Eberron... who you discribe it? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Eberron... who you discribe it? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Draco Spirit
02-05-08, 06:38 PM Ok, Eberron newbie here..

I looked at the main campien setting boook briefly and the feeling I got was that Eberron was mostly about poltics and carton imagery was a bit of a put off at me taking it as serously as the FR for epic fights between good and evil.

However first impression aren't always the best ones, how would you discribe it?
Siran Dunmorgan
02-05-08, 08:13 PM Heh. What makes you think the politics aren't about epic battles between good and evil?

Eberron, more than most settings, is what you, as Dungeon Master and players make of it. It's not someone else's drama, into which you find yourselves cast: it's your story to make of what you will.

Yes, there have been times when vast armies have shredded the very earth—recently, in fact: most of the setting is still recovering from the effects of a very long, very difficult civil war.

The basic theme of the world is "pulp/noir". Pulp in the sense of classic action heroes such as Doc Savage or The Shadow, with appropriate cinematic nods to such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Mummy [1]; noir in the sense of classic detective or spy thrillers such as The Maltese Falcon, or Casablanca.

With these principles in mind, the world becomes about small group action on the part of the adventurers, against a background of intrigue, betrayal, and grand strategy.

Sure, a lot of it is about politics, in the sense of who's in charge of what, who are their friends, and who are their enemies. I can't compare it to Forgotten Realms, where most of my experience is through computer games set there. But I can tell you that I can set virtually any kind of game in Eberron and it'll work well with the setting: there's room for comedy, horror, swashbuckling, spy thrillers, and yes, epics on the scale of a Cecil B. DeMille film—or a Tolstoy novel.

The setting takes a more relaxed view of good and evil than most, yes. But that enables the discussion to be more about right and wrong than good and evil. One of the most evil groups stalking the world—the Quori—who have literally enslaved entire nations does what they do out of the need to ensure their own survival. Is what they're doing evil? Certainly! Is it wrong? Maybe—or maybe not.

One or the most starkly evil-appearing characters in the setting, the Lich-Queen Erandis d'Vol, is often described as doing what she does because she is, at heart, a very lonely and very angry little girl, albeit one that has spent thousands of years honing her necromantic skills into an instrument of vengeance against one of the oldest established civilizations in the setting.

If the published adventures are a reasonable sample, our heroes spend a lot of time attempting to thwart her plots at several levels.

There's romance, too, and sometimes very goofy forbidden love, such as that between Kaius III, King of Karrnath, and his bride Etrigani, an Aereni elf.

There's a devastated wasteland that once, not long ago, was the very jewel of the setting, now inhabited by monsters and other things that defy my poor power of expression to describe: an entire nation laid waste by magical cataclysm, not in some distant storied past, but less than three years ago, well within the living memory of all but the youngest infants. And no one really knows why.

There's an entire continent that's every Tarzan story, every Heart of Darkness, every story of lost civilizations, every map with blank space labeled "Here Be Monsters" ever written or drawn.

The themes aren't really about good and evil: they're about things like death, and the means that various groups and people take to avoid it, or to embrace it. They're about doing the right thing, even when it seems like stabbing your friends in the back. It's about sometimes doing the wrong thing, because you don't want to stab your friends in the back. It's about learning from the mistakes of the past, and building a better future—or turning back the clock, and plunging all the world into a second darkness from which it will never emerge.

It's certainly not about sending people to Hell, because Hell isn't a where, it's a when: when the fiends ruled everything, and the dragons fought a million-year war to push them back into the dark places below the world, and the couatls gave up everything to keep them there, though maybe not forever.

It's not every game you want to play—there'd be no reason for the Forgotten Realms, if that were so—but it's an awful lot of them, on a playing field that's as large or small as you want it to be.

—Siran Dunmorgan

[1] The more recent one, starring Brendan Fraser, as well as the older film starring Boris Karloff.
Tiwaz
02-05-08, 11:57 PM :clap: Very Nicley put Siran Dunmorgan. Insparatinal infact.
CannibalSmith
02-07-08, 04:50 PM Eberron is realistic (as far as fantasy worlds go): gods are not entirely real, alignments are not absolute, all the psychology is realistic. There are no villainous villains (who are evil just because). There are no archetypal do-gooders.

And there's the exactly right amount of magitech in Eberron. Enough for coolness, not too much to make it magepunk.
Belkar
02-08-08, 02:27 PM I think Edy said this once:

Eberron is what you'd get 9 months after Shaft got it on with Galadriel.
CannibalSmith
02-09-08, 03:26 AM Who is Shaft? Who is Galadriel?
ChaoticGood
02-09-08, 04:46 AM Who is Shaft? Who is Galadriel?

