I hope Eberron is a flop. Am I evil?

[Sir Elton]

Were you in the top eleven? I'd like to see what you did, if so.


Regards,
Eric Anondson

Nah. It wasn't the one I sent in. The one I sent in was a complete medieval setting; nothing so ancient that one could have psychic powers, or high technology, or whatever. Atlantis is on my hard drive, being converted into a campaign setting for . . . BESM d20. The lesson I learned is to pull out all of the stops when ever presented an opportunity like this. But as I explained, I was dumbfounded at what had won.

Atlantis is one of my campaign settings, for sure. Not my best, but I am treating it as a work of art. But developing it for print would cost . . . me much more than I currently halve. I can't reveal what it has in it because technically its still under development.

But I basically took GURPS Atlantis and the Timaeus and Critias and started running with it. I even incorporated ideas from the Psionics Handbook . . . and when the XPH came out, I started to change everything to fit the XPH.

It's just that Eberron started to annoy me when people began to make comparisons with some ideas that I had with Eberron. I was, to say, angry. So, in order to keep my ideas pure, I can't buy the book. That way, if something does come up through convergent idea evolution ( a complete impossibility, the world everyone compares to Eberron that I'm working on has changed into something fundamentally different!), I can claim that I had no knowledge of what Eberron contains.

Josh may say that I'm killing my credability, probably I am. But I'm a sensitive guy, and I always won't like it when someone says of my ideas: "This is like Eberron." Or "That's just like Eberron."

I'm glad Keith won the Contest, but I'm a little miffed that I lost. So I've been redirecting my energies. I want Eberron to succeed though. WotC put a lot of money into it, and it deserves to be a success by the investment made into it. Maybe, someday, I'll pick up Eberron to see whats inside, but only when my plans succeed.

In fact, the new world I'm working on that has been compared to Eberron (and made me angry) has changed so much that it more resembles this:

Than anything FR or Eberron related. Plus Spaceships. So it should be really different.

 

[cyferwolf]

perhaps not evil but you do seem to be suffering from delusions of third personess.

I persoanlly like eberron, and I think it's nifty enough that i want it to stick around.

 

[Hellcow]

But I'm a sensitive guy, and I always won't like it when someone says of my ideas: "This is like Eberron." Or "That's just like Eberron."

Really? Me, I just loved it when folks said that I'd stolen all my ideas from Dinotopia or Iron Kingdoms. Oh, wait, I didn't.

 

[BrooklynKnight]

*snicker*

 

[talinthas]

i think, rather than hoping eberron is a flop, i want it to be so successful that gamers who discover the joy of roleplay through it decide they want to sample what else is out there, and in turn give companies more reason to support their own settings to help give the masses more choice in their game.

 

[Khayman]

I hope it succeeds wildly... maybe then FR will go away.

 

[I'm A Banana]

There's also a lot to be said for the best creative minds in the world not having original material, but doing something original with it.

Eberron doesn't have a lot of original material (I'm sure you can find 'something like' almost any aspect of Eberron). However, it does something original with it that hasn't been supported before. And it's better for that. It's better than pulp novels, it's better than Dinotopia, because it twists those conceptions, it plays with them, and it pairs them with others.

There are no new notes. There are new ways of arranging them, though.

 

[atra2]

Yes. Go go Power Eberron Rangers so WotC will stay around.

Beyond that...

I play Living Greyhawk.

I play in a FR Underdark homegame.

I have bills. Non-core and non-FR products don't even get a second look from me. I still haven't bought a 3rd party d20 book of any kind, and I bought into 3E when it came out in 2000. (Now on 3.5)

I occasionally buy dice and D&D minis.

Eberron? Off my radar. If there's no Living Greyhawk to play at the time, I'd consider a slot of Eberron at a con, so long as I got Player Reward points for it.

Evil to wish Eberron to fail? 5,000 other posters already told dead to take a business
course. Make me 5,001

 

[Ranger REG]

I hope it succeeds wildly... maybe then FR will go away.

Unlikely. But I'm don't have any objection to WotC's recent marketing scheme. They did the same way back in 1987 ... with Forgotten Realms.

 

[BruceB]

Eberron doesn't have a lot of original material (I'm sure you can find 'something like' almost any aspect of Eberron). However, it does something original with it that hasn't been supported before.

And this is absolutely crucial in gaming, which is most of the time really a derivative medium. Those of us who labor in the fields of gaming creativity like to come up with neat brand-new stuff, but most gamers most of the time are looking for setting and events that let them draw on inspirations - previous games, books, films, computer games, etc. etc. Eberron is blessed with a very deep and very broad pool of sources, happily assembled into a strong framing fountain. It's loaded both with riffs on various old-school approaches to fantasy and to images and motifs in contemporary fantasy in various media.

This is good. Really, really good, when it's done so well.