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The Player’s Compendium intends to be the definitive book for Earthdawn gamers, taking characters from the First to Fifteenth Circle in their Disciplines. We have worked for about 18 months to include everything needed in an extended campaign lasting for years. The following should give you an overview of what has changed from First Edition - bear in mind that this is only a loose summary, for most of the details you’ll need to read the book.

General
After collecting all the material we found in the books, we needed to bring the content into a coherent state. The information we were dealing with for this book was written by a number of authors over span of several years. The Earthdawn Player’s Compendium contains virtually all material from: Earthdawn First Edition, Earthdawn Companion, Magic: A Manual of Mystic Secrets, Arcane Mysteries of Barsaive, The Adept’s Way, all of the Game Information chapters found in the original sourcebooks, and some new material that was needed to ’fill the holes’. Every chapter listed below was reworded, expanded, reorganized and updated to include more detail, better explanations and more examples. It’s safe to say that we edited every single sentence in order to bring the rules to the state they are in now.

How It Came To Pass
We updated the history of Barsaive and Thera to include the events of Prelude to War, which is the time Earthdawn Classic picks up. The official year of the setting is 1510TH. We also included a timeline for easy reference.

Game Concepts
The most significant change in this chapter affects the whole game and makes the system faster to play: Bonuses and Penalties. In previous editions, bonuses and penalties directly affected the Step Number of the Action Test, which not only resulted in the need to apply the modifiers before the dice were rolled, but also in looking up and gather the dice required for the new step. This generally brings the game to a grinding halt whenever a test is made. We changed bonuses and penalties in a way that they affect the test result - which means that players can roll the dice noted on their Character Record Sheets and worry about the modifiers later (thus minimizing the number of on-the-fly Step/Action Dice recalculations players and gamemasters need to make). Of course, the option of interpreting bonuses and penalties as step modifiers still exists for people who want to play it the old-fashioned way.
Another change affects the Success Levels - which are now called Result Levels. This has been subject to much debate and confusion. How can a test be called a Success if it failed (which would be the case when a Good Success is required, but the player only scores an Average Success)? By using Result Levels, this doesn’t happen anymore. A simple change for sure, but it makes the concept easier to grasp. In addition, we have introduced a new name for the result level below Poor - which is now called a Pathetic result (adding insult to injury :).

Creating Characters
The most notable changes in this chapter are that starting characters now have 8 skill points to spend in total, and the inclusion of guidelines for creating experienced characters. We have also dropped the concept of Legend Point costs for Karma based on a character’s race - every Karma Point now costs the same: 10 Legend Points.

Disciplines
Each of the 15 core Disciplines comes in its own chapter, with a leading chapter describing how Disciplines work in general and what Talent Crises are all about. The individual chapters come in two sections - fictional essays and Game Information. Needless to say, this section covers a large part of the book. The game mechanics of the Disciplines have seen a good amount of work, but we tried to keep as close to the First Edition as possible. Oddities in the talent progressions were replaced with better alternatives; and we balanced the Discipline Bonuses, number of Discipline Talents, and Discipline Abilities with a new Discipline Design system (which will be available as a free download later this year). The Discipline Abilities have been reworked entirely, and some had to be replaced by new ones.
It is worth noting that Summoning now works completely talent-based, with a revised version of the Summon talent available at Fifth Circle for the Elementalist and Nethermancer Disciplines.

Talents
Almost all talent effects were revised and brought into a coherent state. Some talents were changed entirely, others were renamed. We also removed the need for Talent Bonuses. Lots of details in this chapter, so it’s probably best to move on.

Talent Knacks
We added a couple of Talent Knacks to balance the number of knacks available to each Discipline. The effects of exiting knacks were revised and we have dropped a number of knacks which seemed redundant or game-breaking. Enchanting now uses an approach based on Talent Knacks - the precedent was given by the Name Spell knack, and we expanded this to give the gamemaster more control on who can enchant what kind of item. The talent knack learning cost was increased as part of the revision.

Skills
We altered the learning times for skills to make them a little more attractive to players, and we opened up the possibility to use more of them with the default Attribute. It is now possible to get a decent skill rank in a short time, but it still takes years before a character can achieve mastery in a given skill. Talents as Skills were included as general skills, giving a better overview of what choices are available.

Magic
The magic chapters have seen lots of rewordings and were generally edited for clarity, covering how magic works in general, how to use threads, spells, familiars and astral space. Notable rules changes include Casting from a Grimoire, which now allow for casting spells from one’s own grimoire and introduce cursed and tainted grimoires. All of the spells (over 450 in total) were revised.

Combat
The combat system has been expanded by a number of new optional rules and Situation Modifiers have been expanded to cover a greater number of possibilities - the modifiers given here are referenced throughout the rules. Apart from a general revision, the chapter has been reorganized and we have clarified and defined the different attack types and techniques available.

Building Your Legend
While Earthdawn offers a lot of options to customize a character already, we have included additional guidelines and clarifications which allow gamemasters to tailor the system even closer to the needs of their group. This mostly affects the Multi-Discipline rules, which often lead to all kinds of redundant abilities.

Goods and Services
A good number of new items have found their way into this chapter, along with revised rules for Trading and items of better quality. It’s a large collection of stuff, so there isn’t much else to say.

Passions and Questors
We have updated and merged the texts found on Barsaive’s Passions, and included the rules (as well as new options) for becoming a Questor. The powers have been revised completely, and some have been replaced with new ones.

Barsaive
This chapter is an extended summary on the lands of Barsaive with the political situation after Prelude to War in mind. The Explorer’s Guide, the Survival Guide, and the Serpent River sourcebook were used as a guideline. Extended information will be found in the Gamemaster’s Compendium. The new map uses exiting artwork and was updated with some additional locations from the books (the remains of the Kingdom of Marrek, for example, which appeared in Greg Gorden’s novel Prophecy).

Appendices
The Appendices contains a lot of tables and useful sheets: Talents, Talent Knacks, Skills, and Questor Power tables, an Optional Rules Tic-list, Spell tables, an extended Characteristics table, a Character Creation Summary, a Combat Quick Reference, and new Character Record Sheets.

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