Feelings about Eberron


4th Edition

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I really like Eberron, but it seems to be a cursed setting for me. I've tried 3 times to start a game set in Eberron, and all 3 times the campaign has fallen apart within a month due to scheduling conflicts.
Anyways, I love the races. The artificer is interesting. Like the idea of action points, but nobody ever remembered to use them unless prompted to. I think the Dragonmarked houses are awesome. Really dig the whole magitech thing.
I am seriously considering running Iron Gods in Eberron when I run it.

Silver Crusade

I liked Eberon. I think I have almost all the eberon books on my book shelves. I never got to either play or run an Eberon campaign. I remember offering a choice of campaigns for my players. They got to choose between an Eberon campaign, a Midnight campaign, or a Forgotten Realms campaign. They choose a Forgotten Realms campaign. I did run them through the Desert of Desolation Series.

But I digress. I liked the Eberron campaign setting. While I didn't like the halflings who rode velociraptors, I liked the rest of the campaign setting.

It would be an interesting exercise to convert Eberron to Pathfinder. I think the Alchemsit would fit well into the Eberon campaign setting.

Well anyways this is just my opinion.


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Ok, to have played a campaign in Eberron, here are my thoughts:

Pros:
+ Magical Technology: really liked the Lightning Rail and Airships.
+ Cities: Sharn is just awesome
+ Artificer: great class
+ Races: The Warforged, Shifters, Changelings and Kalashtars were great.
+ Use of Psionics: thanks to the Kalashtars

Cons:
- Everyone is low-leveled: Where in Faerun, everyone is high-leveled, in Eberron, everyone is low-leveled. Good luck building a villain when the setting almost discourages you from making a high-leveled character. Dude, they even FORCED you to think about every single detail how a villain's history, because recurring villains were that rare. At least in Faerun or Golarion, you can make a villain with an agenda without much of a hassle.

- Lack of support: such as...
* Few monsters: Y'know how Faerun got "Monsters of Faerun". Yeah, Eberron NEVER did. It had some monsteres here and there, but nothing about an actual exclusive fauna.
* Few infos on the other continents: I counted 2 books about Xen'Drik, one on Argonessen, one on Sarlona, none on Aerenal and none about the Frostfell or Everice. Khorvaire was the only continent with a lot of flavor to make a campaign out of it.
* Few infos on actual locales: Golarion goes region per region to develop each of them, by with modules, booklets and SAPs. Eberron NEVER did, when each region deserved some attention than Sharn and Breland.

- Too much mysteries: What caused the Mourning? Who's the mysterious prisoner on that prison island that Karnath wanted to keep alive? What's brewing in the Demon Wastes? Name it... many things were left unexplained.

- The politics were out of whack: It felt like the PCs had to fight whatever system they were visiting everytime. The politicians were one the brink of war, Sarlona had an extreme dictorship, Xen'Drik was as chaotic as Limbo and Argonessen had none. The PCs were threading on eggs everywhere.

- Magic was scarce: As odd as it sounds, due to the low-leveled people, magic wasn't as plentiful, despite all the tech.

The idea in general was great, but too many things mared it down.


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Quark Blast wrote:
Why, oh why, would you need to buy something "official", ever?

I pay the money so I don't have to do certain things, and while I did decide some things for myself, I had more to decide than I actually wanted to have to decide.

The Exchange

@Jici,

The too many mysteries part was what I loved about the setting.

It gave me so many openings to slot adventures from dungeon mag into the setting I never really had to write my own full adventures at all.

What's better, it was the easiest setting to transform age of worms into.

Spoilers for age of worms ahead.

There's a part in the age of worms where a giant city is under attack by dragons. The Eberron background had a war between dragons and giants some 1000 years before the current age. My players travelled into the mourn lands to trigger a time device built by the Cyrans so they could get the item they were after to beat Kyuss. It hadn't been seen since the dragon wars. The kicker was that it was their activation of the time device that caused the mourn land to happen in the first place (ripples in time theory). They were also the reason the item hadn't been seen for so long. It was because they had stolen it and taken into the future, skipping entire time periods.

I couldn't have put all that together if WotC had filled in all the mysteries for me.

When I sold my 3.5 books a few years back, it was Eberron campaign setting book and the Sharn book that I kept. They still inspire plot ideas and twists on APs that I run to this day.

Ahhhh, good times.

Dark Archive

amethal wrote:
Eberron dwarves are hot headed, clannish and masters of in-fighting. House Kundarak is the least interesting thing about them, in my opinion, and even they are not exclusively bankers. They also sell their services as security experts.

There is a very good Dragonshard article on the history of the Dwarves.

Dragonshards


Fabius Maximus wrote:
...Maybe you could give me an example of a setting that does it right in your opinion?...

Any setting that is just its own. Eberron is a combination of "fixes" (to things that aren't broke!) plus (seemingly) "fun things" from KB's childhood, all plopped into one big un-stirred cauldron of stew sitting over dead coals from a fire long burned to ashes.

Fabius Maximus wrote:
As for the threats, they all have counters: the Chamber, Adar and the Kalashtar, the Church of the Silver Flame, the Undying Court and so on. Don't forget that the most powerful beings of two Big Bad factions are locked into Khyber, one of them pretty thoroughly. Also, they don't wait around (I don't know what gave you that impression)...

Oh, but they do wait around. There are entire frontiers of the major kingdoms guarded by average low-level troops led by mid-level leaders (like 6th level) who have no peers and only a few even lower level aids to help out. One Bulette could take down half the kingdom before the PC's even hear about it. Because, let's face it, without the PCs the kingdom is doomed.

Vol herself could summon a dozen Shadows and, with their Create Spawn ability, take out the ruling class in any one kingdom in a long weekend. Except maybe Thrane. Speaking of Thrane...

The most renowned (?) cleric in Thrane, High Cardinal Krozen, (even though he's a LE cleric of a LG power!) might just be effective in opposing Vol's plans. But then, with someone like Krozen being certainly the most active, if not the most powerful, member of the Church of the Silver Flame, the situation is balanced for being toppled over from an outside push.

And we haven't even mentioned what the Dragons of Argonnessen are up to. But then, who knows and who cares? Their plans (and the Draconic Prophecy) are turning on gears that move to the beat of thousand year cycles (or longer!) and so can't generally be played out in anything like real-time by us mortals camped out around a table-top here in 21st Century earth.

As KB once said:
"Which is what I like - and one of the key reasons we've left things like the Mourning as mysteries. I like the fact that if I showed up and played in your campaign, I wouldn't know whether Krozen was a hypocrite or misguided... whether he wants to stop the Mourning from happening again, or whether he in fact caused it."

That's all fine and dandy but what my PC does then doesn't really matter. When "everything is a mystery" (and everything is in official Eberron) then nothing matters because everything is uncertain. There is no gauge, there is no compass, no right amount, no wrong direction. Just a big plop of unseasoned cold stew.

Which is just like RL. And that's why I play TTRPGs; to mimic the real world because RL is soo exciting. Not.

And that doesn't even touch the issue of "Why buy official Eberron RPG stuff?". 'Cause, you know, the fan fic, the fan art, the fan gaming aids, the online discussions, are, often enough, far better than the stuff you pay for. And once you've homebrewed an Eberron campaign enough to actually play it, you likely have crossed that fuzzy boundary and are no longer playing Eberron anyway.


Quark Blast wrote:
Fabius Maximus wrote:
...Maybe you could give me an example of a setting that does it right in your opinion?...
Any setting that is just its own. Eberron is a combination of "fixes" (to things that aren't broke!) plus (seemingly) "fun things" from KB's childhood, all plopped into one big un-stirred cauldron of stew sitting over dead coals from a fire long burned to ashes.

This is exactly how every single campaign setting in the history of campaign settings has begun, from middle earth on down:-)


captain yesterday wrote:
Come on Quark blast, that is how every campaign setting starts from middle earth on down:-)

No, I think Gygax, Greenwood and the like put far more thought and play-testing into their campaign settings. Tolkien put unearthly thought and re-write into his books - the Skald among skalds.

Either that or they were gods among men.

[edit - ninja'd]
Or were you just referring to my last sentence? ;)


Quark Blast wrote:
Fabius Maximus wrote:
...Maybe you could give me an example of a setting that does it right in your opinion?...

Any setting that is just its own. Eberron is a combination of "fixes" (to things that aren't broke!) plus (seemingly) "fun things" from KB's childhood, all plopped into one big un-stirred cauldron of stew sitting over dead coals from a fire long burned to ashes.

Sorry, but that is not helpful. All you say that Eberron does it wrong, again, instead of saying which setting did it right.

Quote:


Oh, but they do wait around. There are entire frontiers of the major kingdoms guarded by average low-level troops led by mid-level leaders (like 6th level) who have no peers and only a few even lower level aids to help out. One Bulette could take down half the kingdom before the PC's even hear about it. Because, let's face it, without the PCs the kingdom is doomed.

