@The Gun Nut: Thanks for the tips!

RedBrick took the original rules and retooled them to make them leaner and meaner. The Player’s Compendium and Gamemaster’s Compendium (available in both PDF and hardcopy formats, purchase only) are 500+ pages each and have EVERYTHING one could want to play in the world of Earthdawn.

Also, RB is making a D&D 4E version of Earthdawn. When you read the original rules, you will note TONS of ideas that WotC “appropriated” for 4E (such as defenses, healing surges, points of light, etc.). Earthdawn took all the old fantasy tropes and made a world where they were not only plausible, but it made absolute SENSE that these things existed. Dungeons? Cities breached by Terrors From Beyond (Horrors in ED). Treasure in dungeons? That’s the loot folks took with them when they went into hiding from the Horrors (and of course the Horrors keep it there to lure more victims I MEAN adventurers).

Earthdawn is alive and well. Check out http://www.earthdawn.com and see.

I also recommend: White Wolf’s old Changeling game, Exalted’s Fair Folk, a nose through various Ars Magica supplements (Guardians of the Forest and the upcoming _Realms of Power: Faerie_ or the 4th Edition Fairies, perhaps a bit on the Merinita in Houses of Hermes: Mystery Cults)– where the Fey are a complete realm integrated with the regular world.

There is also Wolfgang Baur’s upcoming _Wrath of the River King_, over at http://www.koboldquarterly.com in the store and forums. This is a whole 4E adventure arc, for characters 4-6, set in the Feywild. I’ve been onboard this project from the beginning — it is going to set the standard for what a 4E supplement should be, mark my words and watch for it when the Ennies roll around next year.

The big thing about fey is that they *emulate* emotion without actually having it. They desire that emotion as a driving force, wanting memories and feelings and those little tidbits that make us human– because they are not, and they want that best part of us. They can be beautiful or hideous, but almost always they are amoral and in some degree callous. Their fascination with people could be considered very like our affection for pets– sure, you *love* your dog, but the neighbor’s barking mutt? Not so much… And you know how some people *hate* cats?…

There is also a good look at some parts of the comic Fables, or, of course, the Brothers Grimm. (Can’t forget the authority. )

D&D often dresses it’s fae up in a very Disney fashion, all smiles and woodland song. The folklore was often a different tone.

-Ben.

I had found a PDF book with people who went through the trouble of actually creating an elven dialect… pretty cool stuff.

Ah, found them! Looks like they’ve been hacked Managed to find a working link anyways: http://www.grey-company.org/Circle/).

Eric Maziades last blog post..Stories of yore…

But here is a little trick for flavorful curses, which can be use for all kind of thing… Use an other language then your own they will sound more excentric.

We often revert to other langugage such as english, spanish, germain, japanese instead of French just so it sounds original, removing the schoolyard effect…

Are you the one playing the warlock? Did you come up with curses to shout at enemies? I find that I have a hard time writing potent curses that don’t feel like they belong in school yards…

Eric Maziades last blog post..Stories of yore…

The Earthdawn website seems to have links to places of commerce for purchasing a PDF: http://www.earthdawn.com/index.php?categoryid=10

So, not quite out-of-print.

Otherwise we largely invent as we go based on the allusion here en their about the feywild.

It all builds towards the experience of playing DnD as a group of people (players and DMs alike) building a story together.

You mentionned the fey a few times in there… I haven’t found much material about them. I’m also playing a fey warlock and in dire need of background material… so if you feel like writing about that or pointing towards existing material, I’d be much obliged

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The airships have elementals bound to them, either fire or air, which are the blue and/or red rings you’ll see in depictions of airships from Eberron. The elementals provide propulsion and also, I believe, are what actually keeps the ship aloft.

This is all from memory, so I may have gotten the details wrong but that’s the gist of it.

But I really don’t need to go at this level of detail… I mean we’re going to have combat in flying airships… what more do you need?

@Ben: Thanks for writing this and kudos on getting it published Ben.

That all said… hmm, how much to explain… basically each element had a “true form” (true air, true earth, etc.) which basically represent a finite quantity of pure elemental energy of the specific type. Each true element would confer certain aspects to the items they were woven in to, and elements could be combined in differing amounts to provide effects as well.

Airships where basically ships… they had galleys, barges, viking style longboats, all sorts of boats. These ships would be infused with large amounts of the True Air to make them fly… the specific mechanics of these were a bit, um, vague. They pretty much sailed like a normal ship, only on air, so you could have sails or rowers. The big nasty/decadent magic empire to the south had many stone ships, even a few city sized “Behemoths” that they flew around oppressing everyone in. These ships tended to be fuels by both elemental stuff and Blood Magic, where they would use slaves life force to help keep the huge bulk in the air. Again, specifics were sketchy.

As a side note to the ships themselves, True Air and True Fire were explosive when mixed. So they had “Fire Canons” which were basically magically reinforced canons that combines motes of fire and air to cause fiery explosions. They tended to be quiet devastating in the system… especially since most airships were wooden.

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-Ben.

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