D&D 5E What's to Like about Eberron?

[doctorbadwolf]

Hmm. I've never seen that connection. I guess I would just run it in Hollow Earth Expedition, Savage Worlds, or something like that. D&D just seems like you have to change too much about the assumptions of the game - like forcing a square peg into a round hole.

I really prefer dnd for Eberron. DnD (4e and 5e, at least) does fantasy pulp very well.

Tangent: Eberron doesn’t need guns. It doesn’t need to be “fantasy 1930s”. The 1930s are one of the primary inspirations, it isn’t the whole setting.

Remember, Eberron also has chivalric knights, is mostly ruled by absolute monarchs, has inventors more inspired by steampunk than anything 20th century, and delves into cyberpunk themes of Uber powerful megacorps and questions of what it means to be “human” in the face of truly sapient synthetic people, etc.

I do think it needs elemental blasting rods or something that fill a niche similar to guns without just being guns, like the lightning rail and airships. Wands don’t quite get there, because only select people can use them at all. That misses one of the biggest distinguishing features of guns. Still, not having them helps distinguish Eberron from a generic “fantasy 1930s” world.

 

[Oofta]

I pitched an Eberron campaign to my adopted sister (not my biological sister though, because she HATES D&D) and two family friends after my dad’s game ended as:

Imagine a kind of Star Trek mirror universe, with Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, and Firefly all thrown into the mix of a 19th century where guns never existed.
If you enjoy the world of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, you might enjoy Eberron.
Oh, and one other thing. Eberron is the one official setting where you can fight robot zombies.

You had me at robot zombies.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Eberron doesn’t need guns. It doesn’t need to be “fantasy 1930s”. The 1930s are one of the primary inspirations, it isn’t the whole setting.

You could argue that if default D&D was technologically consistent it ought to have guns too, because plate armour and polearms were around at the same time as early gunpowder weapons.

 

[Retreater]

You could argue that if default D&D was technologically consistent it ought to have guns too, because plate armour and polearms were around at the same time as early gunpowder weapons.

And dragons were around too, right?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You could argue that if default D&D was technologically consistent it ought to have guns too, because plate armour and polearms were around at the same time as early gunpowder weapons.

Sure! And I do any time someone tries to use historicity as an argument against guns in dnd in general.

And dragons were around too, right?

Eh, the game has historical elements. The argument isn’t that only things from a period can be included, but that if it was around “back then” there’s no real reason to exclude it.

 

[Parmandur]

I really prefer dnd for Eberron. DnD (4e and 5e, at least) does fantasy pulp very well.

Tangent: Eberron doesn’t need guns. It doesn’t need to be “fantasy 1930s”. The 1930s are one of the primary inspirations, it isn’t the whole setting.

Remember, Eberron also has chivalric knights, is mostly ruled by absolute monarchs, has inventors more inspired by steampunk than anything 20th century, and delves into cyberpunk themes of Uber powerful megacorps and questions of what it means to be “human” in the face of truly sapient synthetic people, etc.

I do think it needs elemental blasting rods or something that fill a niche similar to guns without just being guns, like the lightning rail and airships. Wands don’t quite get there, because only select people can use them at all. That misses one of the biggest distinguishing features of guns. Still, not having them helps distinguish Eberron from a generic “fantasy 1930s” world.

The nefarious corporations and the synthetic people are part of the 20's-30's element ("Rossum's Universal Robots" debuted on stage in 1920). The elements that are not 1920's-30's are not unique to Eberron (and absolute Monarchy still had serious cache in Europe after the war).

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The nefarious corporations and the synthetic people are part of the 20's-30's element ("Rossum's Universal Robots" debited on stage in 1920). The elements that are not 1920's-30's are not unique to Eberron (and absolute Monarchy still had serious cache in Europe after the war).

Those elements are absolutely not part of the pop culture understanding of those decades. Warforged aren’t inspired by 20th century pulp adventure or noir stories. They’re inspired by dnd itself and by cyberpunk and other futuristic stories and genres.

International megacorps are a staple of cyberpunk.

This is like saying that gadget inventors are drawn from Hellenic stories because Archimedes existed.

 

[Bitbrain]

You had me at robot zombies.

IMO, it’s an excellent sales pitch.

The guy playing the Wizard certainly thought so, as he’s a big fan of Transformers: Prime.

 

[vpuigdoller]

Eberron provides shortcuts for a lot of the travel, through airships, the Lightning Rail, and well maintained roads throughout the more civilised lands. So you can still make travel a focus, or you can turn it into no more than a brief cutscene, the equivalent of the Indiana Jones style red-line-crossing-a-map scene.

And there are several organisations considered unequivocally bad, at different levels of play. The Order of the Emerald Claw, the Cults of the Dragon Below, the Lords of Dust, and more.

It is very set in a pseudo magical industrial world representing late 19 century / early 20th century. Hence why pulp related stories fit so well with it.

 

[Parmandur]

Those elements are absolutely not part of the pop culture understanding of those decades. Warforged aren’t inspired by 20th century pulp adventure or noir stories. They’re inspired by dnd itself and by cyberpunk and other futuristic stories and genres.

International megacorps are a staple of cyberpunk.

This is like saying that gadget inventors are drawn from Hellenic stories because Archimedes existed.

On the contrary, the whole synthetic life anxiety in fiction draws from sources from that period, including the creation of the term "robot" itself. Metropolis is another good period example.

Large multinational corporations were emerging at that time in history, and the Dragonmarked houses are more like the corporate interests of the post-War period than they are like Shadowrun.