Vol herself could summon a dozen Shadows and, with their Create Spawn ability, take out the ruling class in any one kingdom in a long weekend. Except maybe Thrane. Speaking of Thrane...

No.

Take Breland, for example. In your scenario, they would put together a force strong enough to bring the landshark down. For other scenarios, there are the Dark Lanterns, for example. The kingdoms are not helpless. If something turned up that they couldn't handle, you just run with it and have the PCs sort it out.

Vol could maybe use that plan (I highly doubt it, though), but why would she? Her goal is not to conquer a random kingdom, but to take revenge against Aerenal, which is much more difficult. Apart from that, her goals are nebulous. As are those of the Lords of Dust and especially those of the Daelkyr, because they are so alien. The only exception is the Dreaming Dark, who are trying to make the current Quori age last forever, but that doesn't have appeared on the slate of the Khorvaire nations yet.

The Big Bads do not wait around. They are planning and moving pieces into position. Don't forget, they have massive amounts of time to do that. But the moment they start speeding things up, it gets noticed and the checks and balances start being active, the PCs among them.

What your PCs do does matter, if you - as a GM - make their actions relevant. And if you think real life is boring, it is because you are not in the middle of things. The PCs in Eberron are supposed to be.

As for house ruling: Do you play Golarion, the Realms or any setting as is? Really? I couldn't do that. I have adapted Golarion to my needs and would continue to do so, depending on the region my game is set in, because some things just grate on me. That is the point of a kitchen sink setting: you take what you need and change the rest.


I believe it is supposed to be pulpy
dnd5 rules set should be a great fit given the more narrative play and higher mobility of combat


Fabius Maximus wrote:
Sorry, but that is not helpful. All you say that Eberron does it wrong, again, instead of saying which setting did it right.

Not exactly. I'm also saying why Eberron gets it wrong, not merely "that Eberron does it wrong".

Fabius Maximus wrote:

No.

Take Breland, for example. In your scenario, they would put together a force strong enough to bring the landshark down. For other scenarios, there are the Dark Lanterns, for example. The kingdoms are not helpless.

But half their military along the frontier would be decimated before they got the situation under control. From just one, not especially powerful, monster!

And the Dark Lanturns are led by a (what? I'm guessing here) 6th to 8th level good guy? Someone like that wouldn't even be a morning snack for a Rakshasta.

Fabius Maximus wrote:
Vol could maybe use that plan (I highly doubt it, though), but why would she? Her goal is not to conquer a random kingdom, but to take revenge against Aerenal, which is much more difficult.

The five kingdoms of Khorvaire are, to a greater or lessor degree, purported allies of Aerenal. That's reason enough for her to want to take them down.

Fabius Maximus wrote:
Apart from that, her goals are nebulous. As are those of the Lords of Dust and especially those of the Daelkyr, because they are so alien. The only exception is the Dreaming Dark, who are trying to make the current Quori age last forever, but that doesn't have appeared on the slate of the Khorvaire nations yet.

And look, if you want to defend the esoteric nature of the machinations of Vol, the Daelkyr, etc.... Well, that plays directly into my point that:

On any time frame that we can reasonably hope to play in, the plots involving these entities are entirely irrelevant to actual play.

Like I said about the Dragons of Argonnessen. What are they up to? The pat answer then has to be - Who knows and who cares? Their plans (and the Draconic Prophecy) are turning on gears that move to the beat of thousand year cycles (or longer!) and so can't generally be played out in anything like real-time by us mortals camped out around a table-top here in 21st Century earth.

Fabius Maximus wrote:
The Big Bads do not wait around. They are planning and moving pieces into position. Don't forget, they have massive amounts of time to do that. But the moment they start speeding things up, it gets noticed and the checks and balances start being active, the PCs among them.

Again, if the BEBGs operate at that time scale, then what the PCs do matters not at all for the Eberron Campaign Setting. All those "mysterious", "unknowable", and "centuries-long machinations" are completely opaque to PC play.

Fabius Maximus wrote:
What your PCs do does matter, if you - as a GM - make their actions relevant. And if you think real life is boring, it is because you are not in the middle of things. The PCs in Eberron are supposed to be.

Except the PCs are not important. See what I just typed previously.

Or, if the DM makes them relevant, the question then becomes - Why have sourcebooks on that stuff at all?

Fabius Maximus wrote:
As for house ruling: Do you play Golarion, the Realms or any setting as is? Really? I couldn't do that. I have adapted Golarion to my needs and would continue to do so, depending on the region my game is set in, because some things just grate on me. That is the point of a kitchen sink setting: you take what you need and change the rest.

Agreed! Completely, I think :)

And now you've answered well my previous rhetorical question of:
"Why buy official Eberron RPG stuff?".

The fan fic, the fan art, the fan gaming aids, the online discussions, are, often enough, far better than the stuff you pay for.

And once you've homebrewed an Eberron campaign enough to actually play it, you likely have crossed that fuzzy boundary and are no longer playing Eberron anyway.


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Quark Blast wrote:
Fabius Maximus wrote:
Apart from that, her goals are nebulous. As are those of the Lords of Dust and especially those of the Daelkyr, because they are so alien. The only exception is the Dreaming Dark, who are trying to make the current Quori age last forever, but that doesn't have appeared on the slate of the Khorvaire nations yet.

And look, if you want to defend the esoteric nature of the machinations of Vol, the Daelkyr, etc.... Well, that plays directly into my point that:

On any time frame that we can reasonably hope to play in, the plots involving these entities are entirely irrelevant to actual play.
Like I said about the Dragons of Argonnessen. What are they up to? The pat answer then has to be - Who knows and who cares? Their plans (and the Draconic Prophecy) are turning on gears that move to the beat of thousand year cycles (or longer!) and so can't generally be played out in anything like real-time by us mortals camped out around a table-top here in 21st Century earth.
Quote:
Fabius Maximus wrote:
The Big Bads do not wait around. They are planning and moving pieces into position. Don't forget, they have massive amounts of time to do that. But the moment they start speeding things up, it gets noticed and the checks and balances start being active, the PCs among them.
Again, if the BEBGs operate at that time scale, then what the PCs do matters not at all for the Eberron Campaign Setting. All those "mysterious", "unknowable", and "centuries-long machinations" are completely opaque to PC play.

I think the point of "the PCs are important" is that those plans are all on the slow timescale until they're about to come to fruition and then things start speeding up, which is the point where your particular group of PCs gets involved in the problem.

All the set up has taken centuries or even millenia, which has kept everything apparently balance, but at some point things actually have to kick into gear for the plan to succeed. It's like Sauron taking centuries to rebuild both his form and his forces, but once he does move, the war takes place in real time.


thejeff wrote:
I think the point of "the PCs are important" is that those plans are all on the slow timescale until they're about to come to fruition and then things start speeding up, which is the point where your particular group of PCs gets involved in the problem.

I can see that.

In fact, that is what the DM must do. But then that breaks verisimilitude with the history of Eberron in two ways.

1) Suddenly the patient BEBGs, that are functionally immortal, get stupid and try to hurry everything up.

2) The smart thing for them to do is go to ground and let the PCs die of old age or accident (or each other;).

And, do to the nature of the official campaign materials, this forces the DM into so much prep-work that she may as well not buy any of it since her own ideas, and that of her counterparts on the InterWebs, are going to be better/funner anyway.

thejeff wrote:
All the set up has taken centuries or even millenia, which has kept everything apparently balance, but at some point things actually have to kick into gear for the plan to succeed. It's like Sauron taking centuries to rebuild both his form and his forces, but once he does move, the war takes place in real time.

From T.A. 1300 to the War of the Ring, Sauron is quite busy tearing down the remains of Númenórean culture in Middle Earth. By the time of Frodo there is nothing left of Arnor and Gondor is a bare remnant of its ancient glory.

There is a "Fate" that rules Middle Earth and drives the speed of the plot. The "PCs" (Frodo et al) are caught up in these things which were, in Gandalf's words, "meant to happen".

Eberron could in theory have this type of Fate driving things (Draconic Prophecy anyone?) but that makes for loads of stupefied and un-fun RPing - YMMV. :)

I just don't see, given the nature of the threats in official Eberron material (Vol, Lords of Dust, Daelkyr,...), and the nature and low-power of the forces against them (typically less than 8th level NPCs - and not many of them at that), what good any group of PCs can ever do without a Huge-Heavy-Hand of DM Fiat pushing things along.

And that is not my idea of fun. You will remember the OP is "Feelings About Eberron". And this is how I feel ;p


First of all: Since you avoid answering my question, am I correct in the assumption that no published campaign setting does what you'd like them to do?

You seriously underestimate the levels of Eberron "government officials". King Boranel might be only CR 10, but he doesn't have to be the most powerful NPC around. In fact, Keith Baker described Thorn, one of the common Dark Lantern field agents as having levels in the Assassin PrC, so she can't be of low level. The NPCs in "Five Nations" - among them another Dark Lantern and members of various other organizations - are almost all around CR 10.

