Finding miniatures for trolls and obsidimen in my Earthdawn game is difficult at times. I have a few in my gallery that I’ve collected but can always use more. I recently turned to the collection of Mage Knight figures that I’ve inherited over the years and found a few sculpts to use to supplement my Read more about Troll Brawler[…]
This old Wizards of the Coast miniature is a relatively simple sculpt but he’s got some nice character. The sculpt of the face in particular was fun to paint and took the darker skin tone I wanted to use on this miniature perfectly. Painted up to use as an ork in Earthdawn, I went with Read more about Half Orc Assassin[…]
I painted up Saxon to use as an RPG figure for a desert-flavored character in my Earthdawn game. This required a replacement for his left hand which held a rifle that would be out of place in that game, and mounting on a smaller 25mm base which is easier to use on 1″ grids the Read more about Saxon Orrik[…]
The Troll Sky Raider is one of my favorite miniatures from the old Heartbreaker Hobbies Earthdawn line. Not because of some exceptional quality of sculpt. To be frank, it’s lacking in a number of aspects. But in my mind sky raiders are one of the iconic visuals of the Earthdawn setting. The living Read more about Troll Sky Raider[…]
RedBrick Limited‘s third edition of Earthdawn has been a big hit so far with my Saturday gaming group. The system is providing us with a solid internal consistency through which we can interact with the rich setting.
But like most groups, we’ve come up with a few tweaks to the system to make it better fit with what we want out of our game. The biggest is that we’ve decided to try a slight re-working to how strain is handled.
The concept of strain is that it is a key balancing feature to the game – there are a vast number of talents, skills, and maneuvers which include a strain cost to use them. The disconnect for many members of my group is that this is basically taking hit point damage any time they want to do something.
At the last session with my group, we came up with character concepts and had decided to do the actual generation this week. I wanted to get it taken care on my end prior, so that I could both familiarize myself with the changes to 3e character generation enough to answer questions and be available to do so instead of needing to work on my own character. So earlier last week I finished up my human warrior.
If you’re like me, one of your initial reactions to that last sentence is “a race and a discipline isn’t a character concept,” and you’d be right. However, for this post I want to specifically talk about some of the changes to Earthdawn from a character generation standpoint. So while a character back-story and personality are crucial to a good character, they’re going to be outside the scope of this discussion.
I finally got a chance to try out the Earthdawn Third Edition rules last Saturday when a friend ran Misguided Ambitions, the demo adventure available on the Earthdawn home page. Though there were some obvious tweaks and mods to the Step System to help streamline play, the game still feels very much like Earthdawn. Considering how much I enjoy the Eartdawn game – both the system and the setting – that’s about the highest “initial impression” I can offer.
I’ve said before that Earthdawn has been my favorite roleplaying game for some time. I don’t get to play too often because it’s not exactly the best fit for my current gaming group (which includes one player who hates fantasy roleplaying games in general) but I still am a big fan of the game. I Read more about Earthdawn Third Edition[…]
A month or so ago my Earthdawn: Savaged campaign wound up to a close. The early summer/late fall months brought a rash of player absences and missed sessions which seemed to sap everyone’s motivation. So although I very much enjoyed returning to the Earthdawn world our game ended rather anticlimactically.
At least I was able to do the experimentation with Savage Worlds that I wanted to. I learned a number of valuable lessons about the system from behind the GM’s screen. I plan on going into more detail about what modifications I plan on making to Savage Worlds in a short series of articles but I wanted to take this opportunity to summarize our campaign and my thoughts on it.
Our small group consisted of a few adepts who had banded together in defense of a Rex, a small village in the hinterlands north of Bartertown, and forged their group in tribute to the dwarven weaponsmith who had brought them together and gave his life in defense of the innocent. Thus The Hounds of Askari were born.
Session 1 – March 30th, 2008
GM: Dave
Players: Luke, Chad, Dan, Josh, Pat
The scene opened on the town or Rex, a battered and broken village in the hinterlands of Barsaive. The townspeople had fought a daily struggle to eek a meager living out of the dried and broken land, and just as their efforts began to pay off they became the target of a band of ork scorchers. Frequent raids kept the town on the brink of collapse but the orks were smart enough to always leave the town in good enough shape that it could recover… and be raided all over again.
Rex’s headwoman, an elf by the name of Emberica, was finally fed up with the cycle of destruction and called in some old favors which led Askari, a dwarven weaponsmith, to bring his small band of adepts to aid the town. The orks were not expecting any resistance, let alone a band of adepts, and a cunning trap sealed their doom. However they were not go quietly. Many good townsfolk lost their lives in the orks’ death rage, as did Askari himself.