Earthdawn

Earthdawn is a long-running fantasy TTRPG about adepts, magic-wielding heroes who step out of sealed underground cities into a world the Horrors nearly destroyed. It suits groups that want a crunchy, class-driven fantasy campaign with a detailed setting, where the magic system explains why the world works the way it does. It is a poor fit for tables that want light rules, quick prep, or a short book they can learn in an evening.

The current line is Fourth Edition from FASA Games, spread across three core books. Expect a lot of reading, and a few sessions before your Discipline's talents click.

What Earthdawn is

Earthdawn was created at FASA in 1993, with Greg Gorden credited as designer. You play adepts in Barsaive, a region of city-states that broke away from the Theran Empire. Magic once swelled enough to let the Horrors cross over from astral space, and the Namegivers (the playable peoples) hid in magically warded kaers for four centuries. The game starts after they come out. Characters explore ruined kaers, push back the Horrors that remain, and get caught up in the politics of Throal, Thera, and the free cities.

The setting began as a sibling to Shadowrun and shares its world millennia earlier, but the publishers deliberately cut the canonical link when the licenses split. Treat Earthdawn as its own setting. The tone is heroic fantasy with a dark edge: legends matter, and so does the cost of the Scourge.

Editions and what to buy

Earthdawn has passed through several publishers. FASA released the first edition in 1993, Living Room Games the second in 2001, and RedBrick produced the Classic edition (2005), the Third Edition (2009) and a Revised Third Edition (2012). FASA Games, Inc. got the license back and published Fourth Edition, which it calls the current edition. It advances the timeline to the year 1517 TH.

The three Fourth Edition core books are:

• Player's Guide: character creation, the fifteen core Disciplines, spells, talents, skills and the rules for Circles 1 to 8 (DriveThruRPG).
• Gamemaster's Guide: running the game, an overview of Barsaive, creatures and magic items (DriveThruRPG).
• Companion: Discipline progression for Warden and Master tiers (Circles 9 to 15), knacks, enchanting and legendary thread items (DriveThruRPG).

You need the Player's Guide and Gamemaster's Guide to start. The Companion only matters once characters pass Eighth Circle. DriveThruRPG sells each as a watermarked PDF at $24.99, and FASA's own shop offers softcover and deluxe hardcover.

Later books add depth rather than new requirements: The Adept's Journey: Mystic Paths (more Discipline options), Magic: Deeper Secrets (a 624-page book of spells and knacks up to Circle 15), Grand Bazaar (a 272-page guide to Throal's market), and region books such as Vasgothia and Iopos: Lair of Deceit. There is also Earthdawn: The Age of Legend, a separate rules-lite version from Vagrant Workshop covered below.

How the rules work

Earthdawn uses the Step system. Almost every attribute, talent and skill has a step number, and each step maps to a dice pool or a die combination. You roll it against a static difficulty number. Modifiers change the step, not the total, so the core roll is always dice against a target. Players often describe a step as roughly the average result of its dice, which helps a GM set difficulties on the fly. Fourth Edition brought back the d4 for the lowest steps and the d20 for the highest, with the middle of the table following Third Edition's approach.

Success is graded. Meeting the target number is a success, and each additional five points adds another, so a strong roll does more than clear the bar. Many abilities, including spells, use those extra successes to add effects.

Initiative is rolled every round, and the result affects how reactions work during that pass. Damage dice can explode, so fights are swingy. Wounds trigger on big hits rather than small ones, which means the same fight can end with a few points of ordinary damage or several slow-healing Wounds.

Characters: Namegivers, Disciplines and Circles

You pick one of eight Namegiver peoples: dwarf, elf, human, obsidiman, ork, t'skrang, troll or windling. Then you choose a Discipline, which works like a class but carries a philosophy as well. The fifteen core Disciplines are Air Sailor, Archer, Beastmaster, Cavalryman, Elementalist, Illusionist, Nethermancer, Scout, Sky Raider, Swordmaster, Thief, Troubadour, Warrior, Weaponsmith and Wizard. Four of them (Elementalist, Illusionist, Nethermancer and Wizard) cast spells as magicians. The rest rely on talents alone.

Each Discipline advances through Circles, the game's levels. Every Circle unlocks new talents, talent options and abilities. Advancement is paid for with Legend Points, which the game ties to a character's growing reputation rather than treating them as abstract experience.

Signature mechanics

• Karma. A pool of magical energy that adepts spend to boost talent tests. In Fourth Edition you can spend it on any talent, and a short ritual restores it, so karma tends to be used freely.
• Thread magic. Spellcasting uses Thread Weaving. You attune spells to matrices, weave threads as part of casting, and can add extra threads to tailor a spell, with the number of extra threads growing with Circle. Thread weaving is also how adepts bond with magic items that unlock deeper powers as the item gains legend of its own.
• Talents and talent knacks. Each Discipline has a distinctive list, and the options broaden as characters advance. This is where most of the game's crunch and character identity lives.
• Legend Points and legend. Deeds earn Legend Points that feed both character growth and the standing of heroes and their magical items inside the setting.

