Post/Author/DateTime	Post
adamb0nd 11-03-05, 12:30 PM	Hey, Im new to the eberron boards, but a long time dm. I need some tips from others experianced in running it, and I did check the FAQ, which didnt really help. I, as a DM, am terrified to run a game in an already existing world. I am always worried I'll screw up important details, missing out on NPCs, or important events. The only time Ive run a game that wasnt in a self-made world, was Starwars, and even then, I was constantly worried about screwing up continuity (I let lucas do that fine on his own). I really want to run eberron. My players are all final fantasy fans, and I think that this specific world would really get them hooked. I did read the entire eberron handbook, and I placed it down, and thought "good god, I cant keep a single thing I just read straight". Does any one have tips for running this mod? Or running any pregenerated world at all? I need all the advice I can get.
Grymar 11-03-05, 12:36 PM	Start small. Pick a village or small town. Introduce the setting slowly. Don't start by having the pc's in the middle of Sharn with 17 factions fighting over them, have them do a small job in a village for one House. Then they are introduced to another House. Then they take the lightning rail to a larger town...
drunkenewok 11-03-05, 12:40 PM	Best advice: don't worry so much. No one is going to come to your house and beat you up because you got a few wires crossed. (Or at least it's highly unlikely... ;) ) Pick bits of the world you like, put your own spin on them, and just have fun with it. If you have more specific questions about a particular aspect of Eberron, I'm sure you'll get many different opinions that can help get a great campaign started, but the only opinion that really matters is your own. (and to a slightly lesser extent, your players). Unless your players are huge Eberron fans and are cruel and heartless enough to jump all over you for any tiny fault they find in your background, you shouldn't have any problems. Basically, running a commercial world is just like running a homebrew, except that you don't have to do nearly as much work, and you might occasionally have to contradict the published material.
adamb0nd 11-03-05, 01:00 PM	Any advice on which town or area I should start? I prefer one with the least ammount or NPCs, religion, polotics, and any thing else.
DarkWarriorKarg 11-03-05, 01:07 PM	Problem is, the only city that's been detaile din any way, is teh one wit themost of what you are trying to avoid: Sharn. I'd suggest making up your own town/hamlet, if that worries you. Personally, I'd recommend Sharn. Just have the PCs come in "off the boat", don't involve them in politics & power groups right away. keep notes so you don't contradict yourself. make a series of notes concerining the power groups you are going to be using. There aren't that many to begin with. make notes concerning the timeline you'll be using, if you're not using an episodic format. (I am, right now) be careful if you're using the premade adventures. They were written mostly before the rules were set in stone.
13x13 11-03-05, 01:10 PM	To be honest you can't screw up the continuity. If you do something different than the book states regarding backround, then just your change the real thing. Everyone's Eberron is different from everyone elses, have fun and there are no Eberron Secret Police to beat down your door and smack you around for breaking "official" continuity. Consider the Eberron books suggestions for the most part, make the world your own.
shadowpavement 11-03-05, 01:15 PM	I'd sudjest using First Tower, the thorp on the way out of Sharn. There are only about 5 paragraphs or so of info on it (pg 147) so there is lots of room to do anything you'd like and only make the NPC's you would need. It's close to sharn so you can get your PC's there if you want, there is a lightning rail station so you can use that as well. It's also on the main road between sharn and wroat so any caravan type of adventures can be used. Especially using any of the Dragonmarked houses. Just some thoughts.
DarkWarriorKarg 11-03-05, 01:19 PM	To be honest you can't screw up the continuity. If you do something different than the book states regarding backround, then just your change the real thing. Everyone's Eberron is different from everyone elses, have fun and there are no Eberron Secret Police to beat down your door and smack you around for breaking "official" continuity. Consider the Eberron books suggestions for the most part, make the world your own. Stay right where you are. You have violated rules enacted for the Department of Eberron Security. Do not ask what rules, for they are secret. Cry havok, and set loose the bovines of hades!
Saurenda 11-03-05, 01:57 PM	Hey, Im new to the eberron boards, but a long time dm. I need some tips from others experianced in running it, and I did check the FAQ, which didnt really help. I, as a DM, am terrified to run a game in an already existing world. I am always worried I'll screw up important details, missing out on NPCs, or important events. The only time Ive run a game that wasnt in a self-made world, was Starwars, and even then, I was constantly worried about screwing up continuity (I let lucas do that fine on his own). I really want to run eberron. My players are all final fantasy fans, and I think that this specific world would really get them hooked. I did read the entire eberron handbook, and I placed it down, and thought "good god, I cant keep a single thing I just read straight". Does any one have tips for running this mod? Or running any pregenerated world at all? I need all the advice I can get. We all make mistakes, and it's hard to remain perfectly attuned. you will make mistakes. Accept it. If your party likes final fantasy, it stands to reason they have "good guy syndrome" in thier game style. Work out a save the world game. Pick one major group and focus on them. Sharn isn't as overwhelming as it is difficult to explain through imagery. you can easily navigate the book without an index(Darn you WoTC) and still amange to keep up with your players traveling. Having a specific destination in the city or an area where the group can commonly go will make it easier for you all to become familiar with it.
