I remember a while back there was a thread that suggested that Eberron might be Steam Punk, which for whatever reason seemed to make a lot of people mad. However, I was thinking about it the other day and it occurred to me that the setting could easily have the same feel and visual theme. I'm considering introducing some new gadgets into the setting. Some are just mildly altered standbys and some are downright weird.SOme of the devices I'm thinking about are:
Wand-sights: Cannath has started producing a new kind of wand. Any wand with a "ray" effect. These wands are built with a slight curve near the handle and a set of rings standing one near the "handle" and one near the "barrel". They are wrapped in whirling brass filigree and each is capped with an Eberron dragonshard.
Leather wings: These are a set of large bat-like wings made of soarwood and leather attached to a brass and gold harness. The can retract a bit making it possible to walk through doors while wearing them but the whole apparatus is cumbersome at best imposing a maximum +1 DEX bonus and a -4 to all skills that are restricted by wearing armor. In the front of the harness there is a 3 inch by 1 inch rectangular depression which fits a minor schema etched with the Fly spell. Anyone wearing the harness, spell caster or not, can place the approiate schema in the harness and press the Eberron dragonshards set on either side of it. After activation the character can fly, as the spell Overland Flight, for five hours. Control of the flight is managed through two handles attached to either side of the wearers waist. There is no daily limit to the the number of times the harness can be used though each activation uses the schema's daily activation.
Lightning Cannon: This device resembles an 8 foot long 3 foot wide copper tube bound with silver and brass rings at six inch intervals along it's length. Four thin steel tubes are set parallel to the main device and are mounted on copper struts. The far end is capped with a large Eberron dragonshard and the other end is mounted to a heavy iron turret allowing the device to be aimed in any direction and up to 80 degrees up or down. It is loaded by placing a a minor schema of Lightning Bolt in a slot at the near end and closing the hatch over it. Two three foot diameter wheels on the turret are used to aim the cannon, one turning it side to side and the other up and down. Pulling the large lever on the near end activated the schema. The device amplifies the spell and fires a 5 foot wide ball of lightning from the far end causing 10d8 damage to everything in a line five feet wide and 2000 feet long. The lightning ball ignores 20 points of structural hardness Aiming the cannon is a rather slow process (taking full round to turn it 90 degrees) and as a result the creatures in the line gain a +2 bonus to their reflex saves, a successful save results in half damage. It takes two rounds to reload the cannon and each firing requires a charged schema but there is otherwise no limit to the number of times it could potently be fired. The cannon weighs 800 pounds, requiring it to be mounted on a large vehicle such as a wagon or airship in order for it to be effectively used in the field. The cannon has 10 hardness and 50 hp, though it stops working after taking only 15. When reduced to 0 hp or less it cannot be repaired.
I'll come up with more later. I'm thinking that there is a branch of Cannath with ideas of concoring the world, possibly by joining forces with the Emerald Claw. It doesn't have to be Cannith but they have the best fit. These devices shouldn't be available to the public or even the Nations. It should be a while before the players even know who's building these things. The Organization has been making huge advances in modifying the application of magic and the players should feel out of their depth for a while before meeting a character (player or npc) who was aligned with the Organization before realizing just how crazy they are and defecting. She/he will finally have some insight into how these strange things work and who's behind it all.
How can you do punk without the most important aspect :D?
Mood Goggles: The lenses of these goggles (ordinarily clear) are tinted a certain color based on the wearer's mood.
Green -Envious / Greedy
Red - Angry / Lustful
Grey - Contemplative / Muddled
Blue - Depressed
Purple - Calm
Yellow - Happy
I'm still trying to introduce television and computers based on crystal ball technology, but every time I make a suggestion in that regard people tell me it's a terrible idea and I should be bashed with a plastic noodle for even considering it.
The same when I advocate introducing mecha...
I don't know about TV, but maybe something like a radio might fit. I don't mean anything like an i-pod either. They should be about the size of a desk and weigh 200 pounds. I can almost imagion a dozen children at the local orphanage sitting around it in the dark listening to the latest tales of adventures in far off lands and wanting to grow up like the heroes they're hearing about.
For a computer, give it a really elaborate name and make it really really big, no laptops. And make them rare, of not one of a kind. Mana-Methodical Planer Calculating Engine or something like that. Maybe part of it's working process involves generating an artificial manifest zone into Daanvi. Describe it as being the size of a small house, encased in brass and steel plates with lightning arching between rods and antennae. it is programed with plate-sized sheets of copper with various mystical designs and magical words (like magic punch cards) and it displays its information on a huge Eberron shard (similar to how a spellshard displays it's stored spells.) or through printouts. For the first several encounters your players have with it it only communicates in these way... but then it starts talking.
