I have never tried Eberron myself. I am a big Forgotten Realms fan and have limited myself to that setting. I am considering trying out Eberron in 4E.
I was wondering if the fans on this board could give me their reasons why they like this setting. Give me the Pros and Cons of playing in the Eberron World so that I may have a better understanding of why some people seem to like it so much.
I would much rather have a general understand of the Setting to decide whether or not I should buy it instead of going in without any real knowledge of it. I don't want to waste my money on a setting I may not like.
So here is your chance to gain a new fan of your favorite setting.
The floor is now open to you.
:D
- The PC's are the stars of the show. There are very few high-level good guy NPC's, the gods are distant and might not even exist, but there are threats everywhere, so the world needs the PC's. (This is in contrast to FR, where the world is full of famous epic-level good guys from novels like Elminster, the chosen of Mystra, etc., and where the gods often show up in person to take care of anything important, and every city has multiple high-level casters sitting around. This makes it hard to come up with excuses as to why the PC's are necessary to do anything important) In 4e FR, they're killing off all the high-level NPC's with the spellplague.
- The world integrates D&D's magic system in a more consistent and realistic way. People know that magic exists, and they use it to help their everyday lives rather than just using it to blow things up in combat or make better swords. They use it for travel, business, entertainment, etc. However, it's "wide magic", not "high magic". There are almost no good-guy high level NPC casters left, so even though there's a lot of magic, it's all low-level stuff. The PC's still seem powerful and exotic when they get to mid level or higher. (In FR, by contrast, there are a ton of epic level good guy NPC spellcasters, but none of them ever seem to do anything to help their society or to advance the state of "science" and create new technologies. Commoners are supposed to be amazed and afraid of magic, even though half of the people living in their town are 5th level wizards.) In 4e FR, they're killing off all the high-level spellcasters with the spellplague, and making the remaining ones band together and study magic more cautiously; perhaps this will lead to spellcasters working together for the good of the world.
- Moral ambiguity is mechanically supported and encouraged. Most creatures that have an alignment restriction in the Monster Manual officially lose that restriction in Eberron, so you can have an evil silver dragon or a good red dragon. Clerics and similar classes don't lose their powers anymore if they drift from their deity's alignment, so you can have corrupt priests in good churches, or people with a good heart in an evil church. I personally don't use alignment at all in my games, and Eberron works very well if you just throw it out; one might say that the creators didn't like alignment either and only left it in because they had to. (In FR, every person in the world must choose a patron god or lose their soul forever. The gods are very straightforward and black and white about alignment. It's hard to throw out the idea of alignment and still have a reasonable explanation for the way the Church of Cyric acts.) In 4e, alignment is mostly gone from the rules, so it will be mostly gone in FR as well. I wouldn't be surprised to see a change in the way people act towards gods.
- Religion is more mysterious and varied. There is the standard pantheon style religion from most campaign worlds, the Sovereign Host, but there are also other sorts of religions, like the Silver Flame, a monotheistic nonanthropomorphic religion, or the Path of Light, a nontheistic Buddhist-style religion. No one knows if the gods really exist, so they require faith, like real religions. (In FR, everyone knows the gods are real, because they recently all walked around talking to people and starting fights with eachother. Religion isn't about faith; it's about looking through the catalog of recruiting gods and picking the one that you think offers the best benefits package.) I'm not sure if this will change in 4e FR or not, but I think I read that the spellplague "makes the gods more distant", so we'll see.
- I like their custom races more. Probably just personal preference, but I think the Warforged and Changelings are awesome, and the Shifters and Kalashtar are pretty cool as well. And they're all balanced to be playable from level 1. (In FR, we have a whole bunch of subraces of the standard races, all of which are pretty similar in ability and personality to the standard race, plus a few that might be cool except for the huge ECL and the fact that they seem designed to be mysterious NPC races only (shades, saurials, etc.)) In 4e FR, who knows? They probably won't throw in any of the Eberron races. Too bad. ;)
On a side not, I do think you may be stretching some of the FR info there a little bit.:P
FR is great if you want to play a game that feels like every fantasy novel you've ever read. Which I often want to do, and should always be a staple of dungeons and dragons. It is D&D's answer to traditional fantasy, much more so than Greyhawk ever was. Eberron is keeping everything you know from fantasy but making it exciting, new and different but familiar at the same time. It's our decade's Dark Sun, in a lot of ways. Instead of environmental concerns, you've got a world without black and white morals, with an ever-present fear of war, and with a lot of uncertainties.
