D&D 5E Eberron Is Here Today!

Eberron: Rising from the Last War hits local gamestores today. Eberron creator Keith Baker talks on his blog about what's changed!

So, what's changed? The Mror Dwarves, races, Dragonmarks, the Mournland, Lady Illmarrow, monsters... but not guns!

And what's new? The artificer class, group patrons, warforged colossus, and scary monsters!

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Explore the lands of Eberron in this campaign sourcebook for the world’s greatest roleplaying game.

This book provides everything players and Dungeon Masters need to play Dungeons & Dragons in Eberron—a war-torn world filled with magic-fueled technology, airships and lightning trains, where noir-inspired mystery meets swashbuckling adventure. Will Eberron enter a prosperous new age, or will the shadow of war descend once again?

• Meld magic and invention to craft objects of wonder as an artificer—the first official class to be released for fifth edition D&D since the Player’s Handbook.
• Enter the world of Eberron in a 1st-level adventure set in Sharn, the City of Towers
• Dive straight into your pulp adventures with easy-to-use locations, complete with maps of train cars, battle-scarred fortresses, and fallen warforged colossi.
• Explore Sharn, a city of skyscrapers, airships, and intrigue and a crossroads for the world’s war-ravaged peoples.
• Flesh out your characters with a new D&D game element called a group patron—a background for your whole party.
• Explore 16 new race/subrace options including dragonmarks, which magically transform certain members of the races in the Player’s Handbook.
• Confront horrific monsters born from the world’s devastating wars.
• Prepare to venture into the Mournland, a mist-cloaked, corpse-littered land twisted by magic.

 

[Weiley31]

My point exactly. It also wouldn't make sense with Pelor, Mystara, & the rest getting in bar brawls with the Bloody Barons & Dark powers so has its own justifications for why they aren't. More importantly is that it's lore does not overwrite the lore of the settings it snatches people from, it just snatches them & then subjects them to it's baselines while they are... guests. The justifications the various settings make are not an important thing I'm trying to be hyperspecific on just to show that they don't put out the welcome mat

YOU KNOW FULL WELL THAT BAR BRAWL IS STILL GOING ON!!

 

[Yaarel]

Do you explain this to the players ahead of time?

Do you tell them that no matter what they do they will succeed or fail at some things so that you can have particular story beats occur?

From what I understand is. The ‘beat’ is anything that provokes a ‘response’ (an action within a scene that provokes a reaction, or an event within a narrative that results in a significant change in the narrative).

Thus, when the players respond to a ‘beat’ (whatever it might be), that response might succeed or fail.

In other words, a ‘beat’ is something the DM plans to throw at the player characters. The players will decide how their characters will respond.

 

[ad_hoc]

From what I understand is. The ‘beat’ is anything that provokes a ‘response’ (an action within a scene that provokes a reaction, or an event within a narrative that results in a significant change in the narrative).

Thus, when the players respond to a ‘beat’ (whatever it might be), that response might succeed or fail.

In other words, a ‘beat’ is something the DM plans to throw at the player characters. The players will decide how their characters will respond.

But that response will have no effect on the game/story if it would interrupt the DM's planned story.

 

[Yaarel]

But that response will have no effect on the game/story if it would interrupt the DM's planned story.

From what I understand, the DM plans the ‘beat’. But only the players decide the ‘response’.

The players ‘response’ becomes a new context. A new beat might or might not make sense now.

So, when the DM takes the player-decided response into account, it can alter or even interrupt an upcoming planned beat.

 

[Weiley31]

But that response will have no effect on the game/story if it would interrupt the DM's planned story.

YOU FOOL!!!!!!! Did you really think I, [BBEG] WOULDN'T HAVE ANTICIPATED YOUR ATTEMPTS TO SHUT DOWN THE DRAGO GENERATOR!!??? BEHOLD MY TRUE POWER: [STORIED BEATS]!!

[PC NAME] Oh noes!!!