I plan to use several variations of Cannith Goggles too, they have the right look to them. Same with warforged grafts, especially for the big badguy.
I like the use of schemas as parts of devices. Sure, they can be used as once-a-day scrolls, but they were intended to be a part of another, larger device.
The weapons presented in Magic of Eberron fit well too, such as the Alchemy Blade. The vehicles in the same book such as the Tumbler and the Earth Sled. The Organization might use one of the submersible elemental ships as a mobile base.
I cannot begin to emphasize my belief that if you're interested in introducing computing into Eberron and want to do it well, you should read The Difference Engine. It's an excellent alternate reality novel that really helps set the mood and style of how computers could work in yea old manapunk/steampunk style setting. That and it's a darn good yarn!
Or use the thinking machine (I forget it's given name) from Discworld novels as a computer. XD
Good 'ol H.E.X.
I'm thinking that the ManaPunk aspects should be modifications of more standard, by 3.5 terms, magical items. With a lack of high level spell casters on Eberron magical research is slowly shifting from new more powerful spells and items and more toward innovation and modification of the old.
Some of the more complex things require a minimal skill rating to use. A wand with a complex aiming system doesn't actually effect the spell itself but gives a bonus to aiming rays. The user needs a minimum Craft: Engineering 5 to gain any benefit, usually a +1 or +2 to-hit bonus.
The lightning cannon I mentioned earlier requires an engineering DC 15 check to load and the gunner needs Craft: Engineering 10 to be able to aim properly. If he has less then targets gain a bonus to save throws equal to his skill - 10.
I'm also playing around with the idea of Arcane Consoles. Many are very simple, such as those attached to a magical lift (elevator). Some, like those that allow rudimentary control of an airship, are very complex. But they all function on similar principals and design. At it's core is a large Syberious shard which supplies power to the device. Attached to it are the Eberron shards that hold the spells that the console utilizes. These are usually concealed within the device. On the work surface are rotating and/or shifting plates etched with arcane sigals and miniature leylines. By manupulating these plates the user can break some magic circles and lines while lineing up others.
In the lift's console the Eberron shard holds a levetate spell while the Syberious shard empowers it as needed to lift much more weight than the spell normaly can. The console is very simple. The surface has a complex pattern of circles, lines and magic words but the operator dosn't need to mess with that. The left side of the console has two symbolic runes on a sliding plate which is moved by a lever. Pulling the lever down aligns the rune for "earth" with the rest of the etchings and the elevator goes downward. Pushing the lever up aligns the rune for "sky" with the console and the lift goes up. The city of Sharn employs people to operate these lifts for a pittance. No real knowledge of the console is needed.
The much larger consoles on some airships are much more complex with dials, levers and switches that manipulate dozens of etched plates and even so the control is rough at best. Mostly it's used by assistants to the pilot while he's away from the wheel for course corrections. Turning port of starboard requires an engineering check DC 10 while up and down requires a DC 12. Speed changes have DCs of 10 for speeding up and 12 for slowing down. But these changes in direction and speed are jerky and unsettling. It is virtually imposable to navigate a storm with the console (DC 20) and outright dangerous to try to dock an airship (DC 25). If the elemental decides to act up the pilot (or someone with the right dragon mark) needs to rush to the wheel and regain control as all DC's increase by 5 to 10 until the elemental is placed back under control. It might seem redundant, but with a few trained assistants and a marked pilot an airship can stay on course for weeks at a time without stressing the pilot.
I'm looking for a better term right now, but I think of these etched plates as a kind of magical circuitry. With circuits opening and closing by aligning mini-laylines and runes with the spells in the shards that allow nonspell casters and nondragonmarked to utilize magic items they otherwise wouldn't be able to or would be too expencive to enchant for anyone to use. They also allow two or more spells to function together in ways they normaly couldn't.
I'm also planing to play the modern magical world as a major paradigm shift from the ages before. When you say the word "magic" to the average person in Sharn they think of everbright lanterns and eternal wands; airships and artificers; convinces and weapons, and mostly low level stuff, because there's a lot you can do with 0-4th level magic.
But the old kingdom was a place of wizards and old, powerful magic. And the pre-Galfar world drew it's power from the stones of the earth and the necromancy that Karrnath used in the last war was so old that until then it was the stuff of scary campfire stories that surely couldn't really exist. Which is part of the reason that the elves are so widely held in suspicion, fear and superstition. The vast majority of people just don't even think about the nature of the forces that light the streets at night.
