I just picked this up at a used book sale for $3, mainly for the art which brought back a bunch of Shadowrun 2E nostalgia. Was Earthdawn intended as the prehistory of Shadowrun? I forget their connection.

Anyways, as the thread title says, tell me why this game is awesome! Or sucks! Psyche me up for it!

First, yes.  Barsaive is set in a real-world place, though it isn't immediately obvious from first brush.  And I don't know if there are a lot of other ties, because my Shadowrun experience is limited.  Concept is, magic waxes and wanes.  When it starts coming back, people start turning into dwarves.  When it gets really strong, horrors come out to play.

(Which would make a Shadowrun campaign set 1000 years into the future really, really interesting...)

Let's see...  Highs and lows...

Highs:

1) I love the 'crawling out of the darkness into the sun' part.  It's post apacolyptic fantasy.  With the added twist of those societies who 'went wrong'.  Failed cairns, blood-thorn elves, Parlainth.  Good, good, good stuff.

2) I love the 'tie threads to things' concept.  Players can 'build' magic items through weaving them into their history.

3) I liked the Theran war vs Dwarven independance angle.  Very nice.

4) If you don't mind a ride on the railroad, their 'epic campaign' through Barsaive at War is worth a try.  So many moving parts...  It was like a Paizo adventure path, if maybe a bit ahead of its time.

Lows:

1) Typcial system flaws you might find in a 'see, we are totally different from D&D' game.

2) Horrors may be too powerful in the system as described.  The concept gets wonkey pretty quick.  Either your players can kill them or they can't.  Both wreck up the game in one way or another.  I can explain more if you'd like, but it'll take some thought on my part to draw up better examples.

It is clearly meant to fix AD&D.
We never really got the thread magic system, at all, but the step die mechanics were fun. We would probably have kept on playing it indefintely, but the sheer amount of setting cruft inthe core book really turned me off and so we moved on.
The 1e supplements are full of useless 90's style fictive detail that never ever gets used in play. The monster book is especially terrible in this regard. The entire thing is the first person singular account of the world's monsters as related by a dragon. Stats are included, but the first person shit makes everything like twice as long as it needs to be, and so you get half as many monsters, related in a bliovating, inferior way.

I had lots of fun with ED1e. I love how they do magic items which is far superior to any other fantasy game I have played.

I was never a big fan of the system, but the races and classes were really evocative and enjoyable.

You only need the main book and can play forever. Some of the supplements are very good, though.

Earthdawn was the system of my longest, most successful, and most often reminisced campaign. The players all loved the system. We house-ruled it to play in the Wheel of Time as I have mentiond in other threads. We played generic dungeoneering style hack.

My personal favourite parts are the awesome magical items (which as mentioned is quite simply the best I've come across), and the base classes were incredibly fun and flexible.

In the end we stopped playing because my two core books fell apart and I couldn't find a cheap replacement, but other peeps had stacks of D&D 3/3.5 stuff.

The hardest part is overlooking the intrusive setting cruft as Gib mentioned. Parts were good, but by and large the literature was crap. Having said that, I really quite liked the Horrors and Passions, the rest was give or take for me.

I've been playing in a bi-monthly Earthdawn campaign for a few years now.
I think our GM is using first edition with homespun tweaks but I'm not clear where the delineations lie... the guy likes his numbers though and I wouldn't be surprised if he had added complexity rather than removing it (the players' rulebooks are bound printouts at the table).

That being said...
I like the setting. There's a lot going on and it feels like change is in the wind... it's not stagnant. It's got a very high-magic feel to it in that there are bits of magic in just about everything... rivers and rocks and trees. The magic feels less like science, more like art.
My favorite bit is the concept of how magic items are not just plug-and-play... if you find one you have to research it, get to know it, enter a relationship with it, before it will really shine.
The same goes for creating magic items... it's a process and it centers on your own personal use of the item in great deeds. If you want to create a heroic level sword you have to BE a hero. At least that's how it feels.
 
Our group recently overcame a mid-level Horror that had been plaguing us for some time... it was a pretty big event and we had a lot of help... but our reputation as heroes has grown into a tangible thing now. We are recognized (for good and ill) in many locations.
Somehow no D&D campaign ever gave me the 'epic' feeling that Earthdawn has on many occasions.

I'm not so fond of the system mechanics though...
I like that the rules are heavily integrated with the setting... but at times they seem needlessly convoluted... particularly regarding magic. Even after years of playing the game our groups' Elementalist ends up having to consult the GM on the rules fairly frequently, and I don't think it's because he's daft. The spell matrix rules seem a repeated point of confusion.
As much as I like the IDEA of how magic items work I still get a bit lost in the shuffle of weaving threads, forgings, etc. Much of it seems redundant... could be done with fewer rules.
The way it tries to work classes and levels into the setting seems forced to me... but I'm not generally a fan of them anyway so YMMV.
Really, I'd just prefer it to be skill-based with some archetype/professions to riff off of... it would probably lose SOME flavor, but not much, and I'd find it a whole lot more intuitive.
There are mechanics for learning Talents from other professions but none of us have sought that out yet.
The dice dice step progression isn't my favorite thing either. The GM seems to love it though (him being a math major). At higher circles it starting to slow combats down a bit as we grab out the particular dice needed for each roll... attack/buffing talents/damage. One of my archery attacks can involve up to 6 separate dice rolls if I turn on all my buff Talents, each using a different mix of dice types.
I'm not sure what would be lost by simplifying that procedure to a couple of percentile rolls (our GM HATES percentile-based systems).
My PC recently had a curse put on him that lowered/raised some base ability scores and since those feed in to Talents (skills) I had to stop and go through my character sheets (I think we're up to 5 pages, including Familiars) and make adjustments... look up the new dice to use. Not a huge deal but I didn't see the fun in it... vs. just giving me an overall penalty/bonus.
In general I just think it has too many different mechanics, too many die rolls, too many rules.

I've blathered enough.

A couple of people have already summarised some of the good and bad bits of the game. For anyone interested, someone has very recently started a 'Let's Read' thread about it here:

http://www.ukroleplayers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=14829

Slow going at the moment, but over time it should give a good picture of the game - although the OP has the book so more likely to be of interest to someone who doesn't have a copy...

I've sort of skimmed the chargen so far and getting into the magic system (avoided the settingwank for the moment). I have to say of what I've read so far I really like the magic system, though it seems very complex for actual play.

Quote from: TristramEvans;626943I have to say of what I've read so far I really like the magic system, though it seems very complex for actual play.

That's my take on the system in general. There's a lot of stuff that READS as cool and flavorful, but in actual dice rolls kinda clumps up and slows things down.
It's not unusual for a single battle to take huge chunks of our game time... an entire session... especially when magic comes out... though I wonder if part of that is because we're playing with miniatures on a gridded gameboard... stopping to draw out AOE and measure distance and such.

I never got into this game.  But I know some people who love it. The art is pretty enough...

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;627161I never got into this game.  But I know some people who love it. The art is pretty enough...

RPGPundit

Yeah, there's one artist, Jeff Laubenstein, who did alot of work for Shadowrun 2E, pretty much my main reason for initially picking up the game. I wonder what he's doing these days, because I loved his stuff.

Quote from: mcbobbo;626478First, yes.  Barsaive is set in a real-world place, though it isn't immediately obvious from first brush.  And I don't know if there are a lot of other ties, because my Shadowrun experience is limited.  Concept is, magic waxes and wanes.  When it starts coming back, people start turning into dwarves.  When it gets really strong, horrors come out to play.

(Which would make a Shadowrun campaign set 1000 years into the future really, really interesting...)

That would be Equinox.