Sweet Lord Aureon, boy! Learn your roots!

Shaft was the starring role in a '70's blaxploitation TV series about a street cop with a wicked 'fro and a way with the ladies. The role was reprised in movie form a few years back by Samuel L. "hand my mutha-f'in' lightsaber and get these snakes off my mutha-f'in' plane" Jackson.

Galadriel is ... No, seriously, how can you not know who Galadriel is?! You play D&D!? Ugh...

Galadriel is the great elven seer in Lord of the Rings. Frodo asks her to take the One Ring from him, and she is consumed by a dark aspect of herself, shouting,

"In place of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen, not dark, but beautiful... and terrible as the dawn! Treacherous as the sea! Stronger then the foundations of the earth! All shall love me... and DESPAIR!"

I mean, seriously... I can't imagine forgetting that scene... It's pretty well stamped into my memory and burned into my retinas.

Are you SURE you play D&D??? :P
CannibalSmith
02-09-08, 04:51 AM I dislike Tolkien's work. :hides:
ChaoticGood
02-09-08, 04:56 AM You've got to know Tolkien's work before you can dislike it. :P
Draco Spirit
02-09-08, 11:14 AM You've got to know Tolkien's work before you can dislike it. :P

I tried to read LOTR.. but I found the fact it seemed to go into every characters famly history every 5 minutes rather off putting :(
CannibalSmith
02-09-08, 12:37 PM How Lord of the Rings Should Have Ended (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yqVD0swvWU). Nuff said.
vegetalss4
02-09-08, 03:04 PM How Lord of the Rings Should Have Ended (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yqVD0swvWU). Nuff said.

would not have worked
they would have been smashed by the ring wraiths and suaron would not be disstrectted by them standing and showing their end. max sending a few 100 of his 1000000 orcs out and killing them
OctaviusIII
02-09-08, 03:58 PM Ahh yes, the forgotten and forsaken strain of geek that shuns Tolkein's stories. Rare, to be sure, but it breeds true.

In any case, Eberron is difficult to describe, but Siran did better than I could. And besides, as a political science student, I certainly find that the epic battle of Good vs. Evil is often waged vigorously through words and laws. A paladin can slay the evil king, but the lords that abetted his rise to power - aren't they just as guilty?
Sakon22
02-10-08, 12:42 AM How Lord of the Rings Should Have Ended (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yqVD0swvWU). Nuff said.

First of all, read the hobbit first. It is much more readable and enjoyable than LotR. Secondly, given Sauron's corrupting abilities and the ringwraiths AND the fact that the Eagles in Tolkien's work are intelligent and usually avoid open battle (from what I've read,) that is notsomuch possible.
kelvinaw273
02-10-08, 10:57 AM I tried to read LOTR.. but I found the fact it seemed to go into every characters famly history every 5 minutes rather off putting :(

D*mn it man, have you never created a real character history before? Does background mean nothing to you? What about depth, drama, imagination ...

OK, I'll admit, Prof. T is not for everyone, but as one of the primary sources of Fantasy inspiration he's still worth reading even if you don't like the style. Sadly he was writing for an audience that liked to curl up with a book for a couple of hours, not squeeze in a text-bite between Nintendo games on the train, so in these times he comes through as overly verbose, but bear with it - his battle depictions are awesome (he was a WWI veteran, after all), and the sense of creeping menace very realistic.
Edymnion
02-10-08, 05:51 PM I tried to read LOTR.. but I found the fact it seemed to go into every characters famly history every 5 minutes rather off putting :(Tolkien was a historian and a world builder, not a good story teller.

Its like having a DM that makes the most fantastic world you've ever seen, but ends up being Ben Stein reading out of the phone book when it comes time to actually play it.
UnknownCorrespondent
02-10-08, 06:24 PM How Lord of the Rings Should Have Ended (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yqVD0swvWU). Nuff said.

In the '60s, Tolkien was approached by Forrie Ackerman, one of the moving forces of schlocky SF fandom with a script for an animated LotR that had the eagles showing up and whisking them all over the place. Tolkien was Not Amused.

Its like having a DM that makes the most fantastic world you've ever seen, but ends up being Ben Stein reading out of the phone book when it comes time to actually play it.

I resemble that remark. :)
Nerdicus
02-10-08, 07:46 PM Getting back to the OP, and leaving the Tolkien debate alone, one of things you need to realize about Eberron is that the whole Evil vs Good shtick is flipped and remixed. The whole idea, at least in my opinion, is that good can be evil and evil can be good.