So, while the mooks on the border might be low-level NPCs, there are special operatives on hand who have teleportation magic available and who can to a crisis in a literal flash. Furthermore, being low level doesn't mean the NPCs have to be stupid. They can withdraw. That particular border is sparsely settled anyway.

Also, the only nation on Khorvaire Aerenal is allied with is Valenar, and that only tenuously. The Aerenal elves are isolationists. Taking over one of the Galifar successor states won't garner Vol anything she wants.

As for GM-fiat: That is not different in any setting. Describe it how you will: fate, prophecy, bad luck, whatever. The GM decides what happens in the world. No matter what I changed in Golarion, I still chase my players through Council of Thieves (which I modified heavily, as well) set in Westcrown, Cheliax, Avistan.

Buying setting material means I don't have to come up with my own world and reading it inspires me, to boot. Saying that modifying something makes one not to play in a published setting anymore is hyperbole. The effect of player interaction, fan fiction, online discussions, etc. is additive, not exclusionary.

I really don't know what you want. Your expectations of what an RPG campaign setting should do seem way to high and more akin of a CRPG persistant world than a P&P RPG.


Level is relative,
they are what you want them to be, if Elminster works better as a fifth level expert sage in you campaign, have at it stat the old bastard out!
same goes for any NPC in any campaign, if you don't like how they're written, do it yourself:)

one of the smart decisions they made with Golarion is not including levels in the Inner Sea World Guide.

The Exchange

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If you read the book on the last war, it details the army structure and typical class levels of troops, officers and specialist units in Eberron. There are far more level 6 through 12 people out there in their armies than Quark is giving credit for.

The other thing you are missing is that creatures like Bulettes are meant to be scary to things like villages and towns.

I actually think Eberrob does a better job of explaining why the critters in DnD are scary than most other settings. After all, who would find a Bulettes more than an inconvenience when the local militia could just kill it in 18 seconds?

Also remember, the leaders of a country do not have to be the highest class in said country. The setting only details the movers and shakers.

Please also remember that magic works like industry in Eberron. They build massive devices powered by bound creatures to do the hard stuff for them. You don't need to be high level to run the Adamantine engine of ultimate destruction, you just need to know which lever to push.

For me at least, Eberron was a setting that was the magical version of late 1800 early 1900 Earth. WW1 era politics and war with a similar feel in technology. For me, it was a great setting to run my games in.


Fabius Maximus wrote:
First of all: Since you avoid answering my question, am I correct in the assumption that no published campaign setting does what you'd like them to do?

But I did answer. Go back and read my 20+ posts earlier on this thread and you will see.

Fabius Maximus wrote:
You seriously underestimate the levels of Eberron "government officials". King Boranel might be only CR 10, but he doesn't have to be the most powerful NPC around. In fact, Keith Baker described Thorn, one of the common Dark Lantern field agents as having levels in the Assassin PrC, so she can't be of low level. The NPCs in "Five Nations" - among them another Dark Lantern and members of various other organizations - are almost all around CR 10.

<sigh>

This is a character from a novel. Thorn is, in the context of the novel, a PC - not an NPC.

Officially the novels of KB (or any of the other novels) are expressly NOT source material. Sorry for the CAPS there but KB has been abundantly clear that the novels should reflect the flavor of Eberron while not being source material. Yes, even though they are published through WotC. Whacky maybe but that's the way it is.

And if the king of the country is only 10th level then there is something wrong with The Mockery, or the Daughters of Sora Kell, that they can't bring him down.

Eberron is a place that, even by it's own terms, is impossible without Player Characters. And, this is the absurdity of it, when the PCs aren't there that portion of the world just <pauses> waiting for them to get back.

Fabius Maximus wrote:
So, while the mooks on the border might be low-level NPCs, there are special operatives on hand who have teleportation magic available and who can to a crisis in a literal flash. Furthermore, being low level doesn't mean the NPCs have to be stupid. They can withdraw. That particular border is sparsely settled anyway.

And withdraw is their only real option. Khorvaire ought to be a continent of isolated City States for a few decades, at most, and then... Well, Droam would be a vacation spot comparatively.

Fabius Maximus wrote:
Also, the only nation on Khorvaire Aerenal is allied with is Valenar, and that only tenuously. The Aerenal elves are isolationists. Taking over one of the Galifar successor states won't garner Vol anything she wants.

So then Vol takes down Valenar with a wraith-spawn attack to spite Aerenal and remove their one-and-only-ally in the whole world.

Why wouldn't she do that? Or, to ask this more correctly; Why wouldn't she have already done that?

Fabius Maximus wrote:

As for GM-fiat: That is not different in any setting. Describe it how you will: fate, prophecy, bad luck, whatever. The GM decides what happens in the world. No matter what I changed in Golarion, I still chase my players through Council of Thieves (which I modified heavily, as well) set in Westcrown, Cheliax, Avistan.

Buying setting material means I don't have to come up with my own world and reading it inspires me, to boot. Saying that modifying something makes one not to play in a published setting anymore is hyperbole. The effect of player interaction, fan fiction, online discussions, etc. is additive, not exclusionary.

You're side stepping my criticism here. So you homebrewed some aspects of CoT. Who hasn't?

With Eberron there's not much to tweak. You, as DM, get to make it up mostly from scratch.

Fabius Maximus wrote:
I really don't know what you want. Your expectations of what an RPG campaign setting should do seem way to high and more akin of a CRPG persistant world than a P&P RPG.

What I want? Two things.

1) To express my opinion, since the OP asked for it.

2) If someone engages me in discussion over my opinion to return the favor of actually answering my questions. Such as...

Why, oh why, would you need to buy something "official", ever?

What I'm saying about Eberron-official stuff is that if I'm using a purchased product to help me with my campaign it would be nice if it did things that I really don't have time to do.

Adventure hooks? Those are beyond easy to come up with. What I don't have time for is detailed plot interactions and room descriptions... The more details the better as I find it far easier to tweak or delete content than to make it up whole on my own. If I'm paying $30-$50 for something I want the boring detail work done for me.

Decent maps would be another non-negotiable request if I'm laying down $50 for a ECS product.

The fact that very few good or neutral NPCs are >6th level yet the world is infused with major BEBG type-things (Dalkyr, Blood of Vol, Lords of Dust, Dreaming Dark, etc.) is a problem precisely because KB thinks this makes the PCs "sufficiently important" to the campaign.

Things that could eat civilization on Khorvaire for a light brunch instead wait around for the PCs to get high enough level to be a threat to them...

That doesn't make the PCs "important".

It turns the campaign into a console game or side-quests in an MMO - events wait for PCs to stumble upon them before triggering. <yawn>
_
>
O

The setting doesn't simply let the DM use her Heavy-Hand-of-Fiat to rule over the proceedings... It requires that she do so.

On any time frame that we can reasonably hope to play in, the plots involving these entities (Dalkyr, Blood of Vol, Lords of Dust, Dreaming Dark, The Mockery, etc.) are entirely irrelevant to actual play. No group of PCs live long enough to piece together enough of the "mysteries" to make an effective opponent to any one of these powers.

Without DM-Fiat there is no game and with DM-Fiat there is nothing the PCs (and therefore the players) can do to make a difference. The whole campaign world is a railroad to play in... If it's ran like it's designed.

Look back up-thread at how JiCi describes what Eberron means. You'll note I did not respond to that post. Why? Because it was reasonably written.

[edit] See also my response to Wrath below.


Wrath wrote:
For me at least, Eberron was a setting that was the magical version of late 1800 early 1900 Earth. WW1 era politics and war with a similar feel in technology. For me, it was a great setting to run my games in.

And if that's the case I'll bet (no sarcasm!) that the games you ran/run were/are awesome fun.

Just because I don't like the setting doesn't mean someone else can't do awesome things with it...
provided he has the time ;)


Quark Blast wrote:
Fabius Maximus wrote:
First of all: Since you avoid answering my question, am I correct in the assumption that no published campaign setting does what you'd like them to do?

But I did answer. Go back and read my 20+ posts earlier on this thread and you will see.

Fabius Maximus wrote:
You seriously underestimate the levels of Eberron "government officials". King Boranel might be only CR 10, but he doesn't have to be the most powerful NPC around. In fact, Keith Baker described Thorn, one of the common Dark Lantern field agents as having levels in the Assassin PrC, so she can't be of low level. The NPCs in "Five Nations" - among them another Dark Lantern and members of various other organizations - are almost all around CR 10.

<sigh>

This is a character from a novel. Thorn is, in the context of the novel, a PC - not an NPC.

Officially the novels of KB (or any of the other novels) are expressly NOT source material. Sorry for the CAPS there but KB has been abundantly clear that the novels should reflect the flavor of Eberron while not being source material. Yes, even though they are published through WotC. Whacky maybe but that's the way it is.