What play feels like

A session usually alternates between exploration, politics and combat. Characters might investigate a half-collapsed kaer, bargain with a Throalic official, fight off a Horror-touched creature, then split the loot and spend Legend Points. Because the magic system is a part of the setting's explanation, the game encourages players to treat adept abilities as extraordinary but understandable in-world acts. Adepts are heroes from the start, though low-Circle characters are weaker than their later selves and can be fragile.

The step table is a constant presence. Experienced tables write each character's dice for every talent on the sheet so rolls stay quick. Combat has more moving parts than a typical class-based fantasy game, and groups regularly report that it runs slowly, especially at higher Circles and for spellcasters who must weave threads before they act.

Running the game

Earthdawn asks a lot of the Gamemaster. Each Discipline has its own talents with little overlap, so the GM needs to know what the players can do and what NPCs of similar Circle might do back. Barsaive is presented in old-school detail, much more than most modern games give you, so changing it takes work. Prep is moderate for a campaign you build yourself and higher if you want to run supplements with their full political backdrops.

Community advice is consistent: keep the step table visible, write dice on the sheet, and ask about reaction-affecting choices before rolling initiative. Many GMs say talents that look weak at low rank pay off at higher ranks, so give players time before judging a build.

Campaign fit

Earthdawn is built for campaigns. Circles, Legend Points and thread items make long-term growth the point, and the Companion extends play to Circle 15. One-shots are possible with pregenerated adepts (FASA's Gamemaster's Screen includes a booklet of sixty), but the system's strengths show over many sessions. If you want to try Earthdawn in short form, Age of Legend is the more sensible entry.

Earthdawn: The Age of Legend

Vagrant Workshop's Age of Legend (2016) is a separate, 232-page rules-lite take on Earthdawn built on the Freeform Universal system. It keeps the setting, Disciplines, karma and spells, and swaps the Step system for a lighter dice mechanic. Choose it if you love the world but not the crunch. This profile covers Fourth Edition, the main line.

Reception

Earthdawn has a long, loyal following and a reputation for crunch. A Geek Native review of the Fourth Edition Player's Guide (2015) recommended it to Shadowrun fans and fantasy players who like dice and world-building, and said story-focused groups can skip it. Players on r/rpg and r/earthdawn usually recommend Fourth Edition as the most playable version, praising streamlined success levels, karma and Discipline cohesion, and the way mechanics connect to lore. They also cite the learning curve, the step-table bookkeeping and slow combat.

On DriveThruRPG the three core books average between 4.3 and 4.7 from only six or seven ratings each (checked 11 November 2026), which is thin evidence. One recent DriveThruRPG commenter said they passed because the product pages lack previews and FASA was slow to answer questions, and another disliked the size of the 6-by-9-inch books.

Where it is strongest

• A distinctive, carefully developed setting where the rules and the world explain each other.
• Disciplines with real mechanical identity and long advancement through 15 Circles.
• A magic system with decisions beyond picking a spell: threads, matrices and extra threads.
• FASA has kept supporting Fourth Edition with supplements such as Magic: Deeper Secrets and Grand Bazaar.

Where it can frustrate groups

• The step table and the bookkeeping around it slow down new tables.
• Combat can drag, particularly for casters and at higher Circles.
• The GM has to learn many Discipline talents to run NPCs well.
• Three 500-page books are a big commitment, and our research (11 November 2026) turned up no free official Fourth Edition quickstart.
• Barsaive is dense and old-school, so groups that want to invent their own world may feel hemmed in.

Content notes

The setting covers slavery under Theran rule, war, and demonic Horrors that feed on fear and suffering. These appear as setting backdrop. Talk through the Horrors and Theran slavery before play if anyone at your table is sensitive to them.

Best starting path

If you want the full game, buy the Player's Guide and the Gamemaster's Guide in PDF, read the Player's Guide through character creation first, and build a few adepts together. Print the step table before the first session, and write each talent's dice on the sheet. If you want the world with simpler rules, try Age of Legend first.

Research notes

Last checked 11 November 2026. Sources:

• Wikipedia: Earthdawn (editions, publishers, setting)
• FASA Games: Earthdawn Fourth Edition core books
• FASA Games: book release news (Grand Bazaar, Magic: Deeper Secrets)
• DriveThruRPG: Fourth Edition Player's Guide, Game Master's Guide, Companion, Age of Legend
• Geek Native: review of Earthdawn Fourth Edition
• Sage Fault: Earthdawn 4 change list (action dice, karma, Disciplines)
• Panda Gaming Grove: Earthdawn 4E spellcasting
• Earthdawn wiki: Disciplines
• Community discussion: r/rpg edition thread, r/earthdawn GM pitfalls thread