D&D General What do you like about Eberron?

[humble minion]

When it comes to writing (as opposed to other creative industries like filmmaking, video game production where the budget/investment is much higher and the teams much bigger), it can often be true that 'made by committee' primarily means 'someone who needed an editor, got an editor'. And that's almost always a good thing.

 

[Blue]

I mean, to be fair, Eberron IS a kitchen sink setting. They took great care to include everything D&D into Eberron. "If it exists in D&D, there's a place for it in Eberron" was the motto for a while (and still is maybe?)

It's a fancy, designer-model kitchen sink that fits in a specific house aesthetics, but a kitchen sink nonetheless. And there's nothing wrong with that.

That was part of the requirements of the setting search that produced Eberron -- that everything from D&D had a place in it. I remember, I submitted my own one page pitch for the first layer of the search. However, it didn't automatically add things that came to D&D later, which is what makes something a kitchen sink.

 

[jdrakeh]

I like it because it feels different. Specifically, it's not Fantasy Europe, which I feel several official D&D settings are. I don't feel that it's dieselpunk (I think proper dieselpunk is grittier, dirtier), but it falls into the clockpunk/steampunk range for me. And I like both of those things. The most entertaining D&D I've played in the last five years or so has been set in Eberron (one short AL campaign and one traditional D&D campaign).

 

[Thommy H-H]

Lot of overlaps with other posts, I'm sure, but for me Eberron always feels like a kind of alternate universe version of D&D. Like, what if we take all the familiar elements and scramble them up to see what happens. Except instead of "what if Superman had landed in rural Russia during the Cold War instead of Kansas?" it's "what if goblins were the precursor empire?" or "what if orcs were druidic guardians?" And the thing is, those kinds of interpretations aren't unusual at all now, but that's because (for D&D at least) Eberron paved the way.

It's a different, internally consistent take on the classic D&D elements, and the great advantage of that in the modern era is you can drop elements right into other settings if you want. Warforged have shown up with their own sligthly different backstory in Netheril, Faerun, etc. Everyone uses shifters because it's an obvious consequence of lycanthropes existing. Want a theocracy? Here's the Silver Flame. Underdark not weird enough for you? Throw in some Khyber. It's a great example of what you can do within the framework of "D&D" and I really like how that's now reflected in the core books too.

 

[Reynard]

When it comes to writing (as opposed to other creative industries like filmmaking, video game production where the budget/investment is much higher and the teams much bigger), it can often be true that 'made by committee' primarily means 'someone who needed an editor, got an editor'. And that's almost always a good thing.

This isn't true in the rpg space in my experience. Most RPG books are written by freelancers and everything is meches together by a developer. RPGs are made much more like video games than they are like novels.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I like it because it feels different. Specifically, it's not Fantasy Europe, which I feel several official D&D settings are.

It sort of still is Fantasy Europe in Khorvaire, I see parallels between Aundair & France, Germany & Karnath, Breland & Britain, Zilargo might be Switzerland and few others.

There's some non-European equivalents too, some have pointed out Adar could be Tibet and lhesh Haruuc has a story that reminds me of a certain African dictator and nation founder

 

[MarkB]

It sort of still is Fantasy Europe in Khorvaire, I see parallels between Aundair & France, Germany & Karnath, Breland & Britain, Zilargo might be Switzerland and few others.

There's some non-European equivalents too, some have pointed out Adar could be Tibet and lhesh Haruuc has a story that reminds me of a certain African dictator and nation founder

Yeah, if anything it's turn-of-the-twentieth-century Europe rather than medieval Europe.

 

[Distracted DM]

At the time of its release I just thought the whole vibe of the setting was awesome. I think I was a player primarily at the time but Eberron made me want to run games- I think that's probably one of the high compliments I can pay to a setting.

Now I go to it, and KB's blog, for lore inspirations. For example, I wasn't sure how I wanted to handle the religion (s) of orcs in my setting- they were inspired by the gatekeepers at one point, but that didn't really cover religion and one of my players wanted to play an orc cleric.

So lo and behold I was able to read up on orcs from ?the ghost lands? And that gave me some stuff to work with and build on.

 

[Corinnguard]

Yeah, if anything it's turn-of-the-twentieth-century Europe rather than medieval Europe.

One whose magical and technological development was hastened by a war that spanned a century.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

At the time of its release I just thought the whole vibe of the setting was awesome. I think I was a player primarily at the time but Eberron made me want to run games- I think that's probably one of the high compliments I can pay to a setting.

Now I go to it, and KB's blog, for lore inspirations. For example, I wasn't sure how I wanted to handle the religion (s) of orcs in my setting- they were inspired by the gatekeepers at one point, but that didn't really cover religion and one of my players wanted to play an orc cleric.

So lo and behold I was able to read up on orcs from ?the ghost lands? And that gave me some stuff to work with and build on.

Unrelated tangent: a player wanting to play something unusual for an orc is what got John Wick to write Orkworld, which I enjoy pillaging for ideas. The rpg/sourcebook started because his DM told him 'orcs can't be bards or PCs, they're plot speed bumps'. He got his DM - who was his boss - to agree to let him play an ork bard if he could justify it, and a week later he had a four-thousand word essay on ork culture.