And if the king of the country is only 10th level then there is something wrong with The Mockery, or the Daughters of Sora Kell, that they can't bring him down.

Eberron is a place that, even by it's own terms, is impossible without Player Characters. And, this is the absurdity of it, when the PCs aren't there that portion of the world just <pauses> waiting for them to get back.

Fabius Maximus wrote:
So, while the mooks on the border might be low-level NPCs, there are special operatives on hand who have teleportation magic available and who can to a crisis in a literal flash. Furthermore, being low level doesn't mean the NPCs have to be stupid. They can withdraw. That particular border is sparsely settled anyway.
And withdraw is their only real option. Khorvaire ought...

1) It seems to me you don't want setting books, you want ready to run adventures. That's where you get " What I don't have time for is detailed plot interactions and room descriptions..." and "detailed maps". It's not like you find that kind of thing in Golarion's setting books. You get overviews and brief sketches of cities and personalities.

2) Your larger point has been answered, you just don't like the answer. The baddies are in the middle of unspecified large plots that come to the point where someone notices them when the campaign starts and the GM wants to use them. That's not "the villains sitting around waiting for the PCs to show up" any more than than Elvanna was waiting for PCs to show up to rescue Baba Yaga in RoW. Or the Runelords have been waiting for PCs to oppose them before they started coming back.
The opposite problem is in someways a worse (and more common) one: Why, with all these high level rulers and famous casters around do a bunch of upstart PCs wind up having to deal with the real problems?

The Exchange

Quark Blast wrote:
Wrath wrote:
For me at least, Eberron was a setting that was the magical version of late 1800 early 1900 Earth. WW1 era politics and war with a similar feel in technology. For me, it was a great setting to run my games in.

And if that's the case I'll bet (no sarcasm!) that the games you ran/run were/are awesome fun.

Just because I don't like the setting doesn't mean someone else can't do awesome things with it...
provided he has the time ;)

They were. For me it came at the exact moment i needed it. I was already looking to develop something along those lines and it gave me everything i needed.

I love the religion aspect being more nebulous than other settings. It allows for Lawful evil clerics in a chaotic good church.

I love the grey lines concept of how alignment works. Good characters still do things that are nasty, because it protects their country or their ideal or it means the greater good is served. There are no absolutes in Eberron.

I loved the politics.

I loved the Post war feel to the game.

I love the magi tech.

I loved shifters and warfaorged. The entire story behind those races are fantastic.

I love the grand sweeping mysteries that have been left unsolved so DMs can inject what they want into the campaign as well. I wanted to create amazing reasons for why those mysteries had happened. Using my players to do so as well.

For me, Eberron piqued my interest like no other Setting has in the past. It gave me the meat to run MY games in a world that felt real.

Enough gushing from me though.

Quark, I see exactly where you're comig from. The things I probably love in this setting are the same things you likely hate. Every product has a target audience. The trick for companies that want to make money is hitting a wide audience. Eberron seemed to do that.

I couldnt stand Forgotten Realms. Everything already seemed answered for me in that setting. It really stifled my interest and creative side. Yet I know people who love it.

I wasn't a fan of the Dragon marked houses in Eberron. Mostly because it was an extra layer of complexity, but also because I thought they were a little exclusive in how you could become an integral member of the clans. I changed parts of that to suit myself. I didnt want my players feeling they needed dragon marks to be movers and shakers in some situations. I still included those of course, but I allowed other ways of being accepted too.

I also wasnt a fan of actions points. I dropped those completely which meant action feats were also off the table. Didnt affect our game at all.

For me, Golarion isnt all that great to be honest. Parts ofI it are, but mostly I feel meh about it. The only reason I run games there now are because I dont have the time to rejig things in the APs any more. Plus my players seem to like the setting alot. If I had more time, I'd run in Eberron again. Running Paizo APs in my favourite setting would be awesome.....Maybe one day <sigh>

I hope you find the setting you're after Quark. Happy gaming

Liberty's Edge

I really like Eberron. I've read a lot of campaign settings, and Eberron is very nicely done.

I was super critical of it at first. With the dinosaur riding halflings and magitech feel. And the dungeon punk aesthetic.
But then I read the campaign setting. And I found it was actually really cool. While it looks very modern the feel is very retro, harkening back to older genres and types of play without being straight nostalgia. It comes across as familiar while still being original for the hobby.

It's a great example of how to write a campaign setting for publication. There's lots of mysteries and adventure hooks, but they're presented well rather than just feeling like deliberate omissions (gaps for expansions or novels), seeming unfinished, or being blindingly obvious hooks (almost pre-written campaigns). There's a lot of room to make the campaign your own.

There's also a nice range of different types of campaign available, without going too kitchen sink. And it manages to have a constant tone and theme throughout, with the film noir meets pulp fantasy feeling.

Eberron is also consistently good. In a lot of campaign settings you find the off nation: the land that's filler because the creator ran out of ideas, or the nation that doesn't fit and feels tacked on because the numerous creators weren't working well together.
The solid hook of Eberron really allowed the many people adding elements to the work to make everything fit and seem like it makes sense.


thejeff wrote:
1) It seems to me you don't want setting books, you want ready to run adventures. That's where you get " What I don't have time for is detailed plot interactions and room descriptions..." and "detailed maps". It's not like you find that kind of thing in Golarion's setting books. You get overviews and brief sketches of cities and personalities.

Close! Very close.

Adventures, or something like Pathfinder APs, would be good but not great. They would be great if they tied into the ECGs directly on a number of plot-points relevant to the adventure/AP.

But there are none. Or virtually none. And the ones that were published seemed to have gotten panned by the Eberron Fans, not just by someone like me. Especially the 4E ones. But that is another thread...

thejeff wrote:

2) Your larger point has been answered, you just don't like the answer. The baddies are in the middle of unspecified large plots that come to the point where someone notices them when the campaign starts and the GM wants to use them. That's not "the villains sitting around waiting for the PCs to show up" any more than than Elvanna was waiting for PCs to show up to rescue Baba Yaga in RoW. Or the Runelords have been waiting for PCs to oppose them before they started coming back.

The opposite problem is in someways a worse (and more common) one: Why, with all these high level rulers and famous casters around do a bunch of upstart PCs wind up having to deal with the real problems?

Again, close!

Because these principle forces (Dalkyr, Blood of Vol, Lords of Dust, Dreaming Dark, The Mockery, etc.) have long-running and, one assumes, deep-thinking machinations, the right answer anytime PCs begin getting a little too close is to go to ground. The BEBG is functionally (or even worse, actually!) immortal. Just wait them out.

Or summon a Wraith-strike somewhere else to distract them. And if the PCs are not distracted, so much the better. Now they get to come home to a city full of wraith-spawn.

Khorvaire at least would be over-run in decades at most. Except for possibly Vol, none of the big players want to make something of civilization. They want to tear it to a bloody pulp. Dalkyr, Lords of Dust, Dreaming Dark, and maybe others, are not even as favorable to the races of Eberron as ISIS is to their enemies.

As 911 showed - when your only goal is to tear down - a group doesn't need to be particularly sane or skilled to let loose great havoc. And the BBEGs in Eberron, particularly the ones that can drop auto-spawn "bombs", are a great deal more powerful compared to the civilized folks of the realm, than al Qaeda are to the various nations they oppose.

As to your implication for other, more usual, Fantasy RPG Campaigns:

Why doesn't Elminster rule Abeir-Toril? Besides not wanting to, he's trying to keep the lid on Manshoon, or Fzoul Chembryl, and such.

What are the Lords of Waterdeep up to that they can't handle crisis X? Besides travel and infighting (they may all be Lords of Waterdeep but they are not allied except only in that one cause), Skullport spies and greater potential threats lay all about them.

PCs do handle real problems, just not all of the real problems.

Eberron doesn't have these types of options as explanations. At least, not coherently.

The real problems, most all of them, in Eberron are of such magnitude - both in terms of raw power and in scope - that the PCs simply cannot be effective.

And people will say, "Oh, but our PCs did X in an Eberron campaign".

To which I reply; "I believe you". And the circumstances that people describe to me seem to be covered under one of two possibilities.

1) That the campaign is/was in fact not run like it is designed with the DM wielding her Heavy-Hand-of-Fiat. Said campaigns require an inordinate amount of time to run because "official" material is not much help, or

2) While any given adventure can seem like it could have world-changing possibilities, in fact nothing the PCs do matter.

If you can keep #2 hidden from players like me, or run Eberron in the way it was not designed to be run, we can all still have fun. :)


Wrath wrote:

For me at least, Eberron was a setting that was the magical version of late 1800 early 1900 Earth. WW1 era politics and war with a similar feel in technology. For me, it was a great setting to run my games in.

There are no absolutes in Eberron.

I don't know... the Daelkyr seem absolutely evil to me ;)

Wrath wrote:

I loved the politics.

I loved the Post war feel to the game.

I love the magi tech.

