(Earthdawn) Game Whore

Yep that's me.

This weekend we were supposed to play Stargate SG1. We wanted to get it at least one week down the road before succumbing to other games.

I know some people play one game. One game with one character every week and it's got to end up great. We are not such people. We can't do it. I have lost count of the games we have going currently, but we have at least 1-2 games going in every genre. Sci-fi, modern, fantasy, superhero...all of these we have a game or two going in. Fantasy is especially sad. We have three Exalted games going, two D&D games, one Eberron game, and Earthdawn game....it gets nuts.

But the advantage is that we get to have all these cool storylines going at once and can play whatever our mood dictates. Just seen Spider Man 2? Time for our DC Universe superhero game. Chronicles of Riddick got us in the mood for Sci-fi? Break out the Star Wars books. Some discussion got us in a hankering for Fantasy? Well, you saw the choices there....

So in short, Aaron wanted to play something else, so I drove home and got my Earthdawn character sheets. God I love that game. It honestly is one of my very favorite settings out there. It almost lampoons classic D&D elements...building them into the setting rather than trying to completely remove them (like Exalted). Earthdawn is a game where you can proudly proclaim what level you are and what level spells you can cast. Dungeons are a natural part of the world, and really are laying all over the place littered with treasure. Good is good, bad is bad, the heroes really are better than everybody but the BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy), and magic items are full of power...not all of it available at a command word.

Patterns, of people, places and items, play a large part in Earthdawn, and altering the fundamental nature of something or linking it to you is possible for almost anybody in the game. You can give someone a huge nasty sword of legend at the beginning of the game, confident it'll be many many adventures before that character can unlock the true power of the sword. The bad guys in this game are really bad (anything called the Horrors just has to be nasty). And there are Blood Elves....

I read many posts on various message boards about the T'Skrang lizard men and the Obsidimen stone man race being among the more creative races any fantasy game has ever allowed. Everyone thinks the Blood Elves are cheap Drow knockoffs, giving people the opportunity to play another type of evil elf (and they may be right for all I know), but I can't help it. I love these guys! Elves who underwent a ritual to get away from the Horrors that forevermore kept them in excruciating pain at all times...their skin constantly pierced by shifting thorns. Once the capital of all Elven society, the Blood Wood is now corrupt and beautiful, with a grace noone has ever thought possible, but rotten on the inside.

Suffice it to say, one of my Earthdawn characters is a normal elf who is heading for a date with destiny (and a new "skin condition"). :-)