Earthdawn is a fantasy role-playing game, originally produced by FASA in 1993. In 1999 it was licensed to Living Room Games, which produced the Second Edition. It was licensed to RedBrick in 2003, who released the Classic Edition in 2005 and the game's Third Edition in 2009 (the latter through Mongoose Publishing's Flaming Cobra imprint). The license is now held by FASA Games, Inc. (from FASA), who have released the Fourth Edition, with updated mechanics and an advanced metaplot timeline. Vagrant Workshop released the Age of Legend edition in 2016 using alternative rules-lite mechanics.

The game is similar to fantasy games like Dungeons & Dragons, but draws more inspiration from games like RuneQuest. The rules of the game are tightly bound to the underlying magical metaphysics, with the goal of creating a rich, logical fantasy world. Like many role-playing games from the nineties, Earthdawn focuses much of its detail on its setting, a province called Barsaive. It was also originally written as a prequel to Shadowrun, mirroring its setting of returning magic with one where magic has just recently dropped from its peak. However, after Shadowrun was licensed out to a different publisher, the ties between the two were deliberately severed.

Between 1993 and 1999, FASA released over 20 gaming supplements for Earthdawn, and several novels and short-story anthologies. In late 1999, FASA granted Living Room Games a licensing agreement to produce new material for the game.

The second edition did not alter the setting, though it did update the timeline to include events that took place in Barsaive. There were a few changes to the rules in the second edition; some classes were slightly different or altered abilities from the original. The changes were meant to allow for more rounded characters and better balance of play. Living Room Games' last publication was in 2005 and they no longer have an Earthdawn license.

In 2003 a license was granted to RedBrick, who released the original FASA books in PDF form, and developed their own edition based on the FASA products. They published the Earthdawn Classic Player's Compendium and the Earthdawn Classic Gamemaster's Compendium which are compatible with the original FASA publications. Each book has 524 pages and summarizes much of what FASA published; game mechanics, setting, narrations, and stories. Errata was incorporated into the text and provided rules clarifications.

While RedBrick tried to remain faithful to FASA's vision and visual style, they revised almost everything and introduced new material to fill the gaps. RedBrick published new Earthdawn novels in 2007. In 2009, RedBrick announced the third edition of the game, and published it through Mongoose Publishing's Flaming Cobra imprint. The first two books were released in July 2009. In 2012, RedBrick announced the return of the Earthdawn license to FASA Games, Inc.

In 2014, FASA announced the Earthdawn fourth edition and launched a successful Kickstarter to support the project. The fourth edition is described as a reworking of the game mechanics, with redundancies eliminated, and a simpler success level system. The game world is advanced five years, past the end of the Barsaive-Thera War. The first Fourth Edition title—the Player's Guide—was released in early 2015. In 2014, FASA gave permission for Impact Miniatures to return the original Heartbreaker Hobbies & Games Official Earthdawn Miniatures range to production. In order to fund this, Impact Miniatures launched a successful Kickstarter project.

In 2016, Vagrant Workshop released the Age of Legend edition using a permutation of the rules-lite mechanics of the Freeform Universal RPG system. With its rules-lite mechanics the Age of Legend edition is marketed as being "ideal for one-shots, convention games, and introductory games — even for kids!"^{[citation needed]}