Post/Author/DateTime	Post
id4698 06-08-06, 11:44 AM	I posted this on the Keith Baker thread as well. I started a Eberron campaign two months ago, and am loving it. I own each book, and have read each of them. All that remained was the Player's Guide to Eberron. I bought a copy for each of my players. Here is where the problem begins. In my campaign, I have kept the true secret of the Blood of Vol from my players. I have kept the connection of the Emerald Claw and the Blood of Vol from my players. I wanted to keep Argonesson a hazy area...someplace known to exist...but totally unexplored. One of my players cracks open his copy and says "Dude, do you really want us to know all of this stuff?" At that point I read the book all the way through. Why...why....why...did they put tons of DM eyes only type information in this book? This is a player's guide? Half of this stuff isn't even in any of the other books, thereby preventing DM's from knowing it...but evidently the player's know before their DMs what Argonesson looks like....they can roll on these stupid tables for "Knowledge chekcs"...and end up knowing more than their DM. I can understand players knowing, and yet "roleplaying" that their characters don't know...but this book has taken away the premise of Eberron's "Intrigue within intrigue" and just spilled the beans to everyone. Again, I know that the players could simply buy all the books and read them anyways...but why put out a Player's guide...calling it a player's guide...and basically letting it all out, including things not found in DM related material? Can anyone explain this? Does anyone else see my frustration? This isn't just me...my players are even baffled. Added Note Here: K. Baker actually replied to this as well in his thread, which I thought was very cool of him. One of his points was that he just creates the world...does not have control over WotC formatting. The reply is in "Ask Keith Baker" thread if anyone has an interest.
REN 06-08-06, 11:49 AM	I feel your pain. It's the one thing about Eberron that totally pisses me off. Some players who knew more than me, found the game less fun that it should have been. I really wish they would divide the player and DM info into serperate books.
Kreistor1 06-08-06, 11:57 AM	We all agree. DM information must be seperated physically, and it is especially a poor idea to put it in a book called Player's Guide. The reason is Marketing. A book every player thinks they should buy has a larger market than one only DM's are allowed to buy. So blame the money grubbers: I always do. This book should have been written in two parts. The front half with the player options, feats, and basic knowledge of areas. The back half for DM's only, with the tables, etc. I actually had a player buy the book and then go to the players and say, "Hey, tell me what knowledge skills you have and I'll go through the book and tell you what you know about the world." Say what? He got the slap down really fast. It took two very insistent, "No you bl--din' well don't!" demands before he settled back, he was so certain he was allowed to do this. Real pain in the behind. Another book to keep out of your player's hands is the Explorer's Handbook, another mistitled DM book. The EH includes detailed locations for your PC's to visit, not guidelines on how to explore the continents safely. Secrets of Xen'drik hopefully is better named as DM material. "Secrets" implies players shouldn't know. Faiths of Eberron also suggests players ask first, since it implies information about the inner workings of the religions.
id4698 06-08-06, 12:31 PM	I agree about the Explorer's handbook as well. Heck...for that matter I never understood why they put prestige classes in the DMG. It would seem to me that you could actually make profit off of creating "DM Eberron" books and "Player's Eberron books", as opposed to only a few books that are consolidated....
Euangelion 06-08-06, 02:51 PM	Actually I wouldn't be surprised if that for 4th ed. (whenever it comes out) they publish Eberron, DL, and FR-specific editions of the PH, with the campaign specific material included right along with the generic stuff. For instance, the Eberron PH would include the kalashtar, shifters, changelings and warforged right along with the standard races (but with Eberron specifics for them as well), include the artificer among the standard classes, detail only the Eberron religions, etc. etc., plus a general overview of the world. It should be the same price as the standard PH. That way they can keep the "for DM eyes only stuff" where it belongs!
Dragonmann 06-08-06, 03:31 PM	I have been DMing an Eberron campaign since the campaign setting came out, and at first I agreed with your opinion about the player's guide, and even the ECS. But then I thought about it more, and it is the player's guide to eberron, not the character's guide to eberron. The DM is by definition one of the players of the game. And the background information is there to help develop stories for both the DM and the characters. For the first time a member of the church of the silver flame can point to something and say, I know this. A character can be from place A, use information B in his background, and be opposed to (and thus know something about) group C What you need is not a different book, but players who can seperate player knowlege from character knowlege. It wouldn't hurt to have a firm hand to reinforce the policy either.
MysticTheurge 06-08-06, 03:43 PM	What you need is not a different book, but players who can seperate player knowlege from character knowlege. It wouldn't hurt to have a firm hand to reinforce the policy either. And if anything the "What you know" knowledge tables emphasis this fact.
id4698 06-08-06, 03:59 PM	My players do a superb job of seperating character from player knowledge. If I needed to, I would deal with it, but it hasn't been a problem. That isn't the point though. How lame is it when there is a major (Eberron based, not DM written) plot point...and the character has to be like "Oh, how shocking". Nothing is better in game than when you are like "Holy Crap...holy crap, this is a huge revelation". Not "Time to feign shock at plot point I already knew". Thats like saying its ok to let players read your adventure, and then act like they don't know anything. Doesn't mean they can't, but how fun is that? Keith Baker had a good point...he mentioned a good idea about taking what they know, and then throwing yet another twist on top outside of the books. What becomes difficult though is when the players simply get used to that style.
Raziel_Brokodar 06-08-06, 04:05 PM	I hear you man, that's why I suggest RoE over the Player's guide as a general book to give your players access to.
Kalanth 06-08-06, 04:13 PM	Actually I wouldn't be surprised if that for 4th ed. (whenever it comes out) they publish Eberron, DL, and FR-specific editions of the PH, with the campaign specific material included right along with the generic stuff. Forget 4th ed, that is a great idea I would love to see now! The more they compact into one book, the less I need to take to a game session. *walks out of thread with an 80 book library on his back*
jonthegm 06-08-06, 04:33 PM	My players do a superb job of seperating character from player knowledge. If I needed to, I would deal with it, but it hasn't been a problem. That isn't the point though. How lame is it when there is a major (Eberron based, not DM written) plot point...and the character has to be like "Oh, how shocking". Nothing is better in game than when you are like "Holy Crap...holy crap, this is a huge revelation". Not "Time to feign shock at plot point I already knew". Thats like saying its ok to let players read your adventure, and then act like they don't know anything. Doesn't mean they can't, but how fun is that? Keith Baker had a good point...he mentioned a good idea about taking what they know, and then throwing yet another twist on top outside of the books. What becomes difficult though is when the players simply get used to that style though. I encourage my players to read everything they can about Eberron. It helps them to form concrete goals, which helps me in turn to write coherent and meaningful sessions that the PCs are interested in. My PCs have a pretty significant hand in developing the campaign. I don't leave them out of the loop.
MrFilthyIke 06-08-06, 04:48 PM	What you need is not a different book, but players who can seperate player knowlege from character knowlege. It wouldn't hurt to have a firm hand to reinforce the policy either. Quoted For The Truth.
MysticTheurge 06-08-06, 04:52 PM	Nothing is better in game than when you are like "Holy Crap...holy crap, this is a huge revelation". Not "Time to feign shock at plot point I already knew". I definitely agree, but I don't expect to be given these moments by a book. I guess I just assume that most of my players have read enough to figure these things out. Maybe it's cause I have the kinds of players who do read all the books (and I don't think it's fair of me to say "No, you can't read X Y or Z because it might give things away.") or read the boards, etc. If I want the shocking revelation moment, I carefully craft it myself. I write little bits of draconic prophecy that don't make sense now, but are going to provide me that moment where the players all gasp and go "oh I get it now." I interweave plots inside other plots and keep them guessing about how reliable the information they have is, and how much I've changed it. And then, when they're not sure whether Kaius really is a vampire or not, I do the big reveal.
Naudachu 06-08-06, 05:04 PM	I started off my Eberron campaign telling my players to "not go to far in the book" meaning the ECS. They went along with this for awhile, but our sessions became infrequent and they started reading more, thinking my campaign was defunct. It was actually a revelation to me. After reading the ECS (and others) they were able to get more into the world and get a better feel for their characters. Maybe it was a failing by me to show them the world, but I was still learning it myself. Then the day came when I saw one of my player's reading the monster descriptions in the back of the ECS. That day I realized, if I was going to surprise them that I would have to do some work. I was kind of in this mindset already since one of my player's was a DM and knew the Monster Manual well. So now I'm in a hazy place where I'm keeping one step ahead of them with the books and actually getting inspiration from 1st and 2nd edition adventures that they wouldn't necessarily know. I have a couple of books hidden and get a lot of inspiration from these boards. Thankfully they aren't on here...or are they?
id4698 06-08-06, 05:25 PM	There are definetely valid points here. I agree that it is unfair to tell players that they cannot read the books. One of my players playing a 'forged is obsessed with their history, their creation, etc. It would be unfair of me to say "No, you can't read that". It is also a valid point that one shouldn't expect their surprises to come from a book. One of the actual events that bugged me I guess happened recently. One of my players hadn't read anything in relation to "The Mark of Death". He is absolutely obsessed with it now...and spends game hours trying to find details. I lead him along with all sorts of plots and twists. And the irony is that there is a book in front of him detailing the actual facts about it. And some of you are saying "You should be a DM and keep one step ahead"...but part of my problem is that I am defending my players. My players literally say that they want an actual "player's guide" that details things about the world, their races, prestige classes, spells, etc...what they say they don't want is a book they open up, and all of these world-plots take up half the book. They want the world to unfold for them.
Seth of the First Brigade 06-08-06, 06:22 PM	There are definitely valid points here. I agree that it is unfair to tell players that they cannot read the books. One of my players playing a 'forged is obsessed with their history, their creation, etc. It would be unfair of me to say "No, you can't read that". I have to disagree. I believe that as DM you can and should as much as possible instruct their players on what they can and cannot read. i.e.: I would not allow them to read a module I am running prior to the game session. In the same way there are books and parts of books that are simply off limits if they want to play in a game that I am running. Gaming is a symbiotic circle in which all parties involved work together to create a fun environment; DM and Players. My current group has not read any Eberron material except that which I have given them in a typed out format. i.e.: The Last War, The Dragonmarked Houses, the moons and days of the month, so forth and so on. Anything else they learn, they learn in game. For instance they learned in our last game session that Sharn is connected to a manifest zone of Syrannia, the Azure Sky. That happened through role-playing as they were speaking to a scholar from Passage's Institute for the Arcane Arts. He shared with them as a simple matter of conversation, the way someone who is particularly versed in the study of a particular thing might share some obscure or little know fact about it that the know or have recently learned simply to share it or make conversation. My point simply being, if the want to learn it, they either learn it in game or as I feed it to them, but the books are off limits, and they all seem to be ok with that. Gratefully, I have been fortunate enough to have players who aren’t familiar with Eberron at all, and because they have bills to pay, they aren’t running out buying every D&D book they can get their hands on. :)
Romulus LoneWolf 06-08-06, 07:25 PM	Like Keith said, there's nothing keeping you, as the DM, to take what Secret information's in the Player's Guide and suddenly go 180 degrees with it. Alternatively, if your players are really good roleplayers, you might talk them into keeping Player knowledge seperate from PC knowledge.
