The living crystal, especially the shoulder pad, stands out a bit more in person - the reflected light on the photograph is in part because they were given a gloss coating after the rest of the figure was sealed. I was temped to go with Ago-Frod at first, but liked the warm feeling the Ago-Chad crystals gave. Plus next to the contrasting olive jerkin it stands out more.

• Manufacturer & Line: Hearbreaker Hobbies
• Mini Name: Earthdawn Troll Sky Raider
• Painted: 2004

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.

Two of my fellow players and I sat down one night after our gaming session to discuss the strain mechanic and it's effect on game play.  We tossed around a few ideas before finally settling on a proposed solution that we've decided to adopt on a trial basis: adding wind to each character and creature, as defined below:

Wind

• Wind Threshold is a character's Toughness Step plus Durability Rank (if any).
• Any time a character suffers Strain, they may instead take an equal amount of Wind.
• Any Wind taken over a character's Wind Threshold is converted back to Strain.
• Once per combat, a character may spend an action to make a Toughness Test.  Reduce their accumulated Wind by the amount rolled.
• All Wind points are removed when a character has a chance to catch their breath.  This usually takes place at the end of any given scene and outside of any strenuous activity (such as combat).  The Gamemaster has final say on when Wind is renewed.

This definitely increases a character's all around power, especially adepts.  But after discussion its impact with my group, we believe that the effect of the increased power on the game is actually beneficial.

In essence, Wind lets players do more cool things. In my opinion this is one of the top priorities in a game - make the players feel like they're being heroic.  Wind makes that easier to do awesome physical things without hampering anyone's ability to do interesting social things -- win-win.

One of the biggest concerns a player has when considering a strain-causing talent is that there are a number of feats in Earthdawn you can do if only if you're free of damage - like increase talents or heal wounds.  Since Wind is easy to refresh, it helps alleviate this concern.  You don't have to forgo using an ability like Tracking just because you're out of recovery tests or are planning on raising a talent later.

We were worried at first about intolerably drawing out combat, but so far it seems that Wind has actually sped combat up.  It gives martial disciplines like the Warrior the opportunity to unleash their bigger combat talents more freely, magicians the freedom to be more liberal with Willforce, and other characters the ability to use Avoid Blow and other combat options more often.  More fancy maneuvers means more offensive output, which means quicker and more deadly combat on both sides since npcs and creatures have Wind as well.

On top of this freedom, Wind helps Strain make sense for many of our players.  Some of our group has had problems with the idea of basically hurting yourself to do even mundane things.  The example usually brought up was the Evidence Analysis talent/skill, which required a character to take damage to get to ask Sherlock Holmes-style questions about a scene.  From a balance standpoint it makes sense - there's a cost necessary to balance the ability, but "cutting yourself" just didn't feel right.

So far Wind has had the desired effect on our game, and we've been happy with its introduction.  We'll be keeping an eye on its impact on the game and tweaking the rules as needed, but for now it appears we've found a solution that improves our game.

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.

Attribute Generation

While the Derived Attribute table is mostly intact from previous editions of Earthdawn, racial mods are now done in a reverse Polish manner.  Instead of getting flat bonuses or penalties, each race has its own set of starting attributes.  Humans (being average) begin with 10's across the board.  Other races start with slightly higher or lower stats depending on their stereotypical characteristics.  You are then given 25 points to purchase modifiers to each ability (and get refunds by lowering abilities).  Again, like previous versions of Earthdawn, the purchase rate isn't 1:1 for higher attributes - going from a +5 to a +6 will cost you 2 points, for example.  Going up to +7 will cost 3 more.

Having the racial modifiers pre-calculated really doesn't gain you anything new, but it really doesn't cost you anything either.  Honestly, this 'new' system doesn't feel any different than the old one, the starting point is just now 10 instead of 0 and you have less points.  You can't lower abilities quite as far (8 is minimum now) but I don't know anyone who went much below that too often anyway.

Racial Abilities

Sight-based racial abilities were mostly unchanged.  The biggest difference is that the Windling's astral sight ability grants them access to that talent just like the human's Versatility talent.  This adds scalability that was badly needed to keep the ability useful throughout the character's career, as well as remove the need to distinguish between "windling sight astral sensing" and "Astral Sight talent astral sensing."  A balance and a streamline: good modification.

The biggest change was on the racial front and is the new karma rules.  Every race now has the same karma die (d6) and the same cost in LPs.  The difference between races comes in their karma multiplier.  An adept can have a maximum amount of karma point equal to their Karma Ritual rank multiplied by their racial karma multiplier.  I'm not sold on the variable karma pools yet - it's just something else that needs tracking on the character sheet - but I'm willing to give it a shot in game play to see how it works.

Discipline Flexibility

I mentioned this in a previous post, but disciplines have been loosened up to allow some choices in talent selection.  Some choices are a no-brainer.  I can't imagine many magicians not taking the second Spell Matrix at 1st circle or any adept not taking Durability as their option at 2nd circle (yes, it's optional... why I don't know) for instance.  But now a character does have options instead of being on a set path.

Skills & Skill Selection

Initial language, knowledge, and artisan skills are assigned just as in 1st Edition, but now you get 8 more ranks to apply to skills any way you see fit.  However, the talent versions of some skills have been toned down (or removed) to help balance things.  Avoid Blow, for instance, can be used a number of times per round equal to your rank if you know it as a talent.  As a skill it is limited to once per round but otherwise functions the same.

Equipment

The "Adventurer's Kit" is still around - a quick one-item purchase to give you starting gear.  For players that don't like to mess with too many equipment lists, it's a real quick and easy way to get started.  Now though, you start with that: a set of clothing, week of rations, artisan kit (if necessary for your skill), and a dagger plus 100sp to spend elsewhere.  Basically the items that were pretty much standard you don't have to worry about and you can spend your leftover starting funds on whatever other gear you want, which includes weapons and armor.