I love the grand sweeping mysteries that have been left unsolved so DMs can inject what they want into the campaign as well. I wanted to create amazing reasons for why those mysteries had happened. Using my players to do so as well.

For me, Eberron piqued my interest like no other Setting has in the past. It gave me the meat to run MY games in a world that felt real...

Yes, these are the very things that rub me the wrong way. The Church of the Silver Flame really is the RC Church translated into Eberron-speak. I know KB has flatly denied it but, excepting only the raw game elements, the whole structure of the CotSF is RC.

The news item on the TV my mom was watching this morning, while I walked by, spoke about the current Papa and the "Whispering Campaign" now active in the Curia against him - set in motion by reactionary elements <cough>Cardinal Krozen</cough>. I first learned of the term "Whispering Campaign" from reading Eberron source material. The CotSF has ruling "Cardinals", "Templars", etc.

Wrath wrote:

Quark, I see exactly where you're comig from. The things I probably love in this setting are the same things you likely hate.

I wasn't a fan of the Dragon marked houses in Eberron... I changed parts of that to suit myself. I didnt want my players feeling they needed dragon marks to be movers and shakers in some situations. I still included those of course, but I allowed other ways of being accepted too.

I also wasnt a fan of actions points. I dropped those completely which meant action feats were also off the table. Didnt affect our game at all.

If I had more time, I'd run in Eberron again. Running Paizo APs in my favourite setting would be awesome.....Maybe one day <sigh>

These things I all agree with. An Eberron Campaign requires loads of work from the DM... if you do it right. And once you're off and running in that direction, "official" source material is immaterial IMO.

Wrath wrote:
I hope you find the setting you're after Quark. Happy gaming

Thanks. Great campaigns are a definite goal but the right players can make most any game fun.

Maybe Piazo (or Kobold Press) will publish an AP for Eberron? <-- My Christmas wish for you ;)


Quark Blast wrote:
[
thejeff wrote:

2) Your larger point has been answered, you just don't like the answer. The baddies are in the middle of unspecified large plots that come to the point where someone notices them when the campaign starts and the GM wants to use them. That's not "the villains sitting around waiting for the PCs to show up" any more than than Elvanna was waiting for PCs to show up to rescue Baba Yaga in RoW. Or the Runelords have been waiting for PCs to oppose them before they started coming back.

The opposite problem is in someways a worse (and more common) one: Why, with all these high level rulers and famous casters around do a bunch of upstart PCs wind up having to deal with the real problems?

Again, close!

Because these principle forces (Dalkyr, Blood of Vol, Lords of Dust, Dreaming Dark, The Mockery, etc.) have long-running and, one assumes, deep-thinking machinations, the right answer anytime PCs begin getting a little too close is to go to ground. The BEBG is functionally (or even worse, actually!) immortal. Just wait them out.

Or summon a Wraith-strike somewhere else to distract them. And if the PCs are not distracted, so much the better. Now they get to come home to a city full of wraith-spawn.

Khorvaire at least would be over-run in decades at most. Except for possibly Vol, none of the big players want to make something of civilization. They want to tear it to a bloody pulp. Dalkyr, Lords of Dust, Dreaming Dark, and maybe others, are not even as favorable to the races of Eberron as ISIS is to their enemies.

As 911 showed - when your only goal is to tear down - a group doesn't need to be particularly sane or skilled to let loose great havoc. And the BBEGs in Eberron, particularly the ones that can drop auto-spawn "bombs", are a great deal more powerful compared to the civilized folks of the realm, than al Qaeda are to the various nations they oppose.

As to your implication for other, more usual, Fantasy RPG Campaigns:

Why doesn't Elminster rule Abeir-Toril? Besides not wanting to, he's trying to keep the lid on Manshoon, or Fzoul Chembryl, and such.

What are the Lords of Waterdeep up to that they can't handle crisis X? Besides travel and infighting (they may all be Lords of Waterdeep but they are not allied except only in that one cause), Skullport spies and greater potential threats lay all about them.

PCs do handle real problems, just not all of the real problems.

Eberron doesn't have these types of options as explanations. At least, not coherently.

The real problems, most all of them, in Eberron are of such magnitude - both in terms of raw power and in scope - that the PCs simply cannot be effective.

And people will say, "Oh, but our PCs did X in an Eberron campaign".

To which I reply; "I believe you". And the circumstances that people describe to me seem to be covered under one of two possibilities.

1) That the campaign is/was in fact not run like it is designed with the DM wielding her Heavy-Hand-of-Fiat. Said campaigns require an inordinate amount of time to run because "official" material is not much help, or

2) While any given adventure can seem like it could have world-changing possibilities, in fact nothing the PCs do matter.

If you can keep #2 hidden from players like me, or run Eberron in the way it was not designed to be run, we can all still have fun. :)

I think we have some fundamental gap, but I'm not quite sure where it is.

In any but the most open-ended sandbox, there's an element of GM Fiat in setting up the adventure. (Probably in combination with player fiat as well.) If you're playing an AP, the GM (and the players) have chosen to start the campaign in a time and place where certain events are happening that will draw them into the larger adventure. In many cases, that involves some BBEG finally making his move.
The same is true in an Eberron game. Either you set the game when one of the main BBEGs is finally have their plans come to a critical stage or you don't. If you don't, then you deal with other things, life goes on and the horrible evils are only a background worry. If you do, that's likely what the campaign's going to be focused on. Once the starting moves are made and the plans come into the open, the villain can't just stop and wait for the PCs to die. Hundreds of years of planning went to set this up and things are in motion. They can't be put on hold and restarted at a whim. Especially not just because some upstart wannabe heroes have interfered with a few incompetent minions.

I don't understand the "nothing the PCs do matters" argument. That's a matter for the individual campaign, isn't it? How do you want the PCs to matter?
In many cases, if the PCs succeed there won't be much change. If they fail, it'll be catastrophic. Isn't that mattering?


thejeff wrote:

I don't understand the "nothing the PCs do matters" argument. That's a matter for the individual campaign, isn't it? How do you want the PCs to matter?

In many cases, if the PCs succeed there won't be much change. If they fail, it'll be catastrophic. Isn't that mattering?

In order of your questions.

Yes.

In ways that the players can control.

Yes, but the world is already so chaotic - post empire, post nuclear war, a last twitch of civilization, Cthulu-like madness leaking into the minds of countless victims and waiting to spew forth upon all, fiendish plots within fiendish plots within fiendish plots, counter-plots and ploys among all the ruling elite, wrapped in dark mysteries whose keys were lost in times long past,... Oh, and with an afterlife for everyone that is, at best, not so different from Dante's Inferno - that "what matters" has no ultimate relevance. Wee... not.


I love Eberron; to me it's a far more realistic world than Forgotten Realms ever has been (it should have self destructed a long time ago; I actually liked the concept of the spellplague, even though the execution of it simply took the old problems and made them even worse while adding on new ones). I would never run the official adventures as written as I feel they rely a bit too much on the same elements over and over again (especially the whole "you arrive one minute too late" bit), but with a bit of minor tweaking, they are actually some of the better adventures that WotC put out. I can see why a lot of people don't like it, but to me, it's a very good well thought out world that actually looks at how the presence of magic would shape the world as a whole, not just the part that is touched by adventurers while everyone else remains mired in medieval thought and technology.


I think every setting has its problems and logical failures. You just have to decide what you are willing to handwave. In Eberron magic is common enough to be used as technology. I think that makes sense in a D&D based world. In most novels only a handful of people possess magic, and it does not work based on game rules. In the gameworld anyone with magic can make magic items and while the the books mostly contain things that would be used for fighting, in a real world there would be non-war usages of magic such as an item that cleans your entire house. That is why Eberron has street lamps, trains, and flying ships. Admittedly as I have said Eberron has more mystery than I would like, but some GM's like that. I really do wish WoTC would go back and resize Eberron so it was not so small. I really don't want to have to do it, if I ever decide to use it again.


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I'm going to leave the rest of the discussion fall by the wayside. It's going in circles and - quite frankly - you don't make much sense to me.

Quark Blast wrote:
Fabius Maximus wrote:
First of all: Since you avoid answering my question, am I correct in the assumption that no published campaign setting does what you'd like them to do?

But I did answer. Go back and read my 20+ posts earlier on this thread and you will see.

I did. And no, you haven't named a single setting that does it right in your opinion (barring aliases; I didn't check those).

I'm rather curious, though. Maybe you can come up with an answer. If not, I've no choice but to go with my assumption.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

The problem with Eberron is not the setting, but WOTC itself.

Years ago they made the observation that sourcebooks and splatbooks would be what they would concentrate on getting out to detriment of publishing actual adventures.

The reason was simple in a given gaming group, only the GM will buy modules, or those rare cases where the whole group chips in, only one copy of the module is sold.

Player aids on the other hand are things that everyone wants a copy of, so they yield a much greator ROI than modules do.


