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

[Paul Farquhar]

Magic in D&D is predictable, repeateable andobservable, so Eberron treats it like science and looks at how the world would evolve with the magical marvels that the game gives us.

This is the big problem with most other D&D settings: it doesn't make sense for them to work the way they do given that magic works the way it does in D&D.

 

[KahlessNestor]

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.

Kristian Serrano of Manifest Zone has a Savage Worlds Eberron conversion.

 

[KahlessNestor]

My understanding is that one of D&D's core conceits is resource management, dungeon crawling, wilderness travel, and the adventuring party. Indy is swashbuckling, cinematic, and (basically) a loner.
Are there Nazis? Not obviously, but like a universal evil organization?
And I wouldn't consider Indy a morally gray character. He's trying to keep religious artifacts from Hitler.

Keith Baker explicitly compares the Emerald Claw to the Indiana Jones Nazis. So yes, there are those types of villains. But there are also a lot of more Magneto-like grey villains like the Lord of Blades.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

In shared worlds, where many, many hands have helped craft it, I don't feel like the originator is "special." Most of the best Star Wars material is made by people other than Lucas, for example. In fact, THE best Star Wars movie (ESB) has shockingly little Lucas control over it. And having listened to a lot of The Manifest Zone, I actually prefer some of the details and flavor from official WotC books from the 3E era more than I do Baker's personal spin on things.

Perhaps, but Keith Baker's particular spin on things, and the thought that he pas put in to them seem to make his view on Eberron more internally consistent than the one presented by all of the Eberron books.

For example in some of the splash books that he had less input into, the Silver Flame is portrayed almost as a caricature, rather than how it is presented in the original campaign setting.
Generally when Keith clarifies something and he has to start by saying "Well, in my Eberron . . ." I'll take that as my canon unless I particularly want to change it.

 

[gyor]

For me, Eberron is neat because it deals with one of the things that has always bothered me about most Fantasy Settings, and D&D in particular.

Why is it, that in a fantasy setting with magic, which is an unlimited resource, where you can make permanent magic items, that 99% of the population lives as dirt scrabble farmers or medieval town peasants? Why are the streets of Waterdeep filled with beggars and poop (human and horse) like 1300's London?

Eberron is built on the concept that any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from Technology. Trains, Air Travel, restaurants, Indoor Plumbing, the works.

Magic is a commodity, and can be bought and sold like any other service or good.

Waterdeep has Dreys which are street car like devices, and cranes and plumbing in many areas, so its not so much less advanced then Eberron as its tech is less outwardly shared.

 

[dave2008]

For the first couple hundred years of firearms, a well made quilt jacket was bulletproof. Early guns were terrible at inflicting damage. their most valuable quality was how easy it was to train riflemen.

Well the documentary demonstrated how the finest fire arms of the time could easily penetrate a standard steel breast plate and deliver a fatal blow (can't remember the distance off the top of my head). However, the weapon on dented the out layer of the higher quality armor.

 

[amethal]

Generally when Keith clarifies something and he has to start by saying "Well, in my Eberron . . ." I'll take that as my canon unless I particularly want to change it.

That's how I feel as well, although in my case I'm not sure the extent to which I am biased by how much I appreciate Keith's sheer enthusiasm for the setting.

Having said that, the lack of an overriding canon is one of my favourite parts of the setting. I change stuff all the time, and none of the main mysteries of the setting have an official answer anyway.

 

[Oofta]

I've never had too much of an issue with there not being guns in D&D. If you look at the history of guns, it was a long slow development that only gradually became useful. In a world where people can cast fireballs, I'm not sure guns would have ever become all that important. In addition gunpowder is quite unstable, it seems like it wouldn't take much to create a cantrip to cause a misfire on an enemy's canon.

But it has always bothered me that in worlds where there's a significant amount of magic that there isn't more "mundane" magic or magitech. I've done some of that in my home campaign, just not to the extreme of Eberrron. I'll probably pick up the book when released just to see what ideas and concepts I want to steal incorporate.

 

[Vael]

Keith Baker explicitly compares the Emerald Claw to the Indiana Jones Nazis. So yes, there are those types of villains. But there are also a lot of more Magneto-like grey villains like the Lord of Blades.

What's neat though, is that their base religion, The Blood of Vol, isn't necessarily evil. One of the many Eberron characters I've wanted to play is a good-aligned member of the Blood of Vol, who's very into finding one's best self.

 

[Bolares]

What's neat though, is that their base religion, The Blood of Vol, isn't necessarily evil. One of the many Eberron characters I've wanted to play is a good-aligned member of the Blood of Vol, who's very into finding one's best self.

Most of the followers of the religion are like that. To me 3.5 did a bad job presenting the blood of vol. It's not the public branch of the Emerald Claw, neither it's a cult to erandis vol.