Sarlax 06-08-06, 08:17 PM	Like Keith said, there's nothing keeping you, as the DM, to take what Secret information's in the Player's Guide and suddenly go 180 degrees with it. Then why get the book at all? This "If you don't like it, change it!" mantra is tired and flawed. The ability of a DM to change published material is self-evident, but it doesn't excuse poor design choices. Alternatively, if your players are really good roleplayers, you might talk them into keeping Player knowledge seperate from PC knowledge. That isn't the only problem, however. What about people who like the excitement of learning about the world as they play? Imagine if before every adventure, the DM were to summarize the plot and the bad guy's secret plot to the players. The game begins and the players run their characters as ignorant. Yes, it can be done, but such a game wouldn't be as fun for many or most people.
id4698 06-08-06, 09:30 PM	Then why get the book at all? This "If you don't like it, change it!" mantra is tired and flawed. The ability of a DM to change published material is self-evident, but it doesn't excuse poor design choices. That isn't the only problem, however. What about people who like the excitement of learning about the world as they play? Imagine if before every adventure, the DM were to summarize the plot and the bad guy's secret plot to the players. The game begins and the players run their characters as ignorant. Yes, it can be done, but such a game wouldn't be as fun for many or most people. Which is basically what I said above.
mhacdebhandia 06-08-06, 10:38 PM	What about people who like the excitement of learning about the world as they play? False dilemma. Why would these people even be reading the Player's Guide to Eberron if this was a big part of their enjoyment of the game? Surely they would be asking their DM to tell them the basics, not assuming they can read a sourcebook cover-to-cover and still have a lot of surprises left to encounter in-game.
Romulus LoneWolf 06-08-06, 11:02 PM	Which is basically what I said above. Hey, I'm just trying to offer solutions..
Sarlax 06-08-06, 11:57 PM	False dilemma. Why would these people even be reading the Player's Guide to Eberron if this was a big part of their enjoyment of the game? Surely they would be asking their DM to tell them the basics, not assuming they can read a sourcebook cover-to-cover and still have a lot of surprises left to encounter in-game. They'd be reading the hypothetical non-spoiler Player's Guide to immerse themselves in the setting to gain the perspective of someone in that world. A Player's Guide shouldn't be secrets and spoilers which are better kept for the DM; it should be a book that presents the world the way a PC could come to know it.
mhacdebhandia 06-09-06, 12:36 AM	Any Player's Guide worth publishing, though, would include a lot of information that would be "better" discovered through play. For instance, wouldn't it be better for these players to know nothing about the Blood of Vol until they meet some its followers, or hear about it in-game? I just think this is a non-issue. Maybe they shouldn't call it the Player's Guide to Eberron but anyone who expected it to be spoiler-free was fooling themselves.
Korhal_IV 06-09-06, 01:50 AM	All that remained was the Player's Guide to Eberron. I bought a copy for each of my players. HOLD UP! You bought a book sight unseen, no scratch that, you bought FOUR books (if you're running an average-sized group), one hundred and twenty USD before tax spent sight unseen? You didn't read it, you didn't read reviews of it, you didn't come onto this site for the *plethora* of threads related to it, or to start a new one? :confused: Dude, fifteen minutes in a bookstore could've saved you this problem.
ArcTan 06-09-06, 03:53 AM	This is the kind of problem that exists because Eberron is a new setting, and is bound to become less and less of an issue as Eberron (hopefully) gets more popular over the years. No one but no one seriously expects a group of roleplayers to all be virginal when it comes to the Forgotten Realms, right? In order to not know anything about the setting, including potentially spoilery things, you'd have to never have played the computer games Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale or Neverwinter Nights, you'd have to never have read the Elminster novels, the Drizzt novels, and so on, and you'd have to never have hung out on the Internet or in geeky gaming groups jawing away about ins and outs of the Red Wizards of Thay's antics or the aftermath of the Time of Troubles or whatnot. The only way to play with people to whom much of the setting-as-written will be a surprise -- things like the Shadovar and the Progenitor Races and whatnot -- you'd have to mostly play with people who hadn't played much D&D at all. But the nature of the beast is that non-newbie games will mostly outnumber newbie games, because of the kind of high-time-investment hobby this is. I actually look forward to the day when we can basically understand the same level of knowledge on the part of average Eberron players as we do posters to this board -- that Kaius is a vampire, that the Emerald Claw is an arm of the Blood of Vol, that the Dhakaani clans are plotting against the Lhesh Haruuc, etc. That way we can all start with the same baseline before the DM starts mixing things up.
allenchan 06-09-06, 07:18 AM	Dude, fifteen minutes in a bookstore could've saved you this problem. Agreed. This is just plain stupid. The OP needs to get over it, its their own dang fault.
id4698 06-09-06, 09:31 AM	Agreed. This is just plain stupid. The OP needs to get over it, its their own dang fault. Let me rephrase...when we started the campaign, I had two players. I bought one for them, one for me (or for the other player if it came to that). I now have 5 players, and we still only have two Player's books. When I bought the two, one of my players was with me in the store. When he saw "Player's Guide", he decided he wanted a copy...I picked both of them up, trying to get him motivated to play. We did crack the copy open in the store. Through browsing, I saw a first chapter on "Types of characters in Eberron campaigns" or something like that (the chapter that helps flesh out characters) and browsing through I also saw dungeon delving tips and a few other "player notes". You are right, I didn't bother to read the entire thing there in the store. It was a day later that the other guy said "You sure you want us to read this?" and brought to my attention all of the "you know this" sections. One poster above mentioned Forgotten Realms, and possible the future of Eberron popularity, etc. I agree for the most part. As far as getting over "it"...I haven't tried to be whiney here...I was actually enjoying what everyone was saying here. It was helping me to "get over it", by the fact that I was able to see both sides of the issue.
id4698 06-09-06, 09:41 AM	Hey, I'm just trying to offer solutions.. Sorry if I came across as not appreciating it mate. I do. I think some times in text, sarcasm comes out when there was no sarcasm (or related) intended. I do appreciate the posts. And I do appreciate everyone's op's here so far.
id4698 06-09-06, 09:50 AM	HOLD UP! You bought a book sight unseen, no scratch that, you bought FOUR books (if you're running an average-sized group), one hundred and twenty USD before tax spent sight unseen? You didn't read it, you didn't read reviews of it, you didn't come onto this site for the *plethora* of threads related to it, or to start a new one? :confused: Dude, fifteen minutes in a bookstore could've saved you this problem. No, I didn't come to this site for the "Plethora of threads". Actually, once I started my Eberron campaign was the first time I had ever posted anywhere. Here...in the Eberron section. Here is a shocker....are you ready? I bought the entire Eberron set of books without reading a review. Sometimes I see movies without reading the reviews. I did however, spend quite alot of time researching the world before I bought anything (besides the threads section evidently, as you noted). I based my decision off of that.
Dragonmann 06-09-06, 10:04 AM	So what your saying, is that you never want one of your players to create a Karnnathi character whose brother was in the Emerald claw, turned into a vampire by the Blood of Vol, and came home one day to share the "wealth". And now the character must hunt down his brother, and put his immortal soul to rest. Sounds like a nifty background stub, a ready made tragic villain at the end of the campaign, and only possible if the player knows the connection between the two exists.
Sereno 06-09-06, 10:06 AM	My biggest complaint about the Players' Guide is not that it contained DM-only info. Tthe ECS did that, too ... so what? Like Keith says, *I'm* the DM and if I want to change things so the players DON'T know the specifics, there's plenty of room for me to make that happen. What I didn't like was the "kitchen sink" approach that the Players' Guide gives to Eberron. The tone wasn't "Do you want to use Goliaths? You COULD put them here." it was "The Goliaths ARE here." That will make it harder for some DMs to tell their players "no" when they want to keep the flavor of Eberron, and not water it down with material from non-Eberron sources (like me, not that I'd have problems telling my players "no" :) ) What attracted me to Eberron WAS the unique flavor. I was impressed with Keith's ideas, his approach, and his writing. The ECS and Sharn books are the best RPG books I've ever owned.... Once you shoehorn into Eberron everything from every splatbook, or other campaign setting, it's not unique any more, it's just "everything". :mad:
id4698 06-09-06, 10:08 AM	I encourage my players to read everything they can about Eberron. It helps them to form concrete goals, which helps me in turn to write coherent and meaningful sessions that the PCs are interested in. My PCs have a pretty significant hand in developing the campaign. I don't leave them out of the loop. I would say that my player's do as well, in the fact that we work on detailed characted background, future plans and goals, determining what they know, etc. I absolutely write huge portions of my adventures off of this fact. But while that is happening, there is also the mutual plot (or the plot that they have in common as opposed to individual paths/goals). I looked over the Player's Guide again last night, after posting this. I think I can summarize a bit better some of my frustration. I don't understand why alot of this information, some of which has already been in other books...but much of what is new...was put into a "Player's Guide". Why get much more detailed about certain world information here, as opposed to the "Campaign Setting" or the "Five Nations" or the "Explorer's Guide". If I were a player, I would want all of these pages to detail possible Eberron related rules, spells, feats, equipment, and notes on Eberron as to how it effects me. If they want to know that there is a lich controlling the Blood of Vol...they should not get it from a "Player's" guide.
id4698 06-09-06, 10:17 AM	So what your saying, is that you never want one of your players to create a Karnnathi character whose brother was in the Emerald claw, turned into a vampire by the Blood of Vol, and came home one day to share the "wealth". And now the character must hunt down his brother, and put his immortal soul to rest. Sounds like a nifty background stub, a ready made tragic villain at the end of the campaign, and only possible if the player knows the connection between the two exists. Absolutely true. That is a really cool idea by the way. I still stand by my position though that it shouldn't be in the Players Guide. The DM shouldn't have a player walk up to them and say "I learned from the player's guide that the elves of Xen'Drik bla bla bla" for the DM to have to say "Damn...I never saw anything like that in ECS book..."
MysticTheurge 06-09-06, 10:45 AM	What I didn't like was the "kitchen sink" approach that the Players' Guide gives to Eberron. The tone wasn't "Do you want to use Goliaths? You COULD put them here." it was "The Goliaths ARE here." .... Once you shoehorn into Eberron everything from every splatbook, or other campaign setting, it's not unique any more, it's just "everything". :mad: The ECS said this right up front. I'm fairly sure it's in the first ten pages or so. "If it's in D&D it has a place in Eberron."
Kreistor1 06-09-06, 11:18 AM	MT, KB has indicated that only meant, for him, that if a DM wanted it, there is some place in Eberron it could fit. It did not mean that everything had to be in Eberron, only that it could if so desired. I personally disagree with Sereno's statement because it implies that I can't make Eberron feel unique if I allow everything to be in it. He vastly underestimates my capacity to add it in such a way that my Eberron remains unique.
cancerousmango 06-09-06, 11:27 AM	My players have been really good about letting me teach them about Eberron. I can't wait for them to get the BIG surprise in a few adventures.