[BBEG] NOW PERISH BEFORE MY [BEAT]!!!

[PARTY MEMBER] Shutting down both generators may not have worked, but nothing you do can stop us!!

[BARD] To battle friends!!!!
Capcom beat-em up style warcry is done by the party

[LEGIT D20] Aye lads! And you shall have my rolls!!!

[PC NAME] D20!!!! What are you doing here!?!?

[LEGIT D20] For too long the Council of Die has stood by and done nothing. I shall not stand by as [BBEG] toys with this world! You can use me as a bonus action to score Nat 20's on your attack rolls. But toying with fate like that is straining!

[PC NAME] So you'll need to cool down after a certain point then? THEN LETS GIVE IT ALL WE GOT TEAM!!!!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Ok. So it wouldn't change how the game plays. It just messes with the mystery of "Are there really gods out there... somewhere?"

The gods who are the basis of the religions of Eberron may or may not exist (except for the 3 dragons, apparently).



Ok. This really is a thing that would only bother previous Eberroners... Eberronites?... Eberroneeze? hrmph.

Well, and those gods aren’t like Corelleon or Gruumsh, either.

Like, Eberron has always existed in the same vague model of existence as the other dnd worlds. It just used to be an actual multiverse, rather than just a ...you know...universe like in 5e.

I’d say that it’s to the side of the Wheel, though, just like Ravnica.

 

[SkidAce]

The PDF for Wayfinder's is $20. It is digital only. The digital only copy of Rising is $30. Please stop parroting this idea that it is x3 the price. It isn't. Its $10 more for all the info in Wayfinder's + a lot more. We were told by Mearls & Crawford that we'd be happy owning both, and that both books would be distinct. They aren't distinct. One is literally just a hollow shell of the other. Poor form.

I have had the Wayfinder's since at least 7/23/2018. (thats the date last modifed on the pdf file on my computer.

Money well spent.

 

[gyor]

... I don't see how saying Eberron is "a cool spin on Forgotten Realms" follows from that statement. Eberron is its own thing.

I'm also pretty sure that the quoted statement is false. I don't recall seeing Changelings, Kalashtar, Shifters, and Warforged in the Realms in any official capacity.

Shifters were mentioned heavily in 4e's FRCG in places like the Great Dale, Dambrath, and others, basically anywhere that Lycanthropes are common (or relatively common). Shifters were added to Nentir Vale and default D&D in 4e.

Kalashar and Warforged got articles for placing them in the Forgotten Realms. Kalashtar with folks fused together by the Spellplague (so they are in need of an FR update), and Warforged were just unique creations.

3.5e D&D FR had a Changeling template that was very similar to earlier version of Eberron changelings, which were half human/half Doppelganger.

Few D&D races have not appeared in FR.

Take Darksun, Genasai, Muls (Half Dwarves), Thrikreens, Pterrans (FR ones aren't playable), Aarakocra, Dray (Dragonborn) Half-Giant (Goliath), all appear in one form or another in the Forgotten Realms.

From Ravnica only one playable race does not appear in FR, Centaurs, Minotaurs, Goblins, Loxodons (called Loxo in FR where they have 2 trunks, but otherwise are the same as Loxodons), even the Viashino who didn't make to GMGtR, have an FR version of the race.

The only major playable Planescape race Barbiars, don't appear in FR, yet.

Spelljammer I'm not sure.

Thanks to 5e FR stole Tortles from Mystara. FR has it's own catfolk, Tabaxi.

FR has every playable race that Greyhawk has plus more.

Dragonlance has some races that don't appear in FR, but oddly Kender aren't one of them as I think during a crossover novel series a village of Kender immigrated from Kyrnn to Toril. I'll double check that.

Ravenloft I'll have to look into. FR ate Kara Tur aka Oriental Adventures, gaining it's races.

See, this and the Ravnica point are really confusing to me.

