D&D (2024) You Can Now Pre-order Eberron: Forge of the Artificer

Pre-orders for the upcoming setting book have gone live. Eberron: Forge of the Artificer comes out on August 19th. The book contains the new 2024/5 edition Artificer class with 5 subclasses, the Warforged species, a ton of backgrounds and feats, and 20 new monsters.

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Forge wonders in the world of Eberron, where magic meets marvelous inventions.

Play as the Artificer: the ultimate creative class. You’re not just an inventor or spellcaster. You're an innovator, a bold-hearted visionary, fusing together magic and technology to craft extraordinary creations.

Fuel your adventures with this rules expansion for Dungeons & Dragons:

• 4 revised Artificer subclasses and 1 new subclass: the Cartographer
• 5 revised species, 17 backgrounds, and 28 feats
• New spells, bastions, and magic items
• 3 distinct, genre-based campaign templates for building fantasy noir, political thriller, and pulp adventure campaigns in the world of Eberron
• Over 20 new monsters, each inspired by a campaign model

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[Paul Farquhar]

Eberron isn’t steampunk or clockpunk, though. If anything, It’s “magipunk”.

The trains aren’t steam-powered – they use magically bound elementals.

The airships aren’t dirigibles – they use magic wood and magically bound elementals.

Warforged aren’t robots – they’re magically created beings with souls and bodies made of metal, wood, stone, and other organic bits.

House Sivis sends telegrams using magic not electricity and wires.

House Vadalis experiments on animals using magic not alchemy or genetic engineering.

City streets are lit by magical lights tended to by magic-using lamplighters. There’s no central gas or electrical grid powering them.

And so on!



Eberron has magical technology. There’s no steam power or clockwork gears or electricity (other than magical lightning).

If you do a bit of algebra on Clarke's law, you can show that "Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology".

To put it another way, form follows function. A train is a string of carriages full of seats because it transports passengers. It doesn't matter what the power source is.

Eberron was always envisioned as pseudo-1928 (ten years after the War to end all Wars). That's why it takes its inspiration from the popular media of that period. Frankly, the 3rd edition art got it completely wrong. Keith Baker is too obliging a guy to have pointed it out.

Also, I wear a fedora now, fedoras are cool.

 

[pukunui]

If you do a bit of algebra on Clarke's law, you can show that "Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology".

To put it another way, form follows function. A train is a string of carriages full of seats because it transports passengers. It doesn't matter what the power source is.

Eberron was always envisioned as pseudo-1928 (ten years after the War to end all Wars). That's why it takes its inspiration from the popular media of that period. Frankly, the 3rd edition art got it completely wrong. Keith Baker is too obliging a guy to have pointed it out.

Also, I wear a fedora now, fedoras are cool.

I have never bought the "post-World War I" argument. Yes, there are some 1920s-ish elements, but there are huge influences from other eras too. The Last War has more in common with the Hundred Years' War than WW1, for instance. And as I said above, Eberron is not post-industrial revolution. It is still primarily an artisanal economy.

 

[Retros_x]

I have never bought the "post-World War I" argument. Yes, there are some 1920s-ish elements, but there are huge influences from other eras too. The Last War has more in common with the Hundred Years' War than WW1, for instance. And as I said above, Eberron is not post-industrial revolution. It is still primarily an artisanal economy.

Its a fantasy setting so we easily can just grab aesthetics and world building elements and mix them wildly. As you say it has 1920 elements, but also huge influences from other eras too and thats fine. We don't need the setting to have one specific real earth era connected to it, its a kitchen sink setting anyway ( a real good one, I don't mean this term in a derogatory way )

That being said -

Eberron was always envisioned as pseudo-1928 (ten years after the War to end all Wars).

Without knowing what Baker said, it feels to me more like the real hundred years war (it was about throne sucession and new nations emerged from it, and it ran for quite the long time) mixed with elements from WWI. So its a fictional war with inspirations from real history and warfare, but definitely not just WWI in fantasy form.