The characters we created this last weekend spent most of the starting cash on weapons and armor, but when the rest of your gear is already provided for you, there's not much else left.  There were a few odds and ends picked up, but  mostly by the magicians who didn't need fancy weapons.

One side note I'll make, and this isn't new but it's something I very much like about Earthdawn.  No wonky weapon/armor proficiencies or knowledge base.  It doesn't matter what discipline you follow (if any), you can wield/wear any weapon/armor you choose.  Want to be a wizard in plate armor?  Go ahead, the only penalty you'll suffer is the initiative penalty of the armor - same as any warrior who wore the same thing.

Aftermath

Even if there are some minor differences, both the process and the end result of character generation in Earthdawn 3e still feels the same as previous editions.  A warning though: character creation in Earthdawn can still be an involved process if you don't have an application available to help out.  The EDCG was fantastic for earlier editions, so I threw together a quick spreadsheet just to do attributes for ED3.  It wasn't pretty but it was functional.

As I mentioned earlier, I built my character ahead of time so I'd be more familiar with the process and could help answer questions for the other players.  Still, we took a few hours to get everyone finished (not counting time to do the character concept).  So there's a bit of a time sink, but I've found it to be acceptable for the level of enjoyment I get from the game and the settings.

By the end of the night we had an elven troubadour, a t'skrang illusionist, a dwarven beastmaster, and an obsidiman elementalist to go along with my human warrior.  Afterward, we started our first "adventure" and helped out a small town, despite them thinking we were someone else.  We're such nice people. 

Setting-wise, nothing obvious has changed, with the exception of the story being advanced through the events in Prelude to War.  On the system side, there were a number of bigger changes, but nothing that breaks the game.  First off the d4's and d20's were removed from the Step System completely - now you only need six-, eight,- ten-, and twelve-siders.   I've made similar changes before to tweak the way dice roll in the game so I can't complain, but RedBrick also published an alternative Step Chart on their web site as a free download if you want to add the missing dice back in.

Disciplines got a bit of an overhaul as well.  Now instead of having fixed talent lists, you have a few choices to make as you advance in your chosen profession.  It does give you more flexibility, but skills always covered this roll as well.  I've always been a fan of the stricter interpretation of the discipline as a magical entity, but players do enjoy choices so I can't say that the changes that were made were bad ones.  And if it makes the game more accessible to players, who can complain?

A lot of talents and skills got rebalanced, and I'm not going to go into all of them here.  There were a couple issues I have with some changes (or changes back from Earthdawn Classic) but all in all, many of the uber-talents have been toned down to make the disciplines a little more even in power.  Many of the changes were clean ups or simply moving old talent knacks into general use.  For example, now anyone can try to make a check to leap to their feet to avoid losing their combat action and/or movement in combat, but there's a chance they'll fail the check if they're wearing too much armor.

I haven't dug into thread magic too deeply, but conceptually it operates the same way as previous editions.  I've always been a fan of the way that thread magic was implemented in Earthdawn.  The idea of magic items growing with characters or the ability to begin the game with a heirloom that you won't toss out the first time you find a +1 sword is far superior to the D&D style of loot and scoot.  Even D&D itself has tried to duplicate ED's item growth system in some of their own expansions, but it's always been crippled by it's integration to d20's purely level-based system.

I could go on about the ED mechanics for a while, but I'm going to touch on the art and layout of the core books before wrapping this up.  I very much enjoyed the combination of more modern (in technique, not necessarily graphical style) layout design with some of the classic ED1-era art.  Living Room Games went the way wrong direction with ED2, and it's good to see RedBrick returning to art that properly conveys the grittier feel of the people and places of Barsaive.  Kudos to them for that.

I'm an Earthdawn fanboy, I'll admit it.  But while that means I love the IP, it also makes me critical.  ED2 was in my mind a giant failure on the part of LRG.  I'm extremely pleased that RedBrick has not stumbled into the same mistakes that LRG has.  Third Edition is still different than First (or even Classic) Edition, but it's still Earthdawn.  Most of the changes are just balancing and streamlining the game, but more importantly Barsaive is still intact as the wonderful setting that it is.

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 used to follow Earthdawn more closely but I drifted away for a while so was a little late to see the release date finally put to Earthdawn Third Edition.

RedBrick Limited, the current publishers of Earthdawn, signed an agreement with Mongoose Publishing in March to have Mongoose handle the printing, marketing, sales, and distribution of Earthdawn products under their Flaming Cobra brand.  It appears RedBrick will retain all creative control while leveraging Mongoose's brand to move away from the print on demand model and into an actual product that will be available at game stores across the country in July.

I have seen very little of this new Third Edition ruleset other than the implication that it will be a simplified version of the Step System common to Earthdawn and Earthdawn Classic.  Between a simplified ruleset and the increase in exposure that a physical product to sell in game stores provides, I look forward to seeing what impact this will have on the game.  Maybe I'll be able to get it back on my gaming table.

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.

Yurg Highheart, Troll Beastmaster
Former crystal raider who owes his survival when his air ship was destroyed by Therans to T'keela and now travels with him to repay his blood debt.

Silaa, T'skrang Swordmaster
Questing for a relic sacred to his village and pursuing the ork nethermancer named Leonin who had stolen it.

T'keela Soulwringer, T'skrang Nethermancer
An eccentric t'skrang who took up his former master's quest for the Words of Undoing, a ritual rumored banish the Horrors from Barsaive.

Kato, Human Nethermancer
Cast from an airship by the cult he was raised in because of his affinity for spirits, Kato literally fell into the conflict between Silaa and Leonin. T'keela has since taught him to control his 'weirdness,' though Kato seems suspicious of his teacher's quest.

Caelas Solque, Elf Archer
A noble from the Blood Wood smuggled out as an infant before undergoing the Ritual of the Thorns and ignorant of his heritage.

