Falling in and out Eberron [Archive] - Wizards Community

Falling in and out Eberron [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
PoeticJustice
10-09-05, 04:42 AM Does anyone ever get tired of the setting?

What initially attracted me to the setting was the Mournland. I was a totally new DM; coming up with plot hooks was really hard for me, and then came the Mournland which just screamed "Easy adventuring right here! Big dungeon!" For a while, it was good.

Then I remember being so fed up back in April I was going to switch to Homebrew, but reading MarkB's adventure, Errand of Mercy, made me want to tough it out. I think I was tired of having to make the badguys so damned smart all the time, and then that adventure showed how you could play a proper villain.

Now I'm just when the glitter is starting to fade on Eberron yet again, Magic of Eberron has got me enthusiastic about the setting. Again.

Has anyone else yo-yo'ed like I have? What alienated you from the setting? What brought you back? Post your stories, please, I'd love to hear them.
polt
10-09-05, 06:02 AM Quite the opposite, I wish I could use Eberron more.
ieattrollsforbreakfast
10-09-05, 06:34 AM I have never wished to stray for Eberron, it is still by far the best campaign setting I have every played. That said, there are times when I have thought about using different settings in parallel for some games, such as Ravenloft, Dark Sun and Planescape, but that is no fault of the Eberron setting, just a desire to check out something new.
Salla
10-09-05, 05:24 PM No ... my love of Eberron remains undiminished. I can't even think about making a homebrew campaign very well, without thinking about how much it sucks compared to Eberron.
papytofu
10-09-05, 05:45 PM I'm exactly like you, I've got Eberron "high" and sometimes after it fade, it's also beacause I can't play with my group a lot, so I tend to let it rest, and the passion awake when a new book appear. But it's not Eberron, cause I only play Eberron, it's more D&D in general. One month I play D&D, the other I play Final Fantasy or it could be reading books.
treehouse916
10-09-05, 05:49 PM I don't know if I'm really qualified to talk here yet since I technically haven't even started an Eberron game yet. But I'm about to; we are taking a break from my homebrew in like three sessions, and I'll be starting a gestalt Eberron campaign.

What attracts me to the setting is the originality of it, and the multitude of built in ready-to-go plot hooks. And almost all of the villanous organizations are very cool.

The biggest contributing factor for my waiting to start for so long is simply that I'm kind of intimidated by what a good setting it is. I like to go my own way when I start a campaign, and I'm sure I'll take a few liberties with Eberron, but I don't want to screw up any of the cool dynamics if I can avoid it. For example, right now I'd like to make airships more prevalent and common-place; will I feel that way in a month? A year? What are the consequences?

Note: I don't actually want anyone to derail this thread by answering the airship question here; I'll be starting a thread about that later if I can't find an existing one.
Charles Phipps
10-09-05, 06:08 PM Basically, enthusiasm for any subject goes through highs and lows.
Majorafire77
10-09-05, 08:22 PM I've always found that my enthusiasm levels between multiple subjects seem to compete with each other, and one goes up while others go down. Is that normal, or am I just screwed up?
d_nychus
10-09-05, 08:58 PM It's good to vary games, and check out different settings, games, or even different hobbies. Sticking to just one thing, no matter how much you enjoy it, tends to burn you out. And, hell, maybe you've just had your fill of Eberron. There's nothing wrong with that. It's totally fine if a person's interests change.
Yasumoto
10-09-05, 09:42 PM I've always found that my enthusiasm levels between multiple subjects seem to compete with each other, and one goes up while others go down. Is that normal, or am I just screwed up?

I feel the same way, and it frequently happens. (Or at least, it seems to.) At least there are two of us that are screwd up.
Edymnion
10-09-05, 10:13 PM Not yet. Been playing it since the beginning, and to put it simply, Eberron has become my default D&D. Tolkien-esque high fantasy forgotten realms stuff has become "the other D&D" for me :D
Grymar
10-09-05, 11:07 PM Not here, either. Then again, my only exposure to it is through my own game that I run, but still there is so much yet unexplored that is still very vibrant in my mind.
(Psi)SeveredHead
10-09-05, 11:14 PM Where did you find Errand of Mercy?
MarkB
10-10-05, 09:22 AM Where did you find Errand of Mercy?
You can find it via the link in my sig.
Ineti
10-10-05, 09:27 AM I also tend to have the interest shifts from one genre to another or one setting to another. I was all about Lord of the Rings about a year ago, then switched to Star Wars, then switched to Star Trek. I'm running a Trek game now, but I'm planning a short Eberron adventure to run sometime in February.