But like was said earlier, Eberron is the ultimate boiling pot of adventure. In this setting you can run anything you want, from high magic epic battles of world saving proportions, to gritty urban investigative stories of sleuths getting pulled into crazy plots involving extra planer plots spanning millenia and just finally coming to fruition.

You can run full out wilderness adventures in any one of several wilderness spots( Eldean Reaches, Shadow Marches, Xendrik, or Q'barra).

The setting for Eberron has been masterfully crafted to give you adventure and intrigue in literally, every paragraph.

In short, like others have said, Eberron, unlike any other setting, is everything you want it to be.
OctaviusIII
02-11-08, 02:47 AM And if you want a Good vs. Evil reminiscent of Forgotten Realms, there is place for that, too. Sarlona is a nation enslaved by Evil Extraplanars (the Quori), although they have a good reason for doing so. There is a resistance movement spawned in the Extraplanars' realm and brought to Eberron to fight against them.

The Demon Wastes are home to orc paladins that fight to ensure that the darkness that stalks the land does not escape.

Or you could just make one side Very Good (perhaps the Silver Flame?) and one side Very Evil (breaking into a mind flayer's keep in the depths of Khyber).
Draco Spirit
02-11-08, 07:53 AM D*mn it man, have you never created a real character history before? Does background mean nothing to you? What about depth, drama, imagination ...

OK, I'll admit, Prof. T is not for everyone, but as one of the primary sources of Fantasy inspiration he's still worth reading even if you don't like the style. Sadly he was writing for an audience that liked to curl up with a book for a couple of hours, not squeeze in a text-bite between Nintendo games on the train, so in these times he comes through as overly verbose, but bear with it - his battle depictions are awesome (he was a WWI veteran, after all), and the sense of creeping menace very realistic.

Background matters yes.... but I think the way it get handled in the early bits of LOTR is a bit sledge hammer. In my option you either keep alot of background in your head and show it through events and views of the character and/or mention it in bits.

