Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Charles Phipps 08-27-06, 11:51 PM	As an inauggeration of the fact we can discuss novels here. This is a thread to discuss whether the novels fit your view of Eberron or not. For me, they've been something of a mixed bag for me. I think the Dragon Below has been exceptionally like I view Eberron in my head and the characters are enjoyable as well as Eberron-specific. Also, the Dreaming Dark trilogy by Keith Baker is also exceptionally well done (Duhhhhhh). However, I disliked the Lost Mark so much (along with the Crimson Talisman that I honestly dropped both series and have been hesitant to pull up another one of the book series whereas with Dragonlance I'm usually rarely so cautious...ditto FR. Part of my problem is the fact that so much of the books takes place in ruins, crumbling keeps, and wilderness. If I wasn't a fan of the campaign setting beforehand, I'd think Eberron was this barely settled land that was closer to Dark Sun than being the MOST civilized of the D&D settings. Frankly, I was a bit sad that Keith jumped to Xen'drick so quickly because every other books seems desperate to do nothing but dungeon-dwelling the entire way through. Hell, the Crimson Talisman portrays it so you can have the Emerald Claw march across the Five Nations an army of the undead without anyone noticing or caring. Hell, they even had a gigantic forgotten city sitting out in the middle of what should be former Galifar. Its a little perplexing honestly and kinda creepy. There have been some good additions to the world but some of them are a trifle surreal anyway. I didn't mind the Lord of Blades having his own city but why exactly does he have a city that moves around on legs? It's something so bizarre that its difficult to take seriously. It also implies larger numbers of Warforged in the Lord of Blades service than I ever expected there to be. If there is one serious benefit, it's the fact that Eberron is one of the few "Gentleman warrior" worlds in the realm. Dane and the lead in The Dragon Below books are both fairly charismatic examples of it. They're a bit similiar though and I think they'd get along smashingly if they ever met.
DBlizzard 08-28-06, 01:13 AM	However, I disliked the Lost Mark so much (along with the Crimson Talisman that I honestly dropped both series and have been hesitant to pull up another one of the book series whereas with Dragonlance I'm usually rarely so cautious...ditto FR. May I say, the War-Torn series doesn't really have any strong connection beyond a themic element (so far, anyway). It's more like a series of one-shot books. Don't let the Crimson Talisman put you off the rest of the books. In general, all the books fit my vision of certain areas of Eberron. I think that different areas have different feels, and I get that from the various books. Some books give a more vivid feel of the world (notably, the Dragon Below series and Keith's series), but I don't consider any completely out-of-place. Although some elements might not fit, such as the half-elf with the wrong dragonmark.
Shady314 08-28-06, 02:00 AM	There have been some good additions to the world but some of them are a trifle surreal anyway. I didn't mind the Lord of Blades having his own city but why exactly does he have a city that moves around on legs? It's something so bizarre that its difficult to take seriously. It also implies larger numbers of Warforged in the Lord of Blades service than I ever expected there to be. Construct used legs to march across the uneven and blasted landscape of the Mournland whereas magically hovering Argonth is limited to the plains of Breland unable to float high enough to move over larger obstacles or up uneven terrain. I can buy Construct so long as you don't imagine it to be TOO large. I imagined something akin to a football stadium. Anyways it's a great example of why the novels aren't canon. I agree the Eberron books need to start focusing more on specific Eberron locations, groups etc.
Charles Phipps 08-28-06, 02:14 AM	Odd question: Are Keith's novels canon?
Flame_Drake 08-28-06, 02:37 AM	I don't think any of the novels are cannon unless you want them to be. I know that Keith has said before that WotC's stance for Eberron would be that the novels would not be cannon, but this may have changed. Of course, this didn't stop Keith and James from making some references to their books in PGtE and SoX. Drake
itraylor 08-28-06, 03:00 AM	I have personally enjoyed all of the Eberron novels, but primarily The Dreaming Dark trilogy, The Dragon Below trilogy, and The Lost Mark trilogy (I can’t wait for the last books to come out!). I think that they all show different aspects of the world of Eberron. As far as the single books go, I really enjoyed “In the Claws of the Tiger” I thought it was great. I guess it all depends on what aspect of the game you like most, so far I have seen a little bit of everything I like though I would like to see more hobgoblin stuff.
Sythion 08-28-06, 03:08 AM	May I say, the War-Torn series doesn't really have any strong connection beyond a themic element (so far, anyway). It's more like a series of one-shot books. Don't let the Crimson Talisman put you off the rest of the books. Do, however, let it put you off of The Orb of Xoriat. Crimson Talisman and the Orb were the only two Eberron books that I disliked. And many aspects of both were unrealistic. In the Orb, a monk outruns an airship an a lightning rail, after getting a late start! In general, all the books fit my vision of certain areas of Eberron. I think that different areas have different feels, and I get that from the various books. Some books give a more vivid feel of the world (notably, the Dragon Below series and Keith's series), but I don't consider any completely out-of-place. Although some elements might not fit, such as the half-elf with the wrong dragonmark. I do agree with this to some extent. A lot of the rules of the darker Eberron storytelling are followed. There's never a hollywood ending (Except for in Crimson). Trust and betrayal are usually real concerns (Except for in Crimson). The action is very pulpy (Except for in Crimson). The cosmopolitan feel of Eberron is lost in most of the books, however; along with the politics and intrigues that surround the major cities. The exceptions that do capture this are The City of Towers and Voyage of the Mourning Dawn.
igotsmeakabob!! 08-28-06, 03:14 AM	I liked the Lost Mark, thought it was pretty good for Eberron. Dreaming Dark has been, of course, great. I never got going on the Dragon Below, kinda want to since I've heard its good. Another really good one is the Heirs of Ash series, but unfortunately only Voyage of the Mourning Dawn is out. It kicks ass.
Charles Phipps 08-28-06, 03:18 AM	My problem with the Lost Mark can be summed up in the changeling. She needed to die in the first book very early and yet keeps surviving against all odds. I've never seen an AUTHOR have the problem of a character being a pet NPC. But I really hope we can see some signature NPCs soon.
itraylor 08-28-06, 03:24 AM	I see your gripe with the changeling. She seriously ****** me off as well. At times it was like a bad horror movie where they have the villain incapacitated but don’t finish him off…only to be killed by him later. It is corny at times, but I think it is showing an aspect of the way alignment works in Eberron. The changeling is evil, but she does good things at times. That’s just my take on it, but KILL HER already!
Kryptonian Scion 08-28-06, 09:40 AM	I recently picked up Tales of the Last War, which has ups and downs depending on which story you are reading at the time. However, after reading Blade of the Flame in that book, I immediately went to Borders to pick up Thieves of Blood. So far I have finished nine chapters of this book, and it is amazing. Wagonner does a great job using elements of the Eberron setting and sticking with the dark, pulpy fantasy that the world is supposed to be all about. There are even brief mentions of iconic Eberron elements, which I like alot. The main character is also really cool, and part of his past is without a doubt inspired by new rules that were presented in the Eberron Campaign Setting book. As a huge fan of the Silver Flame, I was instantly attached to Diran Bastiaan. Second only to Keith's Dreaming Dark novels, the Blade of the Flame series is easily worth the read, in my opinion.
igotsmeakabob!! 08-28-06, 10:00 AM	I know we're just talking about opinions, so I'm just inserting mine about Thieves of Blood. Before I had picked up that book, I had never read a novel that made me want to put it down and never read it again. And I read alot. Alot. I don't know if it was the characters, the story, or the writing style but man I hated that book. I'm not saying that noone should read it, its just my opinion. The book really sucked. To me. I only got through the first 70 pages or so before I put it down and didn't read anymore. I liked the whole assassin turned cleric of the silver flame thing. But there was just something..
(Psi)SeveredHead 08-28-06, 10:39 AM	But I really hope we can see some signature NPCs soon. I don't know if that's such a great idea, as long as none of them are too powerful. I've only read the first two Dreaming Dark books and the first Mark of Death book. Dreaming Dark is good. I like how it has a fairly realistic adventuring party. I wish it wouldn't focus on Daine quite so much ... adventuring parties rarely have "main characters". I really like the warforged NPCs. If I hadn't sworn off doing DnD magic items I would have statted them up. The named inspired villain is too ... confusing ... to be compelling. The group of inspired kick a lot of butt, though. I think the PCs get captured and split up too much in the second book and poor Daine just can't help but lose his sword and dagger this time (Daine, hint, carry spares already!), and the lost memories thing also never really happens in-game. Marked for Death has that annoying "changeling who won't die" issue. That really never happens in-game. The Emerald Claw only had two named villains, and one was an idiot. Then again, the adventuring party didn't have enough variety in it - two named heroes, plus the SF flunkies, only one of whom counts. The Silver Flame vs ... whatever the main character's name is was annoying. Every time he opened his mouth in the presence of the Silver Flame I felt like putting the book down. Way too much unfomfortable awkward dialogue/ranting there. However, I liked Bastard. I especially like when he killed the paladin. I didn't like how he died. I've read the first chapter of Orb of Xoriat, and ignoring which race wields which dragonmark, it was another "1st-level adventurer with enormously powerful heirloom travels with high-level cleric" romp. Maybe the book gets better after chapter 1... I hope so.
Zalaz Mavi 08-28-06, 10:51 AM	This is a thread to discuss whether the novels fit your view of Eberron or not. The caveat to my answer is that I've only read three of the novels (Dreaming Dark 1 & 2, and Thieves of Blood) and just a few pages of Claws of the Tiger. Ignoring for a moment marketing strategies and target audiences which explain much of why Eberron novels take the form that they do, my answer is "No," the novels don't reflect my impression of Eberron. Because to me, Eberron has much more to offer storywise and character-wise than "war vets turned treasure-hunters." But, again, I'm positive that marketing has a lot to do with this. In regards to Claws of the Tiger specifically, border security is much tighter in my campaigns ("You're a known foreign agent and you want to contact dangerous individuals in order to conduct clandestine operations within our territory then shuttle those individuals across the border to a hostile nation? Wonderful! Let me stamp your passport and 'Welcome to Aundair..."). James Wyatt obviously has never left the U.S. and had to pass through airport security...:D
(Psi)SeveredHead 08-28-06, 11:26 AM	In regards to Claws of the Tiger specifically, border security is much tighter in my campaigns ("You're a known foreign agent and you want to contact dangerous individuals in order to conduct clandestine operations within our territory then shuttle those individuals across the border to a hostile nation? Wonderful! Let me stamp your passport and 'Welcome to Aundair..."). James Wyatt obviously has never left the U.S. and had to pass through airport security...:D Wait, did the adventurers actually tell the border guard this? (I haven't read that book.)
ekomega 08-28-06, 11:41 AM	I have read the Dreaming Dark books, the Dragon Below Books, the last two War-Torn books, Tales of the Last War, and the Lost Mark books. I enjoyed them all. I also liked each author's take on the places in Eberron, even if they described the same place (like Stormreach). The only thing I didn't like was In the Claws of the Tiger because the characters were all like 12th level. In Shattered Land, you get the idea that Daine and Co. are somewhere between levels 4 and 8. They have difficulty fighting everyone, and have real conflict. Similarly with the other novels. In Tiger, the group easily smacks down groups of Zakya Rakshasas at a time, often without taking damage. Also, the final villain is very powerful, probably CR 17 or so. That just seems kind of ridiculous to me. Especially since the same people who slay Rakshasas had problems with one vampire, a warforged and some measly undead. How many level 12 characters are running around in this Eberron?
ekomega 08-28-06, 11:46 AM	Marked for Death has that annoying "changeling who won't die" issue. That really never happens in-game. I got the feeling that this was supposed to portray the goodness of the characters. Despite almost killing her a ton of times, they couldn't finish her off. They were always willing to "be nice" and let someone come back to fight another day. I think this is one possible (and maybe extreme) way to express a good, or lawful good, character. Killing a downed adversary isn't really "good" (neutral at best). I think you have to really go the extra mile to be good, and put up with a lot of people you helped when you shouldn't (who aren't good) coming back to get you. Keith does this in his novels a little bit. Of course, in my games (like yours), the party finishes everyone off. They don't take hostages unless it's tactically important, and then they kill the hostage once information is gleaned. But then, my players never excelled at playing good. They're more like CN or CG at best, usually.
Zalaz Mavi 08-28-06, 12:31 PM	Wait, did the adventurers actually tell the border guard this? (I haven't read that book.) That's the first five pages in a nutshell. Apparently, spies are the Gully Dwarves of Eberron...:P
Bluebrush 08-28-06, 01:05 PM	I too think that the Dragon Below has been the best series in terms of how entertaining it is and faithfulness to the setting. Highly reccomended to all. Baker's Dreaming Dark series and Wyatt's Claws of the Tiger are both from setting creators, so remaining faithful to the setting. In terms of what they actually show about the world though, they're a bit limited in scope. Also, in Claws of the Tiger the Zakya Raksashas we see are mostly used as grunt minions, which I felt was kind of a waste. The Lost Mark series has been pretty bad in terms of fitting in with Eberron. Incorrect facts all over the place, inconsistant characterisations, warforged "designed" with the bare essentials (complete with tounges for clicking when thinking about pressing issues) and a Mournland about 3% as scary as it should have been. The Crimson Talisman I bought, read a little but just couldn't finish. It felt a lot like a generic fantasy novel Pritt-Stick'd into Eberron. The Orb of Xoriat, however, was quite excellent and, while a lot of the travel through Aundair leaves out details, I'll have to consider pinching more than a few elements for my Aundair game. That said, we didn't see nearly enough Xoriat action for a novel with such a title. The Blade of the Flame series, or whatever it was called, I decided not to follow based on the preview and the author's Tales of the Last War submission. The Voyage of the Mourning Dawn was pretty good in it's closeness to the setting, except for one aspect: Airship proliferation. It seems every organisation can afford one and Lyandar's Dragonmarked monopoly has been broken. The Black Pit, that wretched hive of scum and villainy, whose residents only live there to hide from the world, apparently gets enough traffic to justify two airship docking towers. Tales of the Last War is a majorly mixed bag. Some pretty good stuff in there though. Anyway, Bassingthwaite's Dragon Below series (Along with one of Baker's articles in Dragon) have encouraged me to plan campaign centred on Cultists of the Dragon Below.
Melvin the Mediocre 08-28-06, 02:02 PM	I liked the use of the airship in the Mark of Death books. Flying ships were actually getting a little stale in role playing games, but really playing on the sentience of the elemental inside breathes some new life into the idea. Those books influenced my game quite a bit, and one player mentioned how neat the airship was saying it was almost like an NPC. I also liked the walking city in the Mournlands, it was a pretty neat idea. The few other books I've read seemed rather flat. For example, other than them saying this guy is warforged, that gal is a kalashter, everyone seemed very human. I would have liked more of a "Wow that is so NOT human" feel to the other races. So in a nut shell: setting wise, yes they have fit my view. Character wise, they have fallen a little short of my view of Eberron.
mhacdebhandia 08-28-06, 02:59 PM	I have read both of Keith Baker's Dreaming Dark novels, The City of Towers and The Shattered Land, and I enjoyed both of them. Obviously, Keith's take on the world is always going to be pretty damn close to "canonical" as long as he's involved in shaping Eberron, so I have no complaints there - and they're fun books! Pierce is a fascinating character and I'm eager to read The Gates of Night to have some questions answered, which is a good sign. I have also read both of Don Bassingthwaite's Dragon Below novels, The Binding Stone and The Grieving Tree. I found them just as enjoyable as Keith's and just as "accurate". Actually, I think that I like Don's novels just a little better than Keith's, for two reasons: I'm more fond of the cults of the Dragon Below than I am of the Dreaming Dark, and I suspect that Don's greater experience with writing is what allows him to pull off dramatic moments such as the manifestation of Ashi's Siberys mark of the Sentinel, which was foreshadowed in the first book and resolved at the climax of the second. Very nice - and it's also fun that that sort of thing works exactly as it would in a game without leading me to believe I can hear the dice rolling. Don seems very good at using game-mechanical elements like dragonmarks and prestige classes in a natural, accurate fashion. I liked pretty much all of the stories in Tales of the Last War - certainly, Tim Waggoner's tale of how the protagonists of his novels met encouraged me to pick up the first Blade of the Flame book. I also like Rich Wulf's first Heirs of Ash book, The Voyage of the Mourning Dawn. Though I agree that it seems to suggest airships are much more common outside House Lyrandar than the game supplements suggest, it's a good story with interesting characters. It's nice to see a female lead character, for instance, as well as a non-dragonmarked member of a House guild and a paladin who serves the Sovereign Host. I appreciate those latter two characters because it would be so easy to stick to "stock" tropes like an artificer surnamed "d'Cannith" and a paladin of the Silver Flame, and Rich doesn't do that. Finally, I also own Tim Waggoner's first Blade of the Flame novel, Thieves of Blood. Like Don's Dragon Below novels, here we have an antagonist I'm fond of - the Blood of Vol. I really like that the backstory of the main character makes sense according to Eberron's rules, and I'm glad that the first novel with a priest as the lead was so good, because I find the religious aspects of Eberron very fascinating. My only niggle when it comes to "canonicity" was the idea that Ghaji and his mother would have been rendered clanless for being a half-orc and birthing one, respectively, but I can accept that as a regional quirk of the part of the world Ghaji grew up in as opposed to a universal principle, which we know it isn't. I haven't picked up Matt Forbeck's Lost Mark novels and don't plan to, because I don't like the idea of the storyline. I haven't checked out any of the War-Torn novels yet but I'll give them a go - keeping in mind that they're not really connected, so the quality of one might not reflect on the others.
Sythion 08-28-06, 03:05 PM	My problem with the Lost Mark can be summed up in the changeling. She needed to die in the first book very early and yet keeps surviving against all odds. I've never seen an AUTHOR have the problem of a character being a pet NPC. Really? The changeling was by far my favorite antagonist in any Eberron book. She was resourceful, cunning, and she actually had a reason for doing what she was doing... You know, aside from ULTIMATE WORLD DOMINATION!!! In fact, I liked her so much that I modeled one of my NPCs (I guess it's a pet NPC) after her. She's been an incredible success! The characters feelings on her range anywhere from utter hatred to sympathy. When I polled my players to find what their favorite NPC was, she was everyone's favorite. I really don't see a problem lavishing extra attention on a well liked antagonist. But I really hope we can see some signature NPCs soon. I would love to as well! With everyone on guard because another war could erupt any time, I'd expect more people to take advantage of this. I'd like to see some of the monachs, and maybe in Lost Mark book Three, some of the Sharn officials or NPCs listed in the City of Towers supplement.
(Psi)SeveredHead 08-28-06, 03:10 PM	Really? The changeling was by far my favorite antagonist in any Eberron book. She was resourceful, cunning, and she actually had a reason for doing what she was doing... You know, aside from ULTIMATE WORLD DOMINATION!!! Uh huh. She was cool at first... but it breaks my suspension of disbelief that one solitary NPC could keep on that mission without getting killed. The Mournland doesn't slow her down at all, the heroes don't kill her even though she's caused so many problems for them and is obviously a bad guy and they outnumber her, etc. She'd be a lot cooler if she had back up, instead of relying on "narrative invincibility".