That was a lot more introspective than I intended. I hope it didn't come out too ... stupid. It's a valid point, even if i didn't articulate it well. You can, in fact, analyze RPGs for historical relevance ;)
After I actually sat down and started reading the core book, I was amazed in how entertaining the book was. It honestly read more like a novel to me, then a core setting book. In addition everything made sense, no more of the "because it's a fantasy realm" (an excuse I can't stand, myself).
Seeing as how most of the 3.5 stuff is on sale now you owe it to yourself to go pick up the main book and give it a read. If nothing else you will build campaign ideas for your FR setting and have a good read on your hands.
Eberron is a fairly new setting, with lots of 'white space' to fill in.
Pro: DMs are empowered and in fact encouraged to fill in that white space.
Con: Some portions of the world haven't had much official development at all. I prefer somewhere between "completed painting" and "mostly blank canvas."
There are mysteries in the world that will never be explained.
Pro: Excellent for the DM who wants to shape the world more to his liking.
Con: It can be difficult to determine what is intentionally being left a mystery and what is just being left unsaid at the moment.
Religions are faith-based, not rewards-based. Divine magic is generated by belief and devotion.
Pro: This really encourages wildly different sects and cults based on the same god. You don't really need a ton of deities for diverse beliefs.
Con: Sometimes I wonder why they even bothered using some of the 3e trappings of deity worship. Choice of domains particularly seems pretty arbitrary (especially since the most common religion, the Host, grants access to most PHB domains).
Races have been redefined, and are commonly more devoted to their home nation rather than their race.
Pro: Gnomes are cool in Eberron. Half-elves have their own culture and identity. The setting totally changed how I view dragons.
Con: Some of the mechanical trappings of the built-in D&D flavor doesn't jive that well with the new racial definitions.
New, interesting races and different cultures rather than subraces.
Pro: This has been so successful, the idea is being integrated into 4e.
Con: Some of the new races weren't all that thrilling. Daelkyr Half-Blood? Or those half Ogre Mage things in SoS? Not impressive.
I have heard that there is a much higher level of Technology in use. Would anyone be able to tell me about this aspect of the game as well?
Again, thank-you for the information. It does sound very interesting thus far and I may check it out.
One of the things I don't really like in my fantasy games is Gunpowder level tech and up. I may be able to get around it though if I give it a chance.
It takes several things to make an effective firearm. At one point England banned guns because longbows where much more effective than any current weapon, but people stopped learning to use them when low tech guns became available.
One needs steel-like metal, lead-like metal, imagination to design, black-powder that works, the ability to weld or cast steel, a cap explosive, a wooden stock, iron sights, a ramrod, wads, a lock with trigger mechanism, and training to have an effective muzzle loading weapon with a range of about 50'. This weapon also needs reloading every other round.
To prevent Eberron from having firearms, simply restrict the amount of lead in your world. It has taken centuries to learn to make solid bullets out of other materials.
Solid copper bullets are only recently developed in our world and it took a lot of research to make them work. They are also expensive. Steel Shot requires specially harden barrels to use.
Lead is very heavy, a lubricant, easy to cast, and soft enough to not harm the barrel it is shot out of.
(It is also toxic and this post is not meant to get into a discusion about lead in the real world. I simply want to point out that if you do not want guns in Eberron, you can easily and logical shut them out.)
Back to the topic at hand, I started DMing in Eberron because that is what my players wanted...and I found that they are very smart indeed...
I have heard that there is a much higher level of Technology in use. Would anyone be able to tell me about this aspect of the game as well?
Societally, the world is somewhere in between the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. There's an entire new NPC class, the Magewright, whose role in society is to be a craftsman that churns out very low-level magic items.
