Haffrung, did you buy the GM's Compendium? It has a full kaer in it, and there's another one available for free.

Quote from: HaffrungSo after dropping over $150 on Earthdawn books, I have a system that I'd have to dramatically revise and pare down in order to teach my players, and impractical setting material that I cannot use in actual play. Too much work for me.

As you know, I'm right there with you on the fluff, and I can't really speak to the later iterations of the game, but my players read very little and did just fine with the first edition, and we are by no means a crunch loving crowd. That said, I can't imagine playing ED again, because I would have to relearn the whole thing and I'm not up to it, really.

Quote from: JongWKHaffrung, did you buy the GM's Compendium? It has a full kaer in it, and there's another one available for free.

Sure, there's a sample kaer. But it's not a kaer in the sense of a dungeon - as in a place where you can drop the PCs in their first ED adventure and start playing.

Quote from: HaffrungSure, there's a sample kaer. But it's not a kaer in the sense of a dungeon - as in a place where you can drop the PCs in their first ED adventure and start playing.

:raise:

Kaer Tardim is what you are looking for: It's the one available for free... and it has been so since the game was first released in the '90s. It even comes with pregen characters, etc.

Quote from: HaffrungAnd most of the background and setting detail is political - which is weird considering how geared the PCs are to combat and outdoor survival. All you hear about is how cool Kaers are as dungeons, and yet they don't have a single one in a 300 page setting book. Instead, you get 70 pages on the political wranglings of lizard-man merchant houses.

That perfectly sums up my complaints with the 1e product line.  I'm a bit saddened that they didn't smarten up and focus on the heroic ass-kicking, post-apoc survivalism, and lovecraftian horror elements.  I suppose that one could run a game like that, but it would require conciously ignoring 70% of the background material, if not more.

Still, I might get the players book just to see what's what.  I'm impressed by classic's mechanical clean-up.  It seems much smarter than Earthdawn 2e (which seemed so ill-conceived).

Mechanically speaking my biggest problem with the game is that it seems to have oddball systems for no reason at all.  2nd ed D&D and continuing on into D20, the system has some different rules but at it's heart it's generally roll a D20, +/- a modifier against a target number.  The modifiers are all rather obvious and generally speaking the mechanics do flow rather smoothly.

ED on the other hand you have Abilities that aren't really your stats they are just the stats used to figure out what your step number is, but that step number really isn't your stat it tells you what dice to roll, and it acts more like a saving throw for any ability check.  Then you have several different trackers, to use, for different things and some take points off one tracker, others off another, some off more then one, depending on if it's a skill or an ability, then there is this oddity as to why some things are skills and others are abilities and some are both if you have a magical affinity for it.  It makes some sense in context to the setting, but as a mechanic isolated if you try to rationalize it, it doesn't make sense at all.

I remember when ED was fairly popular at the time, as was Shadowrun the biggest complaint I had, as well as any players I ever played with was why didn't they just use the core Shadowrun rules in ED.   It would have made everything so much simpler.  They could have still kept certain ED like qualities intact, like magic for example.  But just use the Shadowrun Dice Pool system for the default rules and build off of it.

What they did instead is just wonky, with no benefit to it's wonkiness.

Quote from: kryystWhat they did instead is just wonky, with no benefit to it's wonkiness.

I disagree. The wonkiness of the system is what we liked about it. the crazy handfuls of dice brought drama to the table. There is just something cool about rolling crazy assortments like 1d20+1d12+1d4 for damage, especially when you know if you max out on any of the dice you get to re-roll them. There was just this feeling that anything could happen. I can honestly say that the combat encounters were the most fun I ever had with any game as a player or a GM. YMMV, of course.

Quote from: kryystI remember when ED was fairly popular at the time, as was Shadowrun the biggest complaint I had, as well as any players I ever played with was why didn't they just use the core Shadowrun rules in ED.   It would have made everything so much simpler.  They could have still kept certain ED like qualities intact, like magic for example.  But just use the Shadowrun Dice Pool system for the default rules and build off of it.

What they did instead is just wonky, with no benefit to it's wonkiness.

I asked myself the same question back then, as I found it pretty stupid for a game that was touted as being the mythic past of Shadowrun to use a non-compatible ruleset.

But then, FASA was going to enter TSR territory. It is clear that they wanted to present a new rule system while at the same time making D&D players feel "at home".