Euangelion 08-28-06, 03:10 PM	I think one of the more interesting developments and one I haven't seen anyone else mention, is that the main character of the Claws of the Tiger is mentioned in the Players Guide to Eberron. I wasn't surprised to see side characters from the sourcebooks in the novels and vice versa, but I was surprised to see Martell in PGtE. I'm not sure I like that trend (if it is a trend). Of the books that I've read, I think the DD series, the DB series, and the Claw of the Tiger have fit the Eberron in my head the most, but I don't think anyone will be really surprised about that. However, except for the DD, even those have had something in it that pinged on my continuity radar. Some of those instances have already been detailed here, and the others aren't that important. It's just that I'm more comfortable reading Keith's, since I'm confident that what I read is the way that Eberron is supposed to be. Then again, even Keith forgot that displacer beasts could talk, but pobody's nerfect.
Donald_Cannith 08-28-06, 03:54 PM	i am currently reading the first books of the dragon below and the dreaming dar kand iahve to saysboth are ver yvery well written i am especially fond of how the tw ocompliment each toher andi view them as the definitive eberron novels becus you get the city feel in the dreaming dar and the "outsider feel" is hit dead on in the dragon below. The two halves are really done justice i nthose books. I havent personally read an of the other novels yet but iintend to in time EDIT: I also ahve recommended that my players read the Dragon below and dreaming draks first few chapters at the very least to give them a quick ideaabout what the settings allabout do yo uthink this wiser than makingthem read the campagin setting(which i know they wont)
The Dreaming Duck 08-28-06, 04:53 PM	every other books seems desperate to do nothing but dungeon-dwelling the entire way through. Because to me, Eberron has much more to offer storywise and character-wise than "war vets turned treasure-hunters." With respect to both of these comments, I have to say that MY favorite piece of Eberron fiction is Keith Baker's novella "Principles of Fire" in Dragons: Worlds Afire. The story is set in Sharn, none of the characters have a direct connection to the Last War, and it focuses more on the noir side of things that the "roaming party of adventurers" path many of the novels have taken. It's pricy, but if you have an opportunity, it is worth checking out.
Sir Elton 08-28-06, 05:05 PM	I don't know if that's such a great idea, as long as none of them are too powerful. I've only read the first two Dreaming Dark books and the first Mark of Death book. Dreaming Dark is good. I like how it has a fairly realistic adventuring party. I wish it wouldn't focus on Daine quite so much ... adventuring parties rarely have "main characters". I'm going to say something in Keith's Defense. When you write a Novel like City of Towers, you are essentially making a Grand Arguement. You have to deal with four different story throughlines in one Novel: a. The First is the Objective Story Throughline. This like looking at of a Great Battle as an observer, but you are looking out as an outsider. For instance, if some one tells you the History of the Battle of Waterloo, he's giving you the Overall Story. It's dispassionate but important. City of Towers' Throughline is how the Cyrans dealt with their situation post Mourning. b. The Second is the Main Character's Story Throughline. For the story to become meaningful to you, you need to look at the story from a Main Character's perspective at the Battle at Waterloo. We see how it happens through his eyes, his perspective. City of Towers' MC Throughline is Daine's experiences. We learn how he deals with the Mourning as an ex-soldier of Cyre. c. The third is the Obstacle or Impact Character's Story Throughline. This is the Character standing in the Way of the Main Character's goal. He challenges the Main Character's belief system, trying to get him to change. Sometimes, he succeeds and sometimes he doesn't. In City of Towers', I felt that the Obstacle Character's throughline was kind of weak. The strongest Candidate was the Captain of the Guard in Sharn. He was trying to help Daine not get into trouble and get him to change his beliefs about himself and how he can accept his new situation. d. The fourth throughline is the Subjective Storyline. This deals with a passionate struggle between the Main Character and his Obstacle. In City of Towers, we see this between Daine and the Captain of the Guard. The point is, Novel writing and Dungeons and Dragons game playing are two different types of mediums. When you write a novel, your writing will engage one person. By having a main character, you allow the reader experience your story. In D&D, your cooperatively story-telling between two or more players. All of them play a main character or protagonist. All of them have personal goals which may or may not support each other.
mhacdebhandia 08-28-06, 07:45 PM	Of the books that I've read, I think the DD series, the DB series, and the Claw of the Tiger have fit the Eberron in my head the most, but I don't think anyone will be really surprised about that. However, except for the DD, even those have had something in it that pinged on my continuity radar. I'm curious as to what pinged your continuity radar in the Dragon Below books, if you're willing to explain.
Charles Phipps 08-28-06, 07:47 PM	I think it's not actually a problem really of Dane being the "lead character" so much as it is that Dane is one of the few genuinely interesting characters in the storyline. Pierce is a wonderful warforged character with his own plot and so is Lei with her own. However, both of them fail to catch the reader's interest as much as Dane for various reasons. Sort of like Raistlin Majere and Tanis aren't the lead characters in Chronicles but they are. Even in games, some players roleplay out more.
Sir Elton 08-28-06, 08:43 PM	I think it's not actually a problem really of Dane being the "lead character" so much as it is that Dane is one of the few genuinely interesting characters in the storyline. Pierce is a wonderful warforged character with his own plot and so is Lei with her own. However, both of them fail to catch the reader's interest as much as Dane for various reasons. Sort of like Raistlin Majere and Tanis aren't the lead characters in Chronicles but they are. Even in games, some players roleplay out more. Yes. These stories of Pierce and Lei and the others are called subplots. And they add wonderful new dimensions to the story. Keith promised me he's gotten better so I can't wait to read the others.
Charles Phipps 08-28-06, 08:55 PM	Yes. These stories of Pierce and Lei and the others are called subplots. And they add wonderful new dimensions to the story. Keith promised me he's gotten better so I can't wait to read the others. I'm not so sure they accurately fall into that category as a writer too. In Lei's case, the "subplot" is the driving force for everything they're doing. Though Dane's recent cursing has taken center stage. Its surprising how little the Dreaming Dark actually shows up in their own book series.
Thwyvylyn 08-28-06, 08:59 PM	Its surprising how little the Dreaming Dark actually shows up in their own book series. Maybe that's the whole point. They are supposed to be secretive.
The Dreaming Duck 08-29-06, 12:26 AM	Maybe that's the whole point. They are supposed to be secretive. I agree. The modus operandi of the Dreaming Dark is supposed to revolve around manipulating others and getting others to do their dirty work for them. They're quite active in both books, it's just not always clear. (spoilers for the Dreaming Dark books below...) As of the end of book two, it appears that Lakashtai is Inspired and has been manipulating Daine throughout the book. Check page 346 of Shattered Land; Daine realizes that the whole reason Lakashtai has been able to manipulate him is because he let her form a bond to protect him from Monan. In the epilogue of City of Towers, the mysterious figure (presumably Lakashtai, but who can say) says that "Chyrassk served its purpose", and that something that has happened to Daine is exactly what she wanted. Which I read as saying that the whole Monan-mental-attack was staged so she COULD form that mental bond with Daine... driving Daine to Lakashtai, and even leaving him with the idea that he owed her a favor. And assuming Lakashtai IS Inspired, she's all over book two. So in my opinion, the Dreaming Dark is completely in the background in book one; taking a far more direct role in book two, though we don't realize how direct until the end; and now in book three it may be completely out in the open. Which IMO fits perfectly with the level of subtlety suggested for the DD in the source material; the first time you encounter them, you shouldn't realize it. EDIT: Hmm. I realize that if you get email notifications of new posts, the spoiler-block tag doesn't work... so I hope I didn't just ruin the book for anyone! :(
Zalaz Mavi 08-29-06, 01:01 PM	With respect to both of these comments, I have to say that MY favorite piece of Eberron fiction is Keith Baker's novella "Principles of Fire" in Dragons: Worlds Afire. The story is set in Sharn, none of the characters have a direct connection to the Last War, and it focuses more on the noir side of things that the "roaming party of adventurers" path many of the novels have taken. It's pricy, but if you have an opportunity, it is worth checking out. Since World's Afire is an anthology, it stands to reason that there would be a certain level of diversity from one story to the next. Diversity is a calculated effort in such a format. I still stand by the marketing argument. There was a very telling article in Dragon recently that offered a sneak-peak inside the workings of WotC. One segment was devoted to discussions between James Wyatt and the marketing director about his next Eberron novel. The gist was that after Wyatt proposed his idea for the novel, the marketing director immediately shot back that while the prosposal was good, it would never sell. The director then launched into this massive list of "change A to B, C to D, E to F, etc." — then it would sell. By the end of the list, they were right back with the same formulaic whatnot. But as disappointing as that is, the company has done it's research and knows what the majority of the audience will and won't buy. Until the market shifts, "vets turned treasure hunters" is the order of the day...
The Dreaming Duck 08-29-06, 01:29 PM	Until the market shifts, "vets turned treasure hunters" is the order of the day... Then apparently the market has shifted. "Principles of Fire" is a story about inquisitives - a pair of detectives in Sharn investigating a mystery. It's got a solid Eberron feel, combining magic and noir. Sure, you say, but that's just a short story. Except that as outlined in this thread (http://worldsofdnd.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1303), the next 3-4 book stand-alone series is going to be all about inquisitives... people dealing with mysteries in the cities of Khorvaire, not just vets looking for treasure.
maollelujah 08-29-06, 03:14 PM	I read Don Bassingthwaite's latest book and liked it. It fit in with my vision of Eberron. My only disappointment was that the plot was a little too much like my current sub-story arc (orcs, goblins, dragons, daelkyr, a shifter, the whole nine yards...). As for Keith Baker, I read the first one and it was decent. I haven't read the newest one, since the fonts just drive me away. I keep picking it up at the store, look inside and put it back down after seeing the fonts.
Arcane Guyver 08-29-06, 05:59 PM	I've read every bit of Eberron fiction, save for the new comic and the story in that 'Dragons Afire' compilation book. The only one that I felt was "bad" is the Crimson Talisman, due to it being too generic (and what few bits of detail that is used is wrong). The Dragon Below trilogy so far is my favorite, but both the Heirs of Ash and the Blade of the Flame have been excellent so far too. I didn't feel the Mark of Death trilogy to be as toxic as everyone else so far; it starts of rocky, but it became pretty obvious that vampires and the Mournland are not the focus of the story, so overcoming those challenges are not as difficult as they would be in-game. I really like the idea of the Dreaming Dark and the kalashtar...yet the Dreaming Dark trilogy is sort of leaving me flat. Despite lots of talk about them, there are still no 'real' kalashtar in any of the novels, and that just ain't right. The Orb of Xoriat is decent, but a just little too dark for even my tastes. The Claws of the Tiger is really good, but I couldn't help but feel that the main character is a friggin' whinerbaby throughout. And Tales of the Last War is predominantly good (at its worst with the very obvious amnesiac slave escapee story, at its best with the Blade of the Flame prequel). Don't have it on hand, but I would love to see more stories involving the Cyran soldier & halfling cohort in the future. I'm using all of these books as cannon material, though some minute details (such as warforged having tongues) and the Crimson Talisman will be ignored.
Nived 08-29-06, 06:27 PM	I've read: The Dreaming Dark -The City of Towers -The Shattered Land The Dragon Below -The Binding Stone -The Grieving Tree The Lost Mark -Marked for Death -Road of Death The War Torn -The Crimson Talisman -The Orb of Xoriat -The Claws of the Tiger Heir of Ash -Voyage of the Mourning Dawn Tales of the Last War Other than "The Crimson Talisman" all of them 'fit' my view of Eberron. Oh some I liked a lot more than others, and some had minor inaccuarcies... but by and large I can gloss over the imperfections and focus on the good stuff, and there is a lot of good stuff. My favorite series going right now has to be the Dragon Below, the "Rosebud" of the series... "Why did Geth abandon his post?" Really has sunk its fangs into me. I can't wait for the last book in that series. A few of the short stories in Tales of the Last War left me cold or were quickly forgotten. Like I said by and large I think things are fairly consistant. Also I personally liked Orb of Xoriat quite a bit, Praxle is one of the finest Gnome characters in existance...
Euangelion 08-29-06, 10:17 PM	I'm curious as to what pinged your continuity radar in the Dragon Below books, if you're willing to explain.Uh, never mind. When I was reading the book, I was mistaken about the range of the dolgaunt's blindsight (360 feet, the total length of an American football field including the endzones). I thought it was a lot shorter, so I thought that Don had forgotten he couldn't actually see. Just goes to show that Don really did his homework. My bad. Edit: Actually, I do remember one thing. I'm not sure that individual followers of the Cults of the Dragon Below would automatically support other DB cultists. I've always been under the impression that the various cults are as likely to fight each other as anyone else. It just seemed to me that the one main group from the Shadow Marches was able to secure the assistance of the other cultist too easily.
Thanqol 08-29-06, 10:56 PM	My theory on the Dreaming Dark books: I don't think Lakashtai is an Inspired. I think she's the real deal, an untainted Kalshatar. But who says Kalshatar are good? This is where the whole Eberron morality kicks in. She's a Kalshatar, and plans to blast the Dreaming Dark into the next cycle. She's prepared to do something extremely evil to achieve this, but it'll win her the war. A la the Mourning. It'll wreck havoc on the planes again, but the Dreaming Dark will be defeated. As they say, victory at any cost.
Zalaz Mavi 08-29-06, 11:53 PM	Then apparently the market has shifted. "Principles of Fire" is a story about inquisitives - a pair of detectives in Sharn investigating a mystery. It's got a solid Eberron feel, combining magic and noir. Sure, you say, but that's just a short story. Except that as outlined in this thread (http://worldsofdnd.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1303), the next 3-4 book stand-alone series is going to be all about inquisitives... people dealing with mysteries in the cities of Khorvaire, not just vets looking for treasure. A single series is hardly a trend. It is a positive step though...
Hellcow 08-30-06, 02:49 PM	Of course, this didn't stop Keith and James from making some references to their books in PGtE and SoX. While I see it the other way... it's Shattered Land that refers to SoX, not the other way around. Secrets of Xen'drik describes the culture of the sulatar drow, but it does not describe the events of Daine's encounter with them; likewise, with the docent Shira (slight TSL spoiler), SoX gives statistics for the docent so YOUR PCs could acquire her... which obviously means that she doesn't fall into the hands of Pierce. SoX is a canon book, and one I was working on at the same time as The Shattered Land. So yes, in theory, the existence of the sulatar is canon (though as with all things in Xen'drik, your PCs could easily never encounter them). But if you want an encounter between the sulatar and your PCs to be the first time they've ever seen humans? Go for it. The existence of The Shattered Land is, in my opinion, irrelevant unless you want those events and characters to play a role in your game. Admittedly, James did mention Martell in the PGtE, and that's his business. Personally, I don't plan to mention my main characters in material I work on, because they are filling the role I'd want your PCs to take in your game. Of course, side characters - Alina Lorridan Lyrris, Hassalac Chaar, Shira - are another matter.
mhacdebhandia 08-30-06, 03:09 PM	Edit: Actually, I do remember one thing. I'm not sure that individual followers of the Cults of the Dragon Below would automatically support other DB cultists. I've always been under the impression that the various cults are as likely to fight each other as anyone else. It just seemed to me that the one main group from the Shadow Marches was able to secure the assistance of the other cultist too easily. Ahh. Perhaps my opinions have been influenced by reading the second installment, but it seemed pretty clear that the other cultist jumped on-board with the schemes of a powerful creature serving the Dragon Below for the same reason he was attracted to the cult in the first place: the promise of power and wealth as a reward. He gets a little more, hmm, typical of a Dragon Below cultist in The Grieving Tree. It's actually an interesting character development.
Euangelion 08-30-06, 03:41 PM	Ahh. Perhaps my opinions have been influenced by reading the second installment, but it seemed pretty clear that the other cultist jumped on-board with the schemes of a powerful creature serving the Dragon Below for the same reason he was attracted to the cult in the first place: the promise of power and wealth as a reward. He gets a little more, hmm, typical of a Dragon Below cultist in The Grieving Tree. It's actually an interesting character development. I agree. I suppose it might be said that the "problem" is that we don't know more about how he got wrapped up in the DB to begin with, which actually might be an important plot point in the third book, if it ties into that whole massacre thing. Without that knowledge, his devotion to the DB seems a little random. But hey, the Cults of the Dragon Below are nothing if not random!;)
Euangelion 08-30-06, 03:47 PM	Personally, I don't plan to mention my main characters in material I work on, because they are filling the role I'd want your PCs to take in your game. Of course, side characters - Alina Lorridan Lyrris, Hassalac Chaar, Shira - are another matter. Not as a slam on James or anything, but personally I really appreciate this approach. This way people who value knowing "canon" information on Eberron don't have to read every novel that comes down the pike, which also frees them to appreciate each author's interpretation/vision of Eberron on its own merit, rather than as a piece in a complicated tapestry of sourcebooks, web articles, Dragon magazine pieces, and a myriad of novels and/or shortstories. Thus disagreements over the novels are largely differences of visions, not the authors being "wrong" somehow. Of course, sometimes half-elves manifest the Mark of Passage, and then things get really crazy!
Hellcow 08-30-06, 04:14 PM	I'm not sure that individual followers of the Cults of the Dragon Below would automatically support other DB cultists. As a side note, I'd say that quite often they won't, and they may go so far as to oppose one another. While they are often grouped as "Cults of the Dragon Below" by outsiders, many cults may not see themselves that way; it's not a monolithic organization, and the cults are wildly diverse in their beliefs and traditions. However, SOME of them do overlap closely, especially those guided directly by servants of the daelkyr. So essentially, it's something that has to be judged on a case by case basis based on the nature of the two cults.
Flame_Drake 08-30-06, 04:36 PM	While I see it the other way... it's Shattered Land that refers to SoX, not the other way around. Secrets of Xen'drik describes the culture of the sulatar drow, but it does not describe the events of Daine's encounter with them; likewise, with the docent Shira (slight TSL spoiler), SoX gives statistics for the docent so YOUR PCs could acquire her... which obviously means that she doesn't fall into the hands of Pierce. Huh, I never got that Shira was the same docent that Pierce found. Anyhow, I was referring to side character stuff also, like the Sultar, so I think we are on the same page. I also appreciate the fact that the main characters exist in a "parallel" dimension to our own adventures unless we say otherwise. Drake
Charles Phipps 08-30-06, 06:15 PM	Honestly, Hellcow, I don't really much care for that approach with the novels. Mostly because it sort of smacks of Dragonlancism where the player characters are expected to fill the role of the War of the Lance modules. In the end, it ended up that no one did that and most players preferred to take those events as canon. I think there's plenty of room on Eberron for both book NPCs and player character adventurers. If they're going to be non-canon, you might as well take the Sadria of Tyr approach and do something Big to the setting (Dark Sun fans know what I mean) ;-) But I can understand why you did it even if I wouldn't have done it and would personally like to see Daine and company in supplements.
