Am I the only one who feels Eberron's setting to be limiting?

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Now, I don't want to be a stick-in-the-mud, so let me explain myself.

Anyway, up to about three months ago, I never even knew Eberron existed. So I initially thought "Wow. A new campaign setting!". I was eager to find out more and started doing research.

Fast forward.

Now after having done some research, I find myself somewhat disappointed in what I've found. My major gripe is that 200 year war that's affected everything. It really feels limiting to me in the sense that every potential protagonist/npc/player-character will have to account for what they were doing during the war period and there's no way to get around it.

No, they won't. PCs frequently start at 1st-level, and at a young age - eg 17. They won't have to have been in the war. PCs from some nations, like Aerenal or Argonessen, could easily have avoided the war.

If there's a 300 year old elf, he would have live through the war. If there's a 100 year old dwarf, he'll have to explain what it was like growing up during the war. If you have 20 year old human, he'll probably be an orphan. The war will probably be mentioned in every book.

If you're an elf, maybe you took part in the war. Maybe that's where you got your 1st-level of fighter from. (Who starts play as a 1st-level 300 year old elf?) If you're a 100 year old dwarf (again, who starts at such an age), maybe you did. Unless you're a fighter, you can just say "I served my three years" and move on.

NPCs are, of course, a bit different. Some were fairly high level. If the character in question was a political player or spellcaster, avoiding joining the army should not be difficult to explain. If they were a fighter, they were probably lower level and little known while the war was going on - unless being a member of the Grey Company is an important part of their backstory.

I'm also disappointed that WotC is also pushing this whole 'war ravaged land' idea. I saw the open-call for writers on their website for Eberron. While reading over what they were looking for, they really put the point across that the characters authors write about should have been deeply affected by the war(no home/family to go back to, etc). This seems to be the opposite of the Forgotten Realms philosophy where a character can be as open-ended(within the limits of the ruleset ) as you want him to be.

As opposed to family members who can easily be held hostage? Orphaned PCs are very common in any setting.

I've also noticed that Eberron's setting is described as 'dark fantasy'.

What page of the ECS is this on?

 

[Storm Raven]

Yes. As a matter of fact, you are the only person on the planet who feels that way. Dick Cheney called me the other day just to tell me that he found the myriad of options contained in the Eberron setting to be exhilirating.

 

[Rel]

Dick Cheney called me the other day just to tell me that he found the myriad of options contained in the Eberron setting to be exhilirating.

Is he in Vin Diesel's group?

 

[GVDammerung]

I'm also disappointed that WotC is also pushing this whole 'war ravaged land' idea. I saw the open-call for writers on their website for Eberron. While reading over what they were looking for, they really put the point across that the characters authors write about should have been deeply affected by the war(no home/family to go back to, etc). This seems to be the opposite of the Forgotten Realms philosophy where a character can be as open-ended(within the limits of the ruleset ) as you want him to be.

Eberron and the Last War is prett much the flip side to the FR coin. FR for the most part has this great feeling of stagnation to it. Maybe it's just me, but I can't help but look over the scads of FR books I own and think that while it's a expansive setting with plenty of development, it's a still frame. Nothing is actually taking place. There's no movement. The history has all long since happened and now everything is just sitting around.

Eberron seems to run on two themes most strongly - The Last War and exploring Xendrik. I really like the exploring Xendrik theme. The Last War theme I do find limiting as a broad brush way of saying - this animates Khorvaire. I do not care for wars as animating social concepts in fantasy games because they tend to so vividly color everything in those particular terms.

I find the Forgotten Realms exactly as described - stagnant - because they are buried under so much detail that 1) any movement has to be almost seismic to be felt at all and 2) lesser movement seems smothered by the greater inertia.

I guess I would agree that Eberron and the Realms are sort of flip sides of the coin. Eberron, like or don't like its themes, feels dynamic, whereas the Realms feel stagnant. This may, however, be a question of how much detail is too much rather than any inherent value judgment on either setting.

I've never once had the Gaming Police knock on my door to make sure I was running a setting to code.

This is, of course, an irrelevant sentiment, quite beside the point. Settings appear as written, with the intention that, as written, they will be appealing on those terms - such that people will want to play them, at least enough to purchase them, as written. That one can do something else with them does not excuse how they appear as written. The "but you can change it" sentiment too easily avoids discussion of what a gaming product purports to be - there would be no need for reviews in such case as you could change whatever you buy and that would be okay - no, it would not be okay - games present themselves in particular ways, and whether you can or should change them, they may be fairly critiqued as to how they present themselves - as written.