At least thats the vibe I was getting from it.

 

[pukunui]

Without knowing what Baker said, it feels to me more like the real hundred years war (it was about throne sucession and new nations emerged from it, and it ran for quite the long time) mixed with elements from WWI. So it’s a fictional war with inspirations from real history and warfare, but definitely not just WWI in fantasy form.

At least thats the vibe I was getting from it.

Exactly. The name “The Last War” invokes “The War to End All Wars” epithet, but the details are more from the Hundred Years’ War, which as you say was more about royal succession and ran for a long time, and it had periods of hot and cold just like the Last War too.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The name “The Last War” invokes “The War to End All Wars” epithet

It doesn’t just evoke it, it is an actual quote from the rules (along with the implication that actually WW2 is brewing).

The 1920s vibe hasn’t just been there from the start, it’s also much cooler than the cheesy 3rd edition art, my players and I love it, and have always played Eberron that way. WotC are just catching up with what lots of us have been doing with Eberron for decades.

 

[pukunui]

It doesn’t just evoke it, it is an actual quote from the rules (along with the implication that actually WW2 is brewing).

Where? Neither the OG 3.5e ECS nor Rising mention WW1 by name that I can find.

In its "Tone of Eberron" section, the ECS even states that Eberron "combines traditional medieval fantasy with pulp action and dark adventure."

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Let's say Eberron is "dungeonpunk" and drinks from different sources of inspiration, and the pulp fiction among these.

* How would be a crossover "Eberron-New Capena"? Let's remember beyond the capital city the rest is practically post-apocaliptic ruins, awaiting the arrival of explorers.

* Eberron has got a lot of magitek but we shouldn't say the industrial revolution to have started yet. The gundpowder hasn't replaced the melee weapons, has it? There are magic wands but these are more expensive. A magitek motor to reload crossbows should be a cheaper option in the battlefield.

* I would add to the cosmology of Eberron a new "demiplane" like a merger of the plane of the mirror and Duskmourn.

* What do we know about the rest of planets in the same widlspace/solar system?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Where? Neither the OG 3.5e ECS nor Rising mention WW1 by name that I can find

“War to end all Wars” is a quote from the rules (with intended irony).

combines traditional medieval fantasy

Which is weird, since D&D isn’t medieval, nor is the 3rd edition Eberron art. Basically, I would take it as meaning generic fantasyland.

The gundpowder hasn't replaced the melee weapons, has it?

Keith Baker is plain in this: gunpowder is not used in Eberron because magic does it better.

The people of Eberron are not ignorant of technology, they just have a better option available: why burn coal when your engine can run endlessly on a captured elemental?

 

[pukunui]

“War to end all Wars” is a quote from the rules (with intended irony).

I’ll have to look again. You still haven’t said where, though.

Which is weird, since D&D isn’t medieval …

It certainly used to be more medieval than it is now, and I for one wish it would go back in that direction rather than continue to become more modern.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I’ll have to look again. You still haven’t said where, though.


It certainly used to be more medieval than it is now, and I for one wish it would go back in that direction rather than continue to become more modern.

Features that clearly (pseudo) date Eberron:

Newspapers
Whist early proto-newspapers first appear towards the end of the 16th century, the kind of mass produced moveable type newspaper that is shown throughout Eberron Rising From the Last War don't appear until the 19th century, as they require industrial technology. Whist you might evasion thousands of imps with very neat handwriting producing Eberron's newspapers, its slightly less Discworld to suppose they are produced on mechanical printing presses that use a magical power source.

Sharn skyscrapers
Sharn is clearly inspired by early 20th century New York, along with Flash Gordon comics and movie serials of the 1930s.

The Chrysler Building (New York) was completed in 1930, using steel frame technology first employed in the construction of the Liver Building (Liverpool) completed 1911. The buildings in Sharn are held up by magic rather than steal frames in a direct example of magic subsisting for technology, leading to a similar outcome.