Hellcow 08-30-06, 06:39 PM	I really appreciate this approach. Honestly, Hellcow, I don't really much care for that approach with the novels. It's time to start the Family ir'Feud! We've surveyed one hundred people, and the survey says... um, we don't know yet. I am curious to see what the balance of opinion is, so I've started a poll in this thread! (http://worldsofdnd.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1423)
Donald_Cannith 08-30-06, 07:39 PM	I personally enjoy the books quite a bit andi haveto say Don is a very talented writer if nothing else. I would not be at all upset to see soe of the NPCs in the sourcebooks and personaly ithink the stas on geths amulet would be handy because that is a common character concept for one of my players.
ArcTan 08-30-06, 08:16 PM	Honestly, Hellcow, I don't really much care for that approach with the novels. Mostly because it sort of smacks of Dragonlancism where the player characters are expected to fill the role of the War of the Lance modules. In the end, it ended up that no one did that and most players preferred to take those events as canon. Well, it's difficult if the novels don't respect the idea of "frozen in time" non-continuity -- that is, rather than each novel being a separate timeline starting from the campaign date, novels build on each other to form continuity. It becomes irritating to have read over a dozen novels that, by the end of them, have put the setting through several major political and cosmological changes, and see no trace of that in the RPG setting. That's why comic books developed continuity, after all, despite the fact that this was never the intention of the original comic book creators -- it's just too tempting to want to impose huge changes on the world in order to make the setting more interesting, and then to build off those changes rather than reboot them. And that leads to the same problem -- a huge spaghetti-web of major plot events in tons of different times and places all interacting with each other and making the storyline impossible to follow. Which leads to people trying over and over to "reboot" the setting and ignore parts of continuity and not others and making readers' heads explode more and more. Better just not to start, I think, and do things like the Ultimate limited series where you do one thing, end it, and then do a new thing starting over and with a new set of assumptions.
Charles Phipps 08-30-06, 08:51 PM	Well there's a rebuttal to that as well. There's a reason comic books developed continuity. Because it was better storytelling. Would you read comic books that had every issue being essentially just another show of Doctor Doom menacing the Fantastic Four in a variety of ways without ever him learning anything? Maybe, but I like some hints towards faithfulness. There's also nothing wrong with the way that Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms timelines did advance. While Eberron is set in a "frozen in time" period (which I'm NOT objecting to---merely non-canon book stories), Dragonlance and FR developed a pretty symbiotic relationship with the books. While you have "Troy Denning killed Dark Sun" on one end of the scale, you also have the game setting thriving in large part because the books brought many people into Dragonlance on the other side. While some would find it a major chore to plow through books, that's what new editions are all about and plenty of people would ENJOY reading novels in addition to the setting changes. There's nothing stopping an entire series from beginning and ending within its confines without majorly changing the status quo as well.
Euangelion 08-30-06, 09:58 PM	But making the novels canon would totally infringe on a major strength of the Eberron setting: the real version of Eberron is the one that each individual DM creates, not what's written in a book! The novels therefore become possibilities, not actualities. A novel that describes the restart of the Last War or the discovery of the source of the Day of Mourning would be very interesting (if written well, of course), but countless DMs would be livid if that version became "The Way It Happened" rather than their own individual vision/concept. Again, we're not just talking about continuity between novels and sourcebooks, we're talking continuity between the novels and every Eberron campaign in existence. The poor DMs have enough trouble just keeping up with the new information that comes out of the new sourcebooks as it is (the true source of the warforged, for example.) Edit: not that I'm necessarily advocating a novel that describes either of the stories I mentioned. I was using hyperbole.
Charles Phipps 08-30-06, 10:25 PM	Edit: not that I'm necessarily advocating a novel that describes either of the stories I mentioned. I was using hyperbole. While it's all well and good the points you've mentioned, I hesitate to call that Eberron's "Selling points." There's another campaign setting whose selling point is complete and utter flexibility to the point that it'd be homebrew if it was less detailed. We call this world...Greyhawk! And of course, this is why GREYHAWK IS THE GREATEST SELLING GAME SETTING OF ALL TIME! *crickets chirp* Now, don't get me wrong, I love the Flanaes but in the 25 or so years the campaign has existed there's been absolutely nothing that's happened there. The world still remains largely undetailed and there's been no major changes except for slight raising of Vecna's prominence. This isn't a good thing I'm not suggesting that there be a Prism Pentad series by Troy Denning where Kaius is outed as a vampire, the Lord of blades is killed, Erandis is pushed down, and the Last War is resolved with there being a magic and happy FAIRYLAND emerging. However, the changes you're describing aren't necessarily going to be just restricted to novels either. While Modules don't sell anymore, if Wizards were to hire Keith Baker or maybe me (*cough*) to write The Next War as a supplement that describes ways the Second Great War could happen, proceed, or be resolved. That would be a supplement everyone would want to pick up I think. Even if it was done differently (a set module series or series of events), I don't think progressing the setting timeline should be a dirty word either. DMs wouldn't use existing settings if they wanted to do everything on their own either. There's still plenty of FR games set pre-Time of Troubles but that hasn't stopped people from using the revised campaign editions either. This doesn't even take into account novels where stories may be of great and personal importance but not affect anywhere particularly much. Ravenloft is infamous for the fact that all of it's novels detailed and enriched the game settings they were set in but always returned to status quo. That doesn't mean that Strahd wasn't fleshed out by I, Strahd or Azalin. Heck, if there is a novel series set in Q'barra where a bunch of evil happens and a new King emerges....that isn't necessarily bad either. It would require a new addition eventually or a supplement but I'm sure that book would inspire a lot more games in Q'barra.
Lady Morn 08-30-06, 10:28 PM	But making the novels canon would totally infringe on a major strength of the Eberron setting: the real version of Eberron is the one that each individual DM creates, not what's written in a book! The novels therefore become possibilities, not actualities. A novel that describes the restart of the Last War or the discovery of the source of the Day of Mourning would be very interesting (if written well, of course), but countless DMs would be livid if that version became "The Way It Happened" rather than their own individual vision/concept. Again, we're not just talking about continuity between novels and sourcebooks, we're talking continuity between the novels and every Eberron campaign in existence. The poor DMs have enough trouble just keeping up with the new information that comes out of the new sourcebooks as it is (the true source of the warforged, for example.) Edit: not that I'm necessarily advocating a novel that describes either of the stories I mentioned. I was using hyperbole. I haven't read many of the novels, but the ones I have read don't suffer from what you describe that much. For the most part, the actions and consequences occur primarily at the personal level. Or, in the case of Orb of Xoriat, the world-shattering element occurs "off-the-radar" (meaning, despite the possible repercussions if the protagonists had failed, the events themselves occur on a small scale and common knowledge of those events is non-existant; success just means that the world carries on in blissful ignorance). So, as long as the novels avoid major historical events and stick to the smaller, personal stories that don't impact on the world, I don't see why material from the novels can't be introduced into the gaming sourcebooks. Case in point, I enjoyed the entry on the Sulatar in SoX, and plan to eventually write a campaign around them. However, I would be passionately opposed to a novel where armies of firebinders sweep over the world with fire and sword. For the time being, history should be left to DMs.
Euangelion 08-30-06, 10:38 PM	Let's look at it from a slightly different angle. Eberron is supposed to be about heroes, rare and significant people of destiny who change the course of history. In an Eberron campaign, the PCs are those heroes. In the novels, the main characters are those heroes. If the main characters in the novels become canonical NPCs in the setting, then that could infringe on the special status of the PCs in every Eberron campaign. Now, one could say that the main characters of the novels haven't been "rare and significant people of destiny." But that begs the question of whether or not an Eberron story is faithful to the essense of the setting if the main characters are not "RASPODs". That then opens up other cans of worms, in which perhaps some novels are canonical and others are not, but I doubt WOTC wants to get into that mess.
Charles Phipps 08-30-06, 10:52 PM	Let's look at it from a slightly different angle. Eberron is supposed to be about heroes, rare and significant people of destiny who change the course of history. In an Eberron campaign, the PCs are those heroes. In the novels, the main characters are those heroes. If the main characters in the novels become canonical NPCs in the setting, then that could infringe on the special status of the PCs in every Eberron campaign. A point that I should clarify, I think it's only a fairly small number of players that are threatened by NPC characters. The only place that there has ever been a problem with PCs being overshadowed by novel characters is the Prism Pentad in Dark Sun, Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms. In Dragonlance's case, the main characters of Raistlin and company are the reason it became so popular since the books became so famous that they're pretty much a setting adapted from them even though the modules came first. Interestingly, Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms are also the two most popular settings (prior to Eberron). Eberron is a place where the PCs are the heroes but I think its wrong to also state that they're the only ones. There's organizations like the Wardens of the Forest, the Dark Lanterns, Kalastar, Royal Eyes, and Knights of the Silver Flame. If a novel sets up a daring raid where a secret agent wipes out one of Aurala's plots to restart the last war, is that a story about a hero or a typical mission of a Dark Lantern? Let's face it, worrying about a book series that drastically changes the setting is sort of like worrying about the horse escaping before you own one. No one wants to see another Prism Pentad or Dragons of a Summer Flame. Yet, simultaneously, it was a rare event that created them.
Charles Phipps 08-30-06, 11:02 PM	BTW, I signed up for the forums to post my opinion but am still not approved. Why I'm continuing to post here about it.
Thanqol 08-30-06, 11:13 PM	I highly disagree. If NPCs become other heros, but secondary heros to the PCs, then we have Forgotten Realms. NPCs stay NPCs, damnit!
Lady Morn 08-30-06, 11:29 PM	A point that I should clarify, I think it's only a fairly small number of players that are threatened by NPC characters. The only place that there has ever been a problem with PCs being overshadowed by novel characters is the Prism Pentad in Dark Sun, Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms. In Dragonlance's case, the main characters of Raistlin and company are the reason it became so popular since the books became so famous that they're pretty much a setting adapted from them even though the modules came first. Interestingly, Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms are also the two most popular settings (prior to Eberron). Eberron is a place where the PCs are the heroes but I think its wrong to also state that they're the only ones. There's organizations like the Wardens of the Forest, the Dark Lanterns, Kalastar, Royal Eyes, and Knights of the Silver Flame. If a novel sets up a daring raid where a secret agent wipes out one of Aurala's plots to restart the last war, is that a story about a hero or a typical mission of a Dark Lantern? Let's face it, worrying about a book series that drastically changes the setting is sort of like worrying about the horse escaping before you own one. No one wants to see another Prism Pentad or Dragons of Summer Flame. Yet, simultaneously, it was a rare event that created them. Certainly, the PCs shouldn't be some anamoly and the only ones capable of changing the world. However, I do believe there should be a hierarchy; the bards should be singing about the PCs' deeds, not Joe Schmo who popped out of the woods to battle evil. Both in the context of Eberron as a brand and the microcosm of the individual game, Joe Schmo should be treated as supporting cast or a bit-player in the PCs' legend, not as an equal or superior. Like Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, for example. Although a more experienced and more powerful Jedi than Luke Skywalker, Kenobi merely served as a plot device in what was Luke's story. In that light, Daine, Pierce, etc. should be regarded as 2nd tier when compared against a band of PCs, unless the individual DM feels they should be equal or better than the PCs within that individual campaign.
Charles Phipps 08-30-06, 11:37 PM	Certainly, the PCs shouldn't be some anamoly and the only ones capable of changing the world. However, I do believe there should be a hierarchy; the bards should be singing about the PCs' deeds, not Joe Schmo who popped out of the woods to battle evil. Both in the context of Eberron as a brand and the microcosm of the individual game, Joe Schmo should be treated as supporting cast or a bit-player in the PCs' legend, not as an equal or superior. Like Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, for example. Although a more experienced and more powerful Jedi than Luke Skywalker, Kenobi merely served as a plot device in what was Luke's story. In that light, Daine, Pierce, etc. should be regarded as 2nd tier when compared against a band of PCs, unless the individual DM feels they should be equal or better than the PCs within that individual campaign. I don't disagree with this.
Charles Phipps 08-30-06, 11:39 PM	I highly disagree. If NPCs become other heros, but secondary heros to the PCs, then we have Forgotten Realms. NPCs stay NPCs, damnit! Except that pretty much exposes what I see as the biggest hypocrisy of the whole thing. You can't do novels about a D&D setting without doing up heroes in the story (even historical novels that would expand the setting's heroes like stories about Karrnath or Galifar....and Dragonlance had some awesome ones like the Legend of Huma). Yet, they're going to do novels about the setting because they sell well because people want to read about heroes in Eberron. Yet, if it's some crazy alternate universe, then it's pretty much false advertising that these stories are set in Eberron to begin with. I want to read stories about Eberron set in Eberron.
DBlizzard 08-31-06, 12:24 AM	Yet, if it's some crazy alternate universe, then it's pretty much false advertising that these stories are set in Eberron to begin with. I want to read stories about Eberron set in Eberron. They are set in Eberron, but not necessarily your Eberron. My campaign is an Eberron campaign, as I'll wager yours is. However, the characters from my game are unlikely to appear in your game. Even the ones from the published sources (for example, Demise) likely have major differences. The most common complaint about the Forgotten Realms is the amount of canon material out there, particularly the novels. Players have come to expect that any novel is canon material for the Forgotten Realms. Previous novels have been supported directly in the campaign setting materials, which has helped foster this attitude. WotC has seemed to be specifically trying a different approach. The novels aren't going to be canon. I would be suprised if characters created for novels ever appear in any game supplement (except maybe as a sidebar), and certainly not as a major movers in the setting. That being said, I personally would like to see Dragon articles ala the Rogue's Gallery. Give the stats of the characters in the various novels for those of us who wish to have them appear in cameo roles in our games.
Arcane Guyver 08-31-06, 05:27 PM	Not sure what the big fuss here is. Think of your game as the primary 'set of novels' and go from there. It's just like superhero comics - Firelord is pretty friggin tough, but if he's in Spider-Man's comic, he jobs out pretty hard. Same should go with your games - Pierce may be pretty badass, but if he shows up in your game (if ever), he is still an NPC. Albeit, he's not going to go down nearly as easily as Joe Shmo Commoner, but he shouldn't have action points or play a prominent part in the story. In my game, I might throw in veiled references to the novels, or even use locations (such as the small town that got destroyed in the beginning of Marked for Death).
kaor 08-31-06, 05:53 PM	That's kind of a problem with d&d though. I read the two part story where Spiderman beat up Firelord. I read the two part story where Spiderman defeated the Juggernaut. Well kinda. I've read reprints of Captain America defeating the Red Skull when he had the Cosmic Cube. Great stories. I know Batman is unquestionably, undisputably, the toughest Justice Leaguer. None of that is possible in d&d with the way the game works.
Siberys 08-31-06, 07:00 PM	I recently read book 2 of the lost mark. While it's written well, it just doesn't stick with eberron enough. My main gripes: 1 - Deathless in mournland. 2 - Bleh dwarves - could have been done so much better 3 - Why is a half-dragon elf helping the Argonnessen dragons? The whole reason House Vol was destroyed was because she was a half-dragon elf!!! He's even half green! Ugh! 4 - How come everyone seems to know a ton about Vol? I thought she was über-secretive? How come Kandler knows Vol's a "Half-Dragon Elf Lich who Lives in an island in Lhazaar"? I was under the impression that very few people, even in the Blood of Vol, knew of Vol's existance, let alone where she lived! My favorite Eberron book thus far has been City of Towers. It felt like "Iconic Eberron", which isn't truly surprising. At first I hadn't like the Shattered Land, but, then, I wasn't really reading between the lines. It felt artificial - but now that I look at it a second time, I realize that was on purpose - to knock you off track, so to speak. The others I've read have been Okay, save Voyage of the Mourning Dawn. That was a great read... Cheers, Siberys
Thanqol 08-31-06, 08:45 PM	Except that pretty much exposes what I see as the biggest hypocrisy of the whole thing. You can't do novels about a D&D setting without doing up heroes in the story (even historical novels that would expand the setting's heroes like stories about Karrnath or Galifar....and Dragonlance had some awesome ones like the Legend of Huma). Yet, they're going to do novels about the setting because they sell well because people want to read about heroes in Eberron. Yet, if it's some crazy alternate universe, then it's pretty much false advertising that these stories are set in Eberron to begin with. I want to read stories about Eberron set in Eberron. I disagree. You can do novels in a D&D setting without drastically changing that setting - or if the plot demands that the setting *be* drastically changed, keep that away from canon. If Daine, say, defeats the Dreaming Dark and Il-lavistar (somehow), then should a new suppliment or edition be printed saying that "the Dreaming Dark are all dead, so just ignore all their plots and enteries". It'd make a good story (abliet perhaps an unlikely one), but it'd make a terrible entry for people who *hadn't* read the novels and wanted to make *their* PCs the stars of the story. Thus, I am entirely in agreement with Eberron perpetually starting at YK998, and *any novel* that does *anything* is just *one possibility* of what could happen in the years following 998. 998 is The Year. Up to that point is where canon material goes. After that point, we've only got speculation - in the forms of novels or your own plot. A hero called Daine *could* arise to stop the forces of Madness. But he could not. Threads of the prophecy, whatever - but all the branches start from 998.
Charles Phipps 08-31-06, 09:22 PM	I disagree. You can do novels in a D&D setting without drastically changing that setting - or if the plot demands that the setting *be* drastically changed, keep that away from canon. If Daine, say, defeats the Dreaming Dark and Il-lavistar (somehow), then should a new suppliment or edition be printed saying that "the Dreaming Dark are all dead, so just ignore all their plots and enteries". And what if I don't MIND that Daine killed the Dreaming Dark? What if I want to set my campaign arond the reprocussions of this fact? Why is the aftermath of this such an inferior story to actually overthrowing the Dreaming Dark? Why am I so petty as to worry about the actions of a novel character. And what's wrong with the books showing ways of using that?
(Psi)SeveredHead 08-31-06, 09:43 PM	And what if I don't MIND that Daine killed the Dreaming Dark? What if I want to set my campaign arond the reprocussions of this fact? For every person that's happy with that, there's a person who isn't. Why is the aftermath of this such an inferior story to actually overthrowing the Dreaming Dark? Why am I so petty as to worry about the actions of a novel character. I dunno. But lots of people have that attitude towards FR novels, and the Eberron novels are getting popular enough to get lots of readers, many of whom won't be DMs. And what's wrong with the books showing ways of using that? And what's wrong with the DM coming up with such an idea for themself? They probably shouldn't be copying a novel's plot anyway.
Charles Phipps 08-31-06, 10:07 PM	For every person that's happy with that, there's a person who isn't. And vice versa.