Grymar 11-03-05, 02:04 PM	I used Ardev, which is in Breland NW of Sharn. There is now a paragraph on it in Five Nations, but I worked it up from the ground when I used it. Here's where I posted my write-up. http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=425216
BMStroh 11-03-05, 02:46 PM	I'd have to agree with the others - relax, and have fun. I've got the whole stack of Eberron books, but I've barely had time to read over the first half of the ECS. When we get together to play, everyone is there to have a good time, not argue over the color of an NPCs hair, according to page 113. If a player happens to mention material that contradicts what you've laid out, you've got two choices: Smile darkly, and say, "Really?" and go on with your day, or simply admit that you must have misremembered the detail, and go on with your day. Personally, I don't think I'm that great of a GM - I wing it a lot, even with rules, let alone background. But, everyone seems to have a good time during the sessions I run, and that's really what it's all about. Your players will cut you some slack.
Sereno 11-03-05, 03:34 PM	Yeah, relax! Really!! Read the ECS again. Then read it again, and take some notes about the important things you DON'T want to forget. Use the adventure seeds to give you ideas. Read the ECS, again. :) One of the greatest things about Eberron is it's inherent ambiguity. So long as your first adventures don't involve resurrecting the Mark of Death, destroying Sharn, killing King Kiaus, killing Erandis d'Vol, or determing the Cause of the Mourning ... you'll be fine. Oh, you probably don't want to kill Oalian (the great druid greatpine), or Jaela the Keeper of the Flame, either. Eberron is the world were even MAJOR NPCs, like the Lord of Blades, isn't set in stone; he might be Aeren d'Cannith, or the First warforged, or Bulwark who once worked for the king of Breland, or something-entirely-different! It's up to you as the DM to make these decisions. The entire continent of Xen'drik is a DM's playgrounds. Even OFFICIAL WotC maps might not match up INTENTIONALLY. Keith has explained how two exporation teams can leave the same place and arrive at the same (different) place, mapping all the way, and the two maps would look nothing alike!! Wow! Sharn it an enormous place ... so big that unless your campaign revolves around destroying it, it won't matter if you forget about an NPC or a location or two.
cancerousmango 11-03-05, 04:12 PM	Seriously, just relax about this sort of stuff. Are you OCD or something? (No diss if you are :) ) Because it sounds like you have this compulsion to always have everything by the rules, perfectly in order. Hell, if you were trying to keep in mind everything that was possibly going on in the world, the effect that the PC's actions had on every NPC/Faction/Draconic Prophecy/the cheese trade between Karnnath and Breland...you'll end up having very little fun. I'd put it someplace out of the way, personally. Someplace NO ONE ever goes...like the Mror Holds. Heh.
Thwyvylyn 11-03-05, 04:24 PM	I am ocd and deviations from the material used to bother me until my old DM sat me down and told me about rule 0 and rule 1.