Kid SixXx 06-09-06, 11:40 AM	The ECS said this right up front. I'm fairly sure it's in the first ten pages or so. "If it's in D&D it has a place in Eberron." Why is it that whenever anyone bothers to quote this statement, they never bother to further state that the paragraph underneath this quote only talks about the core rulebooks? The "If it's in D&D it has a place in Eberron" notion doesn't have anything to do with alternate splatbooks like the Races line. That being said, there are some alternate rulebooks (Complete series, Stormwrack, CPH, and yes.... Powers of Faerun and d20 supplements like Airships) that I have found essential for running my games. I don't think that Eberron is supposed to be an all-inclusive setting, but I also think that there is plenty of room in the setting for creative implementation of the supplemental material. I think that we're all smart enough to look though the PGtE and implement some of the suggestions found therein that we enjoy without making them feel shoehorned into the setting. The downside of this, naturally, is ruleslawyering becomes a time consuming exercise in paper cuts because you've got the Library of Congress to pour through in order to make sure that things stay square. As for the original question, D&D players are the eternal children that spoil Christmas by actively looking for their gifts. Given the existance of message boards like this one, it's harder than it used to be to keep DM-only secrets, especially since DM's like me don't like to be DM's all of the time. I like to play as well, and if I'm involved in an Eberron campaign where the pre-made modules are being run, then my PC is conveniently going to have to not know the things that I might recall from my own games. WoTC also has a company to run and money to make. I don't think they keep this ship afloat by selling books to DM's only, so I don't think that it's necessarily constructive to think that you'll always be able to keep certain types of info out of the hands of players. ;)
Ath'kethin 06-09-06, 11:48 AM	*walks out of thread with an 80 book library on his back* This is why I insist that we play at my house now.
Sereno 06-09-06, 11:59 AM	MT, KB has indicated that only meant, for him, that if a DM wanted it, there is some place in Eberron it could fit. It did not mean that everything had to be in Eberron, only that it could if so desired. I personally disagree with Sereno's statement because it implies that I can't make Eberron feel unique if I allow everything to be in it. He vastly underestimates my capacity to add it in such a way that my Eberron remains unique. First, you're right about the intent of that statement. It's not EVERYTHING that exists in DnD is DEFINATELY somewhere on Eberron ... it's If you want it, you can find somewhere to put it. This is Keith's actual reply to Edymnion's question along exactly these lines: A key point here is that the rule never was "If it's in D&D, it's in Eberron." Check page 8 of the ECS. The original statement was "If it's in D&D, it has a place in Eberron." While that paragraph specifically mentions the three core books, I've never had any problem with people incorporating elements from other books into the setting. But the critical phrase is "has a place." My original intention with the setting to create a world where a DM could include whatever aspects of D&D he loved - from any book - with a minimum of difficulty, while ignoring the things he doesn't like. It's not that everything IS there – but rather than anything COULD be there. Between Xen'drik, Khyber, the Mourning, Manifest Zones, the Daelkyr, etc, etc - there's a lot of ways to work in your favorite monster, class, or whatever without having to say "If Aranea exist, why don't they rule the world?" Second, I'm not saying that you CAN'T make Eberron feel unique with everything if you want to. Nor am I underestimating your capacity to do so. I don't doubt that I could do it, too, if I had to. But, at the very least, *I* don't want to have to work that hard! :) I'm saying that by default EVERYTHING shouldn't be shoved down the throats of ALL DMs.
Kalanth 06-09-06, 12:07 PM	Though they should have mentioned that certain things are optional and not required, I wonder what it is that inspires readers of these books (players and DMs alike) to simply assume everything in the pages has to be in your world. Do you really want to use the aquatic races from Stromwrack? If the answer is no, then you know you do not have to use it. I know, that is really common sense and common knowledge, but the number of players that don't use that is staggering. I have all the books that I WoTC put out last year that had to do with Eberron or was a general book (no Forgotten Realms here). I take a good stack with me to each game, but in many cases I only use the core three to plan things out. Seems like a waist, right? But there are always times when something from one of those books applies and having the book is good. In the long run, always remember rule 0, and if the DM wants to change it or not use it then that is how it will be played.
Edymnion 06-09-06, 12:36 PM	For instance, wouldn't it be better for these players to know nothing about the Blood of Vol until they meet some its followers, or hear about it in-game?Not really. You gotta realize, things like the Blood of Vol are not secret cults, you can find a local Blood temple in almost any city outside of Karnnath. Vol is actually revered by the normal people like a saint, they just don't know she's the founder and how she's manipulating the faith to her own ends. The characters would know about the Blood of Vol without having to be told in game in the same way you know that Muslims exist, or what Buddism is. You may not know the details, but you could probably tell me the basic ideas behind them. The Blood of Vol is a major world religion in Eberron, not a secretive cult.Why is it that whenever anyone bothers to quote this statement, they never bother to further state that the paragraph underneath this quote only talks about the core rulebooks?Because it ruins their excuse to powergame.Why...why....why...did they put tons of DM eyes only type information in this book?Money. Players typically outnumber DMs 4:1 or more. So, a book just for DMs would be aiming at 20% of the market, instead of 80-100%. But look at every other book WotC has published, and you'll see this has been happening since day 1. The 3.0 DMG specifically said that PrC were worldbuilding tools, not character creation tools. Players were *NOT* allowed to simply pick any PrC they wanted. Its why PrC were in the freaking DMG, not the PHB. But after that, every player book had PrC in them. Player books were filled with new races and classes as well, more things that should have been DM only. But, WotC knows that they would never make any money at all by seperating things out, so they just lump it all together. Its something you just have to learn to live with, because its not going to change. WotC will *NEVER* publish a book that says "This is for DMs only, and should not be read by Players under any circumstance", because they know good and well that doing so would be financial suicide for that book.
MysticTheurge 06-09-06, 12:46 PM	MT, KB has indicated that only meant, for him, that if a DM wanted it, there is some place in Eberron it could fit. It did not mean that everything had to be in Eberron, only that it could if so desired. I agree. However, it would be a criminal waste of space to qualify every single statement in a book by saying "If the DM wants..." I'm sure people are going to respond with the age old "I know I can alter my setting, you don't have to tell me" but given how understood that is, I'm not sure how you can be arguing that the books should say "You could do this if you want" instead of just "This is." Everyone who's reading the book should know that if you, the DM, don't want Goliaths to be where the book says they are then they're not there.
Kreistor1 06-09-06, 01:02 PM	Everyone who's reading the book should know that if you, the DM, don't want Goliaths to be where the book says they are then they're not there. Now, that's quite impossible. There are simply too many things that I may want to put in different places from the official line, and I don't necessarily agree that a character without Know(Nature) should know where Flinds are. Such information is situationally useful and not general in the first place. I will point out important ones that I have long term plans for (for instance, no one knows about the Gith) and I will point that out. But that the Centaurs are not in the Talenta planes and are instead in Sarlona (just an example, not what I've actually done) I'm not going to point out until I look into using Centaurs or a player wants a Centaur character. I'll tell them that Wood Elves are in Eldeen Reaches and Valenar, while Wild Elves are in Aerenal, because one player plays a Valenar. I won't tell them that Duergar are in Xen'drik instead of Mror Holds, if Duergar is not important to their specific characters. The sheer volume of information is beyond the scope you suggest. Trying to make all of such decisions before the game starts is just not feasible. You're looking at weeks of work, most of which will never be used.
Kreistor1 06-09-06, 01:07 PM	I'm saying that by default EVERYTHING shouldn't be shoved down the throats of ALL DMs. Okay, that I can agree with.
MysticTheurge 06-09-06, 01:20 PM	The sheer volume of information is beyond the scope you suggest. Trying to make all of such decisions before the game starts is just not feasible. You're looking at weeks of work, most of which will never be used. I didn't mean to imply that you should make decisions on where everything is in advance and then tell people what's changed from the books and what's not. I simply was pointing out that people should be aware of the DMs right to change any or everything should they choose and that it would therefore be redundant to write in every book that the information contained there in is dependent on DM decisions. People should know that this is the case.
Kreistor1 06-09-06, 01:29 PM	Ah. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
ArcTan 06-09-06, 04:58 PM	So let's say that there should be a split between "Newbie Games" and "Non-Newbie Games", where in a Newbie Game the DM reserves the right to teach players about the setting at his pace and in his way, so that he can reveal things like Kauis Is a Vampire or The Swords of Liberty Serve the Lords of Dust or that sort of thing in exciting, plot-driven driblets instead of having them laid out right there for you in a book. A Newbie Game wouldn't even make the ECS available to the players -- the DM would, instead, write out/print out his capsule summary of mechanical things players ought to know about the setting, like the Artificer class description, and reveal everything else verbally, at the table, as part of the game. This could be fun, although it'd take a bit of work. The key thing is that it'd only work with players who were new to the setting, i.e. newbies. In my group of friends when we play an "Eberron game" it's assumed that most of us own many of the books or, at the very least, have played in an Eberron game before. That makes it a Non-Newbie Game and means that the DM has to deal with the fact that players are likely to know things about the setting -- that some of them have, in fact, DMed the same setting before -- and that any surprises he introduces has to be of his own making. In a Non-Newbie Game "spoiling" things would be de rigeur, as it'd be pretty unfair to exclude someone from the game because he'd played in a high-level campaign before and had fought the daelkyr and everything, but also unfair to let him be going around with all this OOC knowledge but keep his newbie girlfriend completely unspoiled about stuff in the setting. I don't see why this sort of thing can't be just as fun -- it can keep the DM on his toes to deal with people as invested in the setting as he is, and it's often *easier* to roleplay gaining IC knowledge when you already have the knowledge OOC. It means you don't get bogged down for several months (in game terms) over something you were confused about for a day (in real life). It can really disrupt a session if someone who's supposed to have been researching the history of the Quori Invasion keeps getting the quori confused with the daelkyr, etc. I'll note that a lot of modern-day conspiracy settings absolutely rely on being able to roleplay a character's shock and surprise at learning things that can't be a surprise to the player by the very nature of the setting. A _Call of Cthulhu_ player, for instance, starts out knowing there are all kinds of horrid monster things underlying the nature of reality and killing people with tentacles and whatnot, and the fun for her is roleplaying her character's gradual realization of this fact.
mhacdebhandia 06-09-06, 10:58 PM	Not really. You gotta realize, things like the Blood of Vol are not secret cults, you can find a local Blood temple in almost any city outside of Karnnath. I was responding to someone who stated that their players derive a lot of enjoyment from discovering the world, so my statement was made in that context. I personally don't think it's an issue at all, but then the people I play with a) know how to firewall and b) change stuff around all the time.
Elderich 06-11-06, 10:23 PM	I am a little disapointed that major plot points are casualy exposed in the players guide. It would be different if the major plot point was exposed in the campaign you are supposed to play before you buy the book. Then you would at least have warning that the book gives away secrets of plots you may encounter. Firewalling is just not as fun as not needing to.
stembolt 06-12-06, 01:21 AM	But, WotC knows that they would never make any money at all by seperating things out, so they just lump it all together. Its something you just have to learn to live with, because its not going to change. WotC will *NEVER* publish a book that says "This is for DMs only, and should not be read by Players under any circumstance", because they know good and well that doing so would be financial suicide for that book. Really? What about adventures then? You are mostly right WotC cannot afford to make strictly DM books, for the most part. The only successful DM only product is Dungeon.
mhacdebhandia 06-12-06, 02:02 AM	I am a little disapointed that major plot points are casualy exposed in the players guide. Point of order: they're not plot points per se. They're setting secrets. They only become plot points once a DM decides to incorporate them into her game, and it is at precisely that point that the DM can decide for herself and for her game whether or not the published secrets are true. I think it's a problem with roleplaying games in general, but often with D&D in particular, that the fanbase gets too hung up on canon. Especially in a world like Eberron, where there is no "metaplot" advancement of the timelines, with future published events depending upon the original published information, what does canon matter? We have several examples of unspecified setting secrets in the world already - the cause of the Mourning, the true nature of the Lord of Blades, et cetera. Why not expand that licence to other areas? Maybe Vol, Queen of the Dead really is a mythical and symbolic figure, and the individual claiming that title is not who she claims to be, for instance.