Doing so is allowing me to read up on Eberron gradually, rather than immersing myself all at once. It's a great setting, and I don't want to burn myself out before I even run the first session.
MikeyP
10-10-05, 09:43 AM My game group and I have become real big fans of this setting for a wide variety of reasons, with some of us loving it more than others. I don't think any of us have fallen "out" with the setting yet in the 9 months or so that we've been using it, and two of my players just introduced it in another group that they run.
I'm sure over time I might get a little "tired" of certain aspects, but I'm sure I'll find something that will keep me roped in. But that wouldn't be for a LONG time anyway, as there are a lot of aspects of the game that our group has yet to "explore".

The only thing that alienates me from the setting, as a GM, is finding and justifying high level NPC opponents for them. Case in point: yesterday I ran Dungeon module Beast of Burden for a group of 8th level PCs. The 'scaling the adventure' sidebar recommends changing one of the two main antogonists from a 9th level wizard to a 13th level wizard. As you may know, that's really damn high for an NPC and sometimes I have a hard time trying to justify using an NPC like that.

Just a quick tangent, I found the idea of a 150' tall beast being controlled by gnolls ravaging the countryside to be a very cool idea for Eberron, so I adapted it quite easily. There is a Citadel Elite paladin in the party, who as part of his duty had to report to a lieutenant (sp?) at Fort Orcbone. The opening of the module had them run into a large band of riders, and instead of the Knights of Heironius (as dictated in the adventure), I made them the Westwind Riders. Being that it borders Droaam and is made up largely of gnolls, it made a lot of sense.
Master of shaarat'khesh
10-10-05, 11:28 AM Not yet. Been playing it since the beginning, and to put it simply, Eberron has become my default D&D. Tolkien-esque high fantasy forgotten realms stuff has become "the other D&D" for me :D
That's exactly what happened to me. I was a FR gamer since its inception and had a basic "been there, done that" feeling for gaming until Eberron. It stoked a dormant fire I had not felt in years. Now it's all I am into. I've been with it since it was first mentioned and I've been high on it ever since.

I do go thru up's and down's with other game settings that are not high fantasy; like Star Wars, Cyberpunk, Spy Craft, etc. It depends really on what kind of mood I'm in and if I have a really good idea for one of those settings. I'll do a hard core gaming run and then when it's over I break out the Eberron books again (if I ever even close them at all)

I have found it a lot of fun to try and use those same story concepts I have used or am thinking of using in the above mentioned settings and adapt them to Eberron. Eberron lends it self well to any story and campaign. Other settings, I've found to be limiting in various ways, whether they be fantasy or Sci-Fi, but Eberron is very adaptable and still believable for PC's.
LewisLlynn
10-10-05, 03:48 PM I've been Eberron-obsessed ever since I first got the ECS, but my "relationship" with Eberron has changed. ;)

When I first read through the ECS the wonder and mystery and novelty of it got me hooked. Now all that is gone, now that I consider myself an Eberron expert (well... about the stuff I care about, at least). But I still love the setting. Once in a while, skimming through the ECS again brings back a little of that thrill.
Streamweaver
10-10-05, 04:14 PM Does anyone ever get tired of the setting?

Tired is not the right word for me. I'm using Eberron for the setting of my current campaign as I did with my previous one and everyong is enjoying it. I've been gaming a LONG time and everyone enjoys a change in their creative process somtimes, I'm sure I'll want to do something that isn't Eberron someday but I'm also reasonably sure I'll come back to it agai. I enjoy different worlds. I've run campaigns out of my own homebrewed worlds, run them in harsh reality driven worlds like Harn, other settings like Diamond Throne and such. The worlds I've probably used least have been the Realms, nothing against them but I've got worlds of their flavor I've been using since before FR existed so I just kept using those.

Eberron is one element of my gaming life, but not the last one.
ranger of the north
10-10-05, 11:07 PM I seem to find that I never really fall out of any setting. Eberron is really neat, but it's hard for me to justify something like an epoch-aged(usage?) vampire fighter that can destroy galaxies with his left hand in that setting, so I used FR. Made for quite the show when he killed Elminster and the Chosen with only a sword he stole. So, in short, FR is my setting for dramatic, and very epic, tales. Nothing quite says epic to me like the ability to stumble into the ruins of a civilization that nearly destroyed the world, or the galaxy, or the material plane, etc.

