Your Earthdawn

[The Undying]

If you've never read the adventure logs over at Panda's Gaming Grove, I highly recommend them. In-player adventure logs (versus bullet point critical items) are totally my jam, and I would LOVE to see a new Earthdawn sub-forum with adventure logs from various tables (despite the significant spoiler risk as groups play various timelines and pre-made adventures).

That aside, Panda also has a couple things that are different for his universe. Some of that is the way that he approaches things in general, some of that is significant changes to locales, some of that is new mechanics (e.g., Blood Shards).

I'd love to hear what various GMs are doing to make their Earthdawn universe there own. I'm not talking about mechanical, unless that is pivotal to your universe. I'm talking setting stuff, theme, prominent groups/factions/nations that don't exist in the basic setting or are heavily altered to play a prominent role. For those that chime in, it might be helpful to state up-front where in the timeline you are, as that could help set some fundamental power balance and faction prominence baselines.

[Kosmit]

I have almost 60 sessions logged by my players but they're all in Polish

[The Undying]

That's a shame. I'd recommend trying machine language conversion, but that never works well: sentence fragments seem to be ok, but large prose just becomes incomprehensible ... or, at least, that's been my experience English-Japanese.

[The Undying]

My preferences for ED aren't periodic specific, I just tend to favor elements of suspicion, fear, and desperation. I think it makes the brighter moments shine brightest, but it definitely can make for a more bleak-feeling campaign. A good chunk of it is just taking the elements already in the base universe and ratcheting them up. Stuff like:
- Greeting Rituals are huge (whether they work or not ...)
- Blood Magic is a necessary evil, with an emphasis on the evil, with associated availability and social stigma changes to practitioners, sellers, and wielders
- Blood Oaths are near sacrosanct, and violations tend to leave spectacularly visible scars with resulting pariah-esque standing
- Village life is hard

And so on

[Slanerous]

There are a mess of Earthdawn campaigns on Obsidian Portal, quite a few of which have some awesome adventure logs.

It's been a quite good resource for getting my campaign up and running.

Full disclosure: My campaign is also up on the site and will be getting adventure logs as soon as we get past the first actual adventure

[Dougansf]

I have my game up on Obsidian Portal as well. We just hit session 10 (every other week).

OP is great for adventure logs and personal journals. Also good for a roster of PC's and NPC's.

Like it says on the front page, spoilers for Ardanyan's Revenge within.

http://leavingthekaer.obsidianportal.com/

[saryakan]

Probably the biggest difference between canon Barsaive and mine is the prevalence and especially the distribution of airships.

In my setting the only factions able to actually craft airships are Jerris (which is now controlled by Iopos and does not trade them freely anymore), Travar, Throal and the Trollclans of the Twilight Peaks. Couple that with the fact that Airships need the (outside of Bloodwood) exceedingly rare True Wood to be created and that during the war A LOT of airships have been destroyed and you have less Airships flying in Barsaivian Skies. The few that are flewn right now mostly belong to rich traders. It's not impossible for an Adept to gain passage via those to somewhere, but it's either cost him somewhere in the 3-4 digit range in Silver or require the right connections.
All that only really applies to airships, that are supposed to fly long distance though, and especially in Travar the skies are filled with small 2-5 person airboats, that need regular maintenance and are much easier to craft since they don't require true wood. Those only can fly relatively slow, not very high, and not for long stretches of time and mostly are for getting around in larger cities.

This change lends itself to the style of campaign where I basically provided 5 elementally themed McGuffin places for the group and the adventure partly comes from getting there.

Another thing is the technological level. One evening a player asked if printing presses were a thing and I didn't know what to say. I could imagine them existing and so I decided that they were a recent thing that has been developed and utilized during the war in order to aid the spread of the Harwood Declaration.
(This might have been a mistake though. Now my players have aspirations to create the first super hero comic series in Barsaive, based on their adventures...)

[Mataxes]

Actually, your airship description isn't that far off the official status of airships in Barsaive (at least as far as I'm concerned).

The printing press does not exist in canon Barsaive.

[Lys]

The canonical number of airships in Earthdawn as of TH 1510 (ED 1st and 3rd Editions) is as follows:

Barsavian City-States

Throal: 3 galleons, 18 galleys, 8 drakkars, plus 2 galleys under construction in Jerris and 2 more in Travar.
Urupa: 3 galleys, 5 drakkars
Travar: 4 galleys, 6 drakkars, "although more vessels are slated to join"
Jerris: 1 galley, 4 drakkars, plus a merchant fleet of 15 ships
Iopos: 3 galleys, 6 drakkars, plus a merchant fleet of 6 drakkars
Marrek: 1 large drakkar
Kratas: 1 mercenary crystal raider drakkar

Of the above cities, Urupa, Travar, Jerris, and Iopos are all capable of building their own airships. Throal has a large airport and shipyard carved into the side of the mountain, but while they can repair and service airships, they do not seem to build them.

Crystal Raiders of Barsaive

Twilight Peaks Moots

Stoneclaws: 10 drakkars
Swiftwinds: 16 drakkars
Ironmongers: 12 drakkars
Thunderskies: 10 drakkars
Bloodlores: 9 drakkars
Blackfangs: 3 stone airships, 7 drakkars

Delaris Mountains Moots

Rockhorns: 8 drakkars
Skyseekers: 7 drakkars

Scol Mountains Moot

Firescale: 11 airships

The moots all have shipyards able to service and build drakkars, but lack the facilities to service larger airships. However it's implied that the Firescale fleet is dependent upon logistical support from Iopos.

Theran Holdings

Triumph: 2 kilas, 2 combat vedettes, 2 mining vedettes, 2 unknown vedettes
Sky Point: 3 kilas, 10 combat vedettes, 10 mining vedettes, variable number of other Theran vessels passing through

Totals

Military Fleets: 3 galleons, 29 galleys, 30 drakkars
Highland Troll Fleets: 89 crystal raider drakkars, 11 unknown airships, and 3 stone airships

Merchant Fleets: 21 airships between Jerris and Iopos. Given that they have 1.5x as many merchantmen as they do warships, i estimate that there's another 70+ merchant galleys and drakkars spread amongst the other city-states in Barsaive.

Pirates and Mercenaries: 1 crystal raider drakkar based in Kratas; "several pirate airships" stalking the Scarlet sea, unknown number for the rest of Barsaive, maybe one or two dozen. Note that it's very common for merchantmen to be part time pirates, and pirates part time merchants, so the distinction between them can be blurry.

Theran Fleet: 5 kilas, 12 combat vedettes, 12 mining vedettes, 2 unknown vedettes, variable number of other airships making temporary forays into the province

Conclusions: Even sticking entirely with canonical figures, airships are not that rare, as Barsavian city-states have at least 83 combined, Trollmoots another 93, and Therans 31, plus there's at least 1 mercenary drakkar and several pirates. For a total of 175+ wooden airships, and 35+ stone ones. Extrapolating off these numbers i would say that there's probably over 250 wooden airships in Barsaive and over 40-50 stone ones, but that's speculation.

[Flowswithdrek]

When the Travar book is released the 4 galleys, 6 drakkars are just those owned by the city. Individual merchants have their own fleets.