Nived 06-12-06, 07:08 PM	Can't please all the people all the time. Can't go a week here without "What are the stats of the 13th Dragonmark." "Who is really the Lord of Blades?" "What REALLY caused the Mourning?" These are people, often DMs asking. Who aren't happy that it isn't explicitly spelled outsomewhere. If they give answers people complain, if they leave things mysteries people complain. As someone who is lucky enough to both play in an Eberron campaign, and run one of my own. I still have no problem being surprised by what's in my buddies campaign or his what's in mine. I mean sure I know Out of Character in my buddy's campaign that the part of the Church of the Silver Flame we're working for is probably scum.... but I still don't know what exactly they're up to. And even though a particular Inspired is a recurring character in my game and he knows (but his character doesn't) that they're all crazy outsiders, but that doesn't mean he knows what I have them doing.
BranWheat 06-12-06, 10:04 PM	Sorry, but I completely disagree. I think it is simply the best book WoTC has ever put out for any of the campaign settings. This book has singlehandedly gotten many of my players to be more interested in the game world. If you are so concerned that your players now know to much information then I would suggest you teach them how to not metagame. Just because your players know about the world doesn't mean the characters do. Look at the Forgotten Realms. FR has been played into the ground, explored more than any D&D world, and most players have a pretty decent knowledge of some of the secrets that are floating around, yet people continue to play in the world and enjoy it.
id4698 06-13-06, 08:38 AM	Sorry, but I completely disagree. I think it is simply the best book WoTC has ever put out for any of the campaign settings. This book has singlehandedly gotten many of my players to be more interested in the game world. If you are so concerned that your players now know to much information then I would suggest you teach them how to not metagame. Just because your players know about the world doesn't mean the characters do. Look at the Forgotten Realms. FR has been played into the ground, explored more than any D&D world, and most players have a pretty decent knowledge of some of the secrets that are floating around, yet people continue to play in the world and enjoy it. You need to read the whole thread. This has been gone over several times.
poisondusk 06-13-06, 09:09 AM	I was a bit annoyed about the content of the Players Guide, but then I realized, the people I play with are good players and can separate player knowledge from character knowledge, and a little dark knowledge in the right circumstance can scare the bejeezus out of them.
Logos7 06-13-06, 02:58 PM	meh anyone who wants to know will know it's a bit like saying dont read the end of the novel first, i'll read it first if i damn well like thank you. I really dont see how it makes a difference as dnd is a game of cliches (even eberron is just differnent cliches, kid), if the pc's act badly change a key fact omg kaius is a well adjusted person again his preistiess wife elf helped him with the eldirtch machine sent the emerald claw up the bomb lol there instant plot and adventure, and the pc's know nothing about it. i think if the people had t heir way, we'd end up with another races of eberron :embarrass
jonthegm 06-13-06, 03:33 PM	All this anger could probably be better used to come up with new "secrets" or your own setting.
DoveArrow 06-13-06, 04:03 PM	I looked over the Player's Guide again last night, after posting this. I think I can summarize a bit better some of my frustration. I don't understand why alot of this information, some of which has already been in other books...but much of what is new...was put into a "Player's Guide". Why get much more detailed about certain world information here, as opposed to the "Campaign Setting" or the "Five Nations" or the "Explorer's Guide". If I were a player, I would want all of these pages to detail possible Eberron related rules, spells, feats, equipment, and notes on Eberron as to how it effects me. If they want to know that there is a lich controlling the Blood of Vol...they should not get it from a "Player's" guide. Wow! Someone who actually agrees with me. You see, people? I'm not alone! :P
Sarlax 06-14-06, 01:45 AM	... but then I realized, the people I play with are good players and can separate player knowledge from character knowledge... That's not necessarily the issue. It's not about Good Players who feign ignorance and Bad Players who use metagame knowledge. The problem is that while good players can and will roleplay according to PC knowledge, it might not be as fun for the individual or the group if everyone knows what the big secret is. Sure, the adventurers don't go out of their way to smash the crystal serpent in Flamekeep that the Eberron Book of Canon Secrets revealed to be Vol's phylactery, but it'd still be nice if they could be suprised when they find that out.
Elderich 06-14-06, 07:30 AM	Thank you Sarlax. That Is the issue. Now it all these secrets had been revealed in the course of some "core" Eberron module(s) that you are "supposed" to play, then I would have no problem. But they aren't. Note that these "secrets" are useless unless the players eventualy learn them. revealing then at a dramatic moment heightens the impact. Revealing them in the players guide? Not so much. Now I think one could argue that the guide does a good job of showing the convoluted and complicated back story that is Ebberon. Perhaps the idea here is that this is just the stuff that expereinced adventures would know. The real story is way more complicated. The problem with that is maintaining Continuity when the story line gets that complicated. If a DM Adlibs a key plot point, in my experience it will bite you in the sensitive parts down the road.
MysticTheurge 06-14-06, 08:13 AM	Honestly, guys, you can't expect this stuff to stay secret forever. I think the people who've made correlations between this and FR have hit it right on the nose. Because Eberron's a new setting everyone seems to want to be able to give the big reveal to their players. But the fact is, eventually all this stuff is going to become common knowledge. No one complains that the "secrets" in forgotten realms are revealed. Take the big Lloth-turns-away-from-her-priestesses plot; You can run City of the Spider Queen, and have it be fun and interesting, even if you're players have already read the War of the Spider Queen novels and therefore already know the big secret. Likewise, the idea of Dritz as a good person would've been a big secret and a great revelation, but no expects to be able to surprise their players with it. Is it more fun to be able to completely surprise your Players and have them gasp and finally put everything together? Of course it is. But the fact of the matter is, you can't expect to get that kind of shocking revelation from published materials, because eventually, even if their not trying to, your players are just going to learn about this stuff. In a few years, when everyone already knows all of Eberron's little secrets this won't even be an issue. In the mean time, if you really care that much, don't let your players read anything you haven't carefully checked through yourself. (Personally, "What you know" is one of my favorite new features in books. It finally gives you guidelines, not just a DM but as a Player, as to what you should and more importantly should not know about any given subject, making it easier to seperate my player and character knowledge.)
Nived 06-14-06, 11:51 AM	MT is right on this. Besides if you think that WotC is out to ruin your game you're freaking crazy.
Lord_dBellatoria 06-14-06, 01:09 PM	I understand all the discussion over player's using knowledge that their characters shouldn't know. This has been a problem since the TSR days. You get a new book or box set and try to keep things secret, then one of the players shows up with a copy and all the knowledge. That is why back in the day, I created my own world and refused to use the published worlds. At least 'til Ravenloft and Dark Sun came out. I managed to work out deals with the players that they wouldn't run out and buy anything from that campaign world unless I had a copy and said that they should read this. Now for the first time in years, I am once again forming a group using 3.5 and Eberron. This is fun since most of the gamers are new to D&D or veterans from the old days (preAD&D 1st ed.) I am going to attempt to keep the majority of secrets, secret and use the Eberron books that I have bought to limit the info to what I think they should and shouldn't know.
Sarlax 06-14-06, 02:15 PM	Honestly, guys, you can't expect this stuff to stay secret forever. What we'd like is for this stuff to stay secret for a reasonable period of time. Yes, there will always be adventures and expansions and companion novels that gradually reveal Secret Truths - given that, why do these secrets need to be deliberately and methodically revealed in a book that targets players?
Kreistor1 06-14-06, 05:10 PM	Honestly, guys, you can't expect this stuff to stay secret forever. I can expect that unless my players cheat that they will only know what I choose to tell them concerning the secrets of the world. And, as a player, I don't want to know those secrets: I want to discover them for myself through revelations in my DM's plot. It is entirely reasonable and historically possible to split DM and Player information in one book such that players know what they can read and not gain any plot revealing secrets.
MysticTheurge 06-14-06, 07:04 PM	It is entirely reasonable and historically possible to split DM and Player information in one book such that players know what they can read and not gain any plot revealing secrets. I'm not entirely sure that's true. As many a person has pointed out it makes more financial/business sense to create books that everyone wants to buy. TSR did go out of business, so to say the things they did are "historically possible" isn't entirely true. Personally, I'd rather have a company that stays in business, but maybe it's more important for you that "secrets" don't make their way into the wrong books.
Sarlax 06-14-06, 07:09 PM	I'm not entirely sure that's true. As many a person has pointed out it makes more financial/business sense to create books that everyone wants to buy. TSR did go out of business, so to say the things they did are "historically possible" isn't entirely true. Personally, I'd rather have a company that stays in business, but maybe it's more important for you that "secrets" don't make their way into the wrong books. Take a look at what Kreistor1 said. Actually, you quoted it:... split DM and Player information in one book ... We're talking about a single book, good for everyone, that doesn't deliberately spoil on every page.
stembolt 06-14-06, 08:22 PM	Secrets cannot stay in, unless you have some way to make players forget their last campaign. You will always have players who know more about the world than their characters because in the last campaign they learned Kaius was a vamp. For the most part players should know some secret things. Take the idea of daelkyer spawn in the Marches. Or the followers of the silver flame in the demon wastes. If a player does not know about these things they cannot want to play them. And unless you plan on making every character for them, they need to know.
Elderich 06-14-06, 09:50 PM	Again, no one is saying secrets of major point of an adventure need to be locked away in a vault. What I am saying is that IF major secrets of a setting were reveled in a "core" set of adventures you might choose to play BEFORE you read the book that gives a bunch of them away, well that sounds like a good idea. The trouble is a player buys a book NOT KNOWING that MAJOR plot secrets of the game world will be given away, and looses the chance to experience thoes events IN GAME. At least give some warning. It is considered poor form to post polt secrets here without giving warning. Shouldn't WotC do the same thing? Buying a book should not threaten my enjoyment of a game.
Euangelion 06-14-06, 10:37 PM	Maybe a better course of action would have been to leave more of these secrets as unknowns, along the lines of the cause of the Day of Mourning. Thus maybe Kaius III is really great-grandpa, but then again maybe he's been subverted by the CotSF or the Dreaming Dark, or some other group that doesn't have Karrnath's best interests at heart. Or maybe Erandis was destroyed but that a new lich has arisen claiming to be her. Sure the DM can make any of these changes he or she wants, but they might feel uncomfortable risking losing some of the tone and flavor of Eberron by going against the sourcebooks like that. That way even if the players read the books, it would do nothing other than heighten their desire to find out what their DM has done with those options.
myusernameis 06-14-06, 11:24 PM	Any DM that gets their 'secrets' and plot points strictly from a book needs to be shot in the knee (small caliber pistol) and have their right to DM revoked until they undergo brainwa... er re-education.