After the short intro that was described in a previous post, the group decided to head to Parlainth.  Silaa and Kato didn't have any leads on Leonin's current whereabouts but T'keela felt that there may be clues to the Words of Undoing amongst the Theran research still buried in the ruins.

Since one does not simply walk into Parlainth, the adepts started in Haven trying to make contacts and find employment that would familiarize them with the ruins and let them fund their own expeditions.  They wound up in the employ of a elven trading house out of Throal - the Circle Path Company.  Apparently tradition has passed leadership of the company to Yuriel, a young swordsman adept, from her parents but she wasn't interested in such a mundane job.  She had exercised a "establishing trade relations" clause in the company charter to join an adventuring group headed into Parlainth.  Yuriel's younger brother - in charge of the company in her absence - and a few other officers of the company needed someone to go into Parlainth and try and find her.

The investigation was slow at first as the party really didn't know anyone in Haven.  Eventually they discovered the group Yuriel had joined had in turn joined up with another group on an excursion into The Smalls, returned to Haven, then headed to The Twists on their own.  The Hounds of Askari retraced her steps to and were eventually able to track her down and escort her (and other captives they freed) back to Haven.

Afterwords the party was granted an audience with a wizard named Heirmon who lived in Haven.  T'keela had already tried to meet him before the group had gone into the ruins, having heard Heirmon was quite knowledgeable of Parlainth and may know if there were any hints of a part of the Words of Undoing in the ruins.  However T'keela was rebuffed, told to tell his boss Herimon wants nothing to do with him. T'keela had no idea what Heirmon was talking about but the eccentric old magician wouldn't listen.

Fortunately one of the captives held with Yuriel, a t'skrang troubadour named Sekra, was a friend of Heirmon's and smoothed out the misunderstanding.  The Hounds met him to talk, and they learned that Heirmon had been harassed lately by a number of rather powerful adepts who were looking for the Words of Undoing themselves, apparently in the employ of an ork named Leonin...

* * * * *

And that's where we closed down the first season of the campaign.  With the scheduling conflicts we were having and one of the players taking a break from the group we decided to move to a fresh game to try and get everyone excited and motivated again.

If you're familiar with the adventure Path of Deception published by Living Room Games then you've probably already recognized it above.  A few other NPC names might be recognizable from other sourcebooks as well.  I decided to use PoD as a jumping point for my Earthdawn game - to introduce Parlainth and Haven and their denizens to the players.  Once the groundwork was laid I would use a surprise reveal to turn things personal quickly.

PoD wouldn't work for my needs as written - published adventures rarely do - so I made a few changes (Pardon the ambiguity, but I'm trying to avoid too many spoilers). I wanted the focus of the characters' investigation to be on Parlainth and Haven and not on the interpersonal relationships of the members of the Circle Path Company.  To that end I removed Gangrene from the adventure and modified the set-up so that Yuriel discovered the trade opportunity-clause in the Circle Path charter on her own.  Finally I didn't have Yuriel in the location she was being held in the book.  It seemed completely unnecessary so I placed her with the slaves in the final location.

Although I took a few of the twists out of the story it did down-play the Circle Path Company and let the players focus on learning the setting.  In my opinion it worked marvelously.

As for the downsides of the campaign... well as I mentioned scheduling conflicts and missed sessions really killed motivation for the game.  On top of that Silaa's player wound up missing all of the roleplaying-heavy sessions and was present for the exploration and/or combat ones, which I think was frustrating for him (he much perfers the former to the latter).

I also think the reveal came too late in the campaign.  Basically the game was four sessions of an impersonal quest before they learned Leonin was after the same rituals T'keela was, and may even be ahead of the group.  Letting the players in on that was fun, but knowing it was right before a break from the campaign means the payoff may never come.

You see, our group has a habbit of going from game to game instead of revisiting past ones.  So there's a chance that we might not come back to Earthdawn.  Only time will tell but there's one thing for certain - it still remains my all-time favorite game.

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.

The adepts, lost without their leader, spent some time helping repair the village and recover lost livestock. After a period of mourning they discussed their next destination. T'killa suggested that they seek the Words of Undoing, a set of rituals his master told him would rid Barsaive of Horrors. It was likely that at least a portion of the Words were among the treasures lost in Parlainth. With a new goal at hand, the group took the name The Hounds of Askari to honor their fallen leader.

It wasn't long into their journey that they encountered trouble. While on watch one night, Silaa heard rustling in the nearby woods. Bardolf, Yurg's dire wolf companion, also sensed something amiss. As Silaa investigated the entire party was ambushed by short, gray humanoids with large black eyes. The group rose quickly to find themselves outnumbered. The creatures fiercely attacked Katto and managed to steal his peg-leg. As they tried to flee into the night they came under the assault of swords, arrows, claws, and fangs as the Hounds charged into battle.

The creatures may have escaped too, had Silaa not grabbed and thrown one of them into the peg-bearer. As the dying monsters dissolved into pools of foam, more continued to poor out of the woods. It did not take long for the group to find that one of the creatures was splitting copies of himself from his own body - a trick that told Yurg that the Hounds were dealing with a triplicant. With the source creature dispatched peace returned to the night.

Caelas had been injured during the battle, as was Bardolf, but both were quickly attended to by the group's Nethermancers. As the party settled back down, there was one question on everyone's mind: Why steal the peg leg? Was someone after a pattern item of Katto's?

The next morning, the group rose and continued on their journey to Parlainth.

* * * * *

Big thanks to Luke for writing up the first session. He's apparently making good progress on the second as well - looks like he's more efficient at this than I am. But I will be following Luke's AP posts up with my own commentary on the campaign meta in the next couple weeks.

Although I've turned to the familiar setting of Barsiave for this game I've decided to try a few new things as well, the first of which was converting this fantastic game to a system more suitable to my players.

I'll be honest - I've been an Earthdawn fan since it's initial release a decade and a half ago. I'm not such a rabid fanboy to defend every aspect of the system but I do think it works despite it's few flaws. That said when thinking about running this campaign I came to the conclusion that the Earthdawn's Step System wasn't going to be the best choice for my current group. I myself like the complexities of the system and how the mechanics are tied in to the world but I recognize that it's not for everyone.

After looking over a few options I decided to try to convert Earthdawn over to the Savage Worlds setting. I'm fortunate enough to game with a couple of the hosts of Fear the Boot, and anyone who listens to that podcast can tell you that Luke has earned himself the unofficial title of Savage Worlds Acolyte. However as he talked about in Episode 92, after he and I discussed the possibilities of conversion he recommended against it, arguing that he didn't think that a Savage Worlds version of Earthdawn would run the same as the Earthdawn I've always been a fan of. While Luke had a valid point, it's also one of the reasons I wanted to try the conversion. In fact one of the things I wanted to see was how well I could preserve the feel of Earthdawn during a conversion as well as in play.

I did some research online and found a conversion over at Savage Heroes that looked promising. There were a number of concepts I thought could work but after looking at Discipline Edges (edges you have to be a member of an adept discipline to learn) I realized it wasn't exactly balanced. A Legendary Warrior could, for instance, bring himself back from the dead but a Legendary Beastmaster could gain the equivalent of the Deadlands Rebel Yell edge. As far as races go most were ok but the Obsidiman was all but unplayable as converted.

After a little tweaking and rebalancing (with Luke's help) I got the document to the point where I could uses it as a starting point for the game. Unfortunately my version isn't anywhere near ready for publishing. I didn't bother fixing the disciplines I discouraged for this campaign (Air Sailor, Sky Raider, and Cavalryman) as well as the couple that the players weren't interested in that needed major work (Troubadour, Weaponsmith). I also need to balance and pad out the discipline-specific edge lists so there's more variety and less power differential between disciplines.

To help character generation for the game I re-used a technique that our group first tried for our Manaburst game: Magic cards. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here; I briefly describe the method in the initial Manaburst post and a couple of the players discussed it in even more detail on Fear the Boot Episode 95. Suffice it to say that the players were able to take the base concepts they had in mind and immediately add plot hooks for me to build on as well as connections to each other and a reason for them to have created a Group Pattern together.

Silaa, T'skrang Swordmaster played by Dan. Silaa is a k'stulaami - a t'skrang with a membrane similar to that of a flying squirrel that allows them to glide short distances. This former village wise man is searching for an artifact stolen from his village that had protected it for generations.

Caelas Solque, Elf Archer played by Pat. Unbeknownst to him, Caelas was born in the Blood Wood to one of the ranelles (noble houses) and was smuggled from the wood for some unknown reason before the Ritual of Thorns could be performed on him. Caelas has grown up with a longing to return to the Blood Wood that he doesn't understand and is being searched for by a family he doesn't know he has.

Katto, Human Nethermancer played by Chad. Katto grew up a member of an airship-borne cult who's charismatic leader had him tossed overboard as a sacrifice to "appease the sky spirits." He now studies under T'killa in an attempt to learn control over his "weird spirit powers."

T'killa Soulwringer, T'skrang Nethermancer played by Josh. After spending many years studying under his master, the aged T'killa has adopted his late mentor's quest for the Words of Undoing, magical rituals said to be able to exorcise the Horrors from Barsaive.

Yurg Highheart, Troll Beastmaster played by Luke. Yurg was once a member of a small but proud clan of Crystal Raiders until most of his clan was captured by Theran Slavers. The trolls rebelled but the Theran airship was damaged in the process, sending it crashing into the lowlands. As the only survivor, Yurg was able to make is way back to civilization only due to his spontaneous initiation into the Beastmaster Discipline.

Together these five adepts make up the Hounds of Askari, named after the dwarven weaponsmith who gathered them together to defend a small village in the hinterlands from repeated scortcher attacks. Although Askari lost his life in the conflict, the surviving adepts have banded together in honor of his heroic sacrifice.

After helping repair the damages done to the small village of Rex the Hounds have left for the nearby Parlainth, hoping the ruins will hold their next opportunity to build their legend. And given the vast amounts of magical knowledge said to have been lost in the city during the Scourge they may even be able to find more information on the Words of Undoing.

I intend to post some commentary on my running this campaign so won't be doing an actual play write-up. However Luke has promised to try and do them this time around and I will repost them here as they are complete.

First Dawn started well enough, with the characters interacting with the various residents of the kaer. Everyone had the opportunity to show off a bit of their character's background and motivations (except the ork's player who couldn't make it) which I think they all enjoyed. After that the party was gathered together for a ceremony that ended with the kaer doors being opened and the party heading out through the traps to the surface with tokens which were supposed to disable the traps for them.

At the far end of the trapped area, the party was introduced to the obsidiman that was supposed to act as their guide. Centuries ago he had volunteered to enter the kaer and enter the Dreaming through the Scourge to be able to guide its people back to the surface when the time came. The party, being told he was how they would open the kaer doors but thinking he was just a statue/key, had drag him up to the surface with the aid of a disk of True Air which levitated him and allowed him to be floated to the front antechamber. Due to the proximity to the surface awoke while the party was resting, leading to some interesting interaction.

After some discussion with the obsidimen about who he was and then ultimately what to expect outside, the adepts finally opened the front doors to the kaer and saw the destruction the Scourge had caused to the countryside. With that visual the first session ended. In hindsight it was a successful session and had hit all of the goals and themes I had set (with the exception of the missing player).

Everything went downhill from there.

Before session two began I received an email from Thok's player telling me he wouldn't be able to play in the campaign. While that was disappointing, the player had a whole lot going on and I didn't blame him for recognizing he didn't have the time and admitting it instead of trying to fit too much in to his schedule. So we continued the campaign down one player and up one NPC.

