D&D 3E/3.5 Eberron/Dragonlance adventure (3.5)

[Alexander123]

I have been thinking of creating an adventure where the players by some magical event travel to another world entirely and have to find their way back to their own world.

I have in mind the players traveling from Eberron to Dragonlance and I want them to arrive in Dragonlance exactly somewhere during the War of the Lance. (I don't like what the authors did with the setting after the War of the Lance and I don't like some of the choices that some of the characters made so I will be making different decisions on their behalf.)

A few issues with this will be consistency since in Eberron gods don't walk the earth.

I am going to explain this by saying that gods and goddesses are primitive myths which each society has and since divine magic has disappeared from DL for 300 centuries and is just returning it is more plausible that ths is the case. (I will make fizban a good lich or something like that.)

The cataclysm is not going to be punishment from gods but a meteor.

I'm sure there are other consistency issues which I will have to work out. I plan on having a link between these two worlds permanently opened so that travel between them is possible.

One of the reasons why I am doing this is because there are things I like about DL which I want to import into Eberron and there are things about Eberron which I also like and want to have the best of both worlds. (My own preference is Eberron.)

Such as:

DL: Kender, The Knights of Thakhisis, The Knights of Solamnia etc.

Eberron: Gods don't walk the earth, retain class abilities even if your alignment is opposed to your deities, (more realistic) the steampunk feel of it, the existence of artificers.

Any advice, problems you think I might have, things to watch out for?

 

[Jhaelen]

Any advice, problems you think I might have, things to watch out for?

Watch out for player expectations.

Depending on how long you intend the jaunt into the other setting to be, players may feel you 'lied' to them when you told them what the campaign setting would be. If it's only a short trip (a single, short adventure), it's probably fine, but be careful about a prolonged change of the setting.

E.g. telling them you'll play an Eberron campaign and then engulf them in the Mists of Ravenloft to continue play there may not be something your players appreciate.

If you plan something like this, it's best to give them some warning right away. If you tell them "This campaign will be all about hopping between different settings" players will know what to expect.

Myself I wouldn't mind getting my character whisked off to Ravenloft, but I'd instantly leave the group if the DM decided to transfer my character to the Forgotten Realms. I have an (unrational) hate for this setting, and there are definitely other players out there, who feel very strongly about certain settings.

 

[Alexander123]

Watch out for player expectations.

Depending on how long you intend the jaunt into the other setting to be, players may feel you 'lied' to them when you told them what the campaign setting would be. If it's only a short trip (a single, short adventure), it's probably fine, but be careful about a prolonged change of the setting.

E.g. telling them you'll play an Eberron campaign and then engulf them in the Mists of Ravenloft to continue play there may not be something your players appreciate.

If you plan something like this, it's best to give them some warning right away. If you tell them "This campaign will be all about hopping between different settings" players will know what to expect.

Myself I wouldn't mind getting my character whisked off to Ravenloft, but I'd instantly leave the group if the DM decided to transfer my character to the Forgotten Realms. I have an (unrational) hate for this setting, and there are definitely other players out there, who feel very strongly about certain settings.

Yes, I definitely plan to discuss this with my players so that I know they are looking forward to it and they will enjoy it.

I would also leave the table if a DM decided to transfer my character to FR. I also don't like FR. Can I ask what you don't like about FR?

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

The cataclysm is not going to be punishment from gods but a meteor.

I'm sure there are other consistency issues which I will have to work out. I plan on having a link between these two worlds permanently opened so that travel between them is possible.

I'd suggest linking the Cataclysm in DL to the Mourning in Eberron--in both cases, an entire region is wiped off the map with disastrous consequences for its respective world, so having this trauma create some sort of link between the worlds would work nicely. Maybe the meteor strike in DL punched its way through to Eberron, maybe the Last War mages blasted Cyre so hard that the biggest fragment of Cyre fell through to DL as a meteor, maybe something else happened, but some sort of thematic link like that which ties together two iconic setting aspects would probably be more believable than "Okay, poof, you're in Krynn now."