ArcTan 06-15-06, 04:01 AM	At least give some warning. It is considered poor form to post polt secrets here without giving warning. Shouldn't WotC do the same thing? Buying a book should not threaten my enjoyment of a game. You know, there's a thread on one of the other forums called "King Kaius vs. a daelkyr" that both describes a daelkyr's abilities, such as its Corrupting Touch and its symbionts and its Aura of Madness, and asks how well Kaius could stand up against them given the fact that, despite appearances, he is actually a powerful vampire with a host of undead immunities. It goes on to talk about how the daelkyr won the war against the Dhakaani Empire and how they have legions of illithid followers and so on and so forth. Every single bit of that information could legitimately be considered a "plot secret", the most controversial, of course, being the whole KAIUS IS A VAMPIRE!!! bit -- but, realistically, the average PC in Eberron is only going to have the shakiest understanding of what the daelkyr are and no idea of what their abilities are. Do you honestly expect every thread like that to get spoiler-marked? Because, in fact, they usually *aren't*, and doing so would be really annoying. For my part, when I play in a campaign I do tend to think of myself -- to use an analogy from theater -- as a co-writer and co-director as well as an actor. Unlike acting, I am not given, ready-made, a story that I simply perform -- I have to make decisions about the story *myself*, I have to make up my own character background and figure out what would be logical for my character to say or do and decide what connections my character has to various setting elements that crop up, so it behooves me to know the setting as well as the DM does. I do see the merit in a pure "newbie campaign" as I've described earlier in this thread, but I don't think that should be the assumed nature of the majority of campaigns. As a DM I'd rather have players who know the published setting as well as I do and who don't have to be told, out-of-character, what it means when they discover King Kaius' secret in-character. The revelation wouldn't be the same anyway, since OOC Kaius is a random fictional character that, if you haven't read _Five Nations_ or the _Eberron Campaign Setting_, you know very little about, so "Kaius III is really Kaius I" for a largely unspoiled player is a largely meaningless revelation. To your characters it's a big deal because Kaius is a famous person in your characters' world. You personally knowing what the secret is from the beginning gives you time to figure out how your character, who may be anything from a pious Thrane to a patriotic Karrn to a bloodthirsty Cyran Avenger, will react to this news. It's the same reason actors benefit from knowing that their character's father is going to die in Act V long before their character knows it. In any campaign the focus ought to be on what the players, including the DM, create together rather than stuff that's already been published in a book. Overemphasis on the latter is what makes latter-day White Wolf products and much of Forgotten Realms disengaging to me, and Eberron's lack of metaplot and frozen time-frame and purposely obscured setting details are meant to correct that. Eberron already includes plenty of unpublished things that encourage me to make things up to surprise my players -- the cause of the Mourning, the next great plan of the Dreaming Dark, the true nature of the Prophecy, the location of Sora Kell, the identity of the Lord of Blades -- and I'd much rather have the focus of the story be on that than on surprises already written down in a book for me. This, by the way, is why I'm not that much of a fan of running published adventures out of the box and unmodified, unless something requires it like time constraints. Even so, there's a difference between an adventure and a setting.
ArcTan 06-15-06, 04:12 AM	Again, no one is saying secrets of major point of an adventure need to be locked away in a vault. What I am saying is that IF major secrets of a setting were reveled in a "core" set of adventures you might choose to play BEFORE you read the book that gives a bunch of them away, well that sounds like a good idea. The trouble is a player buys a book NOT KNOWING that MAJOR plot secrets of the game world will be given away, and looses the chance to experience thoes events IN GAME. At least give some warning. It is considered poor form to post polt secrets here without giving warning. Shouldn't WotC do the same thing? Buying a book should not threaten my enjoyment of a game. Also: I'd hate it if basic secrets of a setting -- I'm talking about really basic facts about the world that the course of events depend on, like "Riedra is actually ruled by the quori" or "Kaius III is Kaius I" or "There's this warforged called the Lord of Blades, see" -- only existed in a set of starter adventures. I don't like the idea of having to run a specific published adventure to introduce players to the setting, and I don't like the idea of having to buy an adventure I don't intend to run in order to have all of a setting in my hands. I should be able to buy just one book -- the Eberron Campaign Setting -- and be able to run a completely self-written campaign that has most of what Keith Baker considered to be the central elements of the setting when he created it. I'm not a huge fan of the PGtE either, but it seemed to me that it wasn't an alternative ECS for player use -- with the original ECS being an Eberron DMG. Far from it -- most of the stuff a player really needs to know is already in the ECS, like the artificer class, the dragonmarks, the purchasable dragonshard items, and so on. PGtE was a largely misnamed "Here's Some Random Facts About Eberron" book, but at that task it did a fair job. FWIW, I find the idea of a "What Do I Know?" chart very helpful if your campaign is going to involve heavy roleplaying. As a DM I don't want to be constantly asked for Knowledge DCs every time a character wants to say anything about anything. Once you get to reasonably high levels, it's perfectly natural and, in fact, necessary for your PCs to start discussing and commenting on and making plans based on "common knowledge" about the world, and a "What Do I Know?" chart takes some of the burden of adjudicating all the different varieties of common knowledge off your shoulders. You ought not to have to intervene whenever a player who spies a flying dragon wants to say, IC, "Look! An agent of the Chamber!" by telling them what the DC is to know what the Chamber is. Charts like this allow players to have fun, IC discussions about history and intrigue and the world around them -- one of the most fun parts of an RPG for me -- based on their own sense of their character's well-informed-ness based on the Knowledge skills they've taken, without the DM having to interject comments all the time.
id4698 06-15-06, 01:05 PM	What we'd like is for this stuff to stay secret for a reasonable period of time. Yes, there will always be adventures and expansions and companion novels that gradually reveal Secret Truths - given that, why do these secrets need to be deliberately and methodically revealed in a book that targets players? Exactly.
id4698 06-15-06, 01:08 PM	I'm not entirely sure that's true. As many a person has pointed out it makes more financial/business sense to create books that everyone wants to buy. TSR did go out of business, so to say the things they did are "historically possible" isn't entirely true. Personally, I'd rather have a company that stays in business, but maybe it's more important for you that "secrets" don't make their way into the wrong books. This argument doesn't work for me. WotC could make more money off of both a "DM's guide to Eberron" and a "Players Guide to Eberron" instead of putting them into one book. The point of the argument again, which you are missing, is that they put this information in a "Player's Guide". Yes, eventually this stuff would get out. It gets out alot quicker though when you put it directly into the "Player's Guide".
id4698 06-15-06, 01:15 PM	Any DM that gets their 'secrets' and plot points strictly from a book needs to be shot in the knee (small caliber pistol) and have their right to DM revoked until they undergo brainwa... er re-education. Give me a break. Read the whole thread. The issue, for like the 100th time, is not simply "getting their secrets" from a book. You have no concept of what my campaign is like or how I run it. Nor are you getting the point. The point is that you give it in a direct in your face manner in a "Player's Guide". All of these arguments along these lines are pointless. It is like saying that if a DM were to use a module, it's ok to let all of the players read it first. Or for that matter, publish it as the "Player's module".
MysticTheurge 06-15-06, 02:39 PM	The point is that you give it in a direct in your face manner in a "Player's Guide". All of these arguments along these lines are pointless. It is like saying that if a DM were to use a module, it's ok to let all of the players read it first. Or for that matter, publish it as the "Player's module". And my point is that not everyone agrees with you that this information shouldn't have been included in the PGtE. I want my players to have a large amount of information about Eberron so they can come up with interesting and detailed characters. Additionally, there's the argument that people have been giving that your sense of what should be "secret" and someone else's secrets could (and probably will) be completely different. As someone pointed out, secret guardians who follow the silver flame in the demon wastes might be a big important secret in one campaign, while in another one of the players might be one of these people. You can't know what's going to be secret from one campaign to another. I think by giving players more information they have the opportunity to create more interesting characters. As for the complaint that these things should stay secret for "a reasonable period of time," the ECS has been out for two years now. How much longer do you want them to wait before they can start talking about these secrets? The issue, for like the 100th time, is not simply "getting their secrets" from a book. If the big complaint here isn't that you don't get to wow your players with something, what exactly are you mad about? That your players learned too much? But if you're not trying to surprise your players with secrets, what's the big deal? As far as I can tell, people are mad that the "Player's Guide" revealed information they didn't want revealed. What is that but another way of saying your players discovered the secrets that you got from a book? A number of people have given reasons that they like the fact that PGtE contained this information and ways they feel it betters their campaign, as well as contributes to the book serving it's purpose as a guide for players. Your dislike of the inclusion of certain details is no more valid than their enjoyment of that same inclusion. For the record, I think the set-up of PGtE makes it easier for a DM who wants to limit his players knowledge to do so. Say I have a player who wants to play a pirate/sailor from Lhaazar. I can tell him to read the Seas of Eberron pages as well as the ones covering Lhaazar, or photocopy those pages for him. This allows him to get the information his character would know while still keeping other secrets secret. I'll say it again, if you don't want your players to know certain things you shouldn't ever just hand them published materials to read without going through it yourself. If you're more like me (and other respondants to this thread) and you just want your players to have fun and be well-informed, then sure just hand them the PGtE and tell them go to town. (And before you say "Well what about those people who 'have fun' by being surprised by stuff," I still find it hard to believe people like that would just expect to be able to read through entire published materials and not discover anything that they'd rather be surprised by.)
Kreistor1 06-15-06, 03:17 PM	And my point is that not everyone agrees with you that this information shouldn't have been included in the PGtE. I want my players to have a large amount of information about Eberron so they can come up with interesting and detailed characters. That is NOT what he's saying. Neither am I. We aren't saying it shouldn't be in the book. We just want the secret stuff separated into Player and DM sections. That way, you can tell your players, "Don't worry about that 'DM only' heading. Just read it all." And I can say, "Don't read the "DM only" section." See, we're both happy this way! Your players get the information you want them to have and my players don't get the information I don't want them to have. Right now, the only one that is happy is you. Yay for you. I'd like to be happy too. Stop trying to convince me that I am happy when I clearly am very unhappy: it's an impossible task. BTW, when I said, "historically possible" I meant that TSR used to format their books exactly like I am asking them to go back to. It did work successfully in the past and it can work successfully now.
id4698 06-15-06, 03:22 PM	"A number of people have given reasons that they like the fact that PGtE contained this information and ways they feel it betters their campaign, as well as contributes to the book serving it's purpose as a guide for players. Your dislike of the inclusion of certain details is no more valid than their enjoyment of that same inclusion." -MysticTheurge I would be surprised, if the layout of certain dungeons in Eberron in any way helps your players create better characters. Things like that are half the book unfortunately. So are detailed layouts, descriptions etc of supposedly hidden places...which are sadly missing from other books in the series. I'm sorry...but I still stick to the fact that maps of Argonneson for instance, or the details of what happens on the main continent should not have been in this book. Especially after the ECS describes it as a place that people rarely, rarely, rarely ever see...and most likely not during the previous 100 years. So your player wants to play an Argonesson barbarian? Does it not clearly state that even they are not allowed into the continent? Have a section that tells you about their culture, not the lair of the arch dragon hidden deep in the mountains in the center of the continent. And if you really must have that, it should be in the Explorer's Guide, or another book based on Argonesson. NOT THE PLAYER'S GUIDE!!!!!! And if the DM is using their imagination, they take what is published in their section, and work it form there. I stated earlier that I appreciate the player's aspect of the guide. Any chance that my player's have of researching and developing their characters is a good thing. You have a valid point that what some people like in the book, does not give me any right to descredit the book (if I understand what you were saying). On the other hand, I do believe that they would be just as well served with different layouts. And from many I talk to..those who like the layout are the minority here. And you are correct as well in regards to....people reading a book and not being surprised...or expecting to be surprised. On the other hand, most are confident that in a Player's Guide, they shouldn't have to worry about that. I do enjoy the "What you know" idea, I just wish that it had been done a little different. Instead of wording it "Vol is a Lich from the House of Death, and is the power behind the Blood of Vol and the Emerald Claw" you could say "rumors abound about Vol, etc etc"... In a modern RPG, this would be akin to publishing a plot line about the President of some island in the DM section of a book...and then in the Player's Guide saying "By the way, President XX is secretly working on a nuclear device and here is the layout to his underground bunker". Who would know this? Instead, if a character had knowledge of Intelligence, it could say something like "Source networks/Agency associates/word on the intel street is that President XX is involved in possible weapon development, etc...but this has not been confirmed. In addition, rumors on the island indicate development of some sort of underground facility being built.". At the same time, the DM section of the core book clearly indicates what is truly happening. This leaves room for the players to become interested, and still not know or realize the complete implications.