I also do like reading for hours on end (and I like to write a bit too:D ), but I'm not a big fan of going into great detail about every single thing all in one go, it break up the flow of the story IMHO.
Karon_the_Orange
02-11-08, 02:43 PM I can't stand Tolkien. I've read LOTR and Hobbit, and the story bores me and I find hobbits to be tiresome. That being said I made it a point to read the 2 books so I can keep my geek membership.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Draco Spirit 02-05-08, 06:38 PM	Ok, Eberron newbie here.. I looked at the main campien setting boook briefly and the feeling I got was that Eberron was mostly about poltics and carton imagery was a bit of a put off at me taking it as serously as the FR for epic fights between good and evil. However first impression aren't always the best ones, how would you discribe it?
Siran Dunmorgan 02-05-08, 08:13 PM	Heh. What makes you think the politics aren't about epic battles between good and evil? Eberron, more than most settings, is what you, as Dungeon Master and players make of it. It's not someone else's drama, into which you find yourselves cast: it's your story to make of what you will. Yes, there have been times when vast armies have shredded the very earth—recently, in fact: most of the setting is still recovering from the effects of a very long, very difficult civil war. The basic theme of the world is "pulp/noir". Pulp in the sense of classic action heroes such as Doc Savage or The Shadow, with appropriate cinematic nods to such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Mummy [1]; noir in the sense of classic detective or spy thrillers such as The Maltese Falcon, or Casablanca. With these principles in mind, the world becomes about small group action on the part of the adventurers, against a background of intrigue, betrayal, and grand strategy. Sure, a lot of it is about politics, in the sense of who's in charge of what, who are their friends, and who are their enemies. I can't compare it to Forgotten Realms, where most of my experience is through computer games set there. But I can tell you that I can set virtually any kind of game in Eberron and it'll work well with the setting: there's room for comedy, horror, swashbuckling, spy thrillers, and yes, epics on the scale of a Cecil B. DeMille film—or a Tolstoy novel. The setting takes a more relaxed view of good and evil than most, yes. But that enables the discussion to be more about right and wrong than good and evil. One of the most evil groups stalking the world—the Quori—who have literally enslaved entire nations does what they do out of the need to ensure their own survival. Is what they're doing evil? Certainly! Is it wrong? Maybe—or maybe not. One or the most starkly evil-appearing characters in the setting, the Lich-Queen Erandis d'Vol, is often described as doing what she does because she is, at heart, a very lonely and very angry little girl, albeit one that has spent thousands of years honing her necromantic skills into an instrument of vengeance against one of the oldest established civilizations in the setting. If the published adventures are a reasonable sample, our heroes spend a lot of time attempting to thwart her plots at several levels. There's romance, too, and sometimes very goofy forbidden love, such as that between Kaius III, King of Karrnath, and his bride Etrigani, an Aereni elf. There's a devastated wasteland that once, not long ago, was the very jewel of the setting, now inhabited by monsters and other things that defy my poor power of expression to describe: an entire nation laid waste by magical cataclysm, not in some distant storied past, but less than three years ago, well within the living memory of all but the youngest infants. And no one really knows why. There's an entire continent that's every Tarzan story, every Heart of Darkness, every story of lost civilizations, every map with blank space labeled "Here Be Monsters" ever written or drawn. The themes aren't really about good and evil: they're about things like death, and the means that various groups and people take to avoid it, or to embrace it. They're about doing the right thing, even when it seems like stabbing your friends in the back. It's about sometimes doing the wrong thing, because you don't want to stab your friends in the back. It's about learning from the mistakes of the past, and building a better future—or turning back the clock, and plunging all the world into a second darkness from which it will never emerge. It's certainly not about sending people to Hell, because Hell isn't a where, it's a when: when the fiends ruled everything, and the dragons fought a million-year war to push them back into the dark places below the world, and the couatls gave up everything to keep them there, though maybe not forever. It's not every game you want to play—there'd be no reason for the Forgotten Realms, if that were so—but it's an awful lot of them, on a playing field that's as large or small as you want it to be. —Siran Dunmorgan [1] The more recent one, starring Brendan Fraser, as well as the older film starring Boris Karloff.
Tiwaz 02-05-08, 11:57 PM	:clap: Very Nicley put Siran Dunmorgan. Insparatinal infact.
CannibalSmith 02-07-08, 04:50 PM	Eberron is realistic (as far as fantasy worlds go): gods are not entirely real, alignments are not absolute, all the psychology is realistic. There are no villainous villains (who are evil just because). There are no archetypal do-gooders. And there's the exactly right amount of magitech in Eberron. Enough for coolness, not too much to make it magepunk.
Belkar 02-08-08, 02:27 PM	I think Edy said this once: Eberron is what you'd get 9 months after Shaft got it on with Galadriel.
CannibalSmith 02-09-08, 03:26 AM	Who is Shaft? Who is Galadriel?
ChaoticGood 02-09-08, 04:46 AM	Who is Shaft? Who is Galadriel? Sweet Lord Aureon, boy! Learn your roots! Shaft was the starring role in a '70's blaxploitation TV series about a street cop with a wicked 'fro and a way with the ladies. The role was reprised in movie form a few years back by Samuel L. "hand my mutha-f'in' lightsaber and get these snakes off my mutha-f'in' plane" Jackson. Galadriel is ... No, seriously, how can you not know who Galadriel is?! You play D&D!? Ugh... Galadriel is the great elven seer in Lord of the Rings. Frodo asks her to take the One Ring from him, and she is consumed by a dark aspect of herself, shouting, "In place of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen, not dark, but beautiful... and terrible as the dawn! Treacherous as the sea! Stronger then the foundations of the earth! All shall love me... and DESPAIR!" I mean, seriously... I can't imagine forgetting that scene... It's pretty well stamped into my memory and burned into my retinas. Are you SURE you play D&D??? :P
