D&D 5E Chronicles of Eberron Is Keith Baker's New D&D Book, out now!

After a few days of teasing, Eberron creator Keith Baker has announced his new book -- Chronicles of Eberron! By Keith and Imogen Gingell, the 200-page book will be available on DMs Guild in December.

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Hektula is the Scribe of Sul Khatesh, the Keeper of the Library of Ashtakala, and the Chronicler of the Lords of Dust. Her treasured tomes hold arcane secrets still hidden from human and dragon alike. What lies beneath the Barren Sea? What powers does Mordain the Fleshweaver wield within Blackroot? Who are the Grim Lords of the Bloodsail Principality? All these secrets and many more can be found in the Chronicles of Eberron…

• Chronicles of Eberron is a new 5E sourcebook from Eberron creator Keith Baker and designer Imogen Gingell.
• This book explores a diverse range of topics, including lore and advice for both players and DMs, along with new monsters, treasures, spells and character options.
• Chronicles of Eberron will be available on the DMs Guild as a PDF and print-on-demand.

But that's not all! There is a collaboration with Hero Forge and new T-Shirts!

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[Veltharis ap Rylix]

I am not familiar with this statement or where/who it might have been made... but I don't doubt someone could have made it.

Keith Baker made it in a recent-ish blog post about House Tharashk.

Dragonmark: The Families of House Tharashk

The Tharashk Triumvirate by Anne Stokes, from Dragonmarked House Tharashk is the youngest Dragonmarked house. The Mark of Finding first appeared a thousand years ago, and over the course of centuri…

keith-baker.com

Orcs, Half-Orcs, and Humans. By canon, the Mark of Finding is the only dragonmark that appears on two ancestries—human and half-orc. However, by the current rules, the benefits of the Mark replace everything except age, size, and speed. Since humans and half-orcs have the same size and speed, functionally it makes very little difference which you are. It’s always been strange that this one mark bridges two species when the Khoravar marks don’t, and when orcs can’t develop it. As a result, in my campaign I say that any character with the Mark of Finding has orc blood in their veins. The choice of “human” or “half-orc” reflects how far removed you are from your orc ancestors and how obvious it is to people. But looking to the Triumvirs above, they’re ALL Jhorgun’taal; it’s simply that it’s less obvious with Daric d’Velderan. In my campaign I’d say that Daric has yellow irises, a slight point to his ears, and notable canine teeth; at a glance most would consider him to be human, but his dragonmark is proof that he’s Jhorgun’taal.

 

[Scribe]

I personally would want to go either way fully on the idea of interracial parenting-- either make every parental combination of race as highlighted and explicit as half-elves and half-orcs are... or else move half-elves and half-orcs into the sub-race category like OneD&D did in their first playtest packet. Because this "these two half-races are important enough to write about but every other one isn't"... kinda blows in my opinion.

I do think a 'custom parentage' option makes most sense. I've dropped Half Elf and Half Orc.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Keith Baker made it in a recent-ish blog post about House Tharashk.

Dragonmark: The Families of House Tharashk

The Tharashk Triumvirate by Anne Stokes, from Dragonmarked House Tharashk is the youngest Dragonmarked house. The Mark of Finding first appeared a thousand years ago, and over the course of centuri…

keith-baker.com

Thank you! I've read a number of Keith's Dragonmark articles but not all of them, nor retain a lot of information (especially when not running an EB campaign). And I'm glad to see he actually specifically called out my other issues, which is why the half-orc split parentage had two race write-ups that could gain the mark, but the half-elf did not. Good stuff!

 

[DEFCON 1]

I do think a 'custom parentage' option makes most sense. I've dropped Half Elf and Half Orc.

I'll be curious to see how the OneD&D playtest scored in that regard... with the removal of full write-ups for HE and HO. If I had to guess... I think the replacing of HO with the full Orc might go through... but enough people love the HE that they'll not want to see it removed from the game. Which I find ironic, seeing as how there are like a dozen different elf sub-species in the game but apparently that's not enough for people and they need the half-elf still too.

 

[Scribe]

I'll be curious to see how the OneD&D playtest scored in that regard... with the removal of full write-ups for HE and HO. If I had to guess... I think the replacing of HO with the full Orc might go through... but enough people love the HE that they'll not want to see it removed from the game. Which I find ironic, seeing as how there are like a dozen different elf sub-species in the game but apparently that's not enough for people and they need the half-elf still too.

Yeah, its always been odd to me, and never sat very well. Especially when HO was always cast in a negative light, while HE was this blessed golden child.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

I don't mind adding full Orcs to the PHB racial line up, but removing Half-Orcs and Half-Elves doesn't work for me, especially in Eberron, where Khoravar Half-Elf and Jhorgun'taal Half-Orc cultural blocks exist in-universe.

The "pick-a-parent" reflavoring method only works for specific individuals, not for entire societies of Half-X's that have to somehow feel distinct from their human and X forebearers while also maintaining a shared identity with one another.

