Part 4: Earthdawn
Earthdawn. I remember the initial buzz, it was 1993, I was fresh out of High School, and there was this new fantasy RPG from the makers of Shadowrun and Battletech. This, I had to see- not to mention the artwork conjuring images of the ancient world. I was stoked. I scored the hardcover rulebook at King’s Hobby, and took it to work with me the next day. I was assigned to the cashier box at the Luby’s Cafeteria where I worked, which usually meant plenty of reading timer after the rush was over. I devoured the book- so many concepts that made sense.
Why did they make sense? Well, rumor has it the FASA crew were taking a look at D&D tropes, and trying to figure out how to make them make internal sense in the game world. Classes and levels became the Adept orders and their Circles. Dungeons full of monsters and discarded treasure? Kaers, magical bomb shelters designed to protect their inhabitants from an astral apocalypse, some of which failed… leaving massive complexes of underground tunnels filled with the former possessions of the previous residents. And often, whatever killed them. That would be the Horrors, creatures who pierced the veil between the Astral and the material plane to visit their depredations upon the unprotected folk, or the Kaers that could be breached.
Magic items? No more +1 swords. Each item has a history, and the potential to grow with the characters, as they discover and utilize more abilities of each item. And every PC has a touch of magic, with the martial classes using theirs in the way the physical adept does in Shadowrun. In fact… until FASA closed its doors, Earthdawn was the pre-history of Shadowrun.
Unlike Shadowrun, Earthdawn uses more than just the D6. It has a system of steps, each of which uses a different die or combination of dice to create a curve whose average is the step number itself. Step 5 is 1d8, Step 10 is 1d10+1d6, etc. Action Dice that roll their maximum possible number are rolled again and added up, familiar to Savage Worlds players today. There are other neat ideas here, like the difference between taking damage and taking a Wound. Or the inherent defenses characters have against different types of attack. Or the whole concept of Karma Ritual. But you don’t have to take my word for it...
Character Creation System:
The first thing to do when creating an Earthdawn character is choose their Discipline. This was novel, in a way, since many games at the time Earthdawn was published still had attribute requirements for certain “classes”- notable Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition. Thus, it was necessary to generate attributes before choosing a class. Earthdawn, however, begins with the choice of Discipline. Disciplines are like classes, but have an in-game identity. You are part of your Discipline’s order, and your level, or Circle, is something of which your character is aware. It is very similar to how colored belts are used in American martial art schools.
Earthdawn First Edition has XX Disciplines: Archer, Beastmaster, Cavalryman, Elementalist, Illusionist, Nethermancer, Sky Raider, Swordmaster, Thief, Troubadour, Warrior, Weaponsmith, and Wizard. I say, let’s go for something that’s not in D&D. Our character will be a Weaponsmith. Next, we choose a race. My first thought is of course a Dwarf, but again, I’d like to do something that isn’t a D&D standard, so let’s make a T’Skrang Weaponsmith. T’Skrang are reptilian humanoids with prehensile tails. They’re often flashy and flamboyant- archetypically, they make great swordmasters. But someone has to make their fine blades, right?
Earthdawn allows players to either point-buy their attributes, or randomly roll them. I love random rolls, so let’s go that route. The book says to roll 4D6, drop lowest, and assign them as desired. Hmmm… that feels familiar. So… here we go… 17! 12, 11, 13, 15, 14. Not too shabby. The attributes are Dexterity, Strength, Toughness, Perception, Willpower, and Charisma. Interesting that there isn’t a strict intelligence or wisdom stat. So, Weaponsmiths need a high Willpower and Perception. T’Skrang get a +1 to Dexterity, Toughness, and Charisma.
In most versions of D&D, the score usually has an adjustment or modifier, for example in 1983 Basic D&D, a Strength of 13 gets a +1 to hit and damage, a Strength of 18 is +3, determined by a chart. In D&D 5th Edition, it’s +1 for every two full points over 10. In Earthdawn, each score equates to a Step, which determines what dice are rolled when using that attribute.
So, with all this in mind, our hero has attributes like this:
- Dexterity: 15 - Step 6 - 1D10
- Strength: 12 - Step 5 - 1D8
- Toughness: 14 - Step 6 - 1D10
- Perception: 17 - Step 7 - 1D12
- Willpower: 15 - Step 6 - 1D10
- Charisma: 12 - Step 5 - 1D8
Now we have a number of things that are determined by our attributes. Defenses are Physical, Spell and Social, and are determined by Dexterity, Perception and Charisma, respectively. Death Rating is the amount of damage a character may take before being killed, Wound Threshold is how many points must be landed at one time to be considered a serious wound, otherwise the damage is minor bruising, small cuts, and the like. Unconsciousness Rating lets you know when your character passes out. Recovery Tests determine how many times per day a character can attempt to heal naturally. It is very reminiscent of healing surges or the D&D 5e version of Hit Dice. Wow, Earthdawn seems like it may have inspired quite a few games down the line.
Armor is usually from worn armor, but Mystic Armor can occur with a high enough Willpower. Movement is determined by looking up Dex on the table. Carrying capacity likewise, with Strength. Next we look up Karma attributes based on race.
In Earthdawn Karma can be spent to add extra Action Dice, among other things. Each Discipline has a Karma Ritual, an activity that can be undertaken in the game in which the character trades Legend Points, the Earthdawn version of experience, for Karma points. Some races tend to be luckier than others, and each has a different sized Karma die, and cos per point recovered. Trolls and Obsidimen are stuck with D4 Karma dice. Windlings get a D10. All of this gets looked up, and written down.