Cities are lit by everbright lanterns. Travel between cities can be accomplished by either airships or railroads, both powered by bound elementals and both affordable to the masses. Dragonmarked Houses act like trade guilds that can provide special services like healing, hospitality, telegraph-like services, etc. The dwarven nations offer secure banking. The common man can get broken household goods repaired magically, and some cities even have prestidigitation-based laundry services.
Heck, there's even an entire race that was the result of attempts to mass-produce soldiers for a continent-spanning war. Armies contain contingents of low-level spellcasters using eternal wands. Public education is available for every child in the Five Nations, and the country of Breland is well on the road to democracy. (No illiterate mud farmers, here!)
On the other hand, since almost all this technology comes from trained magical craftsmen, there are no factories yet (or in the foreseeable future) since many aspects of production can't be automated. "Industry" is largely driven by individual labor. Even though healing spells are available for purchase, they're out of range for the common man, so disease isn't on the verge of being wiped out. Guns and gunpowder are unknown in the setting, and eternal wands are way too expensive for the common man to own, so most people still rely on bows and melee arms. Large potions of the campaign world are wild and uncivilized.
Travel between cities can be accomplished by either airships or railroads, both powered by bound elementals and both affordable to the masses.
I was under the impression that lightning rail was expensive enough to be regularly used only by the middle and upper class, while airship travel was expensive enough to be upper class only. Am I remembering wrong?
Also the Elves of this world are great especially the ones from Aerenal whose religious beliefs focus on the family and ancesters and keeping them "alive" by turning them into positive energy undead (undying) and the greatest of these together form an "Undying court" who individually are quite powerful but as a whole have godly powers and can grant spells. The elves show this respect and worship by painting their faces like skulls or wearing death masks some even change their bodies to resemble undead (no Legolas's here).
On a negative side if you crave huge amounts of detail which the Realms is famous for Eberron seems to be intentionately left blank/vague in places comparitively.
I was under the impression that lightning rail was expensive enough to be regularly used only by the middle and upper class.
Well, by the ECS, you're not. The Explorer's Handbook diversified the price range so even commoners can afford to ride the lightning rail with their livestock in steerage (they just can't do so very often).
On a side-note, I thought there were factories in Eberron, at least mainly in Breland. Isn't that one of the main purposes behind schemas, mass production of goods?
Well, by the ECS, you're not. The Explorer's Handbook diversified the price range so even commoners can afford to ride the lightning rail with their livestock in steerage (they just can't do so very often).
Yep. That's what the first chapter is all about.
On a side-note, I thought there were factories in Eberron, at least mainly in Breland. Isn't that one of the main purposes behind schemas, mass production of goods?
I always thought that they were just blueprints, effectively. Maybe I got the wrong impression.
Creation forges are the closest thing to factory-like automation that I'm aware of, but I don't remember any references to them being applied to anything other than making Warforged and other constructs. Either way, I don't get the impression that they can churn out true "mass" production.
Schemas are formulas or blueprints that can be used by a mage to make items they would otherwise be unable to make -- basically they use the existing D&D rules that you can supply the spell for a crafting from a scroll or wand rather than yourself, only the schema isn't consumable and can be used indefinitely. (Mechanically a Minor Schema is just a scroll that can be used 1/day instead of running out. This is mildly useful for adventurers but the real point is to enable ongoing crafting.)
Creation Forges and other artifacts made using Major Schemas are the same way, only they enable the creation of magical things that can't ever be created using normal spells at all. They still require a mage to run them and a mage to spend energy to use them, though -- they can't run on their own or run by unskilled "factory workers". (Indeed, Cannith maintained its monopoly on Warforged production specifically because the Creation Forges were made so that they were impossible to use unless you have the Cannith Dragonmark. The Lord of Blades has his own Creation Forge that he's modified so that he can use it, but this modification seems to have also made it defective or unreliable.)
Go get the book and read it.
The better question to us trying to convince you to get it, would be us trying to convince you to put it down.
Eh, back on topic...
Eberron has multitudes of shadowy organizations, each vying for power.
Pros: You definitely won't run out of antagonists for your games, and when you got more than three parties after the same objective, things get real interesting.
Cons: Players reading up on the world may easily come to the conclusion that Eberron is pretty much screwed due to the overwhelming number of scheming badguys. Intrigue and noir are great in concept, but sometimes players will just be left confused and frustrated if they don't get enough information. Good guys don't always win in noir, and in my experience even players who appreciate the genre get pissy when they lose.