The second session began with the party exiting the kaer. After descriptions of the changed landscape and interactions with the obsidiman regarding what the land looked like before the Scourge, I wanted to finally give the players the chance to try out their characters skills in combat. Seeing as the characters were advanced, I decided to use something that wasn't quite a push over and could hint that the horrors were still present in the world but not quite as strong. My solution was a small group of tainted ogres (led by a tainted ogre twin) that had been kept alive from before the Scourge by a crystal entity which was severely weakened by the lower magic level.

It was a fairly simple concept but one which caused a couple of problems. The characters had a rough time in the initial encounter with a couple of the ogres, and even though I adjusted the creatures' stats on the fly they still faired poorly. Part of the result was due to die roll disparity and part was due to the fact that the non-melee characters (which meant everyone but the swordmaster) had fairly low Toughness scores and correspondingly low damage ratings.

Still, the characters defeated the cadaver-ogres and pulled back to rest. The characters correctly deduced the source of the creatures must be in the nearby cave and decided to investigate. As the party leader and a stealthy adept to boot, Holthan said he'd check the cave out and see what he could find. Despite Holthan's order to stay behind, Eltherin, the elf archer, decided to accompany him. I called for stealth rolls right away just to emphasis their skill levels and Holthan nearly tripled Eltherin's result as expected. Holthan's player picked up on what I was trying to subtly imply about their comparative chances of remaining quiet and in character pointed out how loud the elf was being and reiterated instructions to remain behind, but the elf refused.

As expected Eltherin was detected further inside the cave. When a single ogre came out to investigate Holthan melted into the shadows. After trying unsuccessfully to hide Eltherin decided to stand and shoot the ogre instead of running and wound up getting killed. Holthan was able to make his way back out and share the news and the party fell back to regroup. Since we had an extra NPC, Eltherin's player took over Thok. As they were recovering I had an animated Eltherin come and have the horror use him to offer the adepts safe passage if they left immediately.

Although the adepts toyed with the idea of leaving, they eventually decided they had to try to destroy the horror that lived so close to their kaer and launched a successful attack that killed the crystal entity. Afterwards the party made a crucial decision - they decided that since they had witnessed horrors still active in the world their mission was complete and they should return to the kaer, inform the council, and reseal themselves in.

And thus, the campaign was quickly sidetracked by the combination of a number of issues.

• Poor choice of enemies. Although I wanted to show the party horrors were still around, I should have done so further into the campaign with weaker enemies. Doing so would have allowed the party to see non-horror opposition then meet horror-backed opposition that was in some ways weaker, meaning manageable by adepts.
• Untimely party death. The world of Earthdawn is dangerous, and I'm always afraid pulling punches will cheapen the experience. Still I won't kill characters over crappy die rolls, but the elf's player realized how powerful the enemies were and ignored the opportunity (and urgings from his fellow players) to flee so I let the dice fall where they may.
• Misuse of Earthdawn themes. If you fight a horror, loose a party member, and flee to seek refuge nearby, it's entirely in genre for a horror to animate the corpse of your former friend and use it to torment and dishearten you. However I did so when the party's courage was already fading and it just served to help push them to the decision to conclude their mission over and return home, claiming it was far to dangerous out. Bad move on my part.

When the party decided to return the kaer, I couldn't say I blamed them. Although perhaps not the most heroic of options, it was certainly in-character to judge the world too dangerous after losing a party member just a day out of the kaer. Still as they made this decision I saw my campaign starting to go down the drain. All of the areas I had created for them to explore and the descriptions I wanted to provider weren't going to see use. Sure it would have been possible for the kaer council to turn the party around and say "go back out, you're not done" but the ogre encounters wound up lasting through the third session of what was planned to be a six-session campaign. Sending them back out meant either rushing the campaign or greatly expanding it past the idea length so I decided to push the timeline and have the final scenario with the kaer's denizens being sacrificed as the party returned.

Hindsight being what it is I made a bad choice. Even besides the way the campaign got sidetracked I had become frustrated with how the game was going - I was far from satisfied with the quality of my gamemastering and was angry at myself for not doing better with it. My frustration soon became apathy towards campaign, and some of the final encounters that should have been exciting and filled with entertaining descriptions turned into rather dull die rolls and narrations.

I'm ashamed to say that eventually I looked at the party and expressed my inability to conclude the game on a high note - they were chasing the final big bad through the kaer but I just couldn't give them the final encounter they deserve. Then for some reason Saultydog asked if I wanted him to take over. Figuring I had nothing to loose I agreed. He handed me his character sheet and I passed him the core book. After taking a few minutes to gather his thoughts and jot down some numbers, S-dog launched into us cornering the elf and having the horror emerge to be dealt with.

There was a difference between Saultydog's version and mine, though - he was immediately excited and his excitement was contagious. Because S-dog didn't have any expectations of what should have been, he was able to take a fresh perspective on the current encounter and make it cool on its own. Even I was sucked in and quickly began plotting a way to defeat the horror dramatically without just knocking of hit point after hit point. A running fight, battle-alchemy, and a chase through the kaer finally culminated in dropping the horror in a bottomless pit that was part of one of the traps the party had passed on their initial trip out of the kaer - all scenes we collaboratively built entirely from my initial description of the overgrown kaer when the expedition had returned and Saultydog's enthusiasm.

After the last encounter we had a post-game discussion. I confessed my frustration and then when asked went through the plot as it was intended to be. The reactions I got from the players assured me that had we gone through the intended story line, it would have been a fantastic game - they loved the encounters, plots, and how they tied into their character backgrounds. But hearing that was bittersweet - while it meant my creation was appreciated, it also meant the difference between teh awesum and teh suk was that great.