I'm still trying to introduce television and computers based on crystal ball technology, but every time I make a suggestion in that regard people tell me it's a terrible idea and I should be bashed with a plastic noodle for even considering it.
The same when I advocate introducing mecha...
By Mecha are you talking about giant robots driven by a person? What I would do is make them something like a warforged titan with a driver compartment. Decide right away how many there are and when those are gone there will be no more.
Maybe right before the (humanlike) warforged were perfected there was another artificer working on a stop-gap method of making "smart constructs". He made 12 and presented them to the House, but the warforged we know were much cheaper to build, didn't risk "real lives" to send into battle and easier to deploy. Distraught the inventor vowed to have his revenge on Channath. But just as he was ready to march his giant killer robot army into Making the Mourning struck. Years later another evil-genius finds the stash.
No one has been able to find the notes or plans for constructing these things. The setting isn't really effected by these, lets call them mana-suits, because they can't be reproduced. Once the bad guy is defeated all but the ones the PCs managed to run off with are broken.
Alternately, the big badguy of the storyarch/campaign can make these things and is using them in a bid for power. But as he's the only one who can build them there will be no more after his death.
It's not that I lack for conceptual niches in which to fit mechs (my preferred one is 'constructed during the Quori war so that the giants could field elven troops on something closer to their own scale'). It's just that the last few times I've made a post describing said niches and appropriate mechanics thereto (such as when DragonMech came out and I posted about my ideas for integrating it) I was told by not a few people that mecha in general and mecha in Eberron in particular were horrible ideas and I should be raked over hot coals for even thinking of such a thing, let alone daring to share my disgusting heresy with anyone.
Admittedly, this seems to happen whenever I post about anything, so I've got to wonder whether the internet is trying to tell me something...
Building suits for the elves so they could be giant size is a great idea. I think the important thing is making the number limited enough that you have to think of reasons why the military of the Nations arn't stomping around in them.
I would suggest if you want to try getting feed back on the idea again to stay as far away from the words; mecha, mech, power armor, and robot. Those terms come with a lot of baddage. People tend to visualize things like Gundam before whatever discription you add. I would suggest keeping them on the fringe though, something only one maybe two organizations in the whole world have access to otherwise the entire flavor of the world will change quite a bit.
It's not that I lack for conceptual niches in which to fit mechs (my preferred one is 'constructed during the Quori war so that the giants could field elven troops on something closer to their own scale'). It's just that the last few times I've made a post describing said niches and appropriate mechanics thereto (such as when DragonMech came out and I posted about my ideas for integrating it) I was told by not a few people that mecha in general and mecha in Eberron in particular were horrible ideas and I should be raked over hot coals for even thinking of such a thing, let alone daring to share my disgusting heresy with anyone.Admittedly, this seems to happen whenever I post about anything, so I've got to wonder whether the internet is trying to tell me something...
That you have a somewhat odd taste and that many on the internet at times have difficulties accepting that others might like different things instead of celebrating the diversion of the net?
Note that after reading CthulhuTech I can see how mecha's are kind of cool, but that game also points out that it is somewhat difficult to use in a standard D&D game. To better simmulate the differences between the large mechas and human-sized combats it is best to split the two into different mechanisms. In turn, that means that facing large creatures such as giants and dragons becomes much more difficult for human-sized fights. Still, if you want to do the work, and don't mind all PCs being mecha-pilots, it might be worth it. It wouldn't be a traditional Eberron campaign though
The radios mentioned above should function with crystals. The one country having mastered the technology would be... Riedra, who would gracefully gift transmitters to friend nations and explain to them how to build receivers.
Riedrans would do it with a view to using their own, more powerful transmitters later on, perhaps to enact a control similar to that achieved through the monoliths. 
That you have a somewhat odd taste and that many on the internet at times have difficulties accepting that others might like different things instead of celebrating the diversion of the net?
See, I don't understand this general antipathy to giant robot war machines. Granted, I don't watch most mecha anime (except for Dai-Guard, which makes fun of other mecha anime) so maybe I'm not getting the full story - but the history of mecha in tabletop gaming is long and illustrious, and the settings they're generally attached to are usually deep and politically intricate (BattleTech, Heavy Gear, CthulhuTech, Iron Kingdoms, even Mechanical Dream). It's caused me no end of frustration in my group, because I want to play CthulhuTech at some point but one player (the one who everyone else listens to so we always do what he wants) doesn't like mecha and so won't even read the book.
It wouldn't be a traditional Eberron campaign though
Almost by definition, there's no such thing as a 'traditional Eberron campaign.' The setting's entire purpose is to challenge assumptions of what is traditional in D&D.