This section is an attempt to layout what would be need to create a gaming system, or adapt an existing system to fit Earthsea. Initially this will involve an analyse of the books and Ursula K. Lequin's other writings about Earthsea.
The first place to start is the originial source material. There are five books dedicated to Earthsea, and one book with a single short story set in Earthsea. Earthsea was originially a trilogy written in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The first three books, in series order are: A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Autuan ( ), The Farthest Shore ( ). Many years later the fourth book came out, Tehanu (1990). This was followed by Tales of Earthsea in 19??. The book with the single short story was The Other Wind, and the short story was actuall written before the first full length book, A Wizard of Earthsea. In addition to the books, there was a movie Legends of Earthsea made by the SciFi channel in 2004. Ursula K. Legquin's website has a lot of comments about the movie, mostly that it mangled her story.
The next part of the site is divided into sections as listed below.
Earthsea is a world of islands. The entire area is often refered to as "the archipeligo". There are 6 major regions of Earthsea. They are North Reach, South Reach, East Reachi which is more towards the southeast, West Reach, The Inner Sea, and The Kargad Lands which are located in the northeast.
The depiction of the races and cultures of Earthsea in the movie was one of Ursula K. Lequin's major complaints [insert link to her website]. When she wrote the books, she purposefully made the various cultures have different skin colors instead of an all Caucasian society. Skin color does not matter from a gaming tactical or strategic rules standpoint, but is an important part of the character description and background. Skin color, and the other physical differences can help characters place NPCs also. From a standard gaming perspective, there are only two sentient races, humans and dragons. There are no Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, or similar.
Kargad
From the Kargad Empire which is located in the northeast region of Earthsea. The Kargads are white skinned with yellow hair (blonde). Basic description fits that of the Vikings from Earth.
Gont
Gont is an island in the northern part of Earthsea, and is roughly due east of the Kargad Empire. Gontsmen are noted for being dark skinned, a dark copper-brown.
The magic system of Earthsea is probably going to be the hardest part to imitate with justice. This is true of many novels trying to create a set of gaming rules. I am going to describe the various parts of the Earthsea magic system and compare each part to various gaming systems. I want to avoid creating an entirely new d20 class, much prefering to
The magic of Earthsea is based, in part, upon knowing the true name of something to control it. By combining words, more things can be controlled. This is similar to most gaming systems where mages have to learn their spells. The more words that are known, or more spells, the things a wizard can do. This part is fairly easy to emulate. Characters have to either level up, spend character points or similar to learn new spells and words. An important difference between Earthsea magic and D&D or d20 is that spells are not forgotten upon casting. Earthsea is closer to the d20 3.X rules for sorcerors than the rules for wizards or for other spell casters.
One limit on casting magic in Earthsea is that magic is draining. In the first book, A Wizard of Earthsea, after Sparrowhawk maintains a spell to conceal his village from the Kargad warriors, he is stunned and will not eat, sleep, talk or even respond to people. More trained mages can cast spells that are more powerful and maintain them for longer. This is indicated when Sparrowhawk keesp the mage wind spell going for apparently days while sailing the South Reaches.
Wizards in Earthsea, or at least those who were graduates from the wizards school on Roke, carry a staff. The staff helps them with their magic and marks them as a mage. The staff, in game terms, seems to act as a focus, but does not provide any specific powers. It is closer to the use a cleric puts a holy symbol to than to anything else. A poster on Wizards of Coast message boards suggested the specialty class of staff mage as a perfect fit. I have not seen the write up and the originial poster dropped that one idea and left. No explanation of why the class is so fitting, or rather than the obviouse that both the class and Sparrowhawk use staves.
Earthsea apparently only has bronze for a metal working technology. Sparrowhawk's father was a bronzesmith (AWoE, chap 1). The Kargad warriors who attacked the village wore bronze and leather armor.