Why is Eberron being pushed so hard?

[mhacdebhandia]

I'm mostly pointing out that you sound like you need to get your hand off it.

When one's high standards rise to a level where catering to them would not be financially successful for any company, one should probably apply one's vast intellect to the problem and realise that complaining about the fact that their tastes aren't catered to is a waste of one's no-doubt valuable time.

 

[schnee]

As a fairly recent high school graduate I can verify that American secondary schools do not push works like The Once and Future King, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, or any form of mythology down students' throats.

LOTR isn't mythology. It's populist fantasy. And I wasn't being totally serious... that stuff happened more when I went to school. Think of that rant as 'Hong lite.'

I stand by the general idea though. It's not like 'classic' fantasy (whatever that is, really) has been done over and over in games, but... jeez... look at all the books. How many times have subtle, minimalist, tasteful fantasy realms been written about? FOUR ZILLION. We've been absolutely BURIED in 'classic' style fantasy in literature as long as I can remember. Now, something like Eberron? Mainstream? That's a bit more interesting to me.

Led Zeppelin was the best rock band ever, Clapton was God, Elvis was the King but... how many times can we listen to the same old riffs and jams and songs before they get completely stale? Are we forever supposed to bow down to tradition? Are there no more stories to tell, so we just sit around and repeat the one about St. George and the dragon forever? I wanna talk about new struggles, new dragons.

I really get sick of the old guy 'new stuff is crap it was better in my day' stuff. The new stuff builds on the old stuff. The new stuff takes the old, puts a spin on it and takes it somewhere else. Led Zeppelin was Blues with electric guitars and amplification, early Metallica was Wagner electrified... guess what, Eberron is fantasy, pulp and D&D mixed together and made electric. It's just how cultural evolution works, and of course some beautiful delicate flowers are going to be trampled along the way, but that's life.

If you hate it, nobody's stopping you from making your own home-brew.

 

[Incenjucar]

I'm mostly pointing out that you sound like you need to get your hand off it.

When one's high standards rise to a level where catering to them would not be financially successful for any company, one should probably apply one's vast intellect to the problem and realise that complaining about the fact that their tastes aren't catered to is a waste of one's no-doubt valuable time.

Who said I was complaining? One is capable of accepting a fact and stating it, and telling others with similar standards that accepting the fact is a reasonable thing.

While you seem to be implying it, I don't do the sour grapes thing. You can look on the WotC boards yourself and see that I've been on rather friendly terms with Eberron, despite not wanting to purchase it. I can be supportive without spending money on something I don't personally want. That it exists is good. It's getting new money and new players in to the game. With new money comes the possibility of future risk-taking. Who knows, if Eberron increases the D&D playing populous by a million, maybe WotC will, by sheer chance, get ahold of something more classic, and try to market it. While utterly doubtful, maybe they'll even bring Planescape back for a bit, and do it in a manner that the largess of Planescape fans will be happy rather than insulted (after all, PS -did- spawn one of the most acclaimed CRPGs ever made).

The current direction of D&D is what is best for the rule set. There's no logic in making it what is best for older generation gamers. We will die before the next generation does. Many of us have an increasing number of distractions (college, kids, and mortgages), which younger persons usually lack. There's also a heck of a lot more youngsters than adults that are willing to try a new game. With Harry Potter, especially, there's a flipping bumper crop to get ahold of.

And who knows, maybe the increase in reading in the population will actually lead to a situation that we self-proclaimed intellectuals like, and we'll get what we want because, all of the sudden, it will actually be in demand.

Who knows. But if you insist on this vision of me typing with one hand, well, just don't ask for my number, and you can draw pictures if it pleases ya.

In the mean time, I'll be happily adding to my own world for but the cost of paper, pencils, and computer power, rather than trying to jury-rig something that I can't even consider selling, that also costs me twenty or thirty bucks a pop.

 

[Laslo Tremaine]

Well, since we seem to be moderator free for the time being, I'm gonna de-lurk and ask you guys to tone things down a bit.

Nisarg, please refrain from insisting that the only people who like Eberron are 14 year old power-gamers. I think enough people have shown that the setting can appeal to all age categories and game styles.

jasamcarl, please try to respond to people's arguments without resorting to name-calling.

One of the main things that I like about the ENboards is the level of polite and well reasoned discourse. Let's try to keep it that way, please.

 

[Nisarg]

Nisarg, please refrain from insisting that the only people who like Eberron are 14 year old power-gamers. I think enough people have shown that the setting can appeal to all age categories and game styles.
.

I didn't say that. I said that Eberron will particularly appeal to 14 year olds and power gamers (one need not be one to be the other, obviously).