cancerousmango 11-03-05, 04:36 PM	I am ocd and deviations from the material used to bother me until my old DM sat me down and told me about rule 0 and rule 1. There we go...see? It's about fun, not sticking to canon! :D
Thwyvylyn 11-03-05, 04:57 PM	Adding to what I said, Retcons are your friend. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retcon
zambuka 11-04-05, 12:59 AM	Don't try to start of with a massive campaign arc in mind, that will develop all on its own as you go provided you think about what comes next. Don't worry about details other than what ever is immediately bothering your PCs. Start with brief descriptions of an area ("you see a dim alley lined with trash and partly blocked by stacks of crates") and only expand when your players ask for details ("The top crate in the nearest stack is rocking slightly back and forth as if something recently disturbed it. Trash is strewn in a trail leading from one pile to another where it appears as if something was hastily buried."). This does work if your players are reasonably curious and quick on their toes. By asking about specific things and getting more and more detail as questions are answered you get a better idea of an area than if you start with a complex detailed description. Limit what you are going to allow for the start of your campaign to only a few source books. Stick with the core books and the ECS and then expand as your world gets more and more detail. Don't allow all and sundry random classes and items from unidentified sources, or even from many published sources (Mongoose Publishing, I'm talking to you) because most of these are made purely for the "oh wow, that's so cool" factor and rarely take game balance into consideration, you will likely later regret it if you allow too many of these things (like a first level spell that grants everyone in the party +2 miscellaneous bonus, and thus stackable with almost every other bonus, to attack, damage and saves as well as skill checks and lasts 10 minutes per level. This is an actual spell from one such published source and the game I get to play in has this spell). Prepare a few NPCs before you start. Use these NPCs as the base for getting the adventures going. Someone like a history professor at Morgrave, a small time gangster boss and a wealthy patron are good starts. Rule 0. If there is something you don't like, change it but make sure you understand the consequences of making these changes. eg. If you want to take magic item creation away from the players then it is much better to just not allow the Artificer or any item creation feats than it is to try to modify and rebalance the artificer and these feats. Take a pencil and some paper, a small grid book is best, with you whenever you go anywhere you will have a bit of idle time. You will be amazed at how much a bit of idle doodling can inspire some great adventures. Remember also: Warforged are not robots, they cannot transform, they cannot swap body parts, like arms and legs and heads. They are quite well balanced in the context of Eberron, because most of their immunities are things that don't come up very often in gameplay. Shifters are not catgirls. Changelings are not overpowered just because they get a high disguise bonus (how does this help at all with the rest of the game I don't know, I will never understand how people use that as their primary argument for why the changeling is an overpowered race) Artifiers, like any other class, are only overpowered when you go out of your way to find the most munchkiny build you can. While the blastificer build can be nasty, so can any other class when you choose the right feat/skill/PrC combo, particularly when you go adding feats from sources that were badly balanced even before the artificer came out.
Quenditar 11-04-05, 01:55 AM	As everyone here has said, it's your world. If Sharn is secretly ruled by a committee of illithid minotaurs in your game, then it is no matter what any book may say. Don't be afraid to cut out what doesn't fit your continuity or you just don't like. If they want a "purer" game, one of them can run it.
Edymnion 11-04-05, 02:50 AM	Okay, now you see, Eberron is actually an ideal place for you to get started in. VAST tracts of even the populated countries are, well, unpopulated, or very nearly so. Just pick a place somewhere in Breland say, thats out of the way of everything, and claim there is a small villiage there. Nothing says there is, nothing says there isn't. Now, all of your players are from that same small villiage. No weird characters yet, this is the ease in for you and them, and you can use the same literary device that authors have used for centuries. You see, the author knows all about how his world works, but the readers don't. So, the author has to somehow tell them how it works, without it sounding like he's reading from a textbook, which would jar you out of the story. The most classic way to do this, the one you see used in virtually everything these days, is to pick a "normal guy" or a "farm boy" who knows NOTHING of the outside world, and use him as a main character. You start out in familiar surroundings, doing familiar things, and then they slowly start going places they've never been, getting into weird situations, and as they go, they learn more about the world they are in, as do the readers/viewers. Tolkien did this with Bilbo and Frodo. Robert Jordan did this with Rand, Perrin, and Mat. Star Wars did this with Luke. Each time, it was someone who didn't know the world as a whole that eased into it. You do the same. Start them off as all humans, in an all human villiage, and then start with little things. Then, as you get more into the setting, you can have something new come by. Like a Warforged. Or a Valenar Elf. Show them how things are differant by introducing it to them the way you would their country bumpkin characters. And while they are learning about this new race, so are you. Then, you spread out more and more, until you find yourself in a full fledged Eberron game. Then you give them the option of retiring old characters and making new Warforged or Shifter or Changling PCs, AFTER they have already been interacting with those races for a bit. And most of all, don't worry about continuity. There are ALWAYS ways to fix what you flub up, or you can just run with them and make them a feature point of that particular Eberron game you are running. Fix them with the next campaign, leave 'em for this one. I mean, you don't run everybody in the same Faerun game, do you? Where you are still using the same screw ups you made the first time you ever played that setting, right? No, you started up a new game, with new characters, new stories, and you didn't make those same mistakes that next time around. The same will happen here. If nothing else, you take everything above, and wrap it up as an "introduction campaign" for the players. Say you play levels 1-4 as the introduction to everything, then you can start up a "real" campaign and give the players the choice of keeping their old character, or making a new one with one of the new races/classes. All in all though, the real key is to find a point in the setting and focus on that. Not just in your games, but in your understanding of the setting. If you want to put your game in Aundair, then just read up some generic stuff on the rest of the world, and only pay attention to the specifics for Aundair. Get that one small region down pat. Then, you can branch out into other areas as you feel more confident, and as they are needed. After all, if you are playing in Breland, there is little reason for you or the PCs to know how Karnnath works, so ignore it for now. If/when the PCs want to go there, THEN you start reading up on that nation and how it works. Its just like any other setting in this reguard, really. If you try and take it all in at once, your head will explode. So, instead, take it in little by little. Don't try to dive in all at once. Just skim over stuff and take in things like "Okay, Mournlands = nuclear holocaust, can't heal there" and move on. Your first glance doesn't have to be 100% right, just enough to get a feeling for it. Mournlands = bad place with freaky stuff. Karnnath = undead. Aundair = magic land. Thrane = theocracy. That sort of thing. It'll help you build up a framework, and you can fill in the holes later.
Devner 11-04-05, 03:41 PM	I must agree with the rest. Heck, our DM takes normal content, throws in some Dragon Magazine dungeons, and certain creatures have house rules as to what they can take or dish out (dragons specifically touch AC 2 on a dragon ain't never gonna happen in his house). From my DM experiences...if your rules or history are questioned just tell them the books are a general guideline for his champaign...then attack the group with a random powerful mob that gives low experience and no treasure - followed by "Any more questions?".
Arz 11-04-05, 04:40 PM	If you like the setting pick a place within it that you like and start from there. I'll show you what I mean by explaining my thought process behind my first Eberon campaign. I don't like to be in the feature spot of a campaign setting. This rules out Breland & Sharn. I did not want to deal with typically monster races right off the bat. Rules out Darguun, Drooam, & Q'bara. Religion was not going to be a central theme. Bye-bye Thrane. I wanted the players to be able to have a wide selection of races. Sayonara Mror Holds, Talenta Plains, & Valenar. I enjoy politics and the outdoors. Karnath is just really weird. I liked the Aundaire region which also gave players the option of being from the reaches too. Since the campaign setting book was the only thing out there when I started I was free to just make things up as I went along. I believe my enthusiasm was probably the biggest reason for that campaigns success. If you have fun and do things that you enjoy so will your players.
MysticTheurge 11-04-05, 08:59 PM	The only thing that you should try not to contradict is yourself. Keep a record (notes, journal) of the things you say, do or create as the DM so you can keep track of them for yourself. Everything else is just a framework of suggestions for you to make your very own Eberron with. And then, even if you do mess up a little, it doesn't really matter cause you can just retcon it, as someone said. Maybe the reason the Duke of Vedykar doesn't remember the last time he met your PCs is because he's not really the Duke anymore but a Rakshasa posing as the Duke. You know, that kind of thing. Keep in mind, that as the DM, there's nothing you can possibly do that can't make your game better with a little bit of work. (Well I guess, except maybe TPK, but even then, sometimes, things can end up better off... And TPK can be just as subject to retcon as anything else... "The maniacal laughter of the Mind Flayer rings in your mind as you suddenly find yourselves lying on the floor of the dungeon where you first encountered it. It would seem that you did not in fact chase it through the portal into a lake of fiery lava, but rather that the evil creature was playing with your minds, perhaps only to show you how easily it can manipulate you.")
Elderich 11-06-05, 04:39 PM	Some good ideas here. You might consider reading the Eberron books. Fun and easy way to get intune with the setting.
Save-vs-DM 11-07-05, 04:35 AM	First of all, a friendly link: Rolplayingtips.com (http://www.roleplayingtips.com/index.php) was a weekly newsletter for GMs and Players alike. It's free to subscribe and John is a really great guy. A lot of the articles are supremely helpful. Now, some tips and suggestions: First of all, as others have stated, don't worry nearly so much. The only reasons most dungeon masters look so utterly prepared and in the know is that the players can't see thier notes. Your players have no idea of what you have planned, so if you change something or forget a part of the adventure, they don't know at all. So take a deep breath, relax, and start smiling - one of the greatest joys of roleplaying is ahead of you. I would suggest either begging, borrowing, or buying a copy of the Dungeon Masters Guide II. It has a plethora of tips you would find useful, including an entire detailed city called Saltmarsh. Though it is detailed for the world of Greyhawk, you could convert it to Eberron and plop it down without a lot of trouble. It has dozens of plot hooks, ready made NPCs, and all the areas detailed for your use. If you needed help converting it, I'm sure other board members would be happy to assist you (that includes me). Reading the books again is good advice, as is learning most of the rules really well. Knowing the rules and material is 7/10th of running a game, in my opinion. I hope you have fun, please ask more questions if you need help, and happy gaming! Cheers, Save vs DM