Forgotten Realms is a land so far removed from our own that it's hard to critique in the "this isn't realistic" mode. Certain aspects are so out-sized that you just have to go with it... or leave it. But to criticize it makes little sense.

Eberron, well it was built by KB on the premise that "normal" D&D is illogical (the oft repeated, there would be no evil in a world with Detect Evil abilities and several other "logical" complaints), and so needed fixing. His various arguments have some to no merit, but his "solutions" are straight from the mind of a precocious teen.

Wrath and sunshadow21 have admitted something I see only occasionally - that in Eberron magic = technology; that the CotSF = RCC; etc. Most fans of the setting, and even KB (depending on exactly which element of the setting is being discussed), refuse to admit these comparisons. And I don't know why, they are plainly obvious, so I don't see how denying them helps to defend the setting in any way. But you see a lot of denials across the various forums.

To me the very best ideas for an Eberron campaign have all come from the fan-base. It could be too that, say take the horror element in Eberron, (and ask; How can we play a scenario around that?), there are some really good in-setting ways to do that. To me, all the best ways by far fit better in a Call of Cthulu or Ravenloft setting.

Take magic = tech element and ask the same question and the better settings are Spelljammer or GURPS or WarHammer40k.

Take the any race can be of any alignment/predisposition element and Metamorphisis Alpha is a better fit.

Take the solving mysteries like a gumshoe and... you get the idea.

The problem then is two-fold. In case this was missed because this thread is now TL/DR:

First, these elements have to be taken together in Eberron. Unlike Golarian (e.g.), which is not all one world and is big enough to be taken in a modular fashion anyway if one so wishes. Second, all of KB's solutions don't solve what he thinks they do. I could take Eberron as is and just go with it - like I mention regarding Forgotten Realms - but the premise behind Eberron is that it "makes sense" of the things that "don't make sense" in the standard FRPG setting.

If KB and the fans would drop the latter claim (as Wrath and sunshadow21 seem to do), then my argument simply devolves back to my opinion and there would be no long threads around this topic... or at least not in the way we see here.


Fabius Maximus wrote:

I'm going to leave the rest of the discussion fall by the wayside. It's going in circles and - quite frankly - you don't make much sense to me.

Quark Blast wrote:
Fabius Maximus wrote:
First of all: Since you avoid answering my question, am I correct in the assumption that no published campaign setting does what you'd like them to do?

But I did answer. Go back and read my 20+ posts earlier on this thread and you will see.

I did. And no, you haven't named a single setting that does it right in your opinion (barring aliases; I didn't check those).

I'm rather curious, though. Maybe you can come up with an answer. If not, I've no choice but to go with my assumption.

As for Fabius Maximus' persistent request - as if it wasn't obvious - I have no disagreement with any other published setting, that I'm familiar with, to the degree that I do with the Eberron Campaign Setting.

Some of that, as can be readily seen, revolves around the silly (to me) "I'm solving these logical faults with the standard FRPG settings and calling it Eberron".

Some of it, perhaps the key portion of it, revolves around the fact that they want to charge top dollar for products that leave virtually all of the tedious work up to the DM. To me that's criminal - Eberron is functionally an Open Source product with proprietary pricing - and that rubs me the wrong way.

To demonstrate, some sample questions with far better answers on the Net than in anything official:

A good idea for The Mourning?

A good idea for building a Warforged true cleric?

Want to know what the Chamber really is up to?

Want to know why Jaela Daran was chosen to speak for the Flame?

These questions, and many like them, ought to be best answered in a thought out campaign setting guide, or revealed over an AP, or some such.

Google knows but KB/WotC don't want to tell you but they'll sell you a book for $50 that has twelve plot-hooks and a few new alchemical and oddly restrictive magic items that most Players/PCs cannot use and/or do not want. Oh, and some vague possibilities for transnational political intrigue - details, of which there are many, all need to be worked out by the DM.

With any other setting players and GMs are welcome to use this method of fleshing out their campaign. With Eberron it is your only practical choice.


Missed this earlier...

wraithstrike wrote:
... In Eberron magic is common enough to be used as technology. I think that makes sense in a D&D based world. In most novels only a handful of people possess magic, and it does not work based on game rules. In the gameworld anyone with magic can make magic items and while the the books mostly contain things that would be used for fighting, in a real world there would be non-war usages of magic such as an item that cleans your entire house. That is why Eberron has street lamps, trains, and flying ships...

Sorta kinda but not really.

As I understand 3.PF magic, it requires a high ability score (INT, WIS, CHA) but it also requires and aptitude. PC casters are simply assumed to come from that very small pool of the population that does have the aptitude.

In-game not every farmer with a 18 INT can go to the wizard acadamy and study to be a Wizard. Most would flunk out for lack of aptitude with manipulating the Weave, not for lack of smarts.

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

You can make the exact same gripes about Golarions's unanswered quesitons.

Is Aroden really dead? What killed him? Or is he coming back?

Why does Sarenrae give spells to the Quadiran war faction of her faith?

What's a good idea for an Android Barbarian?

What's going on inside Hermea? What's the background of a Hermean character?

Why haven't the super mage liches of Eox taken over the solar system?

Every campaign setting has unanswered questions. You can either answer them for yourself as a GM.... or ignore them entirely by not having your plots center around them.

Shadow Lodge

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A campaign setting without unanswered questions is a pretty goddamn boring campaign setting.


LazarX wrote:

You can make the exact same gripes about Golarions's unanswered quesitons.

Is Aroden really dead? What killed him? Or is he coming back?

Why does Sarenrae give spells to the Quadiran war faction of her faith?

What's a good idea for an Android Barbarian?

What's going on inside Hermea? What's the background of a Hermean character?

Why haven't the super mage liches of Eox taken over the solar system?

Every campaign setting has unanswered questions. You can either answer them for yourself as a GM.... or ignore them entirely by not having your plots center around them.

Again, sorta kinda. Those things you list can either...

Be ignored entirely and it doesn't really affect the rest of the Campaign Setting (just like ignoring Action Points in Eberron).

Or

The details of what is going on with one or more of those can be bypassed because it is not in any way central to most areas PCs are likely to be from or adventuring in (like the Scarlet Brotherhood on Oerth).

For Eberron neither of those general excuses are usually valid.

Sure you can write off or marginalize Vol. And you can do that to the Daelkyr... and the Blood of Vol... and the Lords of Dust... and the Dreaming Dark... and the Cult of the Dragon Below... and the Lord of Blades...

In fact, you have to do this, or make up the details yourself, as there is precious little official material to help you.

But if you do that, well, you likely don't have an Eberron Campaign. You have a campaign setting with whatever elements you choose to borrow and flesh out from official Eberron. And for those who want to do that I don't have anything to say other than my observation that, once you've done all that, the official materials are superfluous. Therefore don't spend your money on them.


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I don't expect realism according to our world in a campaign world, but I do expect it to follow it's own set of consistent and realistic expectations in both causes and likely effects.

Greyhawk and Golarion both do this tolerably well; the politics and economy are decent and realistic consequences follow from most actions, both mundane and magical. Neither are notably fantastic or bad in this regard; they serve their function as a storytelling device without making their weaknesses too glaringly obvious.

Forgotten Realms ignores any sense of consistency in any way, shape or form; it may work fine for a novel universe, but for a campaign world, it falls flat on it's face in my mind. The spellplague is actually a very good example of this; magic went crazy and left the areas that had been most abusing magic untouched while other areas where little to no magic was used were completely destroyed. The fact that magic always seems to effect those places and events that are least involved in the story and world in general, and this is true of the vast majority of FR stories, never rang true to me. In the end, it's the lack of any internal consistency that turns me off of Forgotten Realms as a world, no matter how interesting a handful of the NPCs and stories may be. I don't mind a good fantastical adventure with no consistency beyond the rule of cool occasionally, but it doesn't work well as an entire campaign.

Eberron's greatest strength is that it explores realistic and consistent consequences of having magic in the world, something that not even Greyhawk and Golarion really looks at. I could care less about the realism as it compares to our world, but love the fact that it is realistic and consistent within it's own world. Magic has a profound impact on both politics and the economy, which also limits a lot of the abuse you see of it in Forgotten Realms, as that also makes it highly regulated. Dragonmarked characters and magic users in general have a lot of people watching them, ready to stop them should they go off the deep end and go against what their house/country/the world in general is willing to tolerate. It also allows for a functional way to give players access to basic magic items without taking away the mystique and uncertainty of the truly powerful magic in the world. This internal consistency makes it much easier to create the kind of stories that I am interested in telling and playing in. I personally could do without the mystery and race against time aspects found in most of the published adventures, but those are easy enough to ignore and tell your own stories within everything else the official material presents.


I'll <snip> and bold your latest post and make a couple observations.

sunshadow21 wrote:
I don't expect realism according to our world in a campaign world, but I do expect it to follow it's own set of consistent and realistic expectations in both causes and likely effects... Forgotten Realms ignores any sense of consistency in any way, shape or form... In the end, it's the lack of any internal consistency that turns me off of Forgotten Realms as a world, no matter how interesting a handful of the NPCs and stories may be. I don't mind a good fantastical adventure with no consistency beyond the rule of cool occasionally, but it doesn't work well as an entire campaign.

