Doug McCrae
Legend
An AMA with Keith Baker on reddit that addresses some of the issues raised in this thread.
Keith Baker said:Actually, the original pitch for Eberron specifically called out that it WASN'T like, say, Arcanum. Steampunk fantasy often plays to a clash between technology and magic, whereas in Eberron the idea was always that magic was being used to solve the same problems we solved with technology. We don't have firearms because we have wands and enchanted bows. Warforged aren't robots, they're magical golems. The biggest steam-punky element is obviously the lightning rail, but it's still supposed to be a fundamentally magical thing... this is a way to deal with mass transit using low-level magic.
So to answer the question, I'd probably say 4? 5? Not SUPER steampunk, but obviously the warforged, airships and lightning rail will always have some of that.
Keith Baker said:There were a few different inspirations for Eberron. The first was the fact that I'd been working on a pulp-based MMORPG (called Lost Continents, it was cancelled after three years of development for Dilbert-y reasons), and I'd spent 3 years watching pulp serials annd movies... and I've always loved Noir. So that was in my brain and I thought "What would that look like in D&D?"
The second was a long-term frustration of mind that in D&D magic behaves in a scientific manner but never affects the world in that way. You have 18th level wizards living in towers but somehow it doesn't affect the flavor of the world. The question in my mind was "If we'd had arcane magic as it works in D&D in the Renaissance instead of technology, what would the world look like now" - although really, Eberron is more in a late 19th-century/early 20th level of development.