Eberron...is it worth picking -up?

[Thyrkill]

Hello All,

I was flipping through Secrets of Sarlona yesterday, liked what I saw, and started wondering...Is Eberron worth picking-up and trying? I have been very stand-offish towards Eberron until now, mostly because I was immersed in the demise of my campaign, but also because of all the negative response to it. For every one positive thing I read about it, it was quickly followed by three negatives, mostly harping on the size of the world, the Lightning Train thingie, and Warforged.

That being said, I was wondering if those who play in or use Eberron could let me know their opinions and impressions. I don't know much about it so anything will help.

Thanks,
Matt

 

[Corsair]

Eberron has a lot of good things going for it. I'd suggest reading Keith Baker's dragonshards on the WotC website for some more looks at the setting.

 

[wayne62682]

IMO most of the negative reaction to Eberron comes from ignorance of how things are. People immediately look at Warforged and think "robots" when they aren't, so they never bother to give the setting a chance because they immediately turn into "Get your sci-fi out of my fantasy" mode. The lightning rail isn't a train (people just think of it as such) and exists mainly because Eberron proliferates the "redline" technique rather than wandering across the continent. I personally find Eberron to be a great setting with a fresh new twist on D&D (as opposed to traditional sword-and-sorcery like Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms), and highly recommend it.

 

[awayfarer]

Personally theres a lot I like about the setting. It seems a bit video-gamey or perhaps something like a comic book in spots, but that seems to be the intent and I don't think either are necessarily a bad thing. Merkuri and I own the campaign book and a few others related to the setting and the nifty factor is pretty high.

I think the best thing about it is that it takes a lot of old material and refreshes it. The core stuff is in there but a lot of it has a brand new feel.

For every one positive thing I read about it, it was quickly followed by three negatives, mostly harping on the size of the world, the Lightning Train thingie, and Warforged.

I've heard the complaints about the warforged and I can guess that the lightning rails detractors are against modernizing the game too much; but what complaints have their been about the size of the world?

 

[Corsair]

the size issue is a nitpicking by some people complaining that the population density of Khorvaire is too low. That's right, people found something entirely new to complain about.

 

[green slime]

I like Eberron a lot. I like it primarily not because I feel any great compunction to DM in that world (although I wouldn't mind doing so if given the time and a an opportunity), but because it has so many nifty crunchy bits that are easily shifted into a home brew. IMO, it actually adds things (like races) that were missing in the game (warforged, shifters, etc) previously. For low level characters, in a fashion that made sense.

 

[LoneWolf23]

the size issue is a nitpicking by some people complaining that the population density of Khorvaire is too low. That's right, people found something entirely new to complain about.

Considering Khorvaire just came out of a century-long war... How high was the population density at the end of WWI?

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I really like Eberron - coming from a background where Planescape was my favourite Second Edition setting, I like the non-traditional approach to fantasy. I like the way it was built to account for all of the standard elements of core Third Edition D&D without being afraid to tweak them to suit the setting. I like that it's as much inspired by pulp fiction as by fantasy. I like that the religions of the setting rely as much on faith as real-world religions do. I like the post-World War One feel to the politics of the setting. I love that it's so coherent.

I like that it's different from all of the other official D&D settings without going too far from the core D&D experience: you're still in a roughly medieval world with nations and continents and different races. I loved Planescape, but it was a very different setting from anything described in the core rules - as was Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Ravenloft, and so on. Eberron's different enough to attract a gamer like me, who loathes Tolkien and that whole traditional fantasy milieu his work spawned, without being too different for D&D gamers who do like that stuff to get into it.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Considering Khorvaire just came out of a century-long war... How high was the population density at the end of WWI?

Keith Baker is quoted as saying the scale is wrong. Honestly I don't care. If the players never notice, then it's not important.

I really like it, especially the power groups, the non-interventionist non-racial deities of relatively limited number, and NPCs of reasonable level. There are very few heroic high level NPCs; most high level NPCs are either villains or can't do much travelling. The villains are often in check in some way right at campaign start so they don't take over the world while the PCs are only 2nd-level; the Lord of Blades might only have 6000 followers, for instance, and is only 12th-level, but by the time the heroes are about that level, he'll have found a way to increase the production of warforged troops, found a couple of artifacts in Xendrik along with his cabinet so they'll all have gained XP and thus levels and loot, etc.

(Eberron strongly suggests villainous NPCs gain levels, I define cabinet as "the key players alongside the mastermind". A better example of a cabinet is Vol and her thirteen immortal advisors, revealed in Faiths of Eberron. Even if she never gains a single level, she and a portion of her cabinet are more than a threat to a party of high level PCs. Fortunately, they're too busy gathering artifacts and performing secret plots to immediately challenge the PCs.)

Eberron also has a "novels aren't canon" philosophy, so there won't be a world shattering event every two years. Sourcebooks also do not advance the timeline; that is strictly in the hands of the GM.

 

[Defender_X]

The other thing to like about Eberron is the noir tones. Grey infuses everything in the setting. Good and evil has very heavy undertones of grey. It makes running a character like a paladin both easier and harder at the same time. But then again, they kinda eliminated the orc baby problem.