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The last Final Fantasy game I played was the SNES one. Was that FF3? It had an airship and a ghost train. So yeah, kinda Eberron-ish?

pukunui said:

The last Final Fantasy game I played was the SNES one. Was that FF3? It had an airship and a ghost train. So yeah, kinda Eberron-ish?

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OK, so, that was probably Final Fantasy 3...but that means it was really Final Fantasy 6.

Parmandur said:

OK, so, that was probably Final Fantasy 3...but that means it was really Final Fantasy 6.

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Just looked it up, and yep, that's the one.

Come to think of it, I did try playing FF7 back in college. It was my roommate's game, and it would always crash on my PC at a specific point early in the game. We couldn't figure out how to stop it from happening, so I gave up and never finished playing it. After that, I think the FF series went in directions that didn't really interest me, so I stopped paying attention to it. (I do remember going to see the movie while I was in college, though.)

The SNES Final Fantasy reminds me of Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, with its conflict between magic and late 19th century technology. I have fond memories of that game* and it is very Eberron-esque as well. The opening sequence to that game stuck with me so much that I ended up using it for inspiration for a one-shot during the D&D Next Playtest where the PCs wake up scattered around a mountain valley in the midst of the wreckage of a crashed airship. They can't remember what happened, and there are orcs picking through the wreckage and threatening survivors. That would make for an epic opening to an Eberron campaign too!


*Except for the item breakage and overland travel aspects. I recall installing a mod to get rid of item breakage and allow all my characters to cast teleport so I could avoid tedious random encounters and such.

Eberron does have a distinctly 90's-JRPG vibe in a lot of ways, and FF6 in particularly had a fairly plot-significant usage of "Magitek", magically-powered technology, that suffuses a lot of Eberron (or at least Khorvaire). The one thing that's missing is the "long-lost ludicrously technologically advanced civilization" thing that's super popular in the JRPG genre, and even then you can always play up how advanced the old Dhakkani Empire was.

Gradine said:

Eberron does have a distinctly 90's-JRPG vibe in a lot of ways, and FF6 in particularly had a fairly plot-significant usage of "Magitek", magically-powered technology, that suffuses a lot of Eberron (or at least Khorvaire). The one thing that's missing is the "long-lost ludicrously technologically advanced civilization" thing that's super popular in the JRPG genre, and even then you can always play up how advanced the old Dhakkani Empire was.

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What about the ancient giant civilizations of Xen'drik, like the Su'lat League and the Cul'sir Empire? I'm not sure if they were "ludicrously" advanced, but the Cul'sir at least were able to destroy one of Eberron's moons in their war against the Quori! That's certainly something that no one alive on Eberron in the present day can do.

Also, a lot of House Cannith's magitech is based off stuff they scavenged from the ruins of the ancient giant civilizations.* This includes the warforged and the creation forges required to make them. I think House Vadalis may have gotten some of their magebreeding techniques from the giants as well.


*Case in point, the plot of the 3.5e adventure, Grasp of the Emerald Claw, which I am currently converting to 5e for my all-gnome episodic Eberron campaign.

Valetudo said:

I've always looked at eberron as dnds take on a final fantasy style campaign.

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Japanese fantasy never really had the “medieval europism” that American fantasy did. Also see, Studio Ghibli.

Gradine said:

The one thing that's missing is the "long-lost ludicrously technologically advanced civilization" thing that's super popular in the JRPG genre

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Hardly unique to JRPGs though. See Blackmoor for example.

Paul Farquhar said:

The lore for warforged is they have a wide range of different appearances, tailored to function. I.e. the lore states (and always has done) that there is no canon warforged look.

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LuisCarlos17f said:

Ups! Sorry, wrong franchise. What would be I thinking about!?

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Von Ether said:

I am confused What is canon in this case? Using the same standards is there no canonical look for elves or dwarves? Not trying to be a smart alec, but wondering what basis the canon is coming from.

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Paul Farquhar said:

As I said, they were made for specific functions, and are modular and can be radically changed. Some are even made from different materials such as wood, they come in any size, up to gigantic, etc

So no, they are not like elves or dwarves, they are far more diverse.

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That's the wonderful things about em. All the various looks they can have. Here are three of my fave looks for Warforged: