New Campaign Setting Hint Is Eberron?

Bacon Bits said:

Is any travel in any campaign uneventful? The point is that the mode of conveyance does not imply anything special about the type of adventure you're going to have or the sort of encounters it might lead to.

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The thing about Eberron travel is that it's generally faster than in most other settings. A Forgotten Realms adventure that takes the party from Waterdeep to the Dalelands and then to Amn would take months (I estimate 2500-3000 miles travel distance total, so 3-4 months). Sure, you can fast-forward past that, but it's still a major undertaking. If I were playing a game where we were traveling for 3-4 months on foot and the whole journey was just handwaved, I'd be a little annoyed.

In Eberron, a journey of similar length (say, from Sharn, to somewhere in Aundair and then to Thrane) would take 3-4 days, at least as long as you travel via the Lightning Rail. That makes a globe-trotting (or at least continent-trotting) campaign a fair bit more "realistic".

amethal said:

I think Q'Barra is more like Chult than Xen'drik is. However, I'll agree with your last bit, since I don't think Calimshan is much like Al-Qadim either ...

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It depends on how detail-oriented you are. Chult/Xen'drik and Calimshan/Al'Qadim are similar as tropes, despite wildly varying specifics.

Staffan said:

The thing about Eberron travel is that it's generally faster than in most other settings. A Forgotten Realms adventure that takes the party from Waterdeep to the Dalelands and then to Amn would take months (I estimate 2500-3000 miles travel distance total, so 3-4 months). Sure, you can fast-forward past that, but it's still a major undertaking. If I were playing a game where we were traveling for 3-4 months on foot and the whole journey was just handwaved, I'd be a little annoyed.

In Eberron, a journey of similar length (say, from Sharn, to somewhere in Aundair and then to Thrane) would take 3-4 days, at least as long as you travel via the Lightning Rail. That makes a globe-trotting (or at least continent-trotting) campaign a fair bit more "realistic".

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When you design an adventure, however, you don't need to care about how many miles away something is. You care about how many days it will take to get there and how many encounters you will have along the way. It doesn't matter if you're going to walk, or ride a horse, or take a ship or any of that. To the design of an adventure, the next location is always exactly as far away as it needs to be. Let's say you want the players to have approximately one week of travel between two destinations. If the players move at 20 miles a day, the destination needs to be 140 miles away. If they players move 60 miles a day, then the destination needs to be 420 miles away.

That's why RPGs don't really change even when you're playing sci-fi and can planet hop on a starship. As I said: The mode of conveyance and the rate of travel have essentially nothing to do with the quantity, type, or number of encounters that you will have en route. Sure, an airship can't be attacked by merfolk. But it can be attacked by harpies or drake riders or sky pirates.

And if you really need to travel vast distances quickly, well, base D&D already has instantaneous travel. It even has instantaneous travel across planar boundaries if that's what you want to do. Plane Shift can take you almost exactly where you want to go no matter where that might be. You can easily simulate globe trotting with a network of Teleportation Circles, too.

. Not for me.

danddjacko said:

. Not for me.

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What's not for you.

Not too long ago, they talked about seeing different D&D settings as different genres to play in, using Eberron as a example of doing D&D Pulp. That has me excited that we might also be getting a sort of "stealth" handbook on doing a pulpy game in addition to getting Eberron back.

amethal said:

I think Q'Barra is more like Chult than Xen'drik is. However, I'll agree with your last bit, since I don't think Calimshan is much like Al-Qadim either ...

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If you equate Al-Qadim with the medieval Middle East, then Calimshan would be like Morocco / Moorish Spain (with its northern neighbor Amn being something of an analogue to colonial Spain).

There was a 4th edition Eberron book. I don't see the new for a 5th edition one. I like other posters would prefer Greyhawk.

Actually, Greyhawk does not seem to require more rules, and lore from previous editions can be used. Eberron does require a class (artificer), races, dragonmarks, etc., and new lore can be added. I hope Eberron 5e comes in some way. Just a few more days to know

This would be outstanding....!