CannibalSmith 02-09-08, 04:51 AM	I dislike Tolkien's work. :hides:
ChaoticGood 02-09-08, 04:56 AM	You've got to know Tolkien's work before you can dislike it. :P
Draco Spirit 02-09-08, 11:14 AM	You've got to know Tolkien's work before you can dislike it. :P I tried to read LOTR.. but I found the fact it seemed to go into every characters famly history every 5 minutes rather off putting :(
CannibalSmith 02-09-08, 12:37 PM	How Lord of the Rings Should Have Ended (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yqVD0swvWU). Nuff said.
vegetalss4 02-09-08, 03:04 PM	How Lord of the Rings Should Have Ended (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yqVD0swvWU). Nuff said. would not have worked they would have been smashed by the ring wraiths and suaron would not be disstrectted by them standing and showing their end. max sending a few 100 of his 1000000 orcs out and killing them
OctaviusIII 02-09-08, 03:58 PM	Ahh yes, the forgotten and forsaken strain of geek that shuns Tolkein's stories. Rare, to be sure, but it breeds true. In any case, Eberron is difficult to describe, but Siran did better than I could. And besides, as a political science student, I certainly find that the epic battle of Good vs. Evil is often waged vigorously through words and laws. A paladin can slay the evil king, but the lords that abetted his rise to power - aren't they just as guilty?
Sakon22 02-10-08, 12:42 AM	How Lord of the Rings Should Have Ended (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yqVD0swvWU). Nuff said. First of all, read the hobbit first. It is much more readable and enjoyable than LotR. Secondly, given Sauron's corrupting abilities and the ringwraiths AND the fact that the Eagles in Tolkien's work are intelligent and usually avoid open battle (from what I've read,) that is notsomuch possible.
kelvinaw273 02-10-08, 10:57 AM	I tried to read LOTR.. but I found the fact it seemed to go into every characters famly history every 5 minutes rather off putting :( D*mn it man, have you never created a real character history before? Does background mean nothing to you? What about depth, drama, imagination ... OK, I'll admit, Prof. T is not for everyone, but as one of the primary sources of Fantasy inspiration he's still worth reading even if you don't like the style. Sadly he was writing for an audience that liked to curl up with a book for a couple of hours, not squeeze in a text-bite between Nintendo games on the train, so in these times he comes through as overly verbose, but bear with it - his battle depictions are awesome (he was a WWI veteran, after all), and the sense of creeping menace very realistic.
Edymnion 02-10-08, 05:51 PM	I tried to read LOTR.. but I found the fact it seemed to go into every characters famly history every 5 minutes rather off putting :(Tolkien was a historian and a world builder, not a good story teller. Its like having a DM that makes the most fantastic world you've ever seen, but ends up being Ben Stein reading out of the phone book when it comes time to actually play it.
UnknownCorrespondent 02-10-08, 06:24 PM	How Lord of the Rings Should Have Ended (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yqVD0swvWU). Nuff said. In the '60s, Tolkien was approached by Forrie Ackerman, one of the moving forces of schlocky SF fandom with a script for an animated LotR that had the eagles showing up and whisking them all over the place. Tolkien was Not Amused. Its like having a DM that makes the most fantastic world you've ever seen, but ends up being Ben Stein reading out of the phone book when it comes time to actually play it. I resemble that remark. :)
Nerdicus 02-10-08, 07:46 PM	Getting back to the OP, and leaving the Tolkien debate alone, one of things you need to realize about Eberron is that the whole Evil vs Good shtick is flipped and remixed. The whole idea, at least in my opinion, is that good can be evil and evil can be good. But like was said earlier, Eberron is the ultimate boiling pot of adventure. In this setting you can run anything you want, from high magic epic battles of world saving proportions, to gritty urban investigative stories of sleuths getting pulled into crazy plots involving extra planer plots spanning millenia and just finally coming to fruition. You can run full out wilderness adventures in any one of several wilderness spots( Eldean Reaches, Shadow Marches, Xendrik, or Q'barra). The setting for Eberron has been masterfully crafted to give you adventure and intrigue in literally, every paragraph. In short, like others have said, Eberron, unlike any other setting, is everything you want it to be.
OctaviusIII 02-11-08, 02:47 AM	And if you want a Good vs. Evil reminiscent of Forgotten Realms, there is place for that, too. Sarlona is a nation enslaved by Evil Extraplanars (the Quori), although they have a good reason for doing so. There is a resistance movement spawned in the Extraplanars' realm and brought to Eberron to fight against them. The Demon Wastes are home to orc paladins that fight to ensure that the darkness that stalks the land does not escape. Or you could just make one side Very Good (perhaps the Silver Flame?) and one side Very Evil (breaking into a mind flayer's keep in the depths of Khyber).
Draco Spirit 02-11-08, 07:53 AM	D*mn it man, have you never created a real character history before? Does background mean nothing to you? What about depth, drama, imagination ... OK, I'll admit, Prof. T is not for everyone, but as one of the primary sources of Fantasy inspiration he's still worth reading even if you don't like the style. Sadly he was writing for an audience that liked to curl up with a book for a couple of hours, not squeeze in a text-bite between Nintendo games on the train, so in these times he comes through as overly verbose, but bear with it - his battle depictions are awesome (he was a WWI veteran, after all), and the sense of creeping menace very realistic. Background matters yes.... but I think the way it get handled in the early bits of LOTR is a bit sledge hammer. In my option you either keep alot of background in your head and show it through events and views of the character and/or mention it in bits. I also do like reading for hours on end (and I like to write a bit too:D ), but I'm not a big fan of going into great detail about every single thing all in one go, it break up the flow of the story IMHO.
Karon_the_Orange 02-11-08, 02:43 PM	I can't stand Tolkien. I've read LOTR and Hobbit, and the story bores me and I find hobbits to be tiresome. That being said I made it a point to read the 2 books so I can keep my geek membership.