Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Sturm Jaeger 03-29-05, 02:24 AM	I liked the new Sharn Inquisitive article. The idea of an activist group for POWs of the Last War, it's so very real sounding. Something you'd see in our world. Not just another evil secret society or something, but a group with a human purpose. Nice job!
a_psh 03-29-05, 04:44 AM	... left much to be desired, in my humble opinion. I dunno, it all feels so... modern. Like I'm reading the local paper or something. The whole thing is stylistically neutral: excise the first paragraph and the phrases "Breland" and "Last War" and there's absolutely nothing left to ground you in Eberron. It could probably apply to a d20 Modern game without any further tweaking. And that feels somewhat off to me. My particular reasons for saying this, if you care (cut as they're tangential, as well as overly nitpicky): While Eberron is pulp, &c., &c., it still follows the mold of fantasy in that Eberron's present is like a very, very different version of our past.Now, I don't believe that fantasy stuff should be written lieke thif so as to maek no fenfe att alle, or that you should be using the clunky and pretentious language of bad fantasy novels. But there's one particular linguistic parasite that I will always consider a hallmark of our fast-paced, modern times: the acronym (a quick check reveals that "initialism" is actually the term I want, but I don't think anyone other than a certain flavor of academic actually uses that distinction). Anyway, "POW" injects an overwhelming hint of modernity into all this. Not the fact that there are prisoners of war or that they are called "prisoners of war." That's very fitting, in fact... but acronyms have a decidedly modern tone to them. They're a reflection of our hectic and terminology-bloated society, of technology and society and politics creeping along at a rate that forces all these absurdly long expressions that then need to be trimmed down. In fantasy, I don't expect to see any words to be abbreviated unless we're talking about an accounting ledger or something. You're free to disagree with me here, but there's just something utterly un-fantastical about acronyms. I guess it's just too "real sounding," as the original poster put it. There's absolutely nothing that keeps it from just being "something you'd see in our world."