Sarlax 06-15-06, 04:57 PM	As for the complaint that these things should stay secret for "a reasonable period of time," the ECS has been out for two years now. How much longer do you want them to wait before they can start talking about these secrets? Think of the Eberron line. The problem we're discussing is not entirely restricted to the Player's Guide. The ECS also scatters major plot secrets throughout the book. A group should be able to choose to hold some elements of the game in secret without having to declare that entire books are off-limits to the players. Now, specifically regarding the Player's Guide: The book targets players specifically. Check out the back cover: "What does an elf from Shae Cairdal know about the nation of Aerenal? ... What does your character know about the Blood of Vol?" Further, the book is said to "explore the world from the player's point of view." This is an excellent premise for the book. Unfortunately, the book doesn't give the player's perspective: it gives the player's perspective and the DM's perspective in the same place. The Player's Guide could have had the exact same information organized in a slightly different way, with the spoilers in the back. That way, a player could freely read through most of the book without having secrets spoiled. If it was appropriate for a PC to know a particular secret, the player could then choose to turn to the section that reveals that particular secret. If the big complaint here isn't that you don't get to wow your players with something, what exactly are you mad about? That your players learned too much? But if you're not trying to surprise your players with secrets, what's the big deal? Perhaps you've been laboring under a mistaken view of our complaint. It's not just that DMs are robbed of certain dramatic tools; those can be replaced. It's also a problem for players who want to be suprised. When a book says, "Player's Guide," it's not self-evident that major setting secrets are going to be spoiled throughout the book. Think of films. Sure, some people don't mind having the ending spoiled, but plenty of people do mind. That's what the Player's Guide does - for people who don't like spoilers, it makes the game less fun. Your dislike of the inclusion of certain details is no more valid than their enjoyment of that same inclusion. Again, that's not the complaint. It's not that the information is there. The problem is that it's spread among information that isn't secret. It would be a remarkably simple matter to split spoilers from the rest of the text into a new section. For the record, I think the set-up of PGtE makes it easier for a DM who wants to limit his players knowledge to do so. Say I have a player who wants to play a pirate/sailor from Lhaazar. I can tell him to read the Seas of Eberron pages as well as the ones covering Lhaazar, or photocopy those pages for him. This allows him to get the information his character would know while still keeping other secrets secret. And what if the same player wants to know about the Blood of Vol "from the player's point of view?" Sorry! He's out of luck, because the spoilers are plastered all over the page. Again, it's not about limiting knowledge in general. It's about controlling how soon setting secrets are revealed. For your would-be pirate player, he should be able to turn to the entry on the Blood of Vol and simply read about the publicly stated beliefs of the church, the religion's organization, how it was Karrnath's state religion, etc. If that peaks his interest, he could then choose to learn the secrets of the Blood by turning to a different page in the book.
id4698 06-15-06, 05:07 PM	Amen.
DBlizzard 06-15-06, 05:41 PM	This is an excellent premise for the book. Unfortunately, the book doesn't give the player's perspective: it gives the player's perspective and the DM's perspective in the same place. I disagree. Most of the so-called "secrets" are all listed in charts of Player Knowledge. Yes, all characters may not have knowledge of this information, but any specializing in that area may, and is likely to have that knowledge. Do we exclude obscure weapon information from the PHB because the information might not be available to a wizard character? Do we remove any information about Breland from the book because a barbarian from Seren might not know that information? No, don't list the name of the leader of the Church of the Silver Flame because I want my players, who are all playing drow savages, not to have that information since it's something they wouldn't know. Clearly there are lines to be drawn. As long as that information is something a player character who has strong knowledge of an area is giong to know it, I think it's appropriate to include it.
ArcTan 06-15-06, 05:54 PM	This argument doesn't work for me. WotC could make more money off of both a "DM's guide to Eberron" and a "Players Guide to Eberron" instead of putting them into one book. The point of the argument again, which you are missing, is that they put this information in a "Player's Guide". Yes, eventually this stuff would get out. It gets out alot quicker though when you put it directly into the "Player's Guide". Umm... no. Two books cost a lot more to publish and distribute than one. DMs are greatly outnumbered by players. *Especially* if you encourage people who don't plan to DM any time soon *not* to buy the DMGtE because it contains "spoilers", the DMGtE will be an enormous money-loser. Again, two years is not an unreasonable amount of time to assume things have been spoiled. If this were a movie or video game, how much within your rights would you be to complain about something being "spoiled" that came out two years ago?
id4698 06-15-06, 06:01 PM	I disagree. Most of the so-called "secrets" are all listed in charts of Player Knowledge. Yes, all characters may not have knowledge of this information, but any specializing in that area may, and is likely to have that knowledge. Do we exclude obscure weapon information from the PHB because the information might not be available to a wizard character? Do we remove any information about Breland from the book because a barbarian from Seren might not know that information? No, don't list the name of the leader of the Church of the Silver Flame because I want my players, who are all playing drow savages, not to have that information since it's something they wouldn't know. Clearly there are lines to be drawn. As long as that information is something a player character who has strong knowledge of an area is giong to know it, I think it's appropriate to include it. Do we put campaign information in the PHB? Do we put the nature of magical items in the PHB? Do we give detailed NPC stats in the PHB? No. Do we keep info on Breland despite playing a Talenta Halfling? Of course we do. That makes sense. In the section on Breland do we indicate to the player every plot, sub-plot and NPC background? Unfortunately yes as well. It doesn't make sense. Especially in the Player's Guide...especially when its in the Player's Guide and not in relevant books. I don't see the point of this argument.
ArcTan 06-15-06, 06:07 PM	Also, as DBlizzard says, the line between "player knowledge" and "DM knowledge" is *not* a hard line, in Eberron. Unless you absolutely insist that all campaigns start with PCs as 1st-level scrubs from the Five Nations -- which is appropriate for a "newbie campaign", as I've been saying, but is *not* the basis of the majority of interesting campaigns for non-newbies -- it may very well be that my PC *is* a relatively high-ranking member of the Blood of Vol who's aware of Erandis d'Vol's presence, or is an agent of the Dreaming Dark who knows the gist of the history of the quori, or whatnot. I mean, look at it this way -- from the average Khorvaire human's perspective the existence of the kalashtar is an obscure fact and the history of the kalashtar is a complete mystery. For the average PC the kalashtar are very much what you would consider a "plot secret". But for a kalashtar PC to not know the history of their race and the great mission of il-Yannah is unthinkable. Huge swodges of information that *must* be in the ECS because they're the very basis of what is intended to be a setting core race but that, by your logic, every player who doesn't want to play this race must avoid reading. (And if your response to this is that the kalashtar should therefore not be a core race, I'm going to just laugh at you. No one knows much about changelings either -- are they no longer core? Should they be in a Secret Races of Eberron book?) As far as the TSR comparison goes -- D&D is in many ways a different beast now from what it was then. Old-school D&D still assumed a degree of homogeneity among PC backgrounds and assumed PCs would be doing relatively standard stuff -- wandering encounters, dungeon crawls, etc. Not much roleplaying of obscure backgrounds, interactions between different cultures, etc. Nowadays it's expected and normal for players to want to create detailed backgrounds for their characters based on various obscure parts of the setting world, including using things like racial feats, PrCs and whatnot to plan their characters ahead. Thanks to _polymorph_ and item crafting the two formerly DM-only books, the Monster Manual and the *Dungeon Master's Guide*, are both now considered requisite for serious players to own. That's just how it goes -- the way WotC seems to expect us to play, they want players to be just as involved in and informed about the game world as DMs, and every player should at least have an idea about how they would DM the game if they were DMing. The "DM knows all, players know jack" philosophy isn't one they uphold anymore, because it doesn't make money and, frankly, doesn't match up to most people's expectations. Yeah, they could try to do it the way TSR did it, but in a world where most players expect a degree of control -- where people grow up on video games where they can buy a strategy guide and optimize their character based on spoilers from the beginning, where secrets are open for trade on the Internet -- you're just going to annoy people by putting "Secret Information!" and "Don't Read This!" boxes everywhere. Honestly, if you want to run a newbie campaign where players know nothing, players shouldn't buy *any* books, at all. You should decide exactly what you want players to know and make your own photocopied pages. It's not that hard, and it avoids this kind of strife. After all, there are always gonna be DMs who disagree on what really counts as "player knowledge" and what doesn't. How "secret" the existence and rituals of the Blood of Vol are depend on whether you live in Karrnath or what kind of person you are -- but there are plenty of peasants who know exactly what goes on in a Blood of Vol ceremony, while the Keeper of the Flame probably only has a vague idea. That's just one example -- some DMs might like the idea of (unrealistically) "discovering the world" *completely* through the course of an adventure by playing 1st-level peasants who've all received a serious blow to the head and now don't even know what the Five Nations are or who the king is or what year it is or what the creation myth is and have to be told through NPC interactions. (I find that kind of thing infuriatingly tedious, but whatever floats your boat...)
ArcTan 06-15-06, 06:14 PM	Do we put campaign information in the PHB? Do we put the nature of magical items in the PHB? Do we give detailed NPC stats in the PHB? No. Do we keep info on Breland despite playing a Talenta Halfling? Of course we do. That makes sense. In the section on Breland do we indicate to the player every plot, sub-plot and NPC background? Unfortunately yes as well. It doesn't make sense. Especially in the Player's Guide...especially when its in the Player's Guide and not in relevant books. I don't see the point of this argument. You're seriously exaggerating, unless you're confusing The Five Nations (which does not have the word "player's" in its title) with the PGtE. Knowing who King Boranel is and knowing how the Parliament works is *not* secret knowledge -- in-character, it's the sort of thing anyone could learn by reading the newspaper or having a decent education. Even knowing that the Sword of Liberty exist is not that big a deal. Seriously, what kind of campaign would be "spoiled" by this kind of revelation? "Oh my god... the nation of Aundair is ruled by Queen Aurala and her two brothers! And the three don't entirely trust each other! Holy crap! Who knew? AARGH!" When we translate player knowledge into character knowledge it's called metagaming and is a bad thing, but it's okay to turn player *ignorance* into character ignorance, even when doing so is utterly unrealistic? ("Oh, Boranel is *our* king and Kaius is the other guys' king? Okay, I got it mixed up.")
id4698 06-15-06, 06:19 PM	You're seriously exaggerating, unless you're confusing The Five Nations (which does not have the word "player's" in its title) with the PGtE. Knowing who King Boranel is and knowing how the Parliament works is *not* secret knowledge -- in-character, it's the sort of thing anyone could learn by reading the newspaper or having a decent education. Even knowing that the Sword of Liberty exist is not that big a deal. Seriously, what kind of campaign would be "spoiled" by this kind of revelation? "Oh my god... the nation of Aundair is ruled by Queen Aurala and her two brothers! And the three don't entirely trust each other! Holy crap! Who knew? AARGH!" When we translate player knowledge into character knowledge it's called metagaming and is a bad thing, but it's okay to turn player *ignorance* into character ignorance, even when doing so is utterly unrealistic? ("Oh, Boranel is *our* king and Kaius is the other guys' king? Okay, I got it mixed up.") This is an ignorant reply. That is not even close to what I am saying. Did you by chance take another 10 seconds and read what I was replying to? Have you been reading this thread? Before you write something like this, at least read the page before it. Yeah, I am really complaining that people know Boranel is King. Give me a break. I don't mind that player's know who the Queen of Island X is. I do mind that people don't bother to read details. Edit: ArcTan, if I read your sarcasm wrong here, or didn't get your point fully, I apologize. Please do note however, that I believe you missed my point...and more tactfully put :), feel that you would be better served to reread this portion of discussion. I'm not saying this just to say this, I really do appreciate everyone posting here...sometimes my Irish temper can get the best of me. ArcTan, even if I disagree with you, I think that your points are valid.