You could explain the time differential between the Cataclysm that they should be sent to and the War of the Lance where they actually end up in a few different ways; my favorite would be that Mourning is "in the future" relative to the DL timeline, and though the connection stretches from the Mourning to the Cataclysm, the initial portal is unstable and dumps the PCs out halfway--i.e. during the WotL. The PCs' presence in DL as Eberron natives would "stabilize" the portal so it goes from WotL to Mourning.

 

[Jhaelen]

Can I ask what you don't like about FR?

Too many things to list, ranging from bad experiences with FR groups in my early roleplaying years to the overabundance of high-powered npcs to the gracious borrowing of material originally created for other settings.

Also, it's plain boring. The setting doesn't offer anything that hasn't been done better in a dozen other settings.

 

[Alexander123]

Too many things to list, ranging from bad experiences with FR groups in my early roleplaying years to the overabundance of high-powered npcs to the gracious borrowing of material originally created for other settings.

Also, it's plain boring. The setting doesn't offer anything that hasn't been done better in a dozen other settings.

Which settings do you like?

 

[JohnRL]

Interesting choice of excluding deities completely from Ansalon. Any reason for this? Making Fizban a good lich was something I would not expect, and probably wouldn't do myself. One of the things about Dragonlance was that the gods did sometimes appear and/or do something drastic like the Cataclysm. Rewriting it so that gods don't feature at all is a tall order. My feeling is to leave the pantheon, history and divine NPCs as they are and to just steer the PCs away from direct contact with anybody divine.

I do like the idea of going back to Dragonlance, especially during the War of the Lance. I played in a DL campaign back in 1990, when it seemed very cool and fresh - minotaurs, new sorts of wizards, knights of Solamnia and lots of big, angry dragons were the highlights. The low-points for me were the three "humourous" (i.e. irritating) races - kender, gully dwarves and tinker gnomes.
These days, compared to other settings like Planescape, Dark Sun & Spelljammer, Dragonlance seems quite tame, almost but not quite vanilla.

 

[Alexander123]

I actually like humor in my game and that is one of the reasons why I wanted to have an adventure which takes the P.C.s to Dragonlance.

There are a number of reasons why I excluded deities from the setting.

I don't like gods that walk the earth, I don't like the idea of an omnipotent being who can swoop down and destroy you on whim and whom you cannot challenge. (and I don't like playing epic 21+ level games where such things happen.)

I also like to have corrupt priests and other things which would not be possible with gods in my game.

Also, since I am starting the adventure in Eberron, consistency is a big issue and my preference is for DL to be consistent with Eberron and not change the Eberron setting. (because I like it so much.)

I also like the scientific and rational feel which Eberron (where magic approximately equal science.) has and I would like gods and goddesses to be more superstitious myths which people outgrow as they adopt science and reason in my campaign.

I want my campaign to have a steampunk feel to it, the feel of the renaissance period and the age of reason where reason and science were the ways of the future.

 

[Jhaelen]

Which settings do you like?

My favorite D&D settings are Dark Sun and Eberron. The former because it's _different_ and the latter because it manages to be a 'kitchen-sink' setting and still be original.

Outside of D&D my favorite setting is Ars Magica's 'Mythic Europe', because it's as realistic or fantastic as you want it to be and as rich in details as you can get (it's medieval earth, after all!).

 

[Sorak]

It sounds to me like you really only like (kender, knights of thakisis, etc..) and that you really didn't like the main theme of the setting. The way I see it, the main theme of the setting is that the gods are there but your life is in your own hands (or someone else's in the case of them killing you lol).
Why not take the things that you like about DL and put them in Eberron, or even have your game take place further ahead in the DL timeline. However, these are my opinions. I am starting a DL game that takes place after the War of Souls. 100 years after the WoS.
Also, I join the "I really hate FR" brigade.