Euangelion 08-31-06, 10:18 PM	And what if I don't MIND that Daine killed the Dreaming Dark? What if I want to set my campaign arond the reprocussions of this fact? Why is the aftermath of this such an inferior story to actually overthrowing the Dreaming Dark? Why am I so petty as to worry about the actions of a novel character. And what's wrong with the books showing ways of using that? Nothing. That was my point. A DM is free to use the novels or not in their campaign. But it's up to the DM. If the novels become canon, then that's one more source of information that a DM who wishes for his/her Eberron to be authentic and yet particular to them that they have to keep up with, one that the PCs are (hopefully) reading as well. As it stands, if in a novel the Argonth is destroyed, it doesn't change the setting. But if the novels are canon, and an author come to a point in which the destruction of the Argonth makes the most sense to tell the best story, then they're faced with the choice of either changing the setting or telling a half:censored: story. Who wants that, really?
Charles Phipps 08-31-06, 10:29 PM	As it stands, if in a novel the Argonth is destroyed, it doesn't change the setting. But if the novels are canon, and an author come to a point in which the destruction of the Argonth makes the most sense to tell the best story, then they're faced with the choice of either changing the setting or telling a half:censored: story. Who wants that, really? Again, presuming that the novels make such drastic changes at this (I also know that most authors don't have this sort of problem.) If they do change the setting then it's A: Only going to matter to Eberron fanboys like ourselves whom eat up these kind of changes. B: Is a simple matter of a Dragonshard or eventual update in a future book.
Euangelion 08-31-06, 10:39 PM	Again, presuming that the novels make such drastic changes at this (I also know that most authors don't have this sort of problem.) If they do change the setting then it's A: Only going to matter to Eberron fanboys like ourselves whom eat up these kind of changes. B: Is a simple matter of a Dragonshard or eventual update in a future book. A. If no one besides us fanboys pays any attention to it, then what's the point of making them canon? B. You and I have a very different idea about what constitutes "a simple matter!" ;)
Zalaz Mavi 09-01-06, 12:11 AM	Nothing. That was my point. A DM is free to use the novels or not in their campaign. But it's up to the DM. If the novels become canon, then that's one more source of information that a DM who wishes for his/her Eberron to be authentic and yet particular to them that they have to keep up with, one that the PCs are (hopefully) reading as well. As it stands, if in a novel the Argonth is destroyed, it doesn't change the setting. But if the novels are canon, and an author come to a point in which the destruction of the Argonth makes the most sense to tell the best story, then they're faced with the choice of either changing the setting or telling a half:censored: story. Who wants that, really? One possible way to mitigate these problems is to consider the model used by the Star Wars franchise. In this model, home games are the "films," and any non-RPG media are the "EU" (Expanded Universe). If you think about it, the impact the EU had on the films was trivial to non-existent; consisting of nothing more than cameos and the odd comment. Just as you can watch The Empire Strikes Back without being required to know what that whole bounty hunters on Ord Mandell thing was about, gamers should be able to RP in Eberron without it being mandated that we read every novel coming down the pike to make sense of the place...
ekomega 09-01-06, 12:08 PM	My main issue with novels is canon for Eberron comes from the idea that FR novels are canon. Anyone can tell you what a horrible problem that is. Elminster does all kinds of crazy stuff that never should've been acceptable, let alone Drizzt and all the other munchkin characters. It's one of the main problems I had with DMing FR, because one player had read ALL the novels, and I had only read the FRCS. I'd hate to see Eberron change that way. Especially since I'm already paying $30 for a sourcebook every 2-3 months, and then I'd have to pay another $7 per novel every 1-2 months. They can only suck me so dry before I die of an empty wallet.
johnnype 09-01-06, 02:20 PM	So from this thread I gather that I should skip The Crimson Talisman as well as The Orb of Xoriat and start with In the Claws of the Tiger? To clarify, I haven't read any Eberron fiction and am looking to get started. I've read everything I've wanted to read set in the Forgotten Realms and am now looking to see what is available and worthwhile in another setting. I'd like to start with the Keith Baker trilogy but I have an unwritten rule that says I don't read incomplete trilogies. I'll buy into the trilogies as soon as book three in anyone of them is published. So, back to my first point, In the Claws of the Tiger then?
eehamburg 09-01-06, 02:57 PM	With regards to what is canon and what is not canon. Shouldn't canon really be whatever you want it to be? Afterall, D&D is about roleplaying and no one is holding a gun to your head saying "You have to do it this way or else!". So what is wrong with and why can't you just pick and chose what you want ... even if novels are canon or not? If you want them to be, then so be it. If you don't, then so be it. It seems that simple. I think that too many people get hung up with the details of the RAW that they forget that as a DM or whatever, you have the right to change it. Afterall ... you are paying your own money for the stuff ... that in itself gives you the freedom to determine what you want.
ekomega 09-01-06, 04:06 PM	So from this thread I gather that I should skip The Crimson Talisman as well as The Orb of Xoriat and start with In the Claws of the Tiger? To clarify, I haven't read any Eberron fiction and am looking to get started. I've read everything I've wanted to read set in the Forgotten Realms and am now looking to see what is available and worthwhile in another setting. I'd like to start with the Keith Baker trilogy but I have an unwritten rule that says I don't read incomplete trilogies. I'll buy into the trilogies as soon as book three in anyone of them is published. So, back to my first point, In the Claws of the Tiger then? I liked the Orb of Xoriat. I guess the consensus is "take it or leave it". Definitely skip the Crimson Talisman. Since the novels in this set aren't related, read them in whatever order you want. Incomplete trilogies sure are annoying, especially with Keith Baker cliffhangers.
Lady Morn 09-01-06, 05:03 PM	With regards to what is canon and what is not canon. Shouldn't canon really be whatever you want it to be? Afterall, D&D is about roleplaying and no one is holding a gun to your head saying "You have to do it this way or else!". So what is wrong with and why can't you just pick and chose what you want ... even if novels are canon or not? The reason for the debate is that the answer to your question is "yes" and "no." Obviously, the DM at home can pick and choose to their heart's content. Yet, while there isn't a proverbial "gun," there is a certain level of blackmail involved in allowing WotC and its novel department to mandate the contents of the setting. I say blackmail because unless we capitulate to those mandates, those of us developing the setting independently will find sourcebooks increasingly useless or else requiring a heavy degree of conversion. In short, divergence will occur. While there is great joy in crafting with your own hands, divergence can also be incredibly frustrating. And the result of that frustration is to stop buying sourcebooks altogether, as they will become irrelevant; and what information that could be relevant, isn't worth paying the cover price for. In a way, this is like having your favorite band break-up; you can still enjoy the albums you have, but there's also a profound disappointment in never being able to buy a new album from them. So, to answer your question, those dissenting against the novels dictating history are trying to avoid this type of situation and keep Eberron everybodys' game and not WotC's exclusive club.
eehamburg 09-01-06, 05:13 PM	While I agree with your statements and your arguement, it still seems to me to be a matter of personal choice. Because in the end WOTC is going to do whatever they are going to do to remain profitable. And in the end, like with any corporation, the bottom line is money. If they can make money doing it, you better believe that at some point in time, they will. Just reality.
mhacdebhandia 09-02-06, 03:17 AM	I would strongly prefer that Wizards of the Coast choose to never "advance the metaplot" of Eberron, either through the novels or the game supplements. If DMs want to use events in novels they enjoy as canon history for their own games, cool! If DMs run campaigns which change the face of Khorvaire in some drastic fashion, and explore the ramifications of those changes in future games, excellent! I just hope Wizards of the Coast doesn't feel the need to present changes to the setting as anything other than hypothetical future developments, several mutually-contradictory options published at a time, like the mooted The Next War supplement looking at multiple possibilities for the renewal of hostilities in Khorvaire, or even straightforward alternate takes on the setting like some of the essays in the Requiem Chronicler's Guide for Vampire: The Requiem.
ArcTan 09-02-06, 07:40 PM	Well there's a rebuttal to that as well. There's a reason comic books developed continuity. Because it was better storytelling. Would you read comic books that had every issue being essentially just another show of Doctor Doom menacing the Fantastic Four in a variety of ways without ever him learning anything? Maybe, but I like some hints towards faithfulness. Continuity doesn't refer to the timeline advancing in a single comic book line or the comic book line making reference to past issues. It refers to the idea that all comic books by the same publisher *in history* all happened in canon, all happen in the same universe and all refer to each other. This becomes a problem, as any comic book writer who wants to do something interesting has to take into account the myriad half-baked ideas of generations of other comic book writers. Given the varying quality of people who write for D&D tie-ins, this is quite a legitimate concern when saying that stuff in novels is canon in your game setting, because novels can say some pretty ridiculously dumb things, especially since they're not constrained by any design or testing departments to make sure that the elements they introduce are playable or usable or game-balanced. Even so, D&D sourcebooks are also of widely varying quality, which is why I insist on limiting what is to be considered "core" to as few books as possible and making it a DM decision what is or isn't canon, and why it's good if sourcebooks avoid referring to each other more than is necessary. The fact that so many things were based on Polymorph was why it was so hard for WotC to take Polymorph out when they finally got sick of it. There's also nothing wrong with the way that Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms timelines did advance. While Eberron is set in a "frozen in time" period (which I'm NOT objecting to---merely non-canon book stories), Dragonlance and FR developed a pretty symbiotic relationship with the books. There was something wrong with it, as, especially in FR, it led to an increasing number of important high-level NPCs becoming integrated into the setting who had no real reason not to take the PCs' place as the primary problem-solvers in their respective parts of the world. It's much harder to be the main character of a story that already has one, or, in FR's case, several. Also, a frozen-in-time setting and canonical novel stories are a contradiction, unless all the novels take place in the past -- frozen in time means that nothing canonical can happen after the date of the campaign setting. While you have "Troy Denning killed Dark Sun" on one end of the scale, you also have the game setting thriving in large part because the books brought many people into Dragonlance on the other side. While some would find it a major chore to plow through books, that's what new editions are all about and plenty of people would ENJOY reading novels in addition to the setting changes. I didn't say there shouldn't *be* novels. I said that novels shouldn't be canon within the setting, and that gamebooks shouldn't make heavy reference to novels and force people to have read the novels to really understand what's going on in the game. And that there shouldn't be a canon policy that forces novel writers to take game balance into account when writing stories, or game designers to take half-baked novel stories into account when writing sourcebooks. Doing that creates both weaker novels and more confusing, more inconsistent game content. I mean, one of the biggest draws for people into D&D is video games like Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, and yet those stories remain firmly non-canon and I don't see people clamoring to canonize them. There's nothing stopping an entire series from beginning and ending within its confines without majorly changing the status quo as well. Yeah, but it's harder to write books that will be interesting to read that way -- at least not the big, pulpy, splashy *interesting* stories that are the ones that draw newbies in in the first place. I think the right frame of mind for newbies who like novelizations should not be "I want to be a different, lesser character in the same setting as these guys!" but rather "I want to *be* these guys -- or, better yet, be a character *I* invent who saves the world *instead* of these guys!"
ArcTan 09-02-06, 07:46 PM	One possible way to mitigate these problems is to consider the model used by the Star Wars franchise. In this model, home games are the "films," and any non-RPG media are the "EU" (Expanded Universe). If you think about it, the impact the EU had on the films was trivial to non-existent; consisting of nothing more than cameos and the odd comment. Just as you can watch The Empire Strikes Back without being required to know what that whole bounty hunters on Ord Mandell thing was about, gamers should be able to RP in Eberron without it being mandated that we read every novel coming down the pike to make sense of the place... But the EU *was* frustrating because it chose to straddle the two policies and make it so that novelists had absolute freedom in the time period before and after the movies but couldn't touch the movies themselves, *especially* the time period to be covered in Lucas' prequel movies. Not that they always followed this rule, but it was frustrating that all the best stories took place in the distant past or the future, while the stuff that most of us were really interested in -- the Empire/Rebellion war that Star Wars was about -- you had a much harder time getting a good feel for. This is even worse with the current situation, where instead of having a 50-year block of time that's untouchable, you have an endpoint *after* which everything is untouchable, which constrains the timeframe of any story. (Moreover, in order to keep canon intact you have to say that whatever happens the world remains recognizable as the one in the ECS by the time of the campaign start date.) Really, it's just easier to throw this out and say that the novels are set in "different Eberrons", where not only can things happen that are outside the setting as described (after the campaign start date) but that explain things the ECS states must remain unexplained (the Mourning, etc.) and that even contradict the setting, if necessary. The Red Dwarf novels were like this, and considered great successes, even though they often contradicted each other and the TV series they were based on.
ArcTan 09-02-06, 07:51 PM	Except that pretty much exposes what I see as the biggest hypocrisy of the whole thing. You can't do novels about a D&D setting without doing up heroes in the story (even historical novels that would expand the setting's heroes like stories about Karrnath or Galifar....and Dragonlance had some awesome ones like the Legend of Huma). Yet, they're going to do novels about the setting because they sell well because people want to read about heroes in Eberron. People want to read about heroes in Eberron when they're reading. They want to *play* heroes in Eberron when they're playing. So you make up characters that they can read about, and then you let them make their *own* characters that they can play. Not so hard to see, is it? It's when you take the characters they read about and force them to play with those characters as their own, other characters that it becomes dumb. It's fun to watch a movie about an action hero, but the video game based on the movie either has to let me *be* the action hero or erase that action hero and make me be a different action hero. It can't keep the same action hero in the video game and make me be some new secondary character who follows him around. I don't want to meet Pierce in my campaign. I want to *be* Pierce, or be an even cooler WF character than Pierce -- Pierce is my inspiration for playing Eberron, perhaps, but not the exciting thing about the setting -- *being a character like him* is. Yet, if it's some crazy alternate universe, then it's pretty much false advertising that these stories are set in Eberron to begin with. I want to read stories about Eberron set in Eberron. It's not a "crazy" alternate universe, just an alternate universe. Dude, we already knew there isn't one Eberron. There are several -- there's one where the Mourning was caused by ghosts of the Giants, one where it was the quori, one where it was House Cannith, one where it was the Lord of Blades... there's even one where the PCs in my personal campaign were the cause of the Mourning. Now, if my campaign was an Eberron campaign, set *in* Eberron, does that mean you have to get me to send my campaign's character sheets to you and make them NPCs in your campaign or it's not in Eberron anymore? C'mon. Just pretend the novels are other people's D&D campaigns (which they basically are). You can have tons of fun playing in a really cool, really evocative campaign with a very creative DM, and then go and DM *your own* campaign inspired by that campaign that's just as cool, and you don't need to steal the other DM's characters or plot hooks to do it. And it's better if you don't.
ArcTan 09-03-06, 12:44 PM	And what if I don't MIND that Daine killed the Dreaming Dark? What if I want to set my campaign arond the reprocussions of this fact? Why is the aftermath of this such an inferior story to actually overthrowing the Dreaming Dark? Why am I so petty as to worry about the actions of a novel character. And what's wrong with the books showing ways of using that? BTW, there's nothing wrong with doing this. You're absolutely free to do this as a DM. I don't think WotC should be encouraging it, because I don't like the idea of ripping plots straight from a novel all that much in the first place, and because novels often intentionally are written so that they don't fit so well into a gaming setting -- things are twisted and bent for the sake of narrative, but it becomes hard to deal with them, then, on the level of gaming. Keith hasn't statted out Pierce's levels so he can make Pierce do whatever cool acrobatics need to be done in a given situation without having to tell us what feat this represents; he hasn't statted out Lei's armor so it can still have an evolving set of uses without having to fit rigidly within a magic item desc. But I still wouldn't object to WotC creating some non-canon supplement that gives possible stat blocks for characters from the novel or possible ways to alter, say, the Mournland to better fit a certain explanation for it or whatever. If they're short, they go in the back of the novel, like some Dragonlance and FR material did, because it's only fans of the novel who really want to see it. If you want to do a *long* tie-in, like converting a novel wholesale into a playable adventure -- something I haven't seen done but could be quite cool, if planned that way from the beginning -- then sell it as a module. Remember that the adventure modules aren't, strictly speaking, canon either -- you generally don't assume that anything that exists in a module you haven't chosen to play actually exists in the setting. (WotC has broken this rule a couple times, but not in any major way.) It's a problem when there's a metaplot, so that Daine destroys the Dreaming Dark, and then we get a new edition of the ECS where the Dreaming Dark is destroyed. If I don't *want* Daine to have destroyed the Dreaming Dark, then I'm now "behind" in the metaplot -- I have to rigorously change tons of things that come out in each new sourcebook, until I've basically forked from the Eberron setting material and don't want to buy it anymore. Repeatedly doing this to fans, as White Wolf did with its metaplot, is a quick way to alienate people and start bleeding off sales.
Charles Phipps 09-03-06, 06:36 PM	Ultimately, what it boils down to me is that it's not going to be long before we've said absolutely everything there is to say about Eberron. I don't like to be the one to bring this up but have you taken a moment to look at the detail that's already been given to the setting? The Five Nations, Races of Eberron, the Explorer's Handbook which more or less handles Xen'drick, and soon we'll have religious supplements, and probably after that the rest of the nations of Khovaire covered. Congradulations, you've effectively stated everything that there is to know about Eberron. Campaign over. The problem with making novels non-canon is that it removes one of the clearest and most interesting sources of new ideas for the setting. Yes, you'll be BEHIND the metaplot if in fact they do a great big epic storyline where Breland is devastated by a Dragon and Boranal dies with his daughter Allusair taking over (to wholesale rip an example from Forgotten Realms). However, changes like that like gave impetuous for new supplements and new ideas to enter the storyline. By making an EVOLVING setting, you have a setting that can continue to have hundreds of stories told about it continually.
mhacdebhandia 09-03-06, 08:33 PM	If it ever gets to the point where they really, truly have said everything there is to say about Eberron, detailed it to such an extent that any further sourcebooks would just be squeezing blood from a stone . . . . . . then I'd be perfectly content to see the line end. I think the only time there should ever perhaps be an advancement in the metaplot is if and when there's a new edition of the game. However, the truth is that such a time is further off than most people think. A lot of people praise Sharn: City of Towers as an incredible resource for running games set in that city; why not look at the possibility of a book like Atur: City of Night or Flamekeep: City of Faith? A book analogous to Power of Faerun could look at ways in which high-level PCs can have an impact on Khorvaire and beyond. They can always come up with sequels to books like the Explorer's Handbook and Magic of Eberron, which don't necessarily describe the world so much as they expand it by adding things (like the psiforged) which weren't included before or locations and such which can be placed anywhere. Even if there is never a proliferation of regional sourcebooks like the Forgotten Realms has had, it's simple to imagine analogies of books like Lords of Darkness, Champions of Ruin, and Champions of Valor for Eberron. Later in the line it's easy to imagine that the Five Nations could be revisited (and it's a good excuse to clear up any continuity errors), to say nothing of the other regional sourcebooks you yourself mentioned. They've been talking about a sourcebook on the dragons of Eberron (i.e. not just "Secrets of Argonessen" but a more general book on the subject), as well as a book on the Last War; a hypothetical "The Next War" as a source of many mutually-exclusive ideas on how the next big war could start would also be a possibility. On the model of a hypothetical "Dragons of Eberron", what about "Fiends of Eberron" covering the rakshasa overlords, the Lords of Dust, their mortal cults and servants, et cetera? There are plenty of options: "Secrets of Khyber", "Planes of Eberron", "Creatures of Eberron", and so on and so forth. Regardless of whether or not any of these are books which any of us here would particularly like to see, there are literally dozens of possible future supplements which don't require Eberron to follow the same path of novel canonicity and metaplot advancement which the Forgotten Realms and other settings have trod before. I would suggest that, at the very least, Wizards of the Coast could continue publishing supplements for Eberron right up to the (as yet unknown) date on which Fourth Edition D&D will be released without resorting to advancing the timeline according to either "novel canon" or "sourcebook metaplot".