As disappointed as I was with the whole First Dawn experience, I did learn a valuable lesson. The Gamemaster's enthusiasm towards his game is paramount in allowing him to entertain the players successfully. I absolutely should have done one of two things - either realize that while my initial concept was cool a new plot could be just as entertaining and run with it, or break down and meta-game with the players, explaining how their decision to return would derail the campaign and ask what in-game events could help dissuade their characters and get them to change their minds. Instead my stubbornness and reluctance to meta-game combined with my frustration at what should have been killed my enthusiasm and led to substandard gamemastering. It's a mistake I intend not to repeat... assuming I can convince the group to let me behind the screen again.

Unfortunately during the second session I let the campaign take a sharp left turn away from my intent and things only went downhill from there. I primarily blame myself for this, but afterwards I just couldn't get the story back on track. I'm going to try and identify the problems I had and what I could have done to correct them below. However in order to convey the magnitude of diversion from the intended story and feel I first need to start with a description of the campaign as it was intended to be.

As detailed in my first blarg on the campaign we did character generation as a group, and as part of character generation we started building the setting that was Kaer Southhome. What I mentioned in that blarg but didn't expound on was how well the collaborative story fit with my intended plot.

The only background I started with when setting up this campaign was to have two sister kaers at either ends of a valley (geographically isolating the area and containing the campaign). The characters would leave one to check on the other only to discover the northern kaer had been broken out of and all the inhabitants had been killed in a complex ritual. They would find clues alluding to something similar about to happen in their own kaer and rush back in time to stop the ritual and save the kaer and its inhabitants. It was a simple plot to say the least, but once the players got in to character generation, it began growing in complexity:

Before the Scourge, the valley (which was never really named in-game) was governed by a family of elves who protected its denizens (many of their elders had mastered magician Disciplines) and had negotiated with the Therans for the Rituals of Protection. However wards against the horrors had come too late, and the primarch of the elven family had already been tainted. Using knowledge granted to him by his horror master, the elf devised a plan to use the life force of the inhabitants of the valley to open the way for his master to enter the physical realm.

With the Scourge approaching quickly there wasn't enough time to corrupt the entire valley and perform the ritual before the denizens retreated below ground, so the elf expanded a plan. The horror was patient and saw no need to manifest during the Scourge proper. Instead he would be summoned closer to the end of the Scourge when he would not need to compete for survival with the other Horrors.

Through the elf the Horror carved an intricate ritual on twin orichalcum slabs. Together servant and master then corrupted another of the eldest of elves and as the Scourge approached, each elf - now a Harbinger of the horror - took one slab into the two kaers that the people of the valley had constructed. In addition the elves used their influence as headmen of their kaers to alter the Naming Rituals the inhabitants used on each newborn. Every child ingested a seed from a tainted Cherin plant which was supposedly meant to symbolize the seed of hope within each Namegiver for the time they could return to the surface, but instead had a darker purpose. Every generation the harbingers selected a successor from his family and passed on the horror's corruption until the day it was time to summon their master into the physical realm.

As the time approached in Kaer Southhome Laelaron Lightfeather, that kaer's current Harbinger (and the PC Eltherin's father), need a reason to gather the kaer's inhabitants in one location and trick them in remaining passive long enough to complete the ritual. The plan was as follows:

1. Organize an expedition to the surface to determine the status of the Scourge. This would occupy a number of the kaer's adepts, insuring they wouldn't be able to interfere with his plans. Laelaron wasn't able to convince the council to send the most powerful adepts out, but he'd settle for what he could get (the PCs).
2. Conspire with one of the kaer's nethermancers (the PC Thok) to help frame Torvis Sternhand (the one human on the kaer council of elders) to accuse him of horror taint.
3. Once the adept expedition had left the kaer, accuse Torvis of taint publicly with the support of the elves, who would be under the impression it was just a maneuver to gain the Torvis' pivotal seat for themselves.
4. At Torvis' execution and the elevation of the newest councilmen to replace him, enact a ritual that would awaken the corrupted Cherin seeds each kaer member had ingested during their Naming.
5. The seeds would spout forth and mass together, creating a tainted conglomeration that would channel the combined lifeforce of the kaer's inhabitants into a specially prepared orichalcum cage, which would then be combined with the lifeforce of the opposite kaer (who's similar sacrifices was being coordinated by that kaer's harbinger) to summon the horror.

As the adepts explored the valley, their primary clues would come from messages Jaspree was attempting to send them in response to the corruption of his domain (plantlife) being used to summon the horror. A shared vision of the past would have a friendly elderly gardener of a village give the characters information that would lead them to seeing the orichalcum tablets and a perverse grimoire in the possession of one of the Lightfeather ancestors. They would also witness a Naming Ritual from the time that didn't include the ingesting of a Cherin seed (that part of the plan hadn't been formulated yet). Considering denizens of the kaer would have been told that the current naming ritual is the same that has been used since before the valley was settled, this should raise some questions.

Later after the vision they would find the remains of an enchanted grove choked over with tainted brambles. Clearing away the brambles and purifying the fountain in the small temple to Jaspree at the center of the grove would reveal a carving of the Passion that looked just like the gardener from the vision. In addition anyone drinking from the blessed fountain would begin retching within minutes, eventually coughing up the tangle of black vines that was the Cherin seed from their Naming Ritual. The PCs wouldn't know what that meant right away and might even scare them, but if they were astute they may start to piece things together.

Eventually the characters would arrive at Kaer Northhome and find it overgrown with similar tainted plantlife as the grove of Jaspree, including odd-shaped cocoons containing the kaer's denizens. Exploration would turn up that kaer's harbinger's orichalcum slab, which would reveal the purpose of the plants, where the denizens were (if they didn't already carve open a cocoon to look), that it was all part of a ritual to harvest life force to summon a horror, and that the ritual was to be duplicated in their own kaer for the summoning to be complete. At that point the PCs would have to race back to their kaer to save its inhabitants. I had a number of ways to handle the finale, but it all was going to depend on how the players had reacted to different aspects of the story along the way.