 

[Thommy H-H]

I think the only way to handle it, ultimately, is the way that Eberron does it (albeit not in so many words): by making those half-races into distinct populations and societies, and giving them names that don't sound so...uncomfortably essentialist. But if you have "Khoravar" or something similar in place of "half-elf", it does rather beg the question of what mechanical purpose having that as a separate category serves. What is inherently appealing about playing someone from a culture whose ancestors are a mixture of human and elf/orc/whatever, when you can equally just be an elf, an orc, or a whatever?

The bottom line is that D&D has, at its core, concepts of racial essentialism that were part of the fantasy milieu from which it arose. From Tolkien's obsession with bloodlines and categories of people, to pulp adventures and their colonialist antecedents, to Gygax's own cultural biases, we've been left with a pretty uncomfortable legacy. I don't know how you fix that without just abandoning the whole idea of fantasy 'races'. I suspect One D&D's first playtest was trying to go that way by establishing that they were, indeed, species, and that any viable interbreeding required Bigby's benevolent biomancy or whatever but, as has been pointed out, you run the risk with that of alienating a whole different group of players who have a personal connection to the idea of a blended heritage.

Basically, Eberron does it better than most of the settings, and Keith generally has his head screwed on with regard to these issues, but there's really no way to square the circle on this one.

 

[Zaukrie]

For Ravenloft, that's been the community at Fraternity of Shadows (and the Kargatane before them) for several editions now. But they've chosen not to get involved (as a group, at least) with DMSGuild which is where the action is these days. They still mostly just release old-school netbooks as free downloads from their site, which probably misses much of the modern Ravenloft audience.

There's at least one DMSGuild publisher putting out massive encyclopedic volumes about every Ravenloft Darklord ever, but they haven't quite struck the right note for me. There's a lot of almost verbatim retelling of stories we've heard many times over past editions, and frankly the writing and general quality isn't up to the standard of real topnotch products like Exploring Eberron. Which is understandable, not everyone has Keith Baker's production budget.

But nobody's really grabbed the setting with both hands and made it their own yet, like the Maztica people have with their particular setting, for instance. Ravenloft is a tough one to do though. The old Core had some obvious problems, but so does WotCs new iteration, yet both versions of the setting have their upsides and defenders. Whatever you do, you're not going to make them all happy.

It's tough to "pick up the mantle" on a setting.....unless you are already associated with it. It takes a LONG time to write pages and pages of content....time that probably yields more money if you just remake monsters or items or whatnot. The risk / reward payoff is really tough to overcome (unless you got in early or have a "name"). IME.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

What is inherently appealing about playing someone from a culture whose ancestors are a mixture of human and elf/orc/whatever, when you can equally just be an elf, an orc, or a whatever?

Because there are people in the real world who are bi/multiracial and having ways to express/explore aspects of that identity in game is a good thing.

Yes, races in D&D are more analogous to species than what "race" is considered IRL, but unless you start getting really in depth on differing ethnic/cultural blocks within D&D races in your setting, Half-X races are the easiest way a mixed character can be expressed within the game system, and I don't think (if you'll forgive the word choice) segregating each distinct player race into its own group and proclaiming that they essentially never intermingle from the perspective of the rules is a particularly healthy approach to dealing with the matter.

I get that enumerating every possible permutation of Half-X is practically impossible, but Half-Elves and Half-Orcs have established history within the game and its settings, and even if how they are portrayed in the modern game could use some care and nuance that was lacking in older editions, I don't think tossing all Half-Xs out the window and saying "just play a full X, even if you call it something different" is the right way to handle it.

 

[ChaosOS]

What my mixed friend put on her survey

It's true that D&D as whole has a history of treating its half-races as either part of a tragic backstory instead of the complexities that come with being mixed. While the removal of dedicated half-elf and half-orc racial stats was aimed at addressing this issue, this still perpetuates harmful stereotypes about mixed individuals, even though D&D's concept of race is not directly analogous to how we experience it irl. Words such as "wondrous pairings" still otherise and marginalize interracial relationships, making it and by extension their children, as a "best of both worlds" or "a bridge between cultures" narrative. Both of these mindsets are incredibly marginalizing, and they do not reflect the lived experienced of people who are mixed.

The lack of direct rules for a "particularly common pairing" regarding half-elves and half-orcs additionally implies that while these people may be common, they are not common enough to bother with actual rules. For places such as the Eberron setting, both the half-elven khoravar and the half-orc Jhorgun'taal are famously examples of mixed-ancestry cultures that have developed over time. Delegating mixed ancestries to a sidebar removes the inherent cultural complexity that comes from cultures mixing and intertwining, instead flattening it to an assumption that no world has ever seen peoples come together on such a large scale.

My recommendation is to expand out racial ancestries for common D&D settings, noting down which mixed race pairings are common enough to have their own established lore, customs, and cultures. As stated before for an example, Eberron would need a dedicated khoravar and jhorgun'taal ancestry to capture their importance in the setting. I'd also deeply recommend and encourage bringing on mixed writers to both consult and help guide how half races should be treated mechanically and culturally in D&D moving forward.