ArcTan 09-04-06, 12:11 AM	If they really need to advance the metaplot, they can do so. It will hopefully be a long time before they do so, as doing so uproots the assumptions of many DMs and players. I would still prefer that such a metaplot advancement be limited and very broad in its scope, a single set of changes in the world that enable new adventures -- *not* the whole cycle of the world being threatened, the threat being averted, and a whole new order put in place that the typical epic-scale novel series entails. Again, you can advance the metaplot without ripping off ideas from novels in order to do so. And I still think it's perfectly possible to milk the setting for a long time without advancing metaplot. Advancing metaplot is cheating, in a way -- you're not fleshing out the setting as-is, you're *changing* details of the setting and in so doing creating a new setting that old material can't be used in unmodified anymore. That's why D&D traditionally has tried to link major metaplot advancements to new editions. Remember that WoD's biggest *problem* was its metaplot, and the biggest difference between oWoD and nWoD is that nWoD won't have an evolving metaplot. Metaplot creates more problems than it solves -- sure, you can sell more supplements, but you create resentment as people find themselves to keep on buying supplements in order to "keep up" with the setting.
DBlizzard 09-04-06, 02:01 AM	If they really need to advance the metaplot, they can do so. It will hopefully be a long time before they do so, as doing so uproots the assumptions of many DMs and players. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I expect the sourcebooks will advance the metaplot, and I don't think it's a longtime down the road (although I doubt it will happen in the next year, or even two). However, I think it will be done with options. There won't be one path, there will be many. There might be one sourcebook dealing with "The Next War." There might be another sourcebook dealing with "the Daelkyr invasion." A series of adventures might create a situation where Karnnath and Thrane go to war. Another series might focus on a plot that could cause the release of a Rajah. Those series might have sidebars on how to combine them, but the default will be to assume you only use one.
Charles Phipps 09-04-06, 02:06 AM	I also note that when White Wolf removed it's metaplot. The New World of Darkness became a tepid success at best.
Frederyck 09-04-06, 07:37 AM	I also note that when White Wolf removed it's metaplot. The New World of Darkness became a tepid success at best. As Justin Achilli, developer of Vampire the Masquerade once said (paraphrased as I don't remember the exact quote): "The marketing guys wants us writers/developers to write about [metaplot X involving Lucita, Fatima and Vykos and whatnot] because that's what sells"
Horus 09-04-06, 08:00 AM	[QUOTE=Bluebrush]The Black Pit, that wretched hive of scum and villainy, whose residents only live there to hide from the world, apparently gets enough traffic to justify two airship docking towers. Surely this is because they have a khyber mine? I can easily imagine a couple of house Lyrander ships making regular runs to this Extremely profitable location. It occurs to me that what we see as a proliferation of airships is really just the case of the heroes having the best toys. I don't think this indicates their as common as intercontinental flights.
kaor 09-04-06, 10:03 AM	I'm surprised that so many people are against the setting changing with time and published material. It had never occurred to me that it wouldn't. I think I understand the reasons why some don't want it to, but the setting is totally uninteresting to me if it doesn't have a storyline like FR does. If it is frozen in time, heck for some reason I just don't care about it anymore. If that is what makes the greatest number of people happy I can live with it, but I don't understand it and have little interest in buying any of the material associated with it in that case. And as a tangent kind of thing, what exactly is noire about this whole setting, other than they have transportation modes reminiscent of the early 20th century? Though it seems like everyone in the published books or game modules defaults to operating off of airships anyway. And I would suspect in private games as well.
Joni-san 09-04-06, 12:23 PM	The Dragon Below and the Dreaming Dark series are the best IMO. Don Bassingthwaite's writing is good and he keeps to canon perfectly. Keith does not need comments because he created Eberron (and not all displacer beasts have to talk :P) The Tales of the Last War was a bit of a hit and miss. I liked most of it tho' Edward Bolme has a knack for creating interesting characters (I just love that cat and Jeffers, the Vadalis birdkeeper and the barmaid were fun too). I found the Orb of Xoriat a good read. In the Claws of the Tiger was pulp-y goodnes :D The Lost Mark Series is a bit eh. Voyage of the Mourning Dawn is very good, only complaint being a typo (Bear into Boar) Thieves of Blood was nice too. The Crimson Talisman will not be commented on.
davethebrave371 09-04-06, 02:57 PM	The first Eberron book I read was Marked for Death. I had issues with several points in the book, but overall it felt ok. Not great, but certainly not bad. I actually popped off an eMail to Matt Forbeck...I don't know if he ever got back to me. It's all spoilery, so only read it if you haven't read Marked for Death. 1. On p. 39-40, and again on 104-105, the conversation about the Lost Mark seems to imply that people know there was a 13th Mark and that the elf-dragon breeding program went on, whereas published game material (especially the Eberron Campaign Setting, Five Nations and Explorer's Handbook) seems to indicate that only Aernal elves, and some of the older or more powerful members of the various Houses would know anything about the Mark, and almost nothing about the dragon-elf breeding program. People thought that the Cannith artificer who constructed the Twelve's tower was insane when he told House leaders that the 13th tower was there to represent the Lost Mark, except the Phiarlan elves, who knew what he was talking about, but kept their mouths shut. And that was ages ago. This seems to indicate to me that even if other House leaders may have heard about it, they'd brush it off as fantasy or rumour, especially after all these years. Yet Sallah indicates that it's common knowledge, saying that people say it was the first Mark to appear, and the first to go, but people wouldn't say that, because it's very elite, selective knowledge. I have my theories about why Kandler would know what the Mark was, and the knights would have been informed by Jaela, but why would "people" in general know about it? 2. Why would an Aereni deathless have any Sovereign Host holy symbols in her home (the symbol of Aureon on p. 165), instead of the Undying Court? My own answer to that is that she's insane (as indicated in the book), and likely her own people consider her a dangerous outcast. That being the case, why haven't they done anything to stop her? This "corruption" of the deathless state would be seen, I would imagine, as an abomination by the Councilors of Aerenal, especially seeing as she was once one of the highest ranking among the deathless (p. 175) who has now, as no other ascendant councilor in history according to published material, left Aerenal. Though, again, I suppose she was powerful enough to escape Aerenal and make her own tower in the Mournland, so maybe they didn't want to mess with her (although her own words seem to indicate she'd been living there when it was still Cyre, which also doesn't make much sense, since when it was still Cyre, Aerenal easily could have done something about her then). This just confuses me. 3. House Cannith doesn't bind the elementals to the airships, as Sallah says on p. 186, because the Zilargo gnomes keep it a closely guarded secret. They aren't made in Aundair, they're made in Zilargo. I'm sure some might be, just as some might be made in any country with shipbuilding facilities, but the vast majority are made in Zilargo, again according to published game material (the Eberron Campaign Setting, Sharn: City of Towers, Races of Eberron, Explorer's Handbook and Magic of Eberron all mention it explicitly, and I'm not too sure about Five Nations, but I believe it is still mentioned). Those which are made in Aundair would still be made by gnomes, because they don't want Cannith to know their secrets. I could see the gnomish involvement being downplayed, but if the Lost Mark is common knowledge, then the fact that the gnomes bind things and hide their techniques from Cannith, Lyandar and Orien is probably very widely known, and it isn't presented in published material as something unknown, because Cannith is openly offended that the gnomes refuse to share their secrets. I do love your book, but the inconsistencies are nagging at me. I imagine, due to Kandler's comments, that Esprina's parents were difficult to talk to, but that he did meet them. I think perhaps he may have learned of the Lost Mark, deathless, etc. from Esprina and her family. But Kandler's knowledge aside, that still doesn't explain Majeeda's story (which, perhaps, you'll be elaborating on at a later date, but it seems as though her part in the story has passed us by, so I'd like to know why she hasn't been taken out by Aernal yet), and it still doesn't explain why something that isn't common knowledge is made to look like common knowledge by Deothen and Sallah, and why something that is common knowledge seems to baffle Sallah. I found similar problems in Road to Death, but much fewer. I think he's been learnin' some. I am actually looking forward to Queen of Death, because if he improves yet again, it might actually be fairly good. As to KB's books, obviously they feel very Eberron. I felt that his first book was a little...off on the pacing. Not slow, not fast, just...off. I can't put my finger on it, it just felt awkward. Aside from pacing, I loved the characters, I appreciated the plot twists, and since my campaign began (and until next session when they get their mansion in Ocean View, has been based out of for quite some time) in High Walls, so it gave me plenty of NPCs and ideas for High Walls. The Gates of Night had no such naggin pacing issues for me. I totally loved it, and can't wait for the last one. By the way, last few lines of GoN? I nearly crapped myself. Probably the best ending I've read to a book since the Two Towers or Chapterhouse: Dune. I totally didn't see it coming, and my mind was reeling with the implications and possibilities. I hold the Crimson Talisman in a special place in my mind. It's the place that says, "Do Not Read Again Please" on it. Now, admittedly, it's hard when a setting is not out yet to start writing about it, so I don't fault Adrian Cole for it. But it was erroneous all over the place. It opened with a half-elf (not even the setting's own flavourful khoravar, but an actual half-human half-elf) who had a human Mark...and it went downhill from there. The only redeeming quality was the main villain in Xen'drik. I really liked that part. The Madwood was pretty decent too, actually. So yeah, the Madwood and the main villain. That's it. Not worth reading the book for it. But I bought it an innocent! I leave the blame at the till. However, the War-Torn books have no connection at all except the fact that they belong to the same campaign setting and share the War-Torn moniker. The second book in the series, The Orb of Xoriat, is what I'm all about. That was Eberron and a half. Edward Bolme blew me away, and then I read in the back that he was donating part of the proceeds of the book to Sudan, and I was like, "This man is my kind of guy." Pick up the book. Seriously. It was the most Eberron flavour I've tasted yet. Yummy. Tastes like Xoriat. I (being a starving student who needs to be able to afford the Eberron supplements) have only bought those books, however I got as a gift book two of the Dragon Below. :( I NEED BOOK ONE FIRST! So I haven't read it yet, as I need to purchase Book One. Other than that, when my student loan comes in, Ima buy textbooks, pay my tuition, and then get (in this order) Faiths of Eberron, book one of the Dragon Below, and then the Book Ones of series I've been missing out on. I'll ask for Worlds Afire and Tales of the Last War for Christmas from relatives, so I can afford Dragonmarked, and books Three of the DD and MoD trilogies when they come out.
davethebrave371 09-04-06, 04:06 PM	I hate FR. I really, truly do. I didn't always. But by post-Time of Troubles, I did. I hate Dragonlance. I really, truly do. I didn't always. But by the time I finished Summer Flame (which I loved, by the way), I did. I still love the books that have been coming out for them, because they are often well written. And even though I hated what it did to the setting, I loved Dragons of Summer Flame because it was really well written, and had interesting plot twists and character development and so on and so forth. I never could figure why it was I disliked it so much until Eberron came out and the "Never Advance the Metaplot" flag was raised. I realized...it's because I played in those settings. I hated what it did to them because it took away what I liked about it, and since it was all about me, not about the authors, when I play, that was annoying (and the card game of DL that came out didn't help). Personally, the minute Eberron advances metaplot is the minute that I stop paying attention to future updates. That being said, I want to see setting altering books. Things where, for instane, Karrnathi intelligence in cahoots with Kalashtar unearth concrete evidence of the Inspired-Dreaming Dark link, as well as old historical accounts from Sarlona that retell the events in such a light as to convince all of Khorvaire that the plane of Dal Quor desperately needs the reboot the Kalashtar are striving for. I want to see a book where Vol revives the Mark of Death through House Thuranni, and the Moon of Shadow splits asunder in the sky as the heroes race through Xen'drik looking for the legendary "forge" (which may be a metaphor) upon which the 13th Moon was destroyed on. I want to see a book where the Dragons of Argonessen reveal to Prince Oargev, who has just manifested a strange dragonmark, neither aberrant, regular or Siberys, who actually caused the Mourning and how, and place themselves under his rule, for he is the prophecied return of Siberys. What I don't want is for these books to affect the setting. I want to read two different trilogies by two different authors about the Mourning, and I want both to come to different conclusions. This is the Eberron I love. This is the Eberron I stand behind. This is the Eberron I've been DMing for...wow...coming up on it's anniversary in less than a month. This is what we were promised when the setting came out, and I don't like when people lie to me. It's been discussed in a different thread (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=577431), so I'll stop it there.
Arcane Guyver 09-04-06, 04:08 PM	Finally got a hold of the first Eberron comic book, "Eye of the Wolf." I was told by multiple people that it wasn't very good, and it is riddled with inconsistencies. So paint me surprised when I found no such problems. I highly recommend it; the only low point in my mind is the over-use of narration, which is typical of an author not used to letting visuals tell the story. I guess my only complaint is really that the second issue hasn't even appeared in Diamond Previews yet. I want to read more about Greykell! And what happened to her warforged companion? On Topic: I agree with Dave's comments above. I just want a game setting where you only are required to have the PHB and maybe the campaign setting book. Not the PHB, the campaign setting book, as well as having read four trilogies and some short story compilations to fully understand what is going on.
ArcTan 09-04-06, 04:18 PM	I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I expect the sourcebooks will advance the metaplot, and I don't think it's a longtime down the road (although I doubt it will happen in the next year, or even two). However, I think it will be done with options. There won't be one path, there will be many. There might be one sourcebook dealing with "The Next War." There might be another sourcebook dealing with "the Daelkyr invasion." A series of adventures might create a situation where Karnnath and Thrane go to war. Another series might focus on a plot that could cause the release of a Rajah. Those series might have sidebars on how to combine them, but the default will be to assume you only use one. Right, but multi-metaplots aren't real metaplots. Because you can't have several parallel branches with one ongoing series of books for one assumption about how the Last War restarts and another for how the Riedrans invade Khorvaire and another for how the daelkyr return. Well, you *could*, but it'd be unwieldy. It's be a series of alternate futures, options and modules, *not* a single long continuity.
ArcTan 09-04-06, 04:22 PM	I also note that when White Wolf removed it's metaplot. The New World of Darkness became a tepid success at best. Well, *because* of the ongoing metaplot WoD got more people who got sourcebooks as though they were novels to read and talk about playing more than actually playing. WotC is playing to a market that cares comparatively more about the gaming side of gaming. And, well, not that you can't make money selling sourcebooks that want to be novels instead of sourcebooks that want to be sourcebooks. GURPS has been doing it for years. But GURPS remains a fringe market hanging on D&D's coattails, and I think that may be one of the reasons -- overmuch focus on background setting details, not enough on how to make a *fun game*. I would say the tepid response to nWoD is for a lot of reasons -- I don't think most of nWoD is actually all that *good* -- and, certainly, people who enjoyed buying new sourcebooks as though they were comic books were disappointed, and sure, there are market pressures to keep on churning out new world events to excite everybody. But I think it's a bad idea. It's the sort of thing that spikes up short-term revenue but kills series in the long run. It *is*, literally, what killed oWoD -- not being able to handle the onrushing slide toward the Time of Judgment in such a way that you could keep the setting intact. It's like when movies churn out tons of sequels or TV shows flood the airwaves with oversaturation or any setting goes crazy with the fanservice -- you get lots of excitement in the short term and in the long term you get a big unwieldy setting that's impossible to write or play games coherently in.
ArcTan 09-04-06, 04:28 PM	I'm surprised that so many people are against the setting changing with time and published material. It had never occurred to me that it wouldn't. I think I understand the reasons why some don't want it to, but the setting is totally uninteresting to me if it doesn't have a storyline like FR does. If it is frozen in time, heck for some reason I just don't care about it anymore. If that is what makes the greatest number of people happy I can live with it, but I don't understand it and have little interest in buying any of the material associated with it in that case. I have a question: Are you "interested" in the setting because you like reading up on story updates for it that occur regularly, or because you like *playing games* in it? People who simply read sourcebooks for fun -- I'm not criticizing, it's what I still do with games I don't play in anymore, like the World of Darkness -- like the idea of an ongoing metaplot, sure. Because metaplot is the only plot you get when all you do is read. When you *play games*, however, your *game* provides the actual plot of what's going on in the story, and that's why metaplot is *bad* for actual gamers -- the metaplot begins to intrude upon and disrupt the plot that you yourselves have worked out for your game. Seriously, what happens if we have one long, monstrous, epic series of campaigns (a herculean task, but a really fun one if you can pull it off) that details the beginning and progress of the Next War in Eberron over a couple of years, and the new sourcebooks that come out start *telling* us what happened in the Next War, or start telling us the Next War is over? The new books become useless to us without heavy modification. We start to drift away from the audience the books are aimed at *because* we're really serious, committed players who like making our own impact on the story -- something WotC should be encouraging, not discouraging. That's the whole point -- we don't want Eberron to have its own ongoing story because *we're* writing stories in it. That said, people who simply want to read, not play, have the novels to read, and that's great. The novels should have continuity, fine. The novels can keep going on and on and becoming more intricate in *their own alternate universes*, because that's where intricate, ongoing story created by a single author belongs. We just don't want it intruding on our own storylines we're making up at the table. And as a tangent kind of thing, what exactly is noire about this whole setting, other than they have transportation modes reminiscent of the early 20th century? Though it seems like everyone in the published books or game modules defaults to operating off of airships anyway. And I would suspect in private games as well. It's noir because of a large number of quasi-legal organizations engaging in conspiracies and intrigue for their own, selfish ends behind the background of civilized society, as opposed to having a bunch of obviously good-guy civilizations fighting a bunch of obviously bad-guy civilizations in open war.
davethebrave371 09-04-06, 04:37 PM	Finally got a hold of the first Eberron comic book, "Eye of the Wolf." I was told by multiple people that it wasn't very good, and it is riddled with inconsistencies. So paint me surprised when I found no such problems. I highly recommend it; the only low point in my mind is the over-use of narration, which is typical of an author not used to letting visuals tell the story. I guess my only complaint is really that the second issue hasn't even appeared in Diamond Previews yet. I want to read more about Greykell! And what happened to her warforged companion? On Topic: I agree with Dave's comments above. I just want a game setting where you only are required to have the PHB and maybe the campaign setting book. Not the PHB, the campaign setting book, as well as having read four trilogies and some short story compilations to fully understand what is going on. Well, I don't know if it counts as a novel, but I have it too. Funny story, I eMailed Keith about the only two I could find, and he let me know about another one. Ha! <<When the Karrnathi swordswoman says, she'll take Greykell "to Hell" with her, instead of "to Dolurrh">> The original script SAID Dolurrh, in fact; that's the work of the editor, who probably wanted to make it more accessable to non-Eberron readers. The other thing like that is where the Daughters say something like "searching for an artifact called the Kech Nasaar", which was supposed to be "searching for the powers of the Kech Nasaar"... Kech Nasaar translating to "Keepers of Night" and being a Dhakaani clan, not an object. Luckily they do give the correct name of the artifact later. <<No ghulra, or is there a helmet on top of his already armoured head?>> Well &%#$, I have NO idea how I missed that. Um, yeah, he's wearing a helmet. That's the ticket. -Keith
kaor 09-04-06, 07:26 PM	Arctan, You are totally right. I do read the sourcebooks like regular books. I haven't gamed in about 15 months, and don't really miss it. That leads me to a personal quandary as far as the WOTC books go. For whatever reason, if this isn't really a shared world that includes the novels, then I'm not interested in it and won't be buying the sourcebooks. But if I don't buy the sourcebooks, I guess I'm just interested in fiction in a consistent shared world. But if that's the case, why buy the WOTC books? If they aren't consistent with the sourcebooks, are they going to be consistent with each other? I'm going to have to think about this. Why exactly am I buying WOTC novels? I can read enough of a book at Barnes & Noble to know if I'm going to like it, and there is a lot of competition out there. Liveship Traders vs. anything I've read from WOTC isn't a fair fight. I'm not mad. I'm not even sure I'm going away. But I'm going to think about this a bit. Why do I still buy these things? It's not like I reread them like The Stand or something.