Eberron for me was, and is, my setting I go to if I want to have true adventure. Not like a published module, though they are neat, but the kind of world where I can just wander around for the simple pleasure of the descriptions of the world I get from the books and the DM. In my DM's version of the world, you have to be a qualified Extreme Explorer to go to Xen'Drik on official business, so I became an EE just so I could go to new places to hear and see. Plus, of course, the massive awesomeness that results from having too many action points for your own good.
ranger of the north
10-10-05, 11:11 PM Oh, and another setting I love to use as well: Planescape. I can think up so much neat stuff for Eberron, FR, Dark Sun, homebrew, and on and on, and they're all really awesome in their own right, but nothing ever seems to come quite so close to the cerebral, quixotic insanity that Planescape can become. IMHO, I still have yet to play a game, or read a book, that comes close to the story of Torment. Just my 2 coppers. :D
PoeticJustice
10-11-05, 11:32 AM It's good to vary games, and check out different settings, games, or even different hobbies. Sticking to just one thing, no matter how much you enjoy it, tends to burn you out. And, hell, maybe you've just had your fill of Eberron. There's nothing wrong with that. It's totally fine if a person's interests change.

I think this is the best advice I've heard so far. I run an Eberron weekly, but sometimes it feels like an obligation. Luckily a new player joined my group and reinvigorated it a bit. I'm beginning to think its not so much an Eberron problem as problem with my DM'ing style.

I tend to send 'em on adventure afte adventure. This week we wrapped up a module we'd started a month ago and spent the next three hours on "downtime"-- artificer crafting items, fighter going on patrol, wizard learning the intricacies of counterspelling... It was a lot of fun, and now anticipation is high for the next part of the Campaign to begin.
Salla
10-11-05, 11:56 AM It's good to vary games, and check out different settings, games, or even different hobbies. Sticking to just one thing, no matter how much you enjoy it, tends to burn you out. And, hell, maybe you've just had your fill of Eberron. There's nothing wrong with that. It's totally fine if a person's interests change.

You speak wisely.

Despite that, I'm still thinking about using the Eberron setting with the Fantasy HERO system. :D
cmanos
10-11-05, 12:55 PM Eberron is chock full of adventure ideas. Maybe not a whole lot of dungeon crawls, but I don't think that is what the setting is intended for. My gods, think about the possibilities of a political campaign where the characters are sercret police for a govornment or deeply involved in house politics. Think about the possibilities for exploration adventures.

If your just looking for a settingw here characters can go out and kill a dragon whenever they feel like it, check out Forgotten Realms. Eberron is a hell of a lot more mature of a game, in my opinion than the hack-and-slach, get saved by Elmister have tea with the gods that FR is.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
PoeticJustice 10-09-05, 04:42 AM	Does anyone ever get tired of the setting? What initially attracted me to the setting was the Mournland. I was a totally new DM; coming up with plot hooks was really hard for me, and then came the Mournland which just screamed "Easy adventuring right here! Big dungeon!" For a while, it was good. Then I remember being so fed up back in April I was going to switch to Homebrew, but reading MarkB's adventure, Errand of Mercy, made me want to tough it out. I think I was tired of having to make the badguys so damned smart all the time, and then that adventure showed how you could play a proper villain. Now I'm just when the glitter is starting to fade on Eberron yet again, Magic of Eberron has got me enthusiastic about the setting. Again. Has anyone else yo-yo'ed like I have? What alienated you from the setting? What brought you back? Post your stories, please, I'd love to hear them.
polt 10-09-05, 06:02 AM	Quite the opposite, I wish I could use Eberron more.
ieattrollsforbreakfast 10-09-05, 06:34 AM	I have never wished to stray for Eberron, it is still by far the best campaign setting I have every played. That said, there are times when I have thought about using different settings in parallel for some games, such as Ravenloft, Dark Sun and Planescape, but that is no fault of the Eberron setting, just a desire to check out something new.
Salla 10-09-05, 05:24 PM	No ... my love of Eberron remains undiminished. I can't even think about making a homebrew campaign very well, without thinking about how much it sucks compared to Eberron.
papytofu 10-09-05, 05:45 PM	I'm exactly like you, I've got Eberron "high" and sometimes after it fade, it's also beacause I can't play with my group a lot, so I tend to let it rest, and the passion awake when a new book appear. But it's not Eberron, cause I only play Eberron, it's more D&D in general. One month I play D&D, the other I play Final Fantasy or it could be reading books.
treehouse916 10-09-05, 05:49 PM	I don't know if I'm really qualified to talk here yet since I technically haven't even started an Eberron game yet. But I'm about to; we are taking a break from my homebrew in like three sessions, and I'll be starting a gestalt Eberron campaign. What attracts me to the setting is the originality of it, and the multitude of built in ready-to-go plot hooks. And almost all of the villanous organizations are very cool. The biggest contributing factor for my waiting to start for so long is simply that I'm kind of intimidated by what a good setting it is. I like to go my own way when I start a campaign, and I'm sure I'll take a few liberties with Eberron, but I don't want to screw up any of the cool dynamics if I can avoid it. For example, right now I'd like to make airships more prevalent and common-place; will I feel that way in a month? A year? What are the consequences? Note: I don't actually want anyone to derail this thread by answering the airship question here; I'll be starting a thread about that later if I can't find an existing one.
Charles Phipps 10-09-05, 06:08 PM	Basically, enthusiasm for any subject goes through highs and lows.
Majorafire77 10-09-05, 08:22 PM	I've always found that my enthusiasm levels between multiple subjects seem to compete with each other, and one goes up while others go down. Is that normal, or am I just screwed up?
d_nychus 10-09-05, 08:58 PM	It's good to vary games, and check out different settings, games, or even different hobbies. Sticking to just one thing, no matter how much you enjoy it, tends to burn you out. And, hell, maybe you've just had your fill of Eberron. There's nothing wrong with that. It's totally fine if a person's interests change.
Yasumoto 10-09-05, 09:42 PM	I've always found that my enthusiasm levels between multiple subjects seem to compete with each other, and one goes up while others go down. Is that normal, or am I just screwed up? I feel the same way, and it frequently happens. (Or at least, it seems to.) At least there are two of us that are screwd up.
Edymnion 10-09-05, 10:13 PM	Not yet. Been playing it since the beginning, and to put it simply, Eberron has become my default D&D. Tolkien-esque high fantasy forgotten realms stuff has become "the other D&D" for me :D
Grymar 10-09-05, 11:07 PM	Not here, either. Then again, my only exposure to it is through my own game that I run, but still there is so much yet unexplored that is still very vibrant in my mind.
(Psi)SeveredHead 10-09-05, 11:14 PM	Where did you find Errand of Mercy?
MarkB 10-10-05, 09:22 AM	Where did you find Errand of Mercy? You can find it via the link in my sig.
Ineti 10-10-05, 09:27 AM	I also tend to have the interest shifts from one genre to another or one setting to another. I was all about Lord of the Rings about a year ago, then switched to Star Wars, then switched to Star Trek. I'm running a Trek game now, but I'm planning a short Eberron adventure to run sometime in February. Doing so is allowing me to read up on Eberron gradually, rather than immersing myself all at once. It's a great setting, and I don't want to burn myself out before I even run the first session.
MikeyP 10-10-05, 09:43 AM	My game group and I have become real big fans of this setting for a wide variety of reasons, with some of us loving it more than others. I don't think any of us have fallen "out" with the setting yet in the 9 months or so that we've been using it, and two of my players just introduced it in another group that they run. I'm sure over time I might get a little "tired" of certain aspects, but I'm sure I'll find something that will keep me roped in. But that wouldn't be for a LONG time anyway, as there are a lot of aspects of the game that our group has yet to "explore". The only thing that alienates me from the setting, as a GM, is finding and justifying high level NPC opponents for them. Case in point: yesterday I ran Dungeon module Beast of Burden for a group of 8th level PCs. The 'scaling the adventure' sidebar recommends changing one of the two main antogonists from a 9th level wizard to a 13th level wizard. As you may know, that's really damn high for an NPC and sometimes I have a hard time trying to justify using an NPC like that. Just a quick tangent, I found the idea of a 150' tall beast being controlled by gnolls ravaging the countryside to be a very cool idea for Eberron, so I adapted it quite easily. There is a Citadel Elite paladin in the party, who as part of his duty had to report to a lieutenant (sp?) at Fort Orcbone. The opening of the module had them run into a large band of riders, and instead of the Knights of Heironius (as dictated in the adventure), I made them the Westwind Riders. Being that it borders Droaam and is made up largely of gnolls, it made a lot of sense.
Master of shaarat'khesh 10-10-05, 11:28 AM	Not yet. Been playing it since the beginning, and to put it simply, Eberron has become my default D&D. Tolkien-esque high fantasy forgotten realms stuff has become "the other D&D" for me :D That's exactly what happened to me. I was a FR gamer since its inception and had a basic "been there, done that" feeling for gaming until Eberron. It stoked a dormant fire I had not felt in years. Now it's all I am into. I've been with it since it was first mentioned and I've been high on it ever since. I do go thru up's and down's with other game settings that are not high fantasy; like Star Wars, Cyberpunk, Spy Craft, etc. It depends really on what kind of mood I'm in and if I have a really good idea for one of those settings. I'll do a hard core gaming run and then when it's over I break out the Eberron books again (if I ever even close them at all) I have found it a lot of fun to try and use those same story concepts I have used or am thinking of using in the above mentioned settings and adapt them to Eberron. Eberron lends it self well to any story and campaign. Other settings, I've found to be limiting in various ways, whether they be fantasy or Sci-Fi, but Eberron is very adaptable and still believable for PC's.
LewisLlynn 10-10-05, 03:48 PM	I've been Eberron-obsessed ever since I first got the ECS, but my "relationship" with Eberron has changed. ;) When I first read through the ECS the wonder and mystery and novelty of it got me hooked. Now all that is gone, now that I consider myself an Eberron expert (well... about the stuff I care about, at least). But I still love the setting. Once in a while, skimming through the ECS again brings back a little of that thrill.
Streamweaver 10-10-05, 04:14 PM	Does anyone ever get tired of the setting? Tired is not the right word for me. I'm using Eberron for the setting of my current campaign as I did with my previous one and everyong is enjoying it. I've been gaming a LONG time and everyone enjoys a change in their creative process somtimes, I'm sure I'll want to do something that isn't Eberron someday but I'm also reasonably sure I'll come back to it agai. I enjoy different worlds. I've run campaigns out of my own homebrewed worlds, run them in harsh reality driven worlds like Harn, other settings like Diamond Throne and such. The worlds I've probably used least have been the Realms, nothing against them but I've got worlds of their flavor I've been using since before FR existed so I just kept using those. Eberron is one element of my gaming life, but not the last one.
ranger of the north 10-10-05, 11:07 PM	I seem to find that I never really fall out of any setting. Eberron is really neat, but it's hard for me to justify something like an epoch-aged(usage?) vampire fighter that can destroy galaxies with his left hand in that setting, so I used FR. Made for quite the show when he killed Elminster and the Chosen with only a sword he stole. So, in short, FR is my setting for dramatic, and very epic, tales. Nothing quite says epic to me like the ability to stumble into the ruins of a civilization that nearly destroyed the world, or the galaxy, or the material plane, etc. Eberron for me was, and is, my setting I go to if I want to have true adventure. Not like a published module, though they are neat, but the kind of world where I can just wander around for the simple pleasure of the descriptions of the world I get from the books and the DM. In my DM's version of the world, you have to be a qualified Extreme Explorer to go to Xen'Drik on official business, so I became an EE just so I could go to new places to hear and see. Plus, of course, the massive awesomeness that results from having too many action points for your own good.
ranger of the north 10-10-05, 11:11 PM	Oh, and another setting I love to use as well: Planescape. I can think up so much neat stuff for Eberron, FR, Dark Sun, homebrew, and on and on, and they're all really awesome in their own right, but nothing ever seems to come quite so close to the cerebral, quixotic insanity that Planescape can become. IMHO, I still have yet to play a game, or read a book, that comes close to the story of Torment. Just my 2 coppers. :D
PoeticJustice 10-11-05, 11:32 AM	It's good to vary games, and check out different settings, games, or even different hobbies. Sticking to just one thing, no matter how much you enjoy it, tends to burn you out. And, hell, maybe you've just had your fill of Eberron. There's nothing wrong with that. It's totally fine if a person's interests change. I think this is the best advice I've heard so far. I run an Eberron weekly, but sometimes it feels like an obligation. Luckily a new player joined my group and reinvigorated it a bit. I'm beginning to think its not so much an Eberron problem as problem with my DM'ing style. I tend to send 'em on adventure afte adventure. This week we wrapped up a module we'd started a month ago and spent the next three hours on "downtime"-- artificer crafting items, fighter going on patrol, wizard learning the intricacies of counterspelling... It was a lot of fun, and now anticipation is high for the next part of the Campaign to begin.
Salla 10-11-05, 11:56 AM	It's good to vary games, and check out different settings, games, or even different hobbies. Sticking to just one thing, no matter how much you enjoy it, tends to burn you out. And, hell, maybe you've just had your fill of Eberron. There's nothing wrong with that. It's totally fine if a person's interests change. You speak wisely. Despite that, I'm still thinking about using the Eberron setting with the Fantasy HERO system. :D
cmanos 10-11-05, 12:55 PM	Eberron is chock full of adventure ideas. Maybe not a whole lot of dungeon crawls, but I don't think that is what the setting is intended for. My gods, think about the possibilities of a political campaign where the characters are sercret police for a govornment or deeply involved in house politics. Think about the possibilities for exploration adventures. If your just looking for a settingw here characters can go out and kill a dragon whenever they feel like it, check out Forgotten Realms. Eberron is a hell of a lot more mature of a game, in my opinion than the hack-and-slach, get saved by Elmister have tea with the gods that FR is.