FR is truly a High Magic campaign setting if ever there was one. Low level PCs are "safe" to adventure only because they are beneath the notice of the principal BEBGs. Evil low-to-mid-level characters are truly pennyworth chattel to their overlords. It's a great setting for mining adventure ideas, especially high level ones.

sunshadow21 wrote:
Eberron's greatest strength is that it explores realistic and consistent consequences of having magic in the world, something that not even Greyhawk and Golarion really looks at. I could care less about the realism as it compares to our world, but love the fact that it is realistic and consistent within it's own world...

True, but it turns magic into technology, which is a major turn off for many. And you get there by making an assumption that the designers of Oerth or Aber-Toril did not make.

In order to get down this magic-consistancy road, KB first had to assume that just about anyone could wield magic. From his perspective, it seems, all it takes is an above average INT, WIS, or CHA and you're good to go.

And you know what that means?

Statistically speaking 87.5% of the people are above average in one of these abilities!

Add to this the emphasis on education in Khorvaire and just about anyone who can has no barriers to being a caster of some sort. So it is consistent to make low level magic a commodity in such a setting.

sunshadow21 wrote:
Magic has a profound impact on both politics and the economy... Dragonmarked characters and magic users in general have a lot of people watching them, ready to stop them should they go off the deep end and go against what their house/country/the world in general is willing to tolerate.

Although, the consistency problem created by the Magic Cops of Eberron is that this gives a HUGE advantage to the BEBGs. They don't have these qualms. The Mourning is a delight to behold for several of the BEBG organizations.

"Going off the deep end" is a blessing to be encouraged. Vol might not think that way and the Lord of Blades would limit the type of catastrophe he would hope for but the other prionciple BEBGs would be all for another "Oops! We nuked 1/5th of olde Galifar... again. <evil grin>

sunshadow21 wrote:
It also allows for a functional way to give players access to basic magic items without taking away the mystique and uncertainty of the truly powerful magic in the world...

Agreed, but turning low-to-mid-level magic into a commodity is another major turn off for many.

sunshadow21 wrote:
I personally could do without the mystery and race against time aspects found in most of the published adventures...

Funny because these, especially the mystery aspect, are really the most salient feature of the world that player/PCs are going to encounter. It's the most Eberron part of an Eberron campaign in a rubber-hits-the-road way.

The things others might name first (here I'm thinking the Draconic Prophecy) really escape the notice of everyday (or even a lifetime of!) adventuring in Eberron.


Quark Blast wrote:

Missed this earlier...

wraithstrike wrote:
... In Eberron magic is common enough to be used as technology. I think that makes sense in a D&D based world. In most novels only a handful of people possess magic, and it does not work based on game rules. In the gameworld anyone with magic can make magic items and while the the books mostly contain things that would be used for fighting, in a real world there would be non-war usages of magic such as an item that cleans your entire house. That is why Eberron has street lamps, trains, and flying ships...

Sorta kinda but not really.

As I understand 3.PF magic, it requires a high ability score (INT, WIS, CHA) but it also requires and aptitude. PC casters are simply assumed to come from that very small pool of the population that does have the aptitude.

In-game not every farmer with a 18 INT can go to the wizard acadamy and study to be a Wizard. Most would flunk out for lack of aptitude with manipulating the Weave, not for lack of smarts.

Not really. Look at settlements rules. Spellcasters are >5% of popn. That makes magic use pretty common. So I'd say your assumption is wrong. There is no test in PF to be a wizard?


Quark Blast wrote:

Forgotten Realms is a land so far removed from our own that it's hard to critique in the "this isn't realistic" mode. Certain aspects are so out-sized that you just have to go with it... or leave it. But to criticize it makes little sense.

Eberron, well it was built by KB on the premise that "normal" D&D is illogical (the oft repeated, there would be no evil in a world with Detect Evil abilities and several other "logical" complaints), and so needed fixing. His various arguments have some to no merit, but his "solutions" are straight from the mind of a precocious teen.

Wrath and sunshadow21 have admitted something I see only occasionally - that in Eberron magic = technology; that the CotSF = RCC; etc. Most fans of the setting, and even KB (depending on exactly which element of the setting is being discussed), refuse to admit these comparisons. And I don't know why, they are plainly obvious, so I don't see how denying them helps to defend the setting in any way. But you see a lot of denials across the various forums.

To me the very best ideas for an Eberron campaign have all come from the fan-base. It could be too that, say take the horror element in Eberron, (and ask; How can we play a scenario around that?), there are some really good in-setting ways to do that. To me, all the best ways by far fit better in a Call of Cthulu or Ravenloft setting.

Take magic = tech element and ask the same question and the better settings are Spelljammer or GURPS or WarHammer40k.

Take the any race can be of any alignment/predisposition element and Metamorphisis Alpha is a better fit.

Take the solving mysteries like a gumshoe and... you get the idea.

The problem then is two-fold. In case this was missed because this thread is now TL/DR:

First, these elements have to be taken together in Eberron. Unlike Golarian (e.g.), which is not all one world and is big enough to be taken in a modular fashion anyway if one so wishes. Second, all of KB's solutions don't solve...

1: First you make the point that elements of the setting are better handled in other settings.

This is true, but it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. This is like saying that, say, Alien is a bad movie, because other movies have handled horror better, and other movies have handled sci-fi better.

2: You argue that they have to be taken together.

This is not true. Say you don't like the mystery elements of Eberron you can just ignore them. You write your own adventures anyway, there are no requirements placed upon own original adventures aside from reasonably fitting into the world itself.


Quark Blast wrote:

Although, the consistency problem created by the Magic Cops of Eberron is that this gives a HUGE advantage to the BEBGs. They don't have these qualms. The Mourning is a delight to behold for several of the BEBG organizations.

"Going off the deep end" is a blessing to be encouraged. Vol might not think that way and the Lord of Blades would limit the type of catastrophe he would hope for but the other prionciple BEBGs would be all for another "Oops! We nuked 1/5th of olde Galifar... again. <evil grin>

I disagree. If anything, it constrains the BBEG even more than the heroes. It makes it so that while a BBEG might get one solid blow in unanswered, that blow is going to create a lot of attention they don't want or need. The BBEG needs the political savvy, social skills, and extremely good generalship in order to setup and land that blow well. Lone wolf BBEG's are not going to do well in an environment where political and economic organization of the good guys ensures that complete destruction from without is extremely difficult, even with an equally well organized foe. The PCs actually have the advantage because they can buck the system far better than most of the more or less immortal BBEGs, who have to build themselves into the system in order to meet their long term goals.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Quark Blast wrote:
LazarX wrote:

You can make the exact same gripes about Golarions's unanswered quesitons.

Is Aroden really dead? What killed him? Or is he coming back?

Why does Sarenrae give spells to the Quadiran war faction of her faith?

What's a good idea for an Android Barbarian?

What's going on inside Hermea? What's the background of a Hermean character?

Why haven't the super mage liches of Eox taken over the solar system?

Every campaign setting has unanswered questions. You can either answer them for yourself as a GM.... or ignore them entirely by not having your plots center around them.

Again, sorta kinda. Those things you list can either...

Be ignored entirely and it doesn't really affect the rest of the Campaign Setting (just like ignoring Action Points in Eberron).

Or

The details of what is going on with one or more of those can be bypassed because it is not in any way central to most areas PCs are likely to be from or adventuring in (like the Scarlet Brotherhood on Oerth).

For Eberron neither of those general excuses are usually valid.

Sure you can write off or marginalize Vol. And you can do that to the Daelkyr... and the Blood of Vol... and the Lords of Dust... and the Dreaming Dark... and the Cult of the Dragon Below... and the Lord of Blades...

In fact, you have to do this, or make up the details yourself, as there is precious little official material to help you.

But if you do that, well, you likely don't have an Eberron Campaign. You have a campaign setting with whatever elements you choose to borrow and flesh out from official Eberron. And for those who want to do that I don't have anything to say other than my observation that, once you've done all that, the official materials are superfluous. Therefore don't spend your money on them.

That's what home campaigns ARE. No matter what game world you run, if you've truly made a campaign that's yours, it's going to deviate from canon. AND THAT'S GOOD. The official materials are only superflous if you actually invalidate them. Eberron had plenty of setting material to work as a canvas.


sunshadow21 wrote:
Quark Blast wrote:

Although, the consistency problem created by the Magic Cops of Eberron is that this gives a HUGE advantage to the BEBGs. They don't have these qualms. The Mourning is a delight to behold for several of the BEBG organizations.