Bluebrush 09-04-06, 07:44 PM	I found similar problems in Road to Death, but much fewer. Biggest one probably being Kandler taking his treasured daughter straight to the home of the culture with the greatest imperitive to kill her and more than enough high level characters to carry it out. Not to mention Sallah cutting it pretty close with code of conduct at least once.
Euangelion 09-04-06, 07:53 PM	But if that's the case, why buy the WOTC books? If they aren't consistent with the sourcebooks, are they going to be consistent with each other? The novel's being consistent with the sourcebooks is important, since the sourcebooks are the framework of the setting itself. But why would novels have to be consistent with each other? Do we really need for an author to need to know the exact dates that Daine and Co are slinking around Sharn in City of Towers just so she doesn't have a certain BBEG doing something somewhere else at the same time in her novel? No thanks. Give the authors the freedom to write the best stories they can, without having to know not only what's in the Eberron novels that have already been written but even in novels that are being written at the same time as theirs! The only way I would support a novel or novels advancing the metaplot would be if Keith were the only one writing Eberron novels, because he's the creator of the setting. But I like Don and James and others writing novels as well, so I totally support keeping the novels noncanonical.
Charles Phipps 09-04-06, 07:54 PM	What I don't want is for these books to affect the setting. I want to read two different trilogies by two different authors about the Mourning, and I want both to come to different conclusions. This is the Eberron I love. This is the Eberron I stand behind. This is the Eberron I've been DMing for...wow...coming up on it's anniversary in less than a month. This is what we were promised when the setting came out, and I don't like when people lie to me. It's been discussed in a different thread (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=577431), so I'll stop it there. That may kill me off Eberron completely. It's a giant f*** you to the fans. "Ha ha! There's no canon so none of these books matter but you'll shell out anyway!" If that's Eberron's future, it's the worst game in D&D!
Euangelion 09-04-06, 08:16 PM	Eberron is a game. The novels are secondary. Let's not forget that. The most important purpose of the novels is to increase interest in playing a live D&D campaign set in Eberron face to face with a bunch of people. Making the novels canon is putting the elemental before the airship. If someone wants to write something that's canon for Eberron, then they should figure out a way to write for a sourcebook, or Dragon/Dungeon, or a web article, in that order, recognizing that many will only consider what's in sourcebooks to be true canon (I recognize all three, personally, but I respect those who don't.) If someone wants to tell a good tale of dark heroes and brave villains set in Eberron, then sure, write a novel, but don't expect people to incorporate the events into their campaigns.
davethebrave371 09-04-06, 08:20 PM	That may kill me off Eberron completely. It's a giant f*** you to the fans. "Ha ha! There's no canon so none of these books matter but you'll shell out anyway!" If that's Eberron's future, it's the worst game in D&D! I think it'd be a bigger censored you to the fans to go back on what they've already declared. I agree with the viewpoint that you could advance it forward a few years with 4.0 (which better not be for another 8-10 years at least anyway), but before that, I don't expect them to advance it even a year. I think what you mean is it's a giant expletive you to you. That's much different. And honestly, I don't see why that's a "ha ha", since that sounds like the perfect kind of creative outlet. Having a whole 10,000,000+ year history as a spring-board to do whatever you want is very appealing to an author. No need to keep in line with the other stuff, because it's all alternate realities from a single starting point. I like that idea, because that feels more like D&D than FR or DL these days. Again, stagnation is cool for some people, but I prefer a creative springboard. If what you suggest is Eberron's future, it's already as bad or worse than FR or DL currently. I choose not to believe that.
ArcTan 09-04-06, 08:42 PM	That may kill me off Eberron completely. It's a giant f*** you to the fans. "Ha ha! There's no canon so none of these books matter but you'll shell out anyway!" If that's Eberron's future, it's the worst game in D&D! That's so stupid. It's the attitude that got comic books into this mess in the first place. "Canon" is a dumb idea in the first place. We should only use it when we *need* all books to agree with each other, like if we're trying to create a balanced environment to use different rules from different books to play a mechanically balanced roleplaying game. This has no bearing on simple fiction at all. It can be *fun* to have fiction that exists within a certain degree of continuity, but only up to a point, and it can be *more* fun to have fiction that disrespects "canon" or "continuity" and simply tries fun stories where it can. You know how many novels there are that take place in the universe of, say, Arthurian mythology? You know how many of them contradict each other constantly simply because there's no central authority who can say what the "real" Arthurian mythos is, and in reality it evolved from a bunch of separate folk tales? And yet I'm still a huge fan of the Arthurian mythos and those fantasy books that reference it. And I'm more of a fan of the Arthurian mythos *as a whole* than of any individual author's individual, self-contained "canon" for how she sees it. I don't think the fact that Arthurian mythology, like *any* mythology -- Greek, Hindu, Egyptian, Judeo-Christian, American folk myths, etc. -- is riddled with contradictions, elaborations, inconsistencies and whatnot demeans it. It's one set of really cool ideas, and a bunch of separate really cool individuals tried building upon it, accepting some elaborations created by some who came before and rejecting others. That's what a good mythology does. The insistence on continuity is dumb. It really hurts the potential for good stories to be told -- it means that if I want to write a book about what happens in the Star Wars universe if Luke turns to the dark side and joins Vader, I *can't*, or I can't unless I get George Lucas to put an "Alternate Universe" stamp on it. What's worse than that, it means that if I want to create some completely random story that takes place in the future of the Star Wars universe, I have to read the stupid nonsense in the New Jedi Order series and take all its crap into account before I can tell my own story. A lot of stupid harm has been done because of this natural human urge to try to pretend that this other world is "real" and therefore must be a single world with a self-consistent history. Dude, it's what leads to people being Comic Book Guys. "In book #2 the costume looked slightly different from in book #13! This series is therefore worthless!" It leads to people forgetting that the point of stories is the act of telling each individual story itself, and that continuity is only important insofar as it makes each individual story worthwhile. FWIW, DC's Elseworlds line, and Marvel's What If? and its Ultimate lines, have all been quite popular because they unchain writers from this continuity we've come to expect. The whole *point* of the Ultimate lines is that they erase all previous continuity, and that's why I'm a huge fan of them. I don't feel they demean the franchise at all -- they redeem it, by taking what's good and worth doing about them and leaving behind all the dross they've built up over the past few decades. I'd really love to see someone do an Ultimate Forgotten Realms that erases most of the history of the novels and rebuilds the setting from scratch as a *consistent setting*, for instance. It's particularly stupid because of what D&D is. Are you saying that what actually *happens* in a campaign -- the epic story of how y'all save the world from the Dreaming Dark by going here and doing this and trying out that innovative new technique -- is worthless because it's not "canon"? That because we came up with it among six people it's automatically inferior to something that millions of fanboys have read about in an officially sanctioned source? Dude. I read novels because they're *fun to read*. They "matter" as long as I'm reading them and as long as they tell a good story. Just as any given D&D campaign or module I play in only "matters" as long as I'm playing them and they're a fun experience. Whether something is "canon" has nothing at all to do with whether it matters. I don't need to know a novel will be the source of fifteen other novels by other authors, who will probably write stories worse in quality, to think that the novel matters while I'm reading it.
davethebrave371 09-04-06, 09:19 PM	Well said, ArcTan (although Ultimate is already showing those kernels of MUST BE CONSISTENT WITHIN ULTIMATE THEREFOR WE ARE SHOOTING OURSELF IN THE FOOT), however Monsieur Phipps has a valid opinion, and I doubt you'll be changing his mind anytime soon. We can agree to disagree, and then you and I can agree that WotC should hold to what they've already been supplying us with: no advances in metaplot. If it ever changes though, it better be in a twelve chapter game supplement with each chapter being a different way to resolve the Mourning. :D
(Psi)SeveredHead 09-04-06, 10:16 PM	That may kill me off Eberron completely. It's a giant f*** you to the fans. "Ha ha! There's no canon so none of these books matter but you'll shell out anyway!" If that's Eberron's future, it's the worst game in D&D! Not to me it isn't, and I'm an Eberron fan.
AvonRekaes 09-04-06, 10:21 PM	Personally, I see no problem with the novels not being canon in regards to sourcebooks. However, I'd be a little sad if Keith decided to write another trilogy after Dreaming Dark and completely disregarded anything Daine and Co. ever did, or their entire existance for that matter. Sometimes, I just like to feel that the story will continue and go on. It has nothing to do with me playing DnD. I've already altered my Eberron Campaign in ways that I see fit (added a few races, made some groups more powerful and others weaker than they are implied to be in the EBCS). This has no bearing on my need for canon within novels. Personally, I think it would be great if every Eberron author had his or her own canon, like their own campaign. From what I've seen so far, Keith is already doing this. Greykell from Eye of the Wolf is a minor character in DD: City of Towers, and DD: Gates of Night might have something to do with the artifact she picked up in the first issue (I believe it was called the "key to the gates of night" or something). (BTW, another inconsistency with the comic: Warforged are immune to energy drain, regardless of what the vampire says.) To me, this is awesome. Say what you will about Drizzt and FR, but i actually like that there's about 13 books directly related to him and his companions. The normal bitterness of that bittersweet feeling from finishing a book isn't there, leaving only the sweet. Normally when you finish a stand-alone book, you have to say goodbye to all those characters you've grown attached to. Canon says you're just saying "see ya later". I don't think "Canon" is a bad word. I like canon in my fiction. But that's an entirely seperate issue from canon between the games and the books. How long have drow clerics of Lolth been entirely useless as BBEGs for FR DMs who want to stay canon? That kind of stuff should NEVER happen in Eberron. But it doesn't mean I don't want to see any canon at all.
ArcTan 09-05-06, 12:33 AM	Yes and no. Yes, a great big overarching story that's well-connected and self-consistent can be a great thing. But it's not the only way to do something cool. There are some authors who write short stories that are all the more awesome because we *know* we will only get this one glimpse into the world of the story and that glimpse is all we need to know everything we need to know. On the other hand, having one author make a whole storyline on his own where he develops tons of different ideas in parallel within a single consistent timeline? I've always been up for that. I'm even okay with authors giving shout-outs to each other's work and borrowing ideas from each other that they like -- I wouldn't mind if Keith and Don decided to do a crossover with each other's characters one time. But crossovers ought to stay *just crossovers*. What I don't like is this *company* continuity, where the single publisher keeps on keeping the same universe going long after the original author or authors are gone. Because sometimes it results in new, exciting ideas with the same characters and situations, but more often it's a marketing ploy where the same ideas are recycled over and over to make a buck, with the quality of the stories degenerating as the original author moves on to greener pastures and/or starts running out of ideas, and the newer stories are more about churning out something new to make another buck. (This is how I look at a lot of the new Dragonlance, I have to say. *Including* Margaret Weis' own stuff.)
davethebrave371 09-05-06, 12:55 AM	I think that's what AvonRekaes was getting at. Keeping it consistent within the fiction, but having that be seperate from the campaign for sourcebooks.
a_psh 09-05-06, 01:58 AM	There are some authors who write short stories that are all the more awesome because we *know* we will only get this one glimpse into the world of the story and that glimpse is all we need to know everything we need to know.All the stories I've read that have actually moved me and affected me and made me think differently rather than just entertained me have been these kinds of one-shot universes: bubbles that exist only for the lifetime of the tale. Hell is the Absence of God, The Night We Buried Road Dog, that kind of thing. Stories where world (either a new one or the skewed projection of our world) and theme are so tightly coupled that there's just no reason to extend it past what is needed, past this tiny crystalized drop of perfection. World and theme are together and practically indistinguishable. Indeed, there's a reason why pretty much every famous writer ever didn't use recurring characters. Franchise settings and long-lasting characters really are just entertainment, in comparison. This is why Vampire sucked, for example... A vampire RPG (lower-case) has a lot of potential for thematic exploration. It asks you to find meaning and joy in a world where you know that the most moral action you can ever take is to just suck it up and meet the sunrise head-on. It allows you to explore the parasitic existence that a lot of "first-worlders" consciously or subconsciously fear they may be living -- "Do I really do anything other than *take* from the world?" Now throw in nature vampires and magic vampires and freak vampires and artsy vampires and a vampire society with vampire laws and a vampire anti-society with vampire anti-laws and an apocalyptic plot and a world with a lot of enduring factions and characters and events and... it comes out flat. Terribly, terribly, flat. Even just using a published setting at all brings you dangerously close to this edge. Adding a metaplot completely sends you over the edge. Keith and his collaborators did an excellent job maintaing the theme when they canned and packaged the setting to make the ECS. This is why I've learned to use Eberron splatbooks selectively or not at all, for example: because, just like the Vampire splats, they do try to tear and expand and fundamentally ruin this nice little setting/theme you've built up. My first Eberron campaign was pretty fun for everyone involved. But it was very much a traditional D&D campaign: it ran a long time and was kinda unfocused and there were some cool things and then it kinda petered out. The next time I did it, since I was working under time constraints (game must finish by this date), I had a purpose in mind. It wasn't just a D&D game. It was a pulpy crime drama with an undercurrent of noir-ish intrigue and betrayal. I decided from the get-go that I wanted to explore what the players thought of their characters' roles in society and how far they would go to do the moral thing. It was a blast. My next game was a grim revenge drama with a lot of horror and moral dissolution. Again, a specific focus on trying to examine feelings of guilt, isolation, and betrayal. The game went pretty well, mostly losing momentum when only I lost that focus. I liked all three games. But I only felt like I actually accomplished something, learned something, gained something from the last two. The ECS has some of that in it, too. A remarkable amount for a sourcebook. The other Eberron products? Aside from S:CoT, not so much. As far as I'm concerned, putting a metaplot into the game is like ripping that right out.
ArcTan 09-05-06, 02:32 AM	All the stories I've read that have actually moved me and affected me and made me think differently rather than just entertained me have been these kinds of one-shot universes: bubbles that exist only for the lifetime of the tale. Hell is the Absence of God, The Night We Buried Road Dog, that kind of thing. Stories where world (either a new one or the skewed projection of our world) and theme are so tightly coupled that there's just no reason to extend it past what is needed, past this tiny crystalized drop of perfection. World and theme are together and practically indistinguishable. Indeed, there's a reason why pretty much every famous writer ever didn't use recurring characters. Franchise settings and long-lasting characters really are just entertainment, in comparison. I wouldn't go that far. I would say that, for instance, an individual Superman story can be art. I just don't think that it's at all possible that *all of Superman*, from Action Comics #1 to the new movie with Brandon Routh, can be taken collectively to be "art". Collectively it's this big tottering commercial franchise that has overall been pretty dumb a lot of the time. But you *can* use a character that's been used a lot before and take all the resonance that that character has had in story upon story in the past and use that to make your own artistic statement. What you can't do, though, is do this while being perfectly faithful to every single hack who's come before you trying to do the same thing but with less talent, less ambition and less success than you. You have to pick and choose what elements you use. Just as the majority of what we call the Greek myths isn't really art, and wasn't originally intended as such -- like all myths it was just stories people were telling each other. But the universality of the themes inherent in telling a story and the power of a symbol or character who's very old and instantly recognizable means that an individual artist can *make* a great artistic work out of a particular myth. In so doing he puts his individual stamp on it, though, and makes it his particular telling, and it is that telling that's artistic, not the myth-as-a-whole. This is why Vampire sucked, for example... A vampire RPG (lower-case) has a lot of potential for thematic exploration. It asks you to find meaning and joy in a world where you know that the most moral action you can ever take is to just suck it up and meet the sunrise head-on. It allows you to explore the parasitic existence that a lot of "first-worlders" consciously or subconsciously fear they may be living -- "Do I really do anything other than *take* from the world?" Now throw in nature vampires and magic vampires and freak vampires and artsy vampires and a vampire society with vampire laws and a vampire anti-society with vampire anti-laws and an apocalyptic plot and a world with a lot of enduring factions and characters and events and... it comes out flat. Terribly, terribly, flat. Yeah. Good WoD campaigns involved being fiercely committed to slicing away all the dross that existed in the setting and deciding what *your* story was going to be about. Which few people are really good at doing. Even just using a published setting at all brings you dangerously close to this edge. Adding a metaplot completely sends you over the edge. Keith and his collaborators did an excellent job maintaing the theme when they canned and packaged the setting to make the ECS. This is why I've learned to use Eberron splatbooks selectively or not at all, for example: because, just like the Vampire splats, they do try to tear and expand and fundamentally ruin this nice little setting/theme you've built up. Yes. This is the frustrating thing about writing in a shared world, especially a commercial franchise of a shared world. Fanfic authors, after all -- who might be labelled the least "creative", most "canon"-dependent species out there -- are famous for being choosy about what's canon and what isn't, and lamenting the way the real writers destroy their assumptions halfway through when they're working on something, especially if their source material is something like a TV show or a film franchise. My first Eberron campaign was pretty fun for everyone involved. But it was very much a traditional D&D campaign: it ran a long time and was kinda unfocused and there were some cool things and then it kinda petered out. The next time I did it, since I was working under time constraints (game must finish by this date), I had a purpose in mind. It wasn't just a D&D game. It was a pulpy crime drama with an undercurrent of noir-ish intrigue and betrayal. I decided from the get-go that I wanted to explore what the players thought of their characters' roles in society and how far they would go to do the moral thing. It was a blast. My next game was a grim revenge drama with a lot of horror and moral dissolution. Again, a specific focus on trying to examine feelings of guilt, isolation, and betrayal. The game went pretty well, mostly losing momentum when only I lost that focus. I liked all three games. But I only felt like I actually accomplished something, learned something, gained something from the last two. The ECS has some of that in it, too. A remarkable amount for a sourcebook. The other Eberron products? Aside from S:CoT, not so much. As far as I'm concerned, putting a metaplot into the game is like ripping that right out. I think metaplot games only work *despite* the metaplot -- no one actually starts a campaign (in my experience) eagerly waiting and hoping for a new sourcebook to come out in the middle of their campaign sometime that year and change all their expectations. Far from it -- it's usually defined what books go in the campaign at the beginning of the campaign, and newly published books that come out that year can't be used until the campaign is over, or at least until the campaign has passed through a major stage and the DM has approved some new changes. No one says, "Let's wait and see what happens when the new edition comes out and see how the world changes!" For one thing, it wouldn't work -- you'd have to be a genius of a DM to align the events in your campaign with the metaplot going on during your campaign.