There's a whole continent that is meant to be more or less undeveloped.
Pros: If you have an idea that isn't exactly covered in the rest of the setting, you can implement it in Xen'drik. Due to it's wild magic nature, you could base an entire campaign in just this one continent. Even if you aren't exactly sure what to do with this 'DM playground,' there are a number of sources that give suggestions or ideas to help you out.
Cons: All too often, this becomes merely a dumping ground for races and other things that aren't found in other places (much like how everything psionic tends to get dumped into Sarlona). "You want to play a neanderthal? Well, let's just say you came from Xen'drik."
The core races are augmented with dragonmarks (if the player so chooses) and mercantile houses.
Pros: Taking these feats grants any character some amount of magical power to toss around. The houses are integrated at pretty much every level of the setting, so characters belonging to one will find RP hooks easily in most places.
Cons: The dragonmarks aren't impressively powerful (or very useful to adventurers), and most of the PrCs based off them don't do much to fix this.
Eberron introduced a new base class, the Artificer, a class based around infusing objects with magic (both temporarily and permanently).
Pros: The artificer is an amazing class, one that any party would be happy to have in their midst. The flavor is so good and mechanics so unique, many non-Eberron groups utilize it.
Cons: The artificer is quite possibly too amazing, outdoing even the Wizard in sheer power. The classes' "do it all" nature is like the antithesis of 4e, so who knows just what it will look like in the new edition.
Conversely, you could check out some of the novels. I recommend 'Tales From the Last War' short story compilation and the 'Heirs of Ash' and 'Dragon Below' trilogies for starters; the 'Dreaming Dark' trilogy is excellent as well.
The Mournlands:
As you may know, the continent of Khorvaire was very recently torn apart by a century long war known as the last war (it "ended" two years ago) which divided the 900 old empire of galifar in 13 sovereing nations. Well, the thing is that only 12 of those still exist.
In the year 994 (the campaing starts in the year 998) one of the weirdiest things in the modern history of the continent happened. Cyre, one of the original five nations that formed the empire of Galifar, was devastated by an explotion of eldritch power.
That's right, the whole nation exploded... or something like that.
More acurately, the nation died. Now a days, the region is known as the Mournlands and its borders are marked by a deep mist. Inside, the place is death quiet. The bodies of those that died in the day of mourning are still there, refusing to decompose. Spells became living ooses and the sun never fully rises. Other kinds of life are twisted and in the very center of the region there are two strange places that didn't existed in Cyre... one is a chasm of unknown dept that glows and whispers, another is a growing plateu made of glass that might be the key to knowing what the **** happened there.
After this came the Age of Giants. The dragons fled to one continent to contemplate the Prophecies they discovered. The giants of Xendrick became a "big deal" thanks to the dragons teaching htem epic magic. They became interested in the planes. They may have discovered something strange happening on the Plane of Dreams where the Quori dwelled. A war was started and the giants used some epic magic to make sure the quori could not invade their continent. The dragons got angry at the giants and blasted them all to the earth and curse the whole continent so that no organized civilization could spread and grow in power.
The age of monsters was next with a goblin/hobgoblin nation rising in Khoravire. It was grand and powerful but more plane invaders from Xoriat (Realm of Madness) tried invading and wiped out most of the goblin kingdom.
The orcs who learned druid magic from a dragon use their magic to bind the daelkyr (things from Xoriat) into Khyber itself. Now they sit around guarding the "seals" to the daelkyrs prison.
There is a big Planar Invader theme in EB but there is much more to the setting. I have not even touched upon the Great War and the crime noir aspect to the series.
1) The religions are much more interesting. This is a personal thing, since I studied religion at university, but I also think it's important because it's so different from the standard pseudo-polytheism of your average D&D world like Greyhawk.
The Sovereign Host is a true polytheistic pantheon: multiple gods, all worshipped together by their faithful, even if there are some priests especially devoted to single deities.