"Going off the deep end" is a blessing to be encouraged. Vol might not think that way and the Lord of Blades would limit the type of catastrophe he would hope for but the other prionciple BEBGs would be all for another "Oops! We nuked 1/5th of olde Galifar... again. <evil grin>

I disagree. If anything, it constrains the BBEG even more than the heroes. It makes it so that while a BBEG might get one solid blow in unanswered, that blow is going to create a lot of attention they don't want or need. The BBEG needs the political savvy, social skills, and extremely good generalship in order to setup and land that blow well. Lone wolf BBEG's are not going to do well in an environment where political and economic organization of the good guys ensures that complete destruction from without is extremely difficult, even with an equally well organized foe. The PCs actually have the advantage because they can buck the system far better than most of the more or less immortal BBEGs, who have to build themselves into the system in order to meet their long term goals.

And this is where we'll just have to agree to disagree.

What the Daelkyr are thinking/planning can hardly be captured on a human time scale. Trying to RP that without skipping centuries or millennia just wouldn't do justice to powers like they are purported to be. Powers who have a very real presence in the setting.

There are things living in Forgotten Realms that rival the power of Demon Lords - including, potentially, the PCs. That's just the way the setting works. Eberron is a setting where this type of pervasive high magic power gaming is strongly discouraged.

I note that there are factions in Eberron that operate a system to exclude a similar threat, and they are called Gatekeepers. But this is the last vestige from an ancient conflict that, if it is significantly resolved at all in the span of a PC lifetime, will be to the detriment of all Eberron.

That is, in the Eberron setting, the PCs can work with the Gatekeepers to maintain the status quo or they can fail in their mission and unimaginable chaos spews through the gates... or the DM can ignore this element of Eberron. However...

Any resolution of any of the main threats (Daelkyr, Dreaming Dark, Lords of Dust, etc.) posits a very non-Eberron flavor to the whole setting.

Exception - Vol may be a long-term planner but her goal(s) are not inhumanly obtuse. However, all the other major players have plans/goals that shouldn't even be comprehensible to any of the PC races.

The only Eberron element that can be kept without inordinate work on the part of the DM is the gumshoe/mystery/urban-jungle angle. But then, you don't need Eberron at all to play that.


LazarX wrote:
The official materials are only superflous if you actually invalidate them. Eberron had plenty of setting material to work as a canvas.
Ganryu wrote:

2: You argue that they have to be taken together.

This is not true. Say you don't like the mystery elements of Eberron you can just ignore them. You write your own adventures anyway, there are no requirements placed upon own original adventures aside from reasonably fitting into the world itself.

In fact, you are both right. I am saying that, just not only that.

Doing what you guys recommend is in fact what a DM using Eberron pretty much has to do.

And when you do that for your Eberron Campaign you might as well use Internet-sourced materials. Because they are much much better than the comparatively expensive and generally useless official material. And to be clear I am talking about gleaning ideas from forums like this one and expressly not talking about any sort of piracy or copyright infringement.


Quoting the man himself from his blog and - I'll make special note for anyone who is not familiar with it - this type of non-answer is ubiquitous in official and quasi-official Eberron material.

KB wrote:
The Lords of Dust want to free their masters and restore their primal dominion over the world. The Daelkyr… we just don’t know. At the end of the day we don’t know what they want or how they intend to achieve it. We know what’s keeping them at bay – the seals created by the Gatekeepers – but we don’t know why the Daelkyr haven’t already broken those seals or what would happen if they did. Unlike the Overlords, the Daelkyr are free to move about in Khyber. They have armies of aberrations and cults scattered across the world. Why haven’t they taken more active measures to secure their release? Are the mightiest Daelkyr working together, or are they working at cross purposes? Why is it that their cults often follow completely different creeds and are quite often entirely unaware of one another? Again, at the end of the day, we don’t know. We know they are down in Khyber. We know the power they possess. But we don’t know what they want or what they are doing.

So give us a break and post something when you do know, right?


That's up the individual GM. I think that is the point of many of the mysteries in the campaign.


Quark Blast wrote:


Wrath and sunshadow21 have admitted something I see only occasionally - that in Eberron magic = technology; that the CotSF = RCC; etc. Most fans of the setting, and even KB (depending on exactly which element of the setting is being discussed), refuse to admit these comparisons. And I don't know why, they are plainly obvious, so I don't see how denying them helps to defend the setting in any way. But you see a lot of denials across the various forums.

I see their point because magic is not as easy to manipulate as technology is so if you want to be anal enough about it someone could argue the point. However with the way it is presented in the setting the difference is not big enough to really matter IMHO. With the number of magic users sitting around it makes sense to me. I have not been in a debate that where this was denied. I might go look around the internet to see how they see it differently.


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Quark Blast wrote:

Missed this earlier...

wraithstrike wrote:
... In Eberron magic is common enough to be used as technology. I think that makes sense in a D&D based world. In most novels only a handful of people possess magic, and it does not work based on game rules. In the gameworld anyone with magic can make magic items and while the the books mostly contain things that would be used for fighting, in a real world there would be non-war usages of magic such as an item that cleans your entire house. That is why Eberron has street lamps, trains, and flying ships...

Sorta kinda but not really.

As I understand 3.PF magic, it requires a high ability score (INT, WIS, CHA) but it also requires and aptitude. PC casters are simply assumed to come from that very small pool of the population that does have the aptitude.

In-game not every farmer with a 18 INT can go to the wizard acadamy and study to be a Wizard. Most would flunk out for lack of aptitude with manipulating the Weave, not for lack of smarts.

IIRC Eberron assumes most of its high level heroes were killed during the last war, but otherwise it should follow the DMG demograpics for casters. Since this techno-magic did not appear overnight I think it is safe to say it was around before and during the war.

You really would not need a caster to create every magic item in existence. With the number of casters who could basically serve as engineers as an equivalent in our world they can create the items. They could easily create a magic items that helps to create other magic items the same way we use technology to make production of other technology based items. How this magic is supplied is never given too much detail in the setting much like other things so it can definitely happen. It is just up to the GM to say how it happens if the players ever question it, which many won't. If they have what are basically warforge making factories, and a banking system that works no matter which branch you go to when you want your money taken out, then I don't see why the same process could not be in place for magi-tech.


Quark Blast wrote:
Fabius Maximus wrote:

I'm going to leave the rest of the discussion fall by the wayside. It's going in circles and - quite frankly - you don't make much sense to me.

Quark Blast wrote:
Fabius Maximus wrote:
First of all: Since you avoid answering my question, am I correct in the assumption that no published campaign setting does what you'd like them to do?

But I did answer. Go back and read my 20+ posts earlier on this thread and you will see.

I did. And no, you haven't named a single setting that does it right in your opinion (barring aliases; I didn't check those).

I'm rather curious, though. Maybe you can come up with an answer. If not, I've no choice but to go with my assumption.

As for Fabius Maximus' persistent request - as if it wasn't obvious - I have no disagreement with any other published setting, that I'm familiar with, to the degree that I do with the Eberron Campaign Setting.

That still is not a clear answer. Maybe I didn't make myself clear. Are you against published settings in general and particularly don't like Eberron? Or do you like some settings and not others, one of which is Eberron?

I've got the impression that it is the former, in which case I must ask what you are doing here in the first place (except being deliberately belligerent for the heck of it). In the latter case, I'd really like to know which published settings you actually like (for comparison's sake).
I'd appreciate that.


wraithstrike wrote:
You really would not need a caster to create every magic item in existence. With the number of casters who could basically serve as engineers as an equivalent in our world they can create the items. They could easily create a magic items that helps to create other magic items the same way we use technology to make production of other technology based items. How this magic is supplied is never given too much detail in the setting much like other things so it can definitely happen. It is just up to the GM to say how it happens if the players ever question it, which many won't. If they have what are basically warforge making factories, and a banking system that works no matter which branch you go to when you want your money taken out, then I don't see why the same process could not be in place for magi-tech.

Your comments are helpful. Especially this part quoted above. Still, that would be a lot of work to iron out all those details for a campaign.

I've never said a group can't have great fun in Eberron - only that it's a lot of work to build the setting (because the official materials don't really do that), and when taken as given even by KB himself, I don't see how any of his "logical solutions" end up with a result more useful than the "logical errors" they are designed to replace.

For example, I think KB would've been better off having an in-setting limit to the types/schools of Arcane casters (maybe Necromancer and Summoner e.g.) and replace them, to a degree, with Magewrights and Artificers. But then he doesn't seem to be one to think things through and arrive at a solid result. Or if he does, it never gets published. Even on his blog.

Which cycles me back around and I won't repeat my usual refrain. On the other hand, KB does many things very well. He supports the setting like crazy online and at CONS. He is very kind and responsive to his fans and (largely) ignores critics like me... because, well, he has no way to efficiently differentiate critics like me from just trolls. I could be cynical and say he laughs at criticisms like mine while counting his gold but I don't have any reason to believe he's callous like that. He seems to be a genuinely nice guy who's had success beyond his young ambitions and is now working hard to keep what he's been given by the fickle finger of fate.

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