Charles Phipps 09-05-06, 02:34 AM	As far as I'm concerned, putting a metaplot into the game is like ripping that right out. For me, a metaplot that actually brings characters into dealings with what Eberron is about opens people up to possibilities they might not have considered before. I played Ravenloft like regular D&D until Bleak House and The Evil Eye.
ArcTan 09-05-06, 02:39 AM	For me, a metaplot that actually brings characters into dealings with what Eberron is about opens people up to possibilities they might not have considered before. I played Ravenloft like regular D&D until Bleak House and The Evil Eye. You can do this without metaplot in sourcebooks (simply *reveal* things that people hadn't seen before without saying "This happened! For reals!") or else do this with the *plot* of novels, where things that happen as alternate possibilities in novels can serve as inspiration for campaigns. Making a universal advancement in metaplot *forces* everyone to start adopting these possibilities they might not have considered before. (I.e. it'd be a cool possibility to make the Lord of Blades and Erandis d'Vol form an alliance -- I don't want to see all Eberron books start making the assumption that this alliance exists and building off of it, making each new book increasingly useless to me now that I've decided the LoB and Erandis hate each other and are at war in my campaign.)
Charles Phipps 09-05-06, 02:54 AM	No one FORCES you to do anything in book updates though. You can ignore updated material.
Frederyck 09-05-06, 03:16 AM	Regarding metaplot and continuity, the so-called Cthulhu Mythos is a fairly popular "franchise" that adhers to no such constraints. The game Call of Cthulhu outlines a lot of monsters and dangers to the World, and quite frankly, a lot of the published novels and adventures fundamentally change everything. Whether it is Nyogtha that seeps up from the Earth's pores and wreaks maddening havok or if it is Ghroth the Harbinger, the planet sized entity that nears our home in the galaxy bringing an end to all civilisation, reality is basically re-set in the next adventure or sourcebook. If the heroes fail, the reign of Queen Nitocris will be absolute, but no mention of her ghastly plots are present or even bothered with in other books. All sourcebooks, novels and short stories can be considered canon, as far as the word even matters to the setting, and it still works very well. Gaming in the Lovecraft world is obviously vastly different from D&D, but the point is that continuity is thrown out the window in favour of what works right here, right now. And it does work very well. Lovecraft's ability as a writer can be (and has been) discussed endlessly, but his lasting legacy is the creation of his fictional world of horror where everyone can contribute, and where no real heed is paid to continuity or metaplot. August Derleth tried to impose a rigid set of rules on the "Cthulhu Mythos" (his name), and failed miserably. The beauty of the canon is that it is inconsistent.
Charles Phipps 09-05-06, 03:27 AM	They also made Delta Green, which was every bit as successful as the mainline book which "wrapped up" the original 1920s adventures.
Frederyck 09-05-06, 03:41 AM	Well, Delta Green was also a veritable cornucopia of plot ideas and different stories that didn't necessarily mesh with each other particularly well if you wanted seemless metaplot. The notion of Hastur as a malign artist-influencing presence/madness rather than a large lake dwelling monster, for example has really nothing in common with the idea of the Mi-Go creating false Roswell-aliens, or the network of Mordiggian-worshipping ghouls in Russia plagueing the GRU. And Delta Green wasn't published by Chaosium but by Pagan Publishing, and most of the DG story lines clash heavily with Cthulhu Now products from Chaosium. Not that those clashes ever mattered... :)
Charles Phipps 09-05-06, 04:44 AM	I think I'll agree to disagree about that Frederyck re: Delta Green plotlines. No, the Karotechia may not have anything to do with Majestic-12 but that doesn't change that a Delta-Green operative could face one after the other. ;-) And I think the point was Delta Green took the original "metaplot" of the Innsmouth Raid (which was a massive military operation in Chaosium while a minor government act in Lovecraft) to become the basis for their campaign. That's how good metaplot works I think. It takes things to their natural conclusions and doesn't step on player's toes.
Frederyck 09-05-06, 05:01 AM	Oh, yes, I can see your standpoint, and I may have leaned too heavily towards the "clashes-of-plot" within DG, but my point is that Delta Green notwithstanding, a sourcebook or novel for example, detailing the British Intelligence Service with no traces of Shan-infestations ever, wouldn't be incorrect. The whole point of the Mythos as a non-metaplot vehicle is that yes, you can define your own metaplot within a story/sourcebook, but other "canon"-publications can turn everything previously written completely upside down, changing lots and ignoring more without being wrong. A telling example is the over-abundance of the Necronomicon. Lovecraft made it pretty clear that the book was exceedingly rare. Yet, in almost every story, the book pops up somewhere. Does that mean that there are hundreds, if not thousands of Necronomicons in existance? Of course not. The canon just changes for every story written. In one tale the accursed Latin translation of the book is in a hidden section of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris; in another story, the book can perhaps only be found in the library of Celaeno or in the back of a small used-book store in Soho, London. But to return more On Topic - I wouldn't mind some metaplots within future Eberron sourcebooks, especially since I am quite crap at developing large scale politics in my own game. The Eberron novels, however, shouldn't further any plots, I think. That is where I lost my footing in the World of Darkness, and stopped caring. Had they merely provided snippets within the sourcebooks and adventures, I would have been fine, but the sheer volume of strange storylines in the books was just too much.
Charles Phipps 09-05-06, 05:27 AM	I think the problem with White Wolf's metaplot was the fact that 90% of the metaplot was crap. Pardon my language. I see the problem some people have with it. I wouldn't want Sharn randomly destroyed either but I do think that 'events' like those in Forgotten Realms can be extremely good. Maybe not Time of Troubles but a Novel detailing a Riedran invasion and a supplement that talks about how to handle it? I could dig that. Especially if the supplement also says that the events could entirely be optional.
Frederyck 09-05-06, 07:04 AM	I see the problem some people have with it. I wouldn't want Sharn randomly destroyed either but I do think that 'events' like those in Forgotten Realms can be extremely good. I hear you. The problem with this kind of thing is that it is quite difficult to accomplish without über-NPCs, ie the heroes of the stories as presented in the novels. And while I wouldn't mind something detailing say, the Riedran invasion perhaps, I definitely would stop buying the stuff if El ir'Minster or Driz d'Urden appears. My problem with metaplots have never been the actual stories themselves, but the larger-than-life heroes/anti-heroes that come with the territory, be them from the Forgotten Realms or of Clan Lasombra.
davethebrave371 09-05-06, 09:16 AM	Maybe not Time of Troubles but a Novel detailing a Riedran invasion and a supplement that talks about how to handle it? I could dig that. Especially if the supplement also says that the events could entirely be optional. And that's what I've been saying all along. As long as it's optional, I don't see what the problem is. Making it part of the metaplot officially is what I'm against. I'd love to see two different sets of Riedran invasion novels, one subtle and covert, and one more of a "Well, they know too much, we can't do it the wait-a-while way." Then have the supplement have two sections: one for the "Dark Heart of Dreams Trilogy" and one for the "Nightmare Invasion" trilogy. They could easily share PrCs and Feats, and then have sections reference to them as filling completely different roles, and originating in completely different ways. Alter the flavour around the mechanics. Now I'm rambling, but anyway, I think making all the books optional is a good way to go. Personally, I have so far decided that the comic series (as far as it is right now, which is only one issue) and the Dreaming Dark series are canon, as well as Book 2 (but not 1) of War-Torn. These events either have happened, are happening or will happen in my campaign, in all cases likely off stage (for instance, I doubt they'd even hear through the remotest grapevine about anything related to the events in Orb of Xoriat, since none of them have any connections with Aundairian religious orders, Thranish arcanists, Cyran resistance groups or Zilargan scholars).
Frederyck 09-05-06, 09:34 AM	The difficulties with the "different versions of the same story"-approach is that you basically alienate most of your fanbase. Even though the final books for each game in the World of Darkness were eagerly awaited (Gehenna, The Apocalypse etc), they presented not the truth about everything, but several options of the same story, which meant that lots and lots of people felt cheated. They wanted the truth - what really happened. I appreciated the gesture from White Wolf that a single true ending wouldn't have suited all palates, but that plan merely resulted in buyers and would-be buyers being dissatisfied with the whole effort. What I am trying to say is that to give several options won't please most people. And from a marketing view it is a nightmare. You will be cutting your sales base into tiny segments where each version of a story will have it's adherents, and they most likely won't buy any products not relating to that particular branch. On the other hand if all sourcebooks will give nods to all versions, the amount of useful information for each buyer will shrink to merely a part of the book, even if the variants share some bits of it. So don't expect this to happen. Ever. The reason WW could even attempt it was that they were closing down that metaplot/world entirely. They actually rebooted everything and introduced new mechanics, (sort of), new storylines, and a new world to play with. And no metaplot.
davethebrave371 09-05-06, 09:53 AM	The difficulties with the "different versions of the same story"-approach is that you basically alienate most of your fanbase. Even though the final books for each game in the World of Darkness were eagerly awaited (Gehenna, The Apocalypse etc), they presented not the truth about everything, but several options of the same story, which meant that lots and lots of people felt cheated. They wanted the truth - what really happened. I appreciated the gesture from White Wolf that a single true ending wouldn't have suited all palates, but that plan merely resulted in buyers and would-be buyers being dissatisfied with the whole effort. Are those market figures accurate across the board? Because I know that I, personally, was more happy with the Apocalypse books than any other supplement I'd ever purchased from White Wolf. I don't even play Werewolf and I snapped up Apocalypse after reading the finale options for Vampire and Mage, just so I could somehow weave them all together (or even just to read the genius). And maybe it's just oWoDers in my area, but I don't think I know anyone in my community's gaming scene who was disappointed by those books (I even know a pirate who actually went and bought then after downloading them). I think WotC is just tapping into that awesome energy (if not quite the quality, but that takes time). What I am trying to say is that to give several options won't please most people. And from a marketing view it is a nightmare. You will be cutting your sales base into tiny segments where each version of a story will have it's adherents, and they most likely won't buy any products not relating to that particular branch. On the other hand if all sourcebooks will give nods to all versions, the amount of useful information for each buyer will shrink to merely a part of the book, even if the variants share some bits of it. So don't expect this to happen. Ever. The reason WW could even attempt it was that they were closing down that metaplot/world entirely. They actually rebooted everything and introduced new mechanics, (sort of), new storylines, and a new world to play with. And no metaplot. If I had to choose between advancing the metaplot for sure, and no metaplot, I'd go no metaplot. However I think it's totally feasible to have a book called "Secrets of the Mourning" with each chapter being a different version of what happened, and then a PrC/Feat chapter and an Equipment chapter. Then don't reference it again in future supplements. Just keep it as it's been so far. No one knows. That's perfect! But if they came out with a "Secrets of the Mourning" book that only has one option, then it becomes canon no matter how many "THIS BOOK IS TOTALLY ONLY ONE OPTION AMONG MANY DMS PLZ READ THIS IS JUST A BOOK, NOT YOUR BRAIN" warning there are all over it. If it has two options, then it becomes canon to have options, which is far better for things like the Mourning, the Next War, anything to do with planar incursions, or the origins of the warforged (and oh how I wished that SoX had two or three different stories in it, even if each had taken up maybe a half a page sidebar, that would have only been a page and a half extra).
Euangelion 09-05-06, 10:25 AM	I see the problem some people have with it. I wouldn't want Sharn randomly destroyed either but I do think that 'events' like those in Forgotten Realms can be extremely good. Maybe not Time of Troubles but a Novel detailing a Riedran invasion and a supplement that talks about how to handle it? I could dig that. Especially if the supplement also says that the events could entirely be optional. I can agree with this as well.
ArcTan 09-05-06, 01:20 PM	No one FORCES you to do anything in book updates though. You can ignore updated material. Sure, but it's like how no one FORCES you to accept the plotline where Superman died and came back to life in the comics. The problem is that all the newer books keep on making reference to it and incorporating it, so the number of things you have to fudge or alter to keep that plotline out of your Eberron increases, until it becomes not worth it to buy new books anymore, especially if *each* new book starts putting in more metaplot.
ArcTan 09-05-06, 01:31 PM	The difficulties with the "different versions of the same story"-approach is that you basically alienate most of your fanbase. Even though the final books for each game in the World of Darkness were eagerly awaited (Gehenna, The Apocalypse etc), they presented not the truth about everything, but several options of the same story, which meant that lots and lots of people felt cheated. They wanted the truth - what really happened. I appreciated the gesture from White Wolf that a single true ending wouldn't have suited all palates, but that plan merely resulted in buyers and would-be buyers being dissatisfied with the whole effort. But this is only true if you've already established the *idea* of metaplot in the first place, and you've created a bunch of people who buy your sourcebooks as though they *were* novels to be read one after another to get the "real story". Once you create this situation you're stuck, because you can't give people who are actually playing games more options without derailing the story that the casual readers like, but the more detail you give the casual readers the more you railroad actual gamers. Which is why we should have two lines, one line of actual gamebooks for the gamers, and one line of novels for people who like the story. Similarly, I don't think multiple "alternate-future" sourcebooks would that bad if we never *started* telling people to expect a single, continuous metaplot for the setting. And if all the alternate futures were well done and you could see how they could all occur within a single universe -- i.e. they aren't dependent on completely contradictory views of how Eberron works being true. (If we have two Riedran invasions, we have details about what happens differently in timeline B that makes it diverge from timeline A -- like some Dreaming Dark agent's cover being blown at a crucial moment.) The problem with WoD is that the metaplot never really worked in the first place, because the WoD "setting" was a combination of many different settings that were all intended to be based on very different assumptions about how the world worked. It was interesting at times to have tension between the Vampire worldview and the Mage worldview (looking at, for instance, how the Masquerade runs *directly* counter to the Mage concept of Consensus, etc.) but when you actually have to have the whole story come to a climactic end, the two just aren't compatible at all -- a Werewolf story about the end of the world has to be a completely different story from a Mage story about the end of the world, because the two settings are about completely different things. What I am trying to say is that to give several options won't please most people. And from a marketing view it is a nightmare. You will be cutting your sales base into tiny segments where each version of a story will have it's adherents, and they most likely won't buy any products not relating to that particular branch. On the other hand if all sourcebooks will give nods to all versions, the amount of useful information for each buyer will shrink to merely a part of the book, even if the variants share some bits of it. So don't expect this to happen. Ever. I don't like the idea of having long-running parallel "branches", like a "Timeline A" line of books and a "Timeline B" line of books. I don't think the metaplot should be *emphasized* or have continuity, for this reason. Any game events should be one-shots. A "Next War" supplement that contains four or five short module-length descriptions of ways to run the Next War. An Invasion! supplement that contains four or five possible invaders (Riedrans, daelkyr, Aereni, dragons, neogi). Etc. No meta-*plot*, just plot *events* that DMs can use or not use at their leisure. No longrunning stories for people to be fans of or not fans of. The reason WW could even attempt it was that they were closing down that metaplot/world entirely. They actually rebooted everything and introduced new mechanics, (sort of), new storylines, and a new world to play with. And no metaplot. It still seemed to work okay. And the reason they could do it, more precisely, was that no world event in that line had a sequel -- all of them were the end of the world, so you never had to say what happened *after* Gehenna or the Apocalypse. You could do the same here, but with a different philosophy -- the only "real" part of the setting is the current year, frozen in time, and every possible future only details one set of possible events. Then the supplements "snap back" to the real world, until another supplement details something else that could happen. There've been real alternate-history fiction collections that took that conceit -- one pivotal year, like 1940, and lots of authors exploring different ways history could have gone after 1940 -- but each one an individual, self-contained story. That could work fine for Eberron, especially since in D&D we're already used to the idea of taking an established setting, running a particular story within it, and then going back to the status quo to run a different story -- it's what happens every time you run a high-powered adventure in a campaign setting, unless you *always* make a habit of keeping your old PCs as high-level NPCs in the next game, and making all the crazy crap they did "canon". (You remember when we blew up Sharn in the last campaign? That's why we can't start there this time.)
Frederyck 09-05-06, 02:21 PM	No meta-*plot*, just plot *events* that DMs can use or not use at their leisure. No longrunning stories for people to be fans of or not fans of. This is the heart of the matter. If the novels connected to the setting are canon, you will get meta-*plot*, which I really don't like. Meta-*events* on the other hand might work, in the same way that the adventure sites in SoX work. Place them anywhere on the continent, run them any way you like, but they will have no real bearing on the next supplement. "Oh, you didn't use The Colossal Statue adventure site along with the trapped Quori adventure, so your campaign is basically screwed to use all this new published material". It wouldn't be an issue. I could definitely go for the source book variant "if you want the Riedrans to invade Argonessen while the Aurum tries to buy the Lords of Dust - you might like to try it like this". Ie, I wouldn't mind adventure ideas/sites like the ones in the Xen'drik book, but on a slightly bigger scale.
Charles Phipps 09-05-06, 08:41 PM	Okay, that's just dumb. Seriously, novels create "meta-plots"? That's ridiculous because meta-plots are a function of supplements. I only went along with the line of thought that meta-plots aren't bad because I don't believe they are anyway. Novels take plots, set them up, and RESOLVE THEM. The King of Breland dies? That's not a meta-plot, that's an event that happens and the reprocussions are presumably handled by the characters in the novel. The player characters might here about the "Year of Rogue Dragons" but the majority of that is going to take place somewhere else entirely and be something that doesn't impact their day to day life. It's not like they're going to list the EXACT dates a player character is going to be in Sharn or whatnot when some event happens and the vast majority of times said event will be thwarted before it has some major impact. "Jack'A'Knives the Ripper serial killer is caught" in your Korranberg chronicle is the extent of it. Metaplots require the aspect of the story to be far reaching and UNRESOLVED.
Charles Phipps 09-05-06, 08:48 PM	Sure, but it's like how no one FORCES you to accept the plotline where Superman died and came back to life in the comics. The problem is that all the newer books keep on making reference to it and incorporating it, so the number of things you have to fudge or alter to keep that plotline out of your Eberron increases, until it becomes not worth it to buy new books anymore, especially if *each* new book starts putting in more metaplot. To me that's not a bad thing since the continuing development of Eberron is no different from eliminating possibilities to begin with. I already run adventures in Q'Barra and Q'Barra is most decidedly New Orleans (at least pre-Katrina) and the greater land of Lousiana with Lizard Men filling the roles of slaves and the hated shamanistic minority to the Galifar plantation owners. Now, I don't know what the eventual Q'Barra supplement will be but I sincerely doubt it will reflect my homebrew. That doesn't mean I won't buy it or find enjoyment from it.