So that was the plan for First Dawn in an (admittedly large) nutshell. I had high hopes for this game and had plenty of visuals and descriptions I wanted to give the players of the post-Scourge landscape but unfortunately fate decided it was not to be and the campaign got derailed early on, as my next blarg will detail.

After giving the group the rundown of life in the Kaer and the different races and disciplines that they might have to choose from, everyone came up with their general character concepts. From there we began fleshing out backgrounds and motivations, tying the characters together while at the same time developing the Kaer where the game would start. Before the character generation session I had known what sort of overarching plot I wanted for the campaign, but I hadn't imagined that the players would hand me the perfect vehicle to make it personal for them during character generation.

As it turns out, the racial tension is thick within Kaer Southhome. Of the five seats in the council of elders, two are occupied by dwarves, two by elves, and one by a human. The elves of Southhome live luxuriously with their small private community. Although pompous and condescending to much of the kaer's population, they controlled enough of the Kaer's resources to force the residents to deal with them for survival.

Meanwhile the dwarves were attempting to run an efficient, well-organized settlement. Unfortunately that meant allowing the general populous a more direct access to certain resources than the elves were willing to allow, leading to a conflict of interests.

Balance was maintained in the kaer by the single seat on the Council of Elders occupied by neither elf nor dwarf. While the dwarves accepted this arrangement and begrudgingly worked with it, the elves resented the situation and conspired to change it. The elves planned to frame Torvis, the human councilman, of Horror taint in such a way to imply that the dwarves were aware of the matter. They'd then use the support of the residents of the kaer to immediately replace the human and as many dwarves as they could.

The plot elements are pretty basic - a bid for power by one demographic in a culturally segregated setting - but the way the plot was created piece by piece based solely on information provided by each player when they answered questions about their characters' backgrounds and personalities really drew it all together and made it personal to each character even more than I had initially expected. For example the elven elitism came from the the elf character's player deciding he was going to play up his arrogance, then the rest of the group working together to determine why the elves of the kaer were so arrogant to begin with. Each question led into more exposition on the kaer until suddenly we had a plot. In addition by generating the character stats myself I was able to give each character strengths and flaws that I would be able to emphasize during the adventure.

These are the characters that we wound up with for this campaign:

Eltherin, elven archer. Eltherin is the son of one of the elven members of the Council of Elders and has lived with all the comforts his linage would imply. He's only recently met the other members of the group, but his arrogance has already been noted by his traveling companions. Eltherin was assigned to the group by his father as a way to insure his interests were represented in the group.

Glenna, dwarven swordmaster. Glenna is more devoted toward the blade mastery side of the discipline than the social gallantry. Her master, Garas, found her at a young age and offered to teach her the discipline as a way to get her out of trouble and off the streets. Both Holthan and Thok were part of the trouble-causing element she was lured away from, which angered them as children. Now a competent swordmaster, Glenna volunteered for the expedition to the surface as a means to prove herself.

Thok, ork nethermancer. Thok is one of two nethermancers in Kaer Southhome, which is two more than any other residents would like for there to be. The ork's lack of social graces does nothing to overcome this resentment, a fact he is aware of but doesn't care to address. Only days before the expedition, Thok "accidentally" killed an Illusionist and joined the expedition to get out of the kaer before it's discovered he was the murderer. Only Holthan, his childhood friend, is aware of his motivation for joining the group.

Holthan, human journeyman. Holthan is the group leader by default - the dwarves on the Council of Elders refused to allow an elf to lead the expedition, the elves on the council refused to allow a dwarf to lead the expedition, and no one wanted a nethermancer in charge. Holthan has assumed leadership reluctantly, although his protective nature lends itself to the role.

I'd love to comment on just how everything the players created fit into the campaign's plot, but I don't want to spoil any of the surprises for the players yet. Suffice it to say that I was very happy with how character generation worked out for the group.

Our first actual play session was this past Sunday, but unfortunately Ravious came down with bronchitis at the last minute. By the time I found out one of our players was already half way into his hour drive so the decision was made to go on without him. I don't want to recount the entire session here - that's what the campaign wiki is for - but I can offer up my comments on how the game ran.

I wasn't 100% thrilled with my gamemastering this time around. I really wanted to improve my descriptions and in a couple particular instances evoke specific emotions, but I don't think I was as successful at either as I wanted. I still concentrated too hard on what I wanted to be happening and less on the overall look and feel of each particular scene. The players seemed to express that they had a good time once the game got rolling but I'm just not satisfied with how I ran the game.

It never seems to fail - I plan out what I want to do and have some descriptions in mind, but once I sit down at the table I choke. It's like I rush through the descriptions so that we can get to the next part of the game, whatever that may be. And that's really a flaw in my opinion. The GM's descriptions can really go a long way towards setting the stage and mood of a scene that if I wind up not fully expressing something, the players miss out on whatever I skimp on.

I hope that next session will be better. The characters are out of the kaer now, and I'm going to try and use collaborative scene building some more to try to help flesh each scene out more than I seem to be capable of doing on my own. We'll see come Sunday.

The group as a whole has had very little experience with the Earthdawn system, and given the intent to have a short term game to begin with, I didn't want to spend a lot of time on system explanation. In addition after talking to one of the players I learned that while he didn't have a problem with the system, looking up what dice to roll for a given test was a little annoying.

Personally Earthdawn is probably my favorite RPG to run and play and I enjoy the varied dice of the Step System. That said I want to be sympathetic to my players' complaints and I want to make the game run as fast as possible for this mini-campaign. In addition I love tinkering with rule systems; making little tweaks to the mechanics to make certain aspects of a game run more like my preferences. As a result I've decided to make a few slight modifications to the Earthdawn ruleset for this campaign.