Next, we record racial abilities. As a T’Skrang, we get the Tail Attack ability, which allows us to thwack an opponent with the character’s tail, doing 3 extra steps of damage. So instead of rolling a D8, we’d roll 2D6 to do damage.
Now, it’s time to assign Talent Ranks. Here’s the deal: in Earthdawn, Adepts of the various Orders channel magic into the things they do. So a Warrior is using magic to be a supernaturally talented Warrior, not just swinging a sword. Anyone can just swing a sword, but without it being an Adept Talent, it’s just a Skill. Skills perform like Talents, but are more time consuming and expensive in terms of Legend Points to perfect- after all, there’s no magical talent behind it.
Each talent uses an attribute to determine the Step, and therefore the Action Dice rolled when employing it. If a Talent is based on an Attribute with a Step of 5, then Step 6 would be used for a Rank 1 talent, Step6 7 for a Rank 2, and so forth. Beginning Adepts get 8 Ranks to spend, and may not exceed Rank 3 at the beginning of a game.
So, here’s what we take. Rank 2 in Forge Blade and Melee Weapons, and 1 Rank each in Avoid Blow, Karma Ritual, Steel Thought, and Weapon History.
Now the character gets Skills. 2 Ranks worth of Knowledge Skills, 1 Rank in an Artisan Skill, and 1 Rank in a Language Skill. Every character also get Read/Write Languages at Rank 1. We take Ancient Weapons and Court Dancing at Rank 1, Runic Carving and Rank 1, and the Ork language at Rank 1. Why does every Discipline include an Artisan Skill? Glad you asked. The Horrors can plant a mark on a person, corrupt them, even in some cases control them. What’s a telltale sign of the Horror Touched? The inability to truly create. Artisan Skills are a way to prove you are not Horror Touched.
Starting with 120 Silver Pieces, we score Traveler’s Garb for 8, Padded Leather Armor for 20, a Dagger for 0.8, a Broadsword for 25, and Adventurer’s Kit for 15, and a week worth of trail rations for 10. 78.8 spent, 41.2 left for future endeavors.
The Character:
There was a lone Dwarf sheltering with the river folk in their Kaer, forced to hunker down when it became apparent he wouldn’t make it back to Throal before their Kaer was sealed. He was Tommus, a weaponsmith of no small reputation and great skill. With nothing but time after the sealing of the great doors, Tommus took apprentices from among the T’Skrang, and found several skilled and attentive pupils, but was frustrated that even the most dedicated lacked the attention span of a Dwarven scholar. Still, Tommus wanted to pass on his craft, and continued to teach until his years were at an end- finally achieving success with one last student, who passed the craft to her children, who passed it to theirs, and when the time came to open the Kaer again, the community had their own order of Weaponsmith Adepts who had taken Dwarven skill and interwoven it with T’Skrang flamboyance.
The most recent of this line, Tom’tiksk, named for the great weaponsmith who founded his Order, has just reached his majority and proven he has the skills of a First Circle Adept. The doors of the Kaer have been open a very few years, the changed world outside the Kaer is still strange, and unknown. The river is still there, and the people of the Kaer have begun plying it once again. Tom’tiksk has gathered a modest set of equipment and sought the approval of his grandmother, head of their Order, to venture forth and seek his fortune.
There are legends out there of magical weapons forged by the great weaponsmiths before the Scourge, before the Horrors. Just as rumor has it some Horrors remain, so, too, must some of these weapons rest in hidden places of the Earth, waiting for their stories to be told. Perhaps one of them was forged by the Dwarven Weaponsmith Tommus. Tom’tiksk takes a long look back into the Kaer, and then steps confidently forward to find out for himself.
My Thoughts:
This game is one of my favorite to read, but I can’t seem to ever find table time for it. It has so many things I love woven into its structure, the lore is amazing. The quest to carve out a legend rather than seek riches or power for their own sake, the magic items that become more powerful the more one knows about them. It’s all so atmospheric, so flavorful. Oh, and it’s the pre-history of Shadowrun. At least, that was the intention when both were published by FASA. And the Horrors were due to make a return to the Sixth World.
I didn’t talk much about the magic system, because we created a Weaponsmith, but Earthdawn’s magic involves a definite risk-reward mechanic. Magic can be cast by drawing power directly from the Astral plane, but since the Scourge this was terribly unwise. It attracts the Horrors, you see. So spellcasters learned how to use Spell Matrices, constructs of Astral energy that act as a filter and sort of a mold- since each Matrix has to be attuned to a specific spell, and re-attunement takes some doing. Spells are “woven” of threads of magical power. The more powerful the spell, the more threads must be woven into it. Very different from most other RPGs, and definitely a departure from the Vancian magic of D&D.
I have read most of FASA’s Earthdawn line, I’m only missing a couple of books. I own the Second Edition from Living Room Games, the Third Edition, and have PDFs of the current edition and the Savage Worlds version. The system from D&D 4e would have done well with Earthdawn as a setting, so many of the mechanics seem directly inspired. I’ve even read the first Earthdawn novel, and own the rest. I need to get around to reading them, but grad school sort of ruined me for leisure reading. I’m getting back to it now, half a decade later, and just finished Ready Player Two and Han Solo at Star’s End. I need to revisit Earthdawn.
Yeah, we gotta make this game happen. I say that a lot, about many games, but this one deserves a good look. Thematically, it takes the genre tropes of fantasy and gives them internal sense and consistency, and I dig it.
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