They wanted to show a more rational, more logical, more "realistic" approach to D&D-like fantasy. So they made a game that offered a reason for dungeons (kaers) and a monster-infested wilderness (horrors), and they even found ways to hard wire D&D staples like classes (disciplines), levels (circles), and spell memorization (matrices) into the setting.
I am pretty sure that the decision to ignore their own dice pool system (SR) in favour of a system that used the standard polyhedrons stems from a wish to make D&D players feel at ease. And of course they needed six abilities with the familiar numerical range of 3-18 - even if that number was essentially useless as it was translated into a corresponding step number, which in turn was translated into a die size...

"We are sooo different from D&D, but look, we've got Vancian magic, too..."

I found that quite pathetic. To me Earthdawn looked like a product from a company that seemed to be far too occupied (even intimidated) by their competition.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke...And of course they needed six abilities with the familiar numerical range of 3-18 - even if that number was essentially useless as it was translated into a corresponding step number, which in turn was translated into a die size...

Hmm... now where have we seen this before?  Let me think...

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke"We are sooo different from D&D, but look, we've got Vancian magic, too..."

I found that quite pathetic. To me Earthdawn looked like a product from a company that seemed to be far too occupied (even intimidated) by their competition.

I never had the impression that ED was trying to be different from D&D; quite the opposite, in fact. I never felt that they were intimidated by D&D either. I think that they perceived a certain amount of disatisfaction among some of the people who played D&D and thought that they could capitalize on it. The game was definitely about trying to make D&D players feel comfortable. Hence the vancian magic, the crazy dice, the combat tables and all that stuff. It was a strategy that worked really well on my group- we were all burned out on 1e and had no interest in 2e, but we still wanted to play a fantasy game. ED was just enough like D&D and just different enough to hook us in. We played it for years and had a really good time with it, nothing pathetic about that at all.

What was the Barsaive setting like? The big selling point seems to be its in-game justifications for RPG staples like dungeons. Was there anything particularly interesting about it other than that feature?

Quote from: AosED was just enough like D&D and just different enough to hook us in. We played it for years and had a really good time with it, nothing pathetic about that at all.

No, I didn't want to rein/rain in/on the parade of anyone who had (or is still having) fun with Earthdawn!

From a publishing/marketing view I found it "pathetic" to create a D&D heartbreaker when they already had their own, functional system - even more so as the setting of their functional system was deeply intertwined to Earthdawn's.

I'd rather have seen a Fantasy Shadowrun. (And I still wonder if that would have been more successful than the Earthdawn that was.)

Quote from: AosI disagree. The wonkiness of the system is what we liked about it. the crazy handfuls of dice brought drama to the table. There is just something cool about rolling crazy assortments like 1d20+1d12+1d4 for damage, especially when you know if you max out on any of the dice you get to re-roll them. There was just this feeling that anything could happen. I can honestly say that the combat encounters were the most fun I ever had with any game as a player or a GM. YMMV, of course.

It's not the combination of dice that are wonky.  It's all the steps you had to go through to figure out what you actually had to roll, and what the target number was.  Also it had the weirdest side effect ever.  The more skilled you got the higher your target number became, yes you were rolling more dice to beat that target number but still it's all just very wonky.

Quote from: kryystIt's not the combination of dice that are wonky.  It's all the steps you had to go through to figure out what you actually had to roll, and what the target number was.

This has been fixed in Classic Edition, by making modifiers a bonus to the dice roll's result, rather than a Step bonus.

Quote from: Dirk RemmeckeNo, I didn't want to rein/rain in/on the parade of anyone who had (or is still having) fun with Earthdawn!

From a publishing/marketing view I found it "pathetic" to create a D&D heartbreaker when they already had their own, functional system - even more so as the setting of their functional system was deeply intertwined to Earthdawn's.

I'd rather have seen a Fantasy Shadowrun. (And I still wonder if that would have been more successful than the Earthdawn that was.)

I see your point, I guess I just don't think in terms of a game company's marketing strategies.

Quote from: kryystIt's not the combination of dice that are wonky.  It's all the steps you had to go through to figure out what you actually had to roll, and what the target number was.  Also it had the weirdest side effect ever.  The more skilled you got the higher your target number became, yes you were rolling more dice to beat that target number but still it's all just very wonky.

Your memory of how it worked is waaaaay better than mine, so I'll have to take your word for it at this point. I just remember that with the GM screen a lot of the number crunching was pretty easy (but ever present), but we may have been doing it wrong.