Then don't play Earthdawn. Play FR, or any other kind of 'generic fantasy' game. Just don't whine that ED is 'bad', because you don't like it. 'Generic' is boring. It has been done so many times, that you can put one together in a weekend. Been there, done that, wasn't satisfied with it...
And don't contradict yourself in a discussion. First you state that ED isn't 'generic' enough, then you state that 'there is no such thing as generic fantasy'. It's not making me hopeful for a real discussion here.

K wrote:No, I don't. The fact that you think anyone could confuse them says a lot about how little you know about either.

He really has no idea who you are, Ancient? *snicker* Here, K, have a shovel. Or better, I'll get you an excavator...

P.S. I'm getting snarky and sarcastic. The Den has me...

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 9:25 pm

To be fixink Tags please Kot!

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 9:59 pm

Kot wrote: Summarizing: you're whining that ED is 'too sophisticated' and a 'generic fantasy' (read: bullshit setting that falls apart at any attempt of logical analysis) would be better?

Why did you put the words "too sophisticated" in quotation marks? Whom are you quoting?

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:25 pm

One, fix your tags, Kot.

Two, wasn't Earthdawn the 5th Age to Shadowrun's 7th, or something? So using the Horrors from something in the future to explain something in the past?

Three, being a frothing fanboy about dumb fluff shit isn't going to do you any favors. That blood elf thing does sound really lame, too.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:30 pm

Ahem . . No . .

SHADOWRUN is the SIXTH AGE.
The THIRD AGE OF MAGIC.

WE ARE HERE, in the 5th age, the 3rd age of no magic.

EARTHDAWN is the FOURTH AGE.
The SECOND AGE OF MAGIC.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 11:12 pm

Kot wrote:Blood elves don't feel pain, because they are in pain all the time. Just like you don't know that you're breathing.

I don't know anything about the book, but this is not how chronic pain works.
Some people seriously can't lead normal lives because they are in constant pain.
You might want to look through some documentaries and stuff and realise how badly it can actually affect you.

Or I misunderstood how it works in the book since I've not actually read it I guess.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 11:32 pm

For the record, K is allowed his opinion on blood elves, drow, dark Eldar, and whatever the fuck else he wants. I don't give two tugs of a dead dog's cock either way, I just get pissed when people who haven't read the book complain about something with no knowledge of what the hell they're complaining about. That's completely my preference, since I'm sure there are many people that think bitching about something in ignorance is fine, because they've already formed their opinion (it sucks) and don't care to learn anymore about something they don't like. I've just had my writing on the receiving end of that a few times (Street Magic comes to mind), and I don't appreciate it.

On the dark elf fuckery:

I mean, the whole point of doing the "good race and cosmetically different evil race" is to metaphorically highlight the good and evil parts of the race as a whole. I guess I was turned off by that in the setting the "dark side" of the elven race was that they were masochists.

That being said, drow actually make me want to play an elf more in a standard DnD setting. Drow are just arrogant and chaotic and into dark magic, and that fits really well metaphorically with a dark side of the elves that would be fun to play.

There are some things wrong with this, but I'll just hit the highlight: the last statement applies more accurately to Games Workshop's Dark Elves/Eldar from their Warhammer Fantasy/40K games than it does to Drow. None of it really applies to blood elves from Earthdawn.

Drow are dark-skinned elves that live underground and worship Lolth. That is the original basis of their existence, and they only developed as interesting later on when Forgotten Realms added a stratified society, maternal hierarchy, more gods, a little backstory, and the Drizzle. Greyhawk can go suck it. As a race they're usually listed as Neutral Evil these days, and aside from fucking demons and a penchant for web spells aren't noticeably more into "dark magic" than anybody else.

Dark Elves/Eldar are actually elves that use dark magic, are at least partially aligned with the Chaos gods in Warhammer fluff, and actually have fucking "dark" in their names, to further clarify they aren't your garden-variety Elf/Eldar.

Blood Elves use a lot of blood magic, this is true. But then again so does everybody else in Earthdawn; it's just a matter of degree. They are arrogant pricks, I will grant you that, but again: so are plenty of (non-Blood) elves. They aren't even particularly evil, just haughty and fucked up because most of them don't want to admit they made a terrible mistake and paid a horrific price for their survival. Outside of Horrors and the occasional Theran, there aren't a lot of out-and-out "evils" in Earthdawn - just people being terrible to each other, like the real world.

I'm kinda glad you did skip the Blood Wood sourcebook, K., because I really don't want to know what your opinion on thorn windlings is.

Kot · Post by **Kot** » Thu Jan 26, 2012 12:28 am

Stahlseele wrote:To be fixink Tags please Kot!

There. Sorry for that. Seems like something went wrong along the way and I missed a leftover /quote marker.

Ishy wrote:I don't know anything about the book, but this is not how chronic pain works.

It's not "chronic pain" actually. The Ritual of Thorns makes actual thorns grow from their bones, through their flesh. One of the reasons was to cause pain to ward of Horrors who have to cause pain themselves to 'eat' it. Since the Scourge ended, and most Horrors went home, the only reason to do that is to fuel the magic that changed Wyrmwood into Blood Wood with their... well, blood, dripping from the thorns from time to time.
And since that's a magical ritual, and it changes the elf's Pattern, they also get used to the pain, because being in pain is a part of what they are (said Pattern).

And as for the "chronic pain" part, I'm currently suffering from a strained abdomen muscle that didn't manage to heal from a surgery yet, before I had to go and hurt myself again. So I'm currently at 4-5 without meds, manageable to ~2 and being woozy-drugged with meds. Good thing it should heal a bit in a day or two, because I have a game of Mage this weekend, and I don't want to do a TPK because I'm annoyed.

@Mask_De_H: I'm not 'being a fanboy'. I just despise ignorants who claim to have actual knowledge in a field that I do have some. Can't even dream of competing with Ancient (good thing he's not fixing my mistakes and speculations), but still. And I don't froth. Dogs froth. As a Cat (that's what my nick means) I'm insulted by any association with canines.

@Hogarth: Sorry, that's a journalist thing, at least in Poland. Using 'single quotes' to point something as not being literal, or express doubt at legitimacy of it's meaning in this context. "Double quotes" are reserved for literal quoting.