Certainly, it will also appeal to other people; I just think that WoTC (perhaps wisely) had those two demographics especially in mind when they designed Eberron, because the fourteen year olds are a demographic they desperately need, and the powergamers are a demographic that tends to spend well and is well represented.

But certainly I could see a lot of potential settings you could play with Eberron. I'm not mispeaking there: because what I can't see is someone playing ALL of what Eberron claims to be at the same time; is it "medieval fantasy"? Is it edwardian post-WWI angst? Is it pulp heros? swashbuckling? Magic as ultratech? It can't be all at once.

Nisarg

 

[Ranes]

Eberron is what it is and what it is is whatever the beholder sees in it. It can indeed be medieval, steampunk, pulp fantasy, all the same time.

Who wants to be an intellectual? To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, an intellectual is someone who has been educated beyond his capacity to understand.

I'm autodidactic, me.

 

[s/LaSH]

Going back a ways:

What precisely is your point here?

(This might be a vice of my profession as an analytic philosopher, but if I cannot restate any paragraph as a single proposition with a truth-value, I am hopelessly lost.)

Apparently my habit of nesting parentheses (such as I'm demonstrating here in a fashion that doesn't break the host sentence but nevertheless breaks the reader's attention) and going in internal tangents is confusing. Mea culpea. I'm actually saying:

Combining a modern cultural sensibility, with the rigid world-definition necessary to build a believable virtual world, will result in a world that is (potentially) diverse, interesting, and believable, even when you're not in that virtual world. Other worlds where the virtual was dictated rather than designed may work, but they are not as good.

Sorry, I had to throw in a nestparen there.



Upon doing more reading at Gamespy, I'm sensing that my initial instincts were right: D&D Online is all about defining its own corner of a world, and nobody involved (at Turbine or Wizards) thought they could do justice to any of the older worlds - they were too well-defined, in ways that didn't mesh with their game's underlying mechanics. Eberron was very good for them in that regard.

 

[JoAT]

I didn't say that. I said that Eberron will particularly appeal to 14 year olds and power gamers (one need not be one to be the other, obviously).

Certainly, it will also appeal to other people; I just think that WoTC (perhaps wisely) had those two demographics especially in mind when they designed Eberron, because the fourteen year olds are a demographic they desperately need, and the powergamers are a demographic that tends to spend well and is well represented.

But certainly I could see a lot of potential settings you could play with Eberron. I'm not mispeaking there: because what I can't see is someone playing ALL of what Eberron claims to be at the same time; is it "medieval fantasy"? Is it edwardian post-WWI angst? Is it pulp heros? swashbuckling? Magic as ultratech? It can't be all at once.

Nisarg

Well, yes, it can be all of those - aside from "Magic as ultratech", since the whole magic as ultratech is about as prevalent as it would be in any other D&D setting - it's closer to magic as... well, it's common magic. Magic that's used. Pulp heroes and swashbuckling are pretty much the same thing, and both tie well into medival fantasy, and the post-WWI angst... well, it's not really angst here - the whole noir genre isn't about angst, but about shades of grey. So, can someone play a game where magic is common-place and used logically, hereoes tend to be larger-than-life, the world isn't painted in black and white, and is still fairly medival, culturally and techologically? I'd say the answer is yes.

As a side note, your above statement about it not being just for 14 year old power gamers seems to be saying that ic can be for anyone of three groups - 14 year olds, power gamers or 14 year old powergamers. You sure that there's no-one else it'll appeal to? (though, to be frank, I really don't see how the whole power-gamer thing even works, given that most things which can be abused have some fairly serious limitations on them, like an inablity to be healed, or the ability to only be at an increased power level for maybe 4 rounds, 3 times a day...)

 

[Staffan]

1) Dragonmarks aren't particularly powerful, especially when they come at the cost of a feat. You seem so lazy on the powergamer point that you paint all new mechanics with a broad brush. The greater mark of creation might be a problem, but otherwise their use is either solely in utility or, in combat, comes at the expense of using much more potent class abilities.

There are some interesting things that come with the dragonmarks, though. The Mark of Passage can add some mobility to a character who wants it. The Mark of Detection can give you free identifies, which is neat at low level. The Mark of Sentinel can get you mage armor, making it attractive for monks.

But I wouldn't call any of those things "broken". They're cool, they give you a tie to the game world (I'd LOVE it if the party fighter decided to go for the Mark of Warding over Power Attack), but they aren't overly powerful.

 

[ssampier]

To create synergy while minimizing R&D costs and grant an opportunity to create an additional flagship franchise.

I imagine that's about how it was said to the people at Hasbro.

I have NO idea what you just said.