The Future of Earthdawn

Editor's Note: This is a transcript of the seminar given at the 2005 Origins International Game Expo. It is not a word-for-word transcription; a lot of the extraneous comments have been cut out (though some have been left in where it fits the flow of the text). Page One is an introduction and general overview of RedBrick's plans for the line. Page Two covers the publishing model. Page Three is general Q&A and wrap-up. The format and layout should be self-explanatory, but if you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me or visit one of the Earthdawn web forums linked in this transcript. We try to check them daily, and answer questions as quickly as we can. --Josh

Josh
Welcome to the Future of Earthdawn. Pardon us if we seem a little bit excited… there are a couple copies of the mock-up books floating around, which we have not seen until just now ourselves. There's a bit of a story about that, and we will share it with people later--just ask.

James
Preferably over a beer.

Josh Harrison

James Flowers

Carsten Damm

Carlton Anderson

Josh
I'm Josh Harrison. I'm one of the three lead developers on this project. There are other people involved--Carlton [Anderson] over there has helped out a bunch, and there are a couple of other people who've helped out who were planning on being here, but haven't made it yet.

This is James Flowers, the head guy, the one indirectly responsible for this. It's Richard's fault, really, but James is the one here.

At the end of the table is Carsten Damm. The three of us have been involved with Earthdawn--I think our collective experience is close to thirty years with the game.

So... Earthdawn Classic. What we've done is taken all of the original material that FASA put out from 1993 to 1998, and originally the plan was to slap it all into a book and put it out. We ended up discovering it was going to be a bit more difficult than we originally thought. At one point, we were doing so many adjustments and changes it looked like we were going to end up with a completely new "third edition" of the game, instead of what we finally ended up with.

There are still tentative plans for a third edition, but that's down the road. At some point we will probably do that, and Carsten is in charge of the early stages of that project. But that's three or four years down the road--if it's something we actually end up doing.

First up we have the Player's Compendium [Click on the thumbnail for the full image], which will be 512 pages, hardcover, which contains everything a player needs to take their character from first through fifteenth Circle, covering the core fifteen Disciplines of the game. All the spells, all the rules, everything from the whole line. Most of the material in the Player's Compendium is from the original book, Earthdawn Companion, Arcane Mysteries, The Adept's Way, and Magic: Manual of Mystic Secrets. Most of the setting books didn't make it in there. We have some material from the Denizens books, as well.

It's a collection, it's a polish, of the core rules for the game--again, drawing on thirty collective years of experience, along with feedback from the fanbase--areas where we know there were problems in the original system and fixing those. Where we have made changes, we've tried to have the original rules there as an option, to make compatibility with other editions easier.

Then we have the Gamemaster's Compendium [Click on the thumbnail for the full image], which has much the same idea. It pulls on a lot more of the setting material; Creatures of Barsaive, Horrors, most of the magical treasures from the original book, Arcane Mysteries, and Magic. The Earthdawn Survival Guide has a lot of material in there, as does the Barsaive boxed set--both the player's and gamemaster's book from that are in there. This book will also be a 512-page hardcover.

With those two books, you have over a thousand pages of material; enough stuff to run games for years. You really wouldn't need to pick anything else up.

Unless you like us and want to give us money, which we have no problem with.

For me, this has been a labor of love. I've been a fan of this game from the earliest days, and the opportunity to go through and give it the polish and treatment I felt it deserved… it's been a lot of work. Eighteen months and counting, now? We're looking at publication of the Player's Compendium in August, and the Gamemaster's Compendium in late September, possibly October. I'm taking the GM book home with me and I'm going to sit down with a red pen and mark it all to hell.

James
It'll be ready in October.

(Laughter)

Josh

Okay, yes, I am a slow editor, I admit that.

Question
This year?

Josh

Yes, October of this year.

Lined up in the pipe are two or three adventures more or less ready to go, we've just been waiting on the core rules. We've got Ardanyan's Revenge, an adventure that Dammi has written. Burning Desires, by Andrew Ragland. I've got an adventure currently in outline form called Pilgrimage.

Pilgrimage is probably going to be a combination introductory adventure and quick-start setting that is still in Barsaive, but separate from the whole Throal/Bartertown/Theran War storyline. This is so new players to the game don't feel intimidated by all the backstory and metaplot that was going on.

Our plans are to follow the trend started recently by White Wolf and Atlas Games, and go all hardcover for our print runs. Ardanyan's Revenge may end up as a softcover--there are practical limits to making a 48-page hardcover,after all, but we are going to try and have enough material in these books to justify making them hardcover. [Ed note: The 48-page reference is about the practicality of thin hardcovers, and not an actual page count on Ardanyan's Revenge.] James will talk about the publishing model we're using in a minute--it's kind of an experiment.

If you don't already know, our website is www.earthdawn-classic.com. We're working on getting earthdawn.com from Keith Graham, who currently holds the domain--he's been incommunicado for a few weeks now traveling, but the last answer we had from him was a yes, so it's just a matter of time.

There's a really active fan forum over at the Earthdawn Publishing Trust--www.edpt.org--a lot of great material and support there. Even the Living Room Games board, when its active, has some good stuff.

As far as LRG goes... they will put out their stuff, and we'll put out ours. You can pick and choose--use ours, use theirs, use both, use neither, whatever. We wish them luck, and assume to a certain extent they wish us the same. There's no animosity or a sense that we're going to try and take them down or anything.

James
Not at all. I chat with Joe Chan, who used to be president of LRG. He's a nice guy, and we have interesting idle banter.

Josh
James knows more about the publishing model, so I'm going to turn things over to him, and then we'll open the floor up to questions and see where that leads us.