MysticTheurge 06-15-06, 06:44 PM	This is an ignorant reply. That is not even close to what I am saying. Did you by chance take another 10 seconds and read what I was replying to? Have you been reading this thread? Before you write something like this, at least read the page before it. Your responses are starting to get flame-ish. ArcTan has been participating in this thread for quite some time, and has probably, therefore, at least read the posts since his first response. As for the rest, I seriously agree that the line between what is DM-only information and what is player-acceptable information is a very fuzzy one in Eberron. Having just started to read Shattered Land, I was also going to bring up the example of Kalashtars. Technically speaking they're very much a campaign secret, that is most people in Eberron don't know much about them. But I'd still consider most information about them to be player-acceptable. Likewise, the Blood of Vol-Emerald Claw connection might be a big secret to most people, but it's not going to be one for your former-EC Karrn patriot who's struggling to battle the undead minions of Vol. It's pretty easy to come up with similar scenarios where these "spoilers" are going to be central to someone's character concept. And in my opinion these tend to be the more interesting character concepts. When you don't give your Players access to the information until after they've come up with their character, you rob them of major tools they could have used to create detailed and integrated characters. As for the formatting complaint, PGtE was formatted in a manner that was a pretty significant departure from the standard formatting. Personally, I kind of like it. More importantly, I like that wizards is open to change in their formatting and is experimenting with different formats. I'm not sure I would like the formatting Sarlax described; to me it sounds a little too much like a choose your own adventure book ("If you want to know more about the Blood of Vol turn to p. 75, To explore the inner workings of the Emerald Claw turn to p. 97"), but maybe it could be pulled off. I still would probably buy the book, but I think I'd find it harder to use. Which is something else to consider: which is more important to people, ease of use for repeated reference or seperation of secret material? Are your secrets really so important you want to have to try to remember whether a given passage is in the player or DM section about the Mournlands? Personally, I think I'd find that much more frustrating. (I have enough trouble trying to remember which book things are in, much less dividing the information up within each book into multiple sections on each topic.)
id4698 06-15-06, 07:18 PM	I have added a bit to the response for ArcTan. I apologize if the last post came across "Flame-ish". I didn't see it that way, but I understand that others could. I am not attempting to go down that path. However, when someone poses an argument that not does not accurately portray what I am writing, and in fact does it sarcastically, it gets frustrating. I don't think that I have misrepresented you guys and your arguments. I think that I pretty clearly know your point of view. Most of what I have gotten back this entire time has been "Stomp on your players for not meta-gaming properly...you should have read the entire book before you got it....you have no imagination....". Despite those posts, I do appreciate what many of you (who think along opposite lines) are saying. I will attempt to keep this thread going in a positive, constructive fashion if you all will help. That being said, I will most likely post this...and three seconds later a message will pop saying "Don't your players know how to meta-game?" lol. Let me say something else as well. I do actually like the Player's Guide. I like the style, I like the ideas, I like the information. Again, it would have been a simple formatting fix to name it something else, seperate sections better...and there you go, we both have a book we can enjoy. I think that you could do that and still satisfy what you like about the book. Also, if some of us have major gripes, you have to acknowledge that. In the same fashion we need to respect your point of view. The book is already out, I can't change it. That does not diminish my frustration, nor my want to discuss it with you in the forums.
id4698 06-15-06, 07:56 PM	In the sticky (within the Eberron General Forum) that helps people understand Eberron, I noticed this in the Q&A...and found it ironic to our current thread: "As a DM, I'd like to introduce my players to Eberron without revealing all the campaign's secrets. Where can I find a summary of the world from a PC's perspective?" I would not suggest the answer be "The Player's Guide to Eberron". Just my two cents.
mhacdebhandia 06-15-06, 08:30 PM	My position is pretty simple: I just don't think there should be any such thing as "DM-only setting information". DM-only campaign information, sure, but setting information? Whatever. Any player sufficiently enthused about the world to buy all the books is welcome to know as much as they want, in my opinion. Especially since they're more likely to DM, having dropped the cash on all the supplements.
myusernameis 06-15-06, 09:49 PM	I will agree that the Player's Guide to Eberron did include alot of things that don't seem to be right for something with "Player's Guide" in it's name but as far as I am concerned that is just a matter of improperly naming something. I do not ban players from reading about a realm so they can learn the 'secret' aspects of it, in my oppinion it is a very good thing when a player knows alot about a realm as it allows the player to create goals based around what goes on in the realm, it allows them to create backstories that actually tie into the realm, and it creates dangerous assumptions I can use 'against' them. I discourage the reading of modules before I use them but I discourage that much in the same reasoning I discourage metagaming, it is also a matter of politeness in my oppinion.
DBlizzard 06-15-06, 10:34 PM	Do we put campaign information in the PHB? Sure. Admittedly, the core is somewhat campaignless - however, we do have a list of the deities, good & bad. Do we put the nature of magical items in the PHB? No, however, we do have magical items listed in player oriented books (the Complete series come to mind.
id4698 06-15-06, 11:57 PM	Changing this whole thread up a bit...I am interested to see what you all rate the different books, on a scale of 1 to 10. For instance, if you thought that the Explorer's Guide is a 8, but the ECS is a 5, etc. I am curious to get your take, but if no one is interested, that is fine as well. Also, tell me what you would like to see or how you would change the books. Here is one for me: I rate the Players Guide a 6. A great book, but I feel it is inappropriate as a "Player's Guide". I wish that the book had been outlined differently.
Euangelion 06-16-06, 12:24 AM	Changing this whole thread up a bit...I am interested to see what you all rate the different books, on a scale of 1 to 10. For instance, if you thought that the Explorer's Guide is a 8, but the ECS is a 5, etc. I am curious to get your take, but if no one is interested, that is fine as well. Also, tell me what you would like to see or how you would change the books. Here is one for me: I rate the Players Guide a 6. A great book, but I feel it is inappropriate as a "Player's Guide". I wish that the book had been outlined differently. This sounds like something that could be its own thread.
id4698 06-16-06, 12:29 AM	This sounds like something that could be its own thread. You are correct I think. Perhaps I will do that.
Sarlax 06-16-06, 02:23 AM	I disagree. Most of the so-called "secrets" are all listed in charts of Player Knowledge. Two things. First, if you're correct, then you're helping my argument: The secret knowledge is already formatted differently and in a seperate section. It would have been extremely easy to put these sidebars in the back of the book; this would have made it easier for players to control what information they themselves learn, since it's pretty easy for one's eyes to wander a half-inch to the left. Second, let's examine big setting elements to see how they're presented. Are they spoiled in the main text, or are the secrets exclusively listed in the "What Do You Know?" sidebars. Blood of Vol: p.22, paragraph 5: "Behind the scenes, Vol..." Spoiled. The Chamber: p.44, most of the left column: the secret dragon agency is explained. Dragonmarks: p.47, right column, paragraph 1: existence of the former Mark of Death is revealed. Etc. Of course, that's not a thorough survey, but it's a short sample (not complete, since I didn't want to flip too long) of what I'm talking about. Spoilers are scattered in text. Do we exclude obscure weapon information from the PHB because the information might not be available to a wizard character? Do we remove any information about Breland from the book because a barbarian from Seren might not know that information? An invalid analogy. Again, it's not a black and white matter of PLAYERS KNOW ALL vs PLAYERS KNOW NOTHING. It's about being able to know knowledge that's common to people in the world without being required to also know all the secrets connected with a given subject. Obviously, knowing that a greatsword deals 2d6 damage isn't going to ruin a wizard's game. Bringing that up is absurd. The Seren example is more cogent, but it still doesn't work. Look at the ECS - it's divided into chapters, each of which has various section. If a new player wants to be a Seren barbarian with no knowledge of Breland, all he has to do is [i]not[/b] open to the section on Breland. Easy. What if you want to be a commoner from Karrnath who follows the Blood of Vol? All that a commoner would know of the Blood is that it teaches that blood is life and that, through undeath, one can trascend the curse of mortality and ascend to divinity. However, as the Blood is presented everywhere, it's about impossible for the player to know about the Blood's public face without also knowing that it's really just a tool of the evil lich Vol. The Player's Guide could have been a place where that knowledge could be seperated so that players could control their own knowledge. Instead, it's often the same presentation seen everywhere else.
Sarlax 06-16-06, 02:28 AM	...it may very well be that my PC *is* a relatively high-ranking member of the Blood of Vol who's aware of Erandis d'Vol's presence, or is an agent of the Dreaming Dark who knows the gist of the history of the quori, or whatnot. And why shouldn't the player be able to decide? The player is forced to know that Erandis is manipulating everything; neither the ECS nor the Player's Guide gives him the choice.
ArcTan 06-16-06, 02:56 AM	This is an ignorant reply. That is not even close to what I am saying. Did you by chance take another 10 seconds and read what I was replying to? Have you been reading this thread? Before you write something like this, at least read the page before it. Yeah, I am really complaining that people know Boranel is King. Give me a break. I don't mind that player's know who the Queen of Island X is. I do mind that people don't bother to read details. Edit: ArcTan, if I read your sarcasm wrong here, or didn't get your point fully, I apologize. Please do note however, that I believe you missed my point...and more tactfully put :), feel that you would be better served to reread this portion of discussion. I'm not saying this just to say this, I really do appreciate everyone posting here...sometimes my Irish temper can get the best of me. ArcTan, even if I disagree with you, I think that your points are valid. I'm saying that the PGtE does not actually contain detailed information on all plot points, all NPCs, all everything the way you say it does. It doesn't contain, for instance, the detailed stat blocks on King Boranel or the detailed writeup of the Swords of Liberty the Five Nations does. It just mentions them and tells you that you know about them at various Knowledge DCs. What it sounds like is that people are jumping back and forth between attacking PGtE -- whose spoiler information is really, comparatively, quite minor -- with attacking books like Five Nations or Explorer's Handbook, which is where you find the stat blocks for setting NPCs, the maps of dungeons and monster templates, etc. Yes, let's not pretend the only thing we're talking about is who King Boranel is, but let's also not pretend that the PGtE stats everything out, gives you a series of dungeon maps and encounter tables, and tells you the cause of the Mourning. One-sentence-long blurbs in a "What You Know" chart may not be stuff that every PC *would* know, but it's a far cry from "DM knowledge" -- you'd be far more within your rights to complain if the PGtE contained NPC stat blocks or magic item stats.
