I’m considering running an Earthdawn game here on RPOL. I know there’s lots of interest in Earthdawn, my question is how much interest in playing Earthdawn either converted to GURPS or as a freeform game? The reason I ask is that I find Earthdawn to be a bit time consuming with book-keeping and don’t have the time or mental capacity/energy to run a standard Earthdawn game. Would people be interested in an Earthdawn conversion, either direct conversion which would mean playing characters with point totals in the high hundreds, or an approximate conversion which would maintain the “feel” of Earthdawn but use the rules of GURPS. Alternatively, we could make characters using the Earthdawn system, but the game would be freeform using the character sheets as a guideline of what could/should/would be possible.

Thoughts?

Have you considered using Earthdawn: Age of Legend? It's supposedly more rules-lite and more concerned with the story telling aspect than the other editions out there. Could be the middle ground you are looking for without having to do any conversions, or run strictly freeform.

Hmmmmmmm. I hadn’t considered it. I’ll have to look into it to see. What are the major changes?

I'm afraid I haven't read through it yet, so I can't say off-hand. I was planning to use it for one-shots, or games with inexperienced players to get them into the setting before tossing additional rules at them. I know there are a number of reviews online that talk about what changed, if you don't mind a little Google-fu.