Werebat 09-05-06, 09:50 PM	I've read Dreaming Dark, Mark of Death, and Dragon Below, as well as the book of short stories. Liked Dreaming Dark a lot, liked Dragon Below a lot too, maybe even more then DD. Lots of details, interesting characters, some surprises (the halfling dying in DD, which ****** me off because I liked him, and Natrac NOT dying through both of the Dragon Below books when he had Red Shirt all over him at the start; instead he's evolved into one of the more complex characters in the story), and a good feel for the world. Dragon Below inspired me to try and run a campaign set during the Xoriat invasion with orc and goblin PCs. Mark of Death, though... It just kept making me think of a campaign where the PCs just will NOT stop fighting each other, and all the headache of trying to run such a mess and keep it on track. I dunno, maybe I've been there too often, but it was there like the presence of a dull, thudding headache throughout the whole story. I sorta liked Burch, but I like the shifter in Dragon Below a whole lot more, and his conflict with the human lead seem so much more tolerable because they only rarely come to blows over it. - Ron ^*^
ArcTan 09-05-06, 10:30 PM	Okay, that's just dumb. Seriously, novels create "meta-plots"? That's ridiculous because meta-plots are a function of supplements. I only went along with the line of thought that meta-plots aren't bad because I don't believe they are anyway. Novels take plots, set them up, and RESOLVE THEM. The King of Breland dies? That's not a meta-plot, that's an event that happens and the reprocussions are presumably handled by the characters in the novel. The player characters might here about the "Year of Rogue Dragons" but the majority of that is going to take place somewhere else entirely and be something that doesn't impact their day to day life. It's not like they're going to list the EXACT dates a player character is going to be in Sharn or whatnot when some event happens and the vast majority of times said event will be thwarted before it has some major impact. "Jack'A'Knives the Ripper serial killer is caught" in your Korranberg chronicle is the extent of it. Metaplots require the aspect of the story to be far reaching and UNRESOLVED. It's very difficult to write a novel or series of novels that restores the status quo perfectly after it's done. It's extremely difficult to do so when you're writing the great big epic stories that, as you say, sell so well. Dude, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance both, objectively, *did* advance their metaplot primarily through their novel lines for a few years, with sourcebooks racing to catch up with the novels. It's a fact. And, of course, if the novels really are such that they don't cause any important changes to the setting, there's no reason to mention them in sourcebooks at all, any more than most sourcebooks mention the contents of various adventure modules. Doing so is just a pointless shout-out and shameless plug to try to make you buy more books you don't actually need to play.
(Psi)SeveredHead 09-05-06, 11:17 PM	Okay, that's just dumb. Seriously, novels create "meta-plots"? That's ridiculous because meta-plots are a function of supplements. No they're not. Only huge rules changes create meta-plots (eg Times of Troubles). The novels created five ages in the Dragonlance campaign, each of which was split up by a world-shattering event. Similarly, most important events in the Realms were created due to the novels. Most people seem to think metaplots are bad. WotC has to listen to its customers.
kaor 09-05-06, 11:37 PM	I don't know much about White Wolf or what happened there. But say there is no advancement or change in the Eberron world. Why do you think it will be around in a couple of years? The only d&d setting I know of that haven't changed in a while are the dead ones. And if anyone knows the answer to this, I'd like to know. Do they make more money off the novels and computer games, or the sourcebooks?
ArcTan 09-05-06, 11:56 PM	I don't know much about White Wolf or what happened there. But say there is no advancement or change in the Eberron world. Why do you think it will be around in a couple of years? The only d&d setting I know of that haven't changed in a while are the dead ones. And if anyone knows the answer to this, I'd like to know. Do they make more money off the novels and computer games, or the sourcebooks? You can introduce changes in the "blank spaces in the map", like they did by adding some details about Xen'drik, a place once left entirely undefined. You don't need to actually advance the plot and change what is already known about the world in order to add info.
Charles Phipps 09-06-06, 12:39 AM	No they're not. Only huge rules changes create meta-plots (eg Times of Troubles). The novels created five ages in the Dragonlance campaign, each of which was split up by a world-shattering event. Similarly, most important events in the Realms were created due to the novels. Most people seem to think metaplots are bad. WotC has to listen to its customers. Fun filled facts... 1. The Dragonlance Novels were all game supplements first. Even TIME OF THE TWINS and its trilogy still is fundamentally nothing more than a remake of the last storyline of the Dragon adventure where Raistlin is expected to sacrifice his life to stop the Queen of Darkness entering the world. Dragons of Summer Flame was a Revenge piece and really shouldn't be counted. 2. The Time of Troubles was a set of adventures first as well. It was an attempt to usher in the rules changes via a set of traumatic and cataclsymic events. So I don't know what you're talking about.
Frederyck 09-06-06, 03:13 AM	Fun filled facts... [...] 2. The Time of Troubles was a set of adventures first as well. It was an attempt to usher in the rules changes via a set of traumatic and cataclsymic events. So I don't know what you're talking about. No they were not. The adventure modules Shadowdale, Tantras and Waterdeep may have been *published* before the novels, but they were commissioned at the same time, along with what would happen in them. The only reason they appeared before the novels was probably because it takes much less time to write an adventure than a book. (And I actually think that the first installments came out pretty much simultaneously, but I wouldn't put a wager on it). And to put it bluntly, the Time of Troubles adventure arc was just the novels in another form. You really didn't even need the characters present for the "adventure" to unfold - as long as Midnight, Kelmvor, Cyric and the other guy was there. In reality, the PCs were the NPCs of the story, which again is my whole argument against major plot arcs unravelling in a game world through novels. The characters will become spectators. Now, that is dumb. Now, nomenclature aside, (what constitutes a "metaplot" or not), what I really don't like is that events in novels are referred to in sourcebooks. Ie that the novels are "canon" or whatever you want to call it. [...]the vast majority of times said event will be thwarted before it has some major impact. Uh, which basically means it was a non-event? This is not what we are talking about. Or at least not what I am talking about. What I think is important is that when those events/metaplots/whatever actually do happen or can happen for "real" in the setting, the PCs are the ones who should be able to stop it/influence the outcome/be affected by it. Otherwise we'll get the FR "let's just wait for a major NPC to fix things"-syndrome of why lower level characters should even bother? Of course, if you don't want the PCs in your setting being involved in the event/metaplot/whatever, then you don't have to. But having canon information that it was the warforged Corkscrew and her compadres Clumsy ir'Tripsalot the halfling, Nosebleed-Pete the shifter and his intrepid Spaniel Stig that saved Khorvaire from the Daelkyr just doesn't do it for me.
Charles Phipps 09-06-06, 03:17 AM	I stand corrected on the TOT.
davethebrave371 09-06-06, 09:52 AM	I think the original question posed has been answered. It doesn't matter. If the novels fit your view of Eberron, that's fine. No supplements are going to assume the events have happened (though they might name-drop or stat out an NPC or item or spell), but you can incorporate it same as you would elements you dreamed up yourself. If the novels don't fit your view of Eberron, don't worry! No supplements are going to assume...well, you get the point. Now, to me, this is better than having a crappy writer pop in for a canon novel and write future good writers into a hole. And unfortunately, there are for more crappy writers out there than good writers. To me, this is better than having something be canon in 1006 YK so that if you want supplements that come out after that to even work you have to a) advance your storyline to that year and b) incorporate the events. I know that they are out there, but I haven't met FR players who play in a post-ToT world that never had the ToT. And an Eberronian ToT-scale event made canon would kill the Eberron fanboy inside me. However, an Eberronian ToT-scale event happening in 998 YK alongside the events of other novels (and so, clearly contradictory, and clearly not canon), would probably make me jump for joy (if it was well written). In fact, load me up with several ToT-scale event lines. I'd love it. Have Vol bring back the Mark (which, for all we know, Queen of Death will do). Have the Dreaming Dark orchestrate a covert takeover. Have the Mourning revealed. Have the Prophecy come to a culmination, with Khyber overtaking the surface of Eberron, and Siberys reborn. Just don't do it in our game. Do it in your novel. And make sure those two are as seperate as church and state. Well...ok, more seperate.
Joni-san 09-06-06, 12:01 PM	I had a funny thought: What if somebody wrote an Eberron novel where the main character kills the characters from other novels? In return the other authors killed his character in their novels. Eg. Author X kills Daine and Co. in his novel (random encounter?) and Keith kills his character in return in another story or novel.
Tom McCarthy 09-06-06, 12:51 PM	For the most part, the novels have been consistent with my vision of Eberron. I was unhappy with the central premise of the Mark of Death novels (a foundling of the line of Vol), but the notions of a hard scrabble life being eked out on the edges of the Mournland was good. There seemed to be too many airships lying around and the nigh-indestructible changeling is getting annoying, but that's the author, not the author's grasp of the setting. I've been enjoying the Dreaming Dark quite a bit, of course, and am really enjoying the Dragon below novels. I didn't enjoy the Crimson Talisman; it felt like a generic adventure rewritten to fit Eberron. The Orb of Xoriat was uniquely Eberron, and interesting (though the twist turned out to be mundane; I thought the monk's unique strikes would be something more exotic than the answer they seemed to settle on). I quite enjoyed In the Claws of the Tiger. In general, I find the novels to be interesting reading. Sometimes they give me a new or expanded insight into the setting (for example, excoriation spelled out clearly in City of Towers). Other times, they talk abotu something as common knowledge that I thought would be obscure or little known (dragons brought down the giant cultures of Xen'drik, Dal Quor was the plane that invaded Xen'drik, etc.)
ArcTan 09-06-06, 01:45 PM	I had a funny thought: What if somebody wrote an Eberron novel where the main character kills the characters from other novels? In return the other authors killed his character in their novels. Eg. Author X kills Daine and Co. in his novel (random encounter?) and Keith kills his character in return in another story or novel. It would be cute. I wouldn't want to see everything devolve into this, but it'd be a fun April Fool's-ish gag to pull off. I remember comic book writers actually doing this kind of thing to riff on each other, and to hammer home the point that *they* were in charge of *their* universes (so that they'd put a thinly-disguised version of some guy who was the ultimate superhero in a different line in their line and have their protagonist rough him up and humiliate him). If people are confused about the nature of WotC canon on this matter, such an event would be a good way to make the point.
Shady314 09-06-06, 03:32 PM	I'm sure it's been mentioned but I'm not going to read 5 pages so I apologize in advance for repeating. In the Mark of Death book every character seems to make every knowledge check no matter how obscure. They talk about the Dreaming Dark as an evil organization in a casual off hand manner! Not my view of Eberron at all. I wanted to scream every time they'd name drop like this, I guess, just to remind me this is Eberron. ARGH!
The Dreaming Duck 09-06-06, 03:39 PM	They talk about the Dreaming Dark as an evil organization in a casual off hand manner! Say what now? Why? I admit, I only skimmed the first MoD book and haven't read the second, but it certainly doesn't seem like a group the MoD folks would be familiar with, or that would be common knowledge. Heck, in the Dreaming Dark books, it's not like Daine & co say "Oh! I get it! We're dealing with the Dreaming Dark!" What's the context of the mention? Which book?
DarkWarriorKarg 09-07-06, 02:13 PM	In almost every book... Someone mentions Vol... The dreaming dark... Etc. as a matter of fact... very annoying. Thieves of Blood was annoying at the start. A changeling. Impersonating a Raksasha, impersonating a human. In broad daylight. Just walking around town. I have several levels of problems with this scenario. In MoD, I despised the Lawful Stupid paladins parroting "sometimes evil must be done in the cause of good". But it's not the author's fault. I've generally seen that portrayal of paladins throughout TSR/WotC novels. Claws of the Tiger was refreshing. Crimson Talisman made me wince. From start to finish. The rest was pretty good and fits several views I have of Eberron...
WizO_Shadow 09-18-06, 11:34 PM	:applauds you: I've only skimmed the thread and I want to say thank you for not de-evolving into a flamefest and realizing it's all opinion but still being able to discuss it maturely. WizO_Shadow
Always-Late 09-19-06, 01:14 AM	I've only read the Dreaming Dark and Dragon Below series and like them very much. I've decided that unless anything world-shattering happens (there are major events, but they don't qualify as world-shattering) they will essentially count as canon, and even if the events don't the "facts" of the setting will. So yes, I suppose they do. Maybe you won't run into the same conspiracies, but any facts I gain about, say, Kalashtar, or Cyran culture, or other sects and organizations are going to be pretty much true. I totally loved the Dragon Below series. And to top it off, I figured out Geth's secret, too. It was incredible. I was reading The Grieving Tree when it all came together - Wait, flashback here... Okay, you have this, and that... the relations with Singe, the repudiation, the banter... he gets enraged at this point, when [spoiler] happens... That hallucinatory dream that he has... Adolan, too, and *WHAM* It all fits together! I've got it! I've figured out the third book! Then I forgot it. I'm not even kidding you. I was reading it at four in the morning and I'd had a long day, but I just could not sleep. Rereading it for the fifth or sixth time, too. Then, BAM I figured everything out. I was really happy about it, and I decided to go to sleep. On my way to bed, I realized that I'd forgotten what it was. I ran back, reread the section that I was reading when the realization hit me, and tried to piece it together. I couldn't. From that point on, I knew I'd figured it out but I just couldn't figure out what it was. I don't think I'm deluding myself, either.
Charles Phipps 09-19-06, 02:42 AM	So what is it?
Nived 09-19-06, 11:34 AM	Yeah you can't make a claim like that then leave us hanging.
Always-Late 09-19-06, 05:34 PM	I told you, I forgot it. Yeah, I would believe me, too.
Charles Phipps 09-19-06, 07:53 PM	I'd think it very cool if he just left his post because he had to use the can or something ;-)
AkumaDaimyo 09-20-06, 08:34 AM	I like the Dreaming Dark books and they do fit my view of Eberron and Sharn. I heard the books with the Vampires suck. (Ha ha, get it? Suck? um yeah. :P) Seriously I heard the Vampire one is very bad and the Vampire's are pushovers. Though I was told by the gf that Kieth Baker said the books are not cannon. They are heros and events that COULD be happening in Eberron. They aren't actually happening like in the Realms with how their heros totally trump anything the PCs in your game do. The Realms would be better if they killed off a LOT of hero's.
davethebrave371 09-20-06, 09:52 AM	The Realms would be better if they killed off a LOT of hero's. A clean sweep of every NPC over ECL 15 would make me happy.
Cannith 09-20-06, 04:30 PM	I just finished reading the Shattered Land and I was wondering if the Xen'Drik in DDO is like the one in the book? Or did they change it? Also, early in the thread people were talking about Daine and the books focusing to much on him... Well, I must agree! And with Daine repetitively and suddenly attacking EVERYONE, it got quite annoying. I am, personally more interested in Pierce's story then anything else right now. Also, what was Keith thinking when he ended the book like that? Wake Up.... GLOSSARY? Argh! Atleast I didn't have to wait 8 months like the people who picked it up when it first came out... Phew... Regardless... I've enjoyed both of the Dreaming Dark books and cannot wait for the third. I'm thinking about picking up the series with Forge of the Mindslayer, I think it's called. I like Mind Flayers. :) Any suggestions?
johnnype 09-20-06, 04:43 PM	I just finished Blood and Honor and found it entertaining enough to recommend. It makes good use of Karrnath, Fort Zombie, Fort Bones, The Mournland and undead are everywhere. Lot's and lots of details particular to Eberron. For example I liked the fact that one of the main characters is an inquisitor from Sharn. Good use of hospitable halfligs, horse riding valenar elves and the protagonist has a dragonmark. Best of all: not one mention of Xen'drik. All good in my opinion and it serves as a great transition book for those, like me, who up to now have only read Forgotten Realms novels. Thumbs up!
AkumaDaimyo 09-20-06, 06:39 PM	As I also stated earlier I like that Kieth Baker said the books are not what is happening in cannon Eberron. The setting books wont have what the characters in the novels are doing. The characters in the novels are merely people who could or could not exist in Eberron and what could or could not be happening. Therefor no "Oh you can't kill evil person X cause Drizzt already pwned him with his omg wtf scimitars of doom." :rolleyes:
Hellcow 09-20-06, 06:42 PM	As I also stated earlier I like that Kieth Baker said the books are not what is happening in cannon Eberron. However, bear in mind that I am not in a position to make any sort of official statement of policy. I am not a WotC employee, and it's up to WotC to decide these things. The only thing I can say as far as official rulings go is that the docent Shira appears in The Shattered Land and Secrets of Xen'drik, and SoX makes no mention of TSL... with the intention that you can use it for your own story. But beyond that, my opinion as to whether novel events are or should be canon is just my opinion.
The White Sorcerer 09-20-06, 07:11 PM	The problem with The Lost Mark: The characters apparently own a copy of the Eberron Campaign Setting The problem with The Crimson Talisman: It seems the author doesn't own one. The Orien half-elf is a kinda understandable mistake, but there are bigger mistakes than that in the book. Seriously, why is Vaddi's father a Karrn warlord, and why are his sons knights of Thrane? Not only is it weird that a Karrn warlord would send his sons to be knights in Thrane, the father (can't remember his name) being a warlord in the first place is even more nonsensical.
Flame_Drake 09-20-06, 08:14 PM	I am, personally more interested in Pierce's story then anything else right now. Also, what was Keith thinking when he ended the book like that? Wake Up.... GLOSSARY? Argh! Atleast I didn't have to wait 8 months like the people who picked it up when it first came out... I'm I the only one who genuinly liked the way that TSL ended? I mean, I've never ever been slapped harder in the face by an appendix, but I thought it was a great way to end the middle book. Drake
davethebrave371 09-20-06, 10:10 PM	The ending of the Shattered Land blew me away, I know that.
Quicksilver 09-21-06, 02:13 AM	The ending of the Shattered Land blew me away, I know that. I don't know. The cliffhanger ending seems tailor-made for serials, in which you'd get a resolution quite soon afterwards. We're having to wait for 8 months, and it seems a bit of a letdown. I was a little shocked, but when I lent out the book and warned people about the cliffhanger, they seemed happy enough. We all want to know what's next now. This isn't the first time an adventure novel I've been reading has ended suddenly. Dracula ends pretty quickly, and as I remember, I was ready for it when the Bram Stoker's Dracula (the movie) ended at a gallop. I think that if you're ready for it, it's cool, but if you're blindsided by the ending, it makes you feel ripped off.
Fanatic66 09-21-06, 07:23 PM	The ending of TSL was awesome. I love novels that end with cliffhangers, and this was especially good for the middle book of the series. Pierce's story is defiantly the most interesting. The other warforged in the boobk are cool too. Besides the DD series the only other Eberron novels I read were the Binding Stone, Tales of the Last War, and Thieves of Blood. The Binding Stone was on par with DD series, especially liked the shifter whose name escapes me at the moment. TotLW was a good read too. I loved ToB though. Diran is just so cool.