I like Earthdawn and own the second-edition rulebooks from Living Room Games. There seems to be a third edition. Is it worth it to buy these books too? To answer this question for me, I want to know more about the changes. What is new in the third edition, what has changed, what is missing? How does it influence gameplay?
[RPG] What are the changes in the third edition in Earthdawn
earthdawn
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Horror corruption is probably the nastiest non-fatal thing that can happen to a character in earthdawn; it principally affects the character in three types of way.
Effects of horror corruption
The first one is the Horror Mark a horrible way for the horror to affect the character this can be inflicted if the character uses raw magic (anywhere) or by a horror directly using their horror mark ability if they can see the character. This lasts a year and a day, but since a horror can inflict any non-damaging ability onto a character through a horror mark if they're within 100 miles of the horror they can pretty much keep doing this once a character is inflicted. The personal aspect of this as far as horrors are concerned is the abilities the horrors can use through this.
The second one is horror curses. These are a more personal aspect of horrors, as those horrors with the curse ability will have one that is personal to them. The most common one of these is cursed luck but there's a lot of scope for making these individual. These are the easiest way for horrors to inflict corruption on people as they can be placed on areas and items.
The third one is thought worm, although not a corruption par-se this allows the horror to force characters to do things or take damage for a year and a day, slowly corrupting them to do nasty deeds. Horrors need line of sight for these.
It's really worth tracking down the Horrors book as it goes into this in more detail and also gives you a lot more examples of the variety of horrors.
Horrors are earthdawns ultimate bogeymen, they are powerful, malevolent and extremely difficult to kill, even a small horror can provide a huge challenge for a moderately powerful party.
Notes from the horror book (I found my copy)
The Horror Mark described in the ED basic book is the "standard" horror mark, certain powerful horrors have their own versions of that power - examples are in this book. The book also expands on the horror powers a little more as well as the horror mark ability.
I use The Second Step
It is for second edition (which I use) not third; but here is a list of changes It's fairly easy to use, prints character sheets in several formats.
I believe you can get it to work with 3rd fully, but I'm afraid I've not tried.
Best Answer
Earthdawn has been published four times, by three different companies. It was originally published by FASA, and then the license somehow got into the hands of both Living Room Games and RedBrick Limited. LRG made their changes to the game and published the "2nd edition," which you'd be familiar with. RedBrick focused on reorganising and editing the original material, releasing their version as "Earthdawn Classic", then on expanding the line with setting supplements.
That was the state of affairs until recently—two companies with two similar but not-quite-compatible games both called "Earthdawn", and players of Earthdawn divided among the original game, the mostly-compatible Classic RedBrick edition, and the updated LRG 2nd edition.
Now, the third edition's place in that context might be enough to answer your question for you. The 3rd edition is produced by RedBrick (published through Mongoose), and is RedBrick's idea of how Classic should be improved to make for a better play experience. As such, the 3rd edition is unrelated to and doesn't build on the heritage of Living Room Games' 2nd edition, which is what you're playing. It's a separate evolutionary branch, so to speak. In terms of "steps of improvement" from the FASA edition, 2nd edition and 3rd edition are the same number of steps away from FASA Earthdawn, but in somewhat different directions. Which one to play is then a matter of personal preference.
The editions, in chronological order, are:
The changes in 3rd edition compared to 2nd edition haven't been itemised anywhere (that I know of) because they're two different companies' vision of what original FASA Earthdawn could become. However, there was an article by a RedBrick employee about the differences between Classic/original and 3rd. Annoyingly, the article is now lost in a site reorganisation, but some of the relevant points were preserved in a quote in this RPG Site thread on Earthdawn edition differences.