The best thing about it is that there are different kinds of religions. You don't just have competing pantheons - the elves of Aerenal worship their "undead" ancestors who physically live on the island in a city of the dead, the Church of the Silver Flame is devoted to a single impersonal divine force with a specific mission in the world, the Blood of Vol is a mystical faith seeking true immortality in the blood of the faithful, the various druid sects represent different concerns among those who revere the natural order and the world of Eberron itself, et cetera.
2) My second favourite thing is that Eberron was designed to really embody the Third Edition rules. This might sound strange coming from someone who is really looking forward to Fourth Edition, but what matters to me is less the specific rules and more the design philosophy of "The rules say people can do this; what does that mean for the setting?" I'm assuming the same philosophy will carry over to Fourth Edition's version Eberron, so even if the specifics of the world have to change from Third Edition, I'll be satisfied.
More to the point, Eberron was designed in a way that wasn't slaved to the existing assumptions of the D&D world. Orcs aren't all evil barbarians howling on the fringes of civilisation. Dragons aren't colour-coded by alignment. Elves aren't pseudo-Tolkienesque cardboard figures with the same old monoculture they've always had; they exist in multiple cultures (not all of which are defined as "elven cultures") with very different outlooks on life.
As much as I like a lot of the flavour ideas I've heard for the Fourth Edition core rules, a lot of them won't work for Eberron - but there's absolutely no reason Eberron can't continue to re-imagine core D&D tropes in the Fourth Edition era, the way it always had in the Third.
3) Finally, I like Eberron because it takes a more modern, conceptually fresher approach to what a D&D world can be. Mixing in elements of pulp fiction and film noir to the heroic fantasy milieu of D&D actually brings the feel of the setting closer to the sword-and-sorcery tales which appeared around the same time as the original pulp fiction stories.
The specific uses of magic in everyday life and non-adventuring projects which show up in Eberron also provides the appeal of steampunk settings without introducing unnecessary anachronisms like actual steam engines. The lightning rail, airships, the various magical businesses of the dragonmarked houses - they make the setting feel more contemporary and fresh without abandoning the fantasy feel of D&D.
I also really love the specifics of the political landscape in Eberron - the post-World War One, pre-World War Two feel of the international scene lends itself to great and colourful spy stories, another vital component of the setting.
When you boil it right down, I guess I like Eberron because it's a setting in which I can play D&D, a game I love, without shackling myself to the tired old traditional, pseudo-medieval, Tolkienesque tropes of fantasy of which I am personally quite tired after seeing them crop up in virtually every other D&D setting and many other non-D&D games. It's the same reason I liked Planescape back in the day - it's non-traditional but it actually has its own perspective and purpose, as opposed to just breaking "the rules" for the hell of it.
There's no true automation, no assembly lines, no unskilled labour involved in the process of manufacture.
I have heard that there is a much higher level of Technology in use. Would anyone be able to tell me about this aspect of the game as well?
...
One of the things I don't really like in my fantasy games is Gunpowder level tech and up. I may be able to get around it though if I give it a chance.
Sorry if this was answered already and I just missed it.
The technology level of Eberron is no greater than FR or Greyhawk, or medieval China. The magic level of Eberron is also no greater than FR or Greyhawk.
The difference is that Eberron treats magic much like we treat technology. If you perform the same actions under the same conditions the same magic happens every time. Magic is testable, so it's a science. Magic is reliable, so it's a technology. Wizards are like scientists, hackers and gadget freaks. Artificers are like mechanics, engineers, and inventors.
There is no gunpowder in the Eberron Campaign Setting. There aren't even advanced clockworks. The lightning rail doesn't have a steam engine heated by magical lightning. The magical lightning entirely replaces the steam engine, and the gearbox, and the wheels.
I certainly think, as a fan of gnomes, that no one has done a better job of reconceptualizing that race than Keith Baker. Quite simply, the gnomes of Zilargo are easily my favorite interpretation of that race in the history of this RPG. The game, in my opinion, was really in desperate need of a race of schemers, scholars, and spies in the best tradition of Renaissance Italy. They are superb.
Having said that, however, I still think the Aereni elves are probably Mr. Baker's masterpiece when it comes to creative reconceptualization of traditional races. I never thought someone could break away so completely from not only the Tolkienesque archetypes but also from the more mythological fey archetypes of legend and still present us with a race so rich in culture and so interesting to play! I'm still trying after all these years to figure out the mythological and/or folk inspirations behind such a magnificently conceived culture. An incredible feat of the imagination.