To understand my changes, your first have to understand how the existing system works. Instead of having a unified dice mechanic, Earthdawn features a Step chart. This chart lists what die or dice the player rolls for each Step from one to fifty. The dice are assigned to each step in such a way that the average roll for any given Step is that Step value. Dice in Earthdawn are also open-ended, meaning if you roll the maximum value on a die your roll it again and add the new value to the previous result.

Take Step 8 for example. Because of the open-ended dice, a d6 averages to roughly 4. So Step 8 is 2d6. Therefore the average result a player will roll on Step 8 is 4 + 4 = 8. I particularly like this system because as a player you can judge your chance of success fairly well. Knowing you have Step 8 in Climbing and that a tree with many branches may be a difficulty of 5 translates directly into the character knowledge that you're pretty good a climbing a tree.

To determine what Step you roll for a test, you add the Step of the corresponding Attribute with the Rank of a Skill or Talent (if relevant). So the person in the above example may get his Climbing Step of 8 from a Dexterity of 5 and Climbing of 3. However even if he didn't have the Climbing Skill, the character could still roll his Dexterity alone, but the Step (and thus the result) will typically be lower.

Another facet of this system I like is the lack of a linear distribution on die rolls. Although there are some scattered Steps which are exceptions, most Steps have some sort of bell curve to their distribution graphs. In other words, they're weighted towards the middle results that Step can generate. For example you're more likely to roll a 8 on Step 8 then you are a 3. This is another aspect of the system that lends itself to estimating your character's skills.

In OneStep I'm going to be removing the Step system from the game completely replace it with a unified dice mechanic. There will be no consulting charts to determine what die you roll. Instead all rolls will be made by rolling 3d6 and adding the Step of your Skill or Talent to the roll. These dice are not open-ended and average out to 10. However if this is the only change made, OneStep is no longer statistically similar to the Step System. Before Step 8 produced an average result of 8. Now it will produce an average roll of 10 (the average of 3d6) + 8 = 18. To accommodate this change, all difficulties in Earthdawn will be raised by 10. This includes derived statistics like Defenses and Armor Values.

At this point I'm confident I've identified all of the issues this change could cause, such as Armor and Armor defeating hits. Adding 10 to an individual's Armor Rating is fine in general but if an attacker scores an Armor-Defeating hit, the system breaks again. Where an AD hit is made in the Step System, the target's armor is bypassed completely. So an Armor Value of 6 would be treated as an Armor Value of 0, for a net of +6 damage to the target. This Armor Value of 6 is increased to 16 in OneStep, and if an AD hit completely bypassed that, it would reduce Armor to 0 for a net of +16 damage; far more deadly. Instead in OneStep an AD hit will reduce the target's armor for 10, causing the net effect of an Armor Defeating hit in both the Step System and OneStep to be the same again.

If an unexpected hiccup does show itself during game play, adding or subtracting 10 from a given roll or difficulty will be a minor task. This is actually the specific reason I chose 3d6 as the unifying mechanic as opposed to 2d6; adding or subtracting 10 is faster than adding or subtracting 7. So I'm not expecting any slowdowns if we find an issue that needs resolving.

The other aspect of the Step System I decided to revisit was the Karma system. In Earthdawn, a character pays a number of Legend Points (the Earthdawn equivalent of Experience Points) to purchase Karma points, which he can store. The cost of these points and the amount which he can store is dependent on the race of the character. A character can spend a Karma Point under certain conditions to roll an additional die and add it to his result. In the Step System this die varied depending from a d4 to a d10 on the character's race. In OneStep I've decided to make all Karma dice a d6 to preserve the unified d6-based mechanic. However in the Step System the various Karma Dice helped balance the attribute bonuses and penalties associated with each race. In order to keep this balance I've decided to increase or decrease the amount of Legend Points a race has to spend to purchase a Karma Point accordingly.

This does leave one outstanding anomaly: creature Karma. In Earthdawn, some highly magical creatures also have Karma they can spend to increase their rolls. However some of them have Karma Dice that are much higher than those of the player races. The Windling, the highest Karma Die race, rolls a d10, which is the equivalent of Step 6. Some Horrors have a Karma Step of 15 or higher. Unfortunately for the players, having a Horror with a Karma Step of 15 rolling a single d6 when he spend a Karma die is just too statistically dissimilar.

Here are the possible solutions I've identified:

1. Choose some value X. For each multiple of X (or fraction thereof) the creature's Karma Step is, have them roll a d6. So if I set X at 5, a creature with a Karma Step of 15 (average of 15 in the Step System) would roll 3d6 (average +10). Unfortunately it's impossible to choose a value of X for One Step that results in a perfect match to the Step System.
2. Have spending a Karma Point result in d6, always. Boost the number of Karma Points a creature has based on it's old Karma Step. This will let a creature spend Karma even more freely, but it won't have near the impact it did before. In addition some creatures like Horrors or Dragons have abilities that require the expenditure of a Karma Point to activate. Many of these abilities are very powerful, and increasing the number of Karma Points a creature has allow these abilities to be activated much more frequently.
3. Keep character Karma as above. When a creature spends a Karma Point simply add its Karma Step to the result of the test instead of rolling additional dice. This maintains statistical consistency between the Step System and OneStep, but you loose some of the randomness of the Karma Die.
4. Scrap Karma Dice for player characters. Assign each race a Karma Step that corresponds to their old Karma Dice (eg 6 for the Windling). Whenever anyone, character or creature, spends a Karma Point they simply add their Karma Step to the result. Personally I like the idea of Karma resulting in more dice being rolled, but this is an option to maintain consistency between characters and creatures.

At this point I'm still undecided as to which solution is the best. I like 4 the least, but it does make the most mathematical sense. So I'm throwing these options out to the readers. Of the above creature Karma changes, which do you prefer and why?