“Try Before You Buy” is an occasional segment of Astral Projections. It spotlights free (or nearly free) supplements, quick-start rules, and modules for various RPGs. Today, I take a look at Brett “DouganSF” Bowen’s Genesys hack for FASA’s Earthdawn setting, downloadable here, in the Fantasy Flight Games forums.
I got a chance to play this at GNC VI, when my scheduled session was canceled. I’d never heard of the setting before, but the opportunity to play an 18″ tall winged bard was too tempting. The idea of post-apocalyptic fantasy was new to me and got my attention as well. In this game every PC, regardless of their Discipline (Career) can use magic, although I never caught on to the nuances of the setting specific “pattern magic.” Granted, understanding this concept wasn’t necessary for the con game, but even reading the section through a few times hasn’t clarified it for me. Except for how it encourages party members to work as a team which always appeals to me. So many games, it seems like there’s always That Player who has to do it their way.
I did catch on to the necessary mechanics to play the entertaining one-shot. The adversaries we came across seemed pretty balanced. We had a couple tough fights, but were not overwhelmed. Mechanics for combat and skill checks are pretty close to the base Genesys, except for the system-specific talents and skills. The magic system is where the Earthdawn mechanics diverge farthest from Genesys, which is not surprising, since those are very basic and magic systems often have their own unique quirks that don’t easily fit into the limited magical mechanics in the core. (The creators of D20 Radio’s Harry Potter Genesys setting also developed their own magic mechanics for this reason.) I still think the magic chapter could be clearer, as could some other system-specific mechanics. Overall, mechanics is the weakest part of this homebrew sourcebook. My fellow gamer, Donovan Morningfire, expressed a similar sentiment in his own blog. However, we both agree that we still enjoyed this take on the setting enough that it is worth having a copy to run or play again.
It is a very beautiful PDF, with lots of art and quotes from the FASA editions, properly attributed. A lot of work went into converting races, disciplines, and adversaries to Genesys. Even with the shortcomings of the crunch, the character sheet was detailed and clear enough that I had no trouble figuring out what my tiny Windling Bard could do. More importantly, I had fun doing it. Here’s hoping Brett or someone takes a break from cloaks and daggers to run this next year.
Linda Whitson
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