 

[Rel]

The "but you can change it" sentiment too easily avoids discussion of what a gaming product purports to be - there would be no need for reviews in such case as you could change whatever you buy and that would be okay - no, it would not be okay - games present themselves in particular ways, and whether you can or should change them, they may be fairly critiqued as to how they present themselves - as written.

First up, that's one hell of a sentence!

I don't think you quite understood the intent of my post. I do not advocate that everybody should buy every setting because if there is something they don't like they can change it. I was suggesting that if your attitude is "I like Setting X except for Y" then you can try to find ways to minimize Y and nobody has any right to say that "you're not playing right". If Y is a dealbreaker then so be it.

If the OP's core assertion is that they can't enjoy a setting where a recent big war is a factor in the backstory then I guess Eberron is not for them. But if they like all other aspects of the setting then there is no reason why they can't work around or minimize the impact of that history on the game they wish to run. Plenty of examples have been cited here for how it can be done.

It is not possible for game designers to generate a setting that will please everybody. I suspect that very few people pick up a setting and love every aspect of it. The question is whether it has enough good stuff to provide you with the tools to run a game that will be fun for you and your players. The assertion that the Last War MUST figure heavily in any Eberron campaign is just not true. My current Eberron campaign has had almost nothing to do with the Last War and I've had to put in almost no effort at all to make it this way.

 

[Reynard]

At its core I don't find it too limiting, as more supplements come out and or I learn more as I read things closer it feels more limiting. The oh no, pcs can't build X it takes a giant team of gnomes to build that, to the over powerful/ever present guilds it does feel limiting. You can't be messengers or supply carriers x and y guilds do that. Yeah we can say screw you either ignore that or role play are defiance but it really feels like a straightjacket.

You're forgetting one thing -- the jobs taken up by the gnomes and guilds and such are the run of the mill, no fun, no XP kind. When the gnomes need a massive Khyber shard to power said item, or the guilds need the message taken across the mournland -- on foot! -- they call the PCs, because that's what PCs do.

And, really, who says you can't start the campaign off as the PCs all being members of gnomish foundry or a courrier service?

 

[Shard O'Glase]

You're forgetting one thing -- the jobs taken up by the gnomes and guilds and such are the run of the mill, no fun, no XP kind. When the gnomes need a massive Khyber shard to power said item, or the guilds need the message taken across the mournland -- on foot! -- they call the PCs, because that's what PCs do.

And, really, who says you can't start the campaign off as the PCs all being members of gnomish foundry or a courrier service?

no, I'm not forgetting things. Creating things is a big part to lots of spellcasting players, in fact I'd say the main reason someone would take the bind elemental item creaiton feat is in order to build somehting they can't build because its just too complex for the feeble pc mind, you need gnome teams.

And messenger services and shipment services are a great adventure jump start. The guilds they have are much more invasive than in any other cmapaign I've seen. There also much more setting backed, there not messengers because they started the messenger business in kingdom x and ran exeryone else out of town. There the messengers for the entire continent because of some magical inherited dragonmark, which the entire populace seems to think makes them the god given messenger people, they have like the divine right to be the messengers.

Now sure they can subcontract things out to you, but to me things like this make it feel like a very stifling setting.

 

[frankthedm]

All Eberron needs is a few long range radius Mord's Disjunction bombs.

 

[Desdichado]

This is, of course, an irrelevant sentiment, quite beside the point. Settings appear as written, with the intention that, as written, they will be appealing on those terms - such that people will want to play them, at least enough to purchase them, as written. That one can do something else with them does not excuse how they appear as written. The "but you can change it" sentiment too easily avoids discussion of what a gaming product purports to be - there would be no need for reviews in such case as you could change whatever you buy and that would be okay - no, it would not be okay - games present themselves in particular ways, and whether you can or should change them, they may be fairly critiqued as to how they present themselves - as written.

In my opinion, it's your hyperbolic response quote here that is irrelevent and beside the point. The original poster actually appears to have not considered that minor changes to the background of the setting could be made, which is all he needed. He liked most aspects of the setting, except one element of the background, which he felt was too all-encompassing (I disagree with that, by the way--there's still plenty of civilians around who didn't take a very active part in the war), and the advice to "just change it" was particularly well-suited to him.

Of course, the original poster doesn't seem to really be all that familiar with Eberron, in my opinion, either. It's not described as 'dark fantasy' anywhere that I'm aware of, nor is that the vibe of the setting at all.

 

[Anti-Sean]

All Eberron needs is a few long range radius Mord's Disjunction bombs.

Who needs bombs when you have Living Disjunction?

(I know I've posted that link before, but it's just too good to pass up linking to it again!)