ArcTan 06-16-06, 03:21 AM	And why shouldn't the player be able to decide? The player is forced to know that Erandis is manipulating everything; neither the ECS nor the Player's Guide gives him the choice. This, actually, is what I find to be the weakest point in your argument. It's not really *possible* to decide what you do or don't want to know before you know it. As previously noted, what counts as "secret" information and what counts as not depends entirely on your PC's role in the world, and one of the big draws of the tabletop RPG genre is the power to *decide* what your PC's role in the world is going to be. How are you going to do that without knowing what the setting is like from the beginning? Again, I'm not talking about extreme cases like "I want to play an adult gold dragon" or "I want to be a horribly mutated experiment of the daelkyr". I'm talking about exactly this kind of thing. Suppose I'm musing about what kind of character I want to create, but because all I own are Player books, and WotC has decided the ancient Dhakaani clans seeking to restore the Empire are DM-only information, I decide to scrap my idea for a noble savage with a glorious history character and instead play that charming rogue character, because all I can find for noble savages are stupid Darguun mercenaries, and maybe the druidic orcs or Tairnadal elves, neither of which appeal to me. The DM *could* come up to me and say "Hey, by the way, there's also these Dhakaani guys", but I'll never hear of it unless I *bring it up with him* -- this is the problem with storing all knowledge in the DM's brain. Unless I spend all day annoying the DM asking, "Okay, are there evil psionics users?", "Okay, is there a good version of undead somewhere that people worship?", "Okay, but maybe there's some sort of totemic magic that invokes the dragons?", lots of really cool details that I could easily use to build a character around will be forever out of my reach. *Everything* becomes dependent on WotC's decision on where to draw the line between player information and DM information, and tons of stuff that provides cool character hooks in Eberron would suddenly only be usable by the DM and dependent on the DM's creativity. Which, fine, is how some people like to play, but as a DM I wouldn't want that much responsibility on my shoulders. Half the fun is players coming up with their own cool character concepts and the DM using his creativity to integrate it into his campaign. I don't see any way you could consistently do a campaign where *player* knowledge is that tightly restricted, in fact, unless you provided pre-written character sheets for everyone. I can tell you what you know as a human fighter from Karrnath or an elven ranger from Valenar, but I *can't* tell you what you know about the Seren barbarian *before you decide to become a Seren barbarian*, or what you know about the Aerenal clerics *before you decide to become an Aerenal cleric*, because if you ask me what you know about these races from the perspective of an average Khorvaire human the answer is really "Almost Nothing". Moreover, I don't know about you, but I like a lot of very setting-specific PrCs like Renegade Mastermaker or Dragon Prophet, and these PrCs, like most PrCs, require a certain amount of planning before taking them, and for a player to take that into account at character creation *requires* a certain amount of metagaming. The proposal bandied about earlier that DMs should only introduce such PrCs as a worldbuilding tool harks back, again, to an earlier-edition "DMs rule players completely" worldview and takes away player control of a character in a way I think is really inappropriate. (You know what I mean. "The trap suddenly slices off your right arm, horribly painfully! But then behind it you find a very odd-looking custom warforged arm, and this manual of ancient House Cannith secrets." *hands over photocopied RM PrC pages from MoE* "Here ya go, take your first level in it.") If I were a player who specifically did not want to be spoiled, then I would make this choice by *not buying books on my own*. I would go and tell the DM exactly to what degree I did not want to be spoiled -- saying, for instance, "I just want to be an ordinary human, and I don't want to know about anything ordinary humans don't" -- and then receive photocopied pages or page references with which to build my character. Again, the best way for a DM to run this kind of thing is to set their own standards for what constitutes player information -- maybe your campaign bans psionic PCs and all the kalashtar stuff is off-limits, for instance -- and make up photocopies based on that. This makes more sense than expecting WotC to come up with a standardized definition of Player and DM information that they then impose on everyone. Especially since it's pretty clear this is not how WotC plays or expects us to play. The WotC designers are, after all, hardcore veteran gamers who play *with each other* and seem to expect a campaign composed of players who are deeply versed in the setting details and the ins and outs of the rules. Moreover, it's not a good business model for WotC. Ignorant players are by definition players who own fewer books than well-researched players, so WotC encourages you to be a well-researched player. The player who reads all the Campaign Settings and the Monster Manuals and everything will always make WotC more money than printing twice as many books and selling a few slim books to players and expecting the DMs to buy all the rest. D&D materials tend to *expect* (but not require) that you've read most or all of the other current books on the market, and make liberal reference to them throughout -- doing so is obvious good business sense, and encourages a certain eclectic gaming culture that I, personally, like, if only because I like the sense of complexity and possibility that comes with having tons of materials to draw upon both as a player and a DM. This answers the other burning question, of why PGtE contains not only the What You Know sidebars but also the huge amounts of "Integrate This Book!" material for basically every published 3.5 supplement. It's because the "Player" that "Player's Guide to Eberron" is intended for is not the clueless newbie player who wants the DM to lead him around and completely shape his Eberron experience. For such a player, the only "player's guide" possible is the DM himself, and it's inappropriate to expect a book to do a DM's job so completely. PGtE is for the player that WotC expects and wants to encourage -- the player who's bought all the books, who's voraciously read the setting, and who is brimming with ideas for creative character backgrounds and builds based on all the books he's read but isn't sure how to integrate them with Eberron, and who's brimming with thoughts and theories about the Eberron setting but isn't sure how much of it would be appropriate for him to express in character or make part of his background. In a sense it's a tool for players to come up with ideas and present them to the DM without forcing the DM to constantly make all his own judgment calls, which I think is a nice thing, though the guide could have been clearer about this function.
Sarlax 06-16-06, 08:18 PM	As previously noted, what counts as "secret" information and what counts as not depends entirely on your PC's role in the world, This is true in the grand sense, but there are pieces of information throughout the setting that are obviously Big Secrets. These are things like Vol's existence, Kaius's nature, the Quori, etc. It's correct that there's no absolute definition of what is or is not a secret, but it's easy to figure out what sorts of things are supposed to be common knowledge or not. and one of the big draws of the tabletop RPG genre is the power to *decide* what your PC's role in the world is going to be. How are you going to do that without knowing what the setting is like from the beginning? Two ways. First, if you prefer to discover secrets through the game and you trust your DM, tell him what you're interested in and he can point you in the right direction. Second, if you instead prefer to know the everything about the setting, including all major secrets, you're free to flip to the back of the hypothetical book that keeps major secret in a different section. Here's the proposal: Take all of the exact same information in the Player's Guide and present it in a different format. Take the information that reveals major secrets (Vol, etc.) and put it in the back. Change nothing else. I don't understand why you object. You refer often to players who like to know everything about the setting and choose to read everything. That's fine; nothing in this alternate arrangement prevents that! It's the exact same information. The advantage to this format is that groups who choose for themselves to censor player information (with player consent) have an easier time of it. So what's the problem?
MysticTheurge 06-16-06, 08:59 PM	So what's the problem? I gave a couple reasons in my last response.
ArcTan 06-17-06, 02:48 AM	This is true in the grand sense, but there are pieces of information throughout the setting that are obviously Big Secrets. These are things like Vol's existence, Kaius's nature, the Quori, etc. It's correct that there's no absolute definition of what is or is not a secret, but it's easy to figure out what sorts of things are supposed to be common knowledge or not. The latter, again, is a big hole in this argument. Like I said, kalashtar PCs are not exactly an exotic option to take. But then I don't think PCs from the upper echelons of the Blood of Vol are that exotic, either. In any case, the list of things that a PC should absolutely, positively never know just from having a high Knowledge skill is pretty narrow. Actually, stuff like "Kaius is a vampire" is really about it. I would rule that a PC who can make a DC 40 Knowledge (arcana) or Knowledge (history) check *does* know the history of the Mark of Death, for instance. I wouldn't say that it should be necessary for the DM to explicitly reveal things through plot for PCs to know things in a campaign. That's how the Knowledge skills are supposed to work. By this logic, only a very small number of the one-line What You Know sidebar tidbits actually make the Player's Guide not a Player's Guide, and arguably "Kaius is a vampire", having already been disseminated in the ECS (which, after all, players pretty much *do* need to read or have photocopies from in order to play the game) was not the PGtE's fault. What else do you think is such a big deal that players shouldn't know it? That Vulkoor is an aspect of the Mockery? That there was once a War of the Mark against aberrants? That the giants broke the world when fighting the quori? All of these things are background details, not things that are actively being *kept* secret in the world today. The thing is that an anemic setting description hurts immersion and suspension of disbelief. I ought to feel like random and obscure information is something I can learn by looking up in Eberron, that the information *exists* regardless of whether it's relevant to me at the current time. To put it another way, if it were a d20 Modern campaign that took place in the real world rather than a fictional setting, I would ban a PC from knowing things whose secrecy was actively important to the setting -- from knowing that President Bush has been replaced by an alien -- but not from knowing things like "The CIA carried out the MKULTRA experiments to test mind-controlling drugs in the 1970s" or "Constantine the Great experienced a battlefield conversion and his siding with the orthodox Christians at the Council of Nicaea is what made Christianity what it is today" or "Many associate the Tunguska event with an experiment conducted by scientist Nikola Tesla at the same time", even though all of these facts are obscure, controversial and -- in, say, a campaign based around religious conspiracies and whatnot -- possibly pivotal to one's understanding of what's going on. Because these are all facts an average schmoe like me, in real life, can look up. Two ways. First, if you prefer to discover secrets through the game and you trust your DM, tell him what you're interested in and he can point you in the right direction. Second, if you instead prefer to know the everything about the setting, including all major secrets, you're free to flip to the back of the hypothetical book that keeps major secret in a different section. Here's the issue: This would be encouraging and, to a degree, re-creating where it doesn't exist this antagonistic "DM-only info" division within published material. I'm likely to have inexperienced or control-freak-ish DMs tell me that I *can't* look at this stuff as a player and punish me if they found out I did. It's not the sort of think I think Wizards should encourage, and I think it's, in fact, the kind of thing I think they're actively trying to discourage. Wizards has already created "DM-only" information in Eberron. That being information that only the DM can know *by definition* because the DM has to create it. You want DM-only information? The true cause of the Mourning. The history and background of the Lord of Blades. The next big step in the quori's plan. The means by which the Gatekeepers defeated the daelkyr. All of these are very important setting details that the setting purposely leaves undefined so they can be secrets. I don't see why *published* material has to be, or should be, the source of secrets. By definition published material is the basis for everyone's common understanding of the world. The most important bits, like the Mourning, have been left undefined *so that players can be surprised*. It makes more *sense* to be surprised by something your DM invented. Wanting to be surprised by something that's been printed up in 20 million copies of a campaign setting doesn't make sense. Again, I don't see why this insistence that *not only* should DMs provide surprises but the *campaign setting itself* should surprise players. It smacks of laziness -- that the DM can't come up with something suitably shocking on his own so he wants to rely on players not having read the book, and shocking them with something from that. Here's the proposal: Take all of the exact same information in the Player's Guide and present it in a different format. Take the information that reveals major secrets (Vol, etc.) and put it in the back. Change nothing else. I don't understand why you object. You refer often to players who like to know everything about the setting and choose to read everything. That's fine; nothing in this alternate arrangement prevents that! It's the exact same information. The advantage to this format is that groups who choose for themselves to censor player information (with player consent) have an easier time of it. So what's the problem? The problem being that I think, for most Eberron campaigns that don't run on this assumption of DM-only information, having very important details like Kaius and the quori and whatnot in a separate section is no more than a nuisance. And that they don't *want* to encourage this attitude that players shouldn't know "secrets", especially when it gets in the way of fully understanding the campaign world as it is. Players aren't just reading to memorize facts, they're reading to get a sense of Eberron as a world, and it's hard to get a sense of Eberron as a world of intrigue if you're not given any insights into what those intrigues are (and to see intrigues means, by definition, to see secrets).