There are so many others:
1) Well-dressed banking Dwarves.
2) Wonderfully independent clans of colorful Drow.
3) Martial horse-riding warrior elves.
4) Wise half-orc mystics and druids.
5) Powerful goblinoids, heirs to a rich historical heritage.
6) Nomadic, dinosaur-riding (!) halflings.
The list goes on and on. Just a great setting!
a) extremely open - without being a mish-mash, it is incredibly open to everything and responds well to pretty much any character concept I can put forth. In other settings, I am more likely to find something impeding my character concept than in Eberron where so many things support me in variety. It is simply written in an unusually "warm" tone that encourages you to fit something of yours in rather than choose from X preset possibilities.
b) different - it has reduced the traditional cliches (which aren't necessarily a bad thing) to the minimum and introduced a staggering variety of new ideas. For me personally, those are Elves (particularly Aerenal), Dragons, Gnomes and Political relations. More than once did I leaf through say Greyhawk settings and while I did enjoy them, it always annoyed me how many lands were literally clones of each other, with same system, same history, same orders, this and that... etc. Again, cloning wasn't bad in itself but for me it is an impediment to great play, not a boost like it should be.
c) detailed, yet blank - now this is the part I really appreciate and strongly ties me to favoring Eberron, might be related to a). Eberron world has a tremendous amount of detail put into it, particularly into race relations, and yet all those details leave me enough blank space to put in something from my own imagination.
Now please note, this is generalization, but this is a simple design that I do notice differing when comparing campaign setting books: We could say it this way:
a traditional campaign setting has 4 pages for each region. It spends 1 page on demographics/exports, 1 on geography, 1 on history and 1 on politics and restrictions. 4 pages total.
In Eberron, it's more like: 1/5 page on demographics/exports, 2/5 page on geography, 3/5 page history, 2/5 page politics. Which leaves us with 2 and a little leftover pages to fill with: daily life in the region, plot hooks and adventures for the region.
also:
It honestly read more like a novel to me
Yep. Yep it does.
This is pretty much it. It's not that other settings are bad or anything, but as I said very very frequently when playing I find my ideas stifled or even opressed by their tone, and then there are people who take that tone and think it's an excuse to be even more restrictive and etc. etc.... I've pretty much never encountered any of those problems in Eberron, in fact exactly the opposite! This has tremendously contributed both to my sense of enjoyment and motivation to roleplay better, with more detailed personalities.
This is especially beneficial to newcomers to the world of D&D.
Banking, transportation, communication, politics, wealth and social class, genocide, war, religion, espionage, etc... It's all in Eberron just like the real world. Just imagine all this run by magic instead of technology.
It was the first new official D&D setting in ages. It was on par with Dark Sun, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, among others. It has spawned a good series of books. It still is widely played by many, many players. It's a good setting.
All these things that are being said make me curious for Eberron. I've never cared to read any of the campaign setting books (other than Monsters of Faerun), but what I've read makes my interest grow. Though I don't think I'll make use of the actual setting, I'll probably use elements of it in my campaign world.
I felt the same way when I first heard of Eberron. At first, I too tried to bring Eberron into my homebrew, but then I realised that it was a hopeless task. Eberron was just too coherent as a whole to rip it apart. However, what I also understood was that every adventure I had done could have easily been in Eberron and be all the better for it. Now I have moved on to Eberron, using homebrew and published adventures whenever I need them.
All these things that are being said make me curious for Eberron. I've never cared to read any of the campaign setting books (other than Monsters of Faerun), but what I've read makes my interest grow. Though I don't think I'll make use of the actual setting, I'll probably use elements of it in my campaign world.
Hahahahaha:heehee yeah... right!
"I will just eat one doritos, and maybe I will copy some of the ingredients for my own snacks"
Ohh, you poor naive. I'll see you soon in the Eberron boards asking for a book of the Eberron Planes to complete your adventure throught Mabar.
It's the D&D flavor I love but it feels like it's just more realistic. Of course, throw in the pulp action and maybe it's less realistic but still fun.