Realms was, originally, a Renaissance-fair version of D&D. Greenwood can really pull out that aesthetic, but from a world-building perspective it is extraordinarily messy and "jam things in because" after all the years of other authors meddling in. At this point the thing is a total tonal mess which is fine if you're playing a "generic D&D but with recognizable names" campaign.

Ravnica is even worse, since Ravnica is like a cheap knock-off of Planescape but shoved onto a planet to make interesting Magic cards about. It is like they designed it by playing Smashup. Every time I see Ravnica compared to Eberron, I can't get it.

Eberron has multiple coherent histories and a strong twist on the planar stuff woven together to supportseveral specific game-types that "generic" D&D wasn't as good at: pulp, action-adventure, spy thriller, and war/defeat stories (think inter-war period and the movies set in it). The bones of Eberron were totally thought out and it is this coherence that makes it feel like a real place and gives DMs a huge amount of "natural consequence" support when bashing PCs and organizations together.

That and "has the same races" as core 5E is... not a point at all? If Eberron feels generic to you, you're missing important things about it.

Ravnica was highly planned, it's just that it was designed for MtG needs first and foremost, so without understanding how Ravnica was designed the way it is, or the whys, you might not get it.

It's certainly NOT a rip off of Planescape, for one thing until the rescent War of the Spark very few folks knew there were other planes, mostly just Planewalkers knew. In fact for 10,000 years Planewalkers were blocked from the Plane/World. To get the whys of Ravnica, you have to understand the colours of mana in MtG, what they symbolize and what kind of relationships they have to each other. Their are a crap load of blogs on Ravnica from it's MtG designers.

And the comparisons to Eberron are based mostly on magitech. And in my case the Radiant Idol.

And no The Forgotten Realms is not generic, it would never have put competed Greyhawk, Nentir Vale, Dragonlance, ect..., if it was the just generic.

You want Tolkiensic in D&D I suggest Birthright.

 

[Demetrios1453]

@Parmandur Yes it predates, but it's pretty in conflict with various settings & that's why eberron, darksun, & ravenloft have their own explanations for having their own planar structure (or lack of). Over the years FR has consumed it & that was my point.

The Great Wheel wasn't even FR canon in 2004 when Eberron was created. FR had a "Great Tree" planar model of its own during 3e, totally at variance with the Great Wheel which still remained the default for Greyhawk and the edition as a whole. In fact, in the last 20 years, FR has only used the Great Wheel in the last five, and before that the Great Wheel was its own setting in Planescape. Furthermore, Dark Sun and Ravenloft were slotted into the Great Wheel during those Planescape days.

As a result, I'm curious at what date FR "consumed" the Great Wheel.

It couldn't have been in 1e, as FR only existed as a setting at the very end of the edition.
It couldn't have been in 2e, as Planescape was its own setting.
It couldn't have been in 3e, as the FR had a planar system of its own that wasn't the Great Wheel.
It couldn't have been in 4e, as no one used the Great Wheel at that point.

You could potentially say it's happened over the last few years (although that's highly debatable), but all the settings you mentioned were created either at times where Planescape (which is very different than FR in theme) was the default for the Great Wheel, or FR didn't even use the Great Wheel at all. If anything, it's nostalgia for Planescape, Spelljammer, and before them, Greyhawk, which was the progenitor of the Great Wheel after all, that causes people to want to fit square pegs of settings into the round holes of the Great Wheel.

 

[R_J_K75]

Its pretty cool how the entirety of the gazeteer in Wayfinder's was put word for word into Rising from the Last War, and then a new section (Aftermath of the Last War) added to each one.

Feels dope to pay for the same content + extras.

Woulda' been super dope if they stopped selling Wayfinder's. But it's still up for sale, for $20 no less, despite having all its information repeated in the new book (often word for word) + expounded upon.

This is nothing new, Ive read FR books from 1E through 3E where a good part was re-printed word for word with little or nothing added. I remember grabbing stacks of books to research an area and came across this.