Dungeon 117

[Erik Mona]

TBH, I heard "Queen with Burning Eyes" was very good but I didnt even read it once I saw it was for Eberron. Magic Trains, Warforged etc. just dont fit into my groups vision of D&D.

"Queen with Burning Eyes" has neither magic trains no warforged. Neither does "Fallen Angel." You should check 'em out.

Seriously, though, thanks for the kind words.

--Erik Mona
Editor-in-Chief
Dragon & Dungeon

 

[thalmin]

In case anyone cares, I have posted the contents of #117 on this thread.

 

[takasi]

'm going to assume you are just ignorant of the Greyhawk support in Frostburn, Complete Divine and the D&D Miniatures line. Oh, and in a bunch of other recent D&D books.

Thank you for pointing those out Merric, as few and far between as they are. I have Frostburn, Complete Divine and almost the entire miniature line, and they are not representative of a substantial contribution to supporting a campaign setting.

Whom does it hurt if those adventures are set in, say, Furyondy rather than some author-invented nation from his home campaign?

How about the Eberron DM who's thinking of running it but doesn't know where to place it? They have no clue where Furyondy is or the background flavor of it, so why include it? What does it help? Why the need to mention where it takes place at all? Why not have sidebars with suggestions for various compaign settings, including Greyhawk?

Dungeon #118 will include the first of four quadrants for a massive continental map of the World of Greyhawk, incidentally.

That's my point. You are the only outlet supporting this setting. It would be as if a magazine like Wizard bought an old comic book series and started publishing snippets of newly created issues in their magazine. Older fans of that particular series might enjoy it, but it would come off as FAR more than a "wink and a nod" to anyone else.

the point is not to detail the setting in the magazine.

And my point is where is the setting detailed for new players? This is where you may begin alienating future customers, especially when D&D Online comes out.

In the same time period (Dungeon 113-117), we've published a total of15 adventures. Here's the breakdown, by campaign setting:

I haven't complained about the quantity of adventures, just the presentation of the first two.

My informed opinion is that the majority of our adventures are useful to the majority of D&D gamers no matter what setting those players use. Our research tells us that most of our readers don't use _any_ of the official settings.

That's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don't provide setting specific material, why would someone who uses a campaign setting use your magazine if they have to do a lot of work to convert it? As you've implied, there are many differences between FR, Greyhawk and Eberron. IMO it's difficult for a DM to take a series of adventures like Shackled City or a generic module and figure out what role Dragonmarked Houses (with their numerous racial differences), the Last War, the Draconic Prophecy, the magewright economy and other Eberron staples might play in the module. You could make life so much easier for us and increase the value of your adventures by dedicating just a half a page or so in every issue. It doesn't seem like too much to ask for.

 

[Sunderstone]

"Queen with Burning Eyes" has neither magic trains no warforged. Neither does "Fallen Angel." You should check 'em out.

Seriously, though, thanks for the kind words.

--Erik Mona
Editor-in-Chief
Dragon & Dungeon

Bah! The words are well-deserved!

I'll read some of Queen and Fallen later this weekend, Its about time I at least thumbed through them.

 

[Erik Mona]

Well, Takasi, then you will no doubt be pleased to know that I've arranged for Keith Baker to provide 1,000-word "Eberron Appendices" to the next Adventure Path adventures, almost exactly along the lines you suggest.

Erik Mona
Editor-in-Chief
Dragon & Dungeon

PS> Oh, and Eric Boyd has agreed to do the same thing with the Forgotten Realms.

 

[takasi]

That's awesome Erik! I apologize if you had previously announced this, but this is the first I've read of this. Sorry if I sounded like I was beating a dead horse, but I strongly believed it was needed. Thanks for the great news!

 

[Hellcow]

(Warforged) appear in all three.

They may "appear" in the sense of "there's an illustration of a warforged adventurer", but Steel Shadows is the only one of the three adventures that actually includes warforged in the adventure. None of them include the lightning rail or airships. Steel Shadows is the big exception here, but the point of the adventure was to take a look at the life of the warforged following the war and to present something that was unique to Eberron; not every Eberron adventure will be so heavily focused on an Eberron-specific topic.

I, for one, am extremely grateful to Erik and Paizo for the support they have given to Eberron over the last few months. FR has dozens of sourcebooks out there to help give DMs ideas; Eberron still only has one. That will change soon enough, but for now DMs who do want to use the setting have very little material to work with, and I would think that people would be grateful for anything they can get. I think it makes sense to try to ensure that most Eberron material produced in the future is easily adaptable to other settings; at the same time, I'm glad that there is an outlet for ideas like Steel Shadows, showcasing some of the unique aspects of the world.

So thanks, Paizo, and thanks to everyone else for their patience as Eberron finds its place. I certainly understand that there are folks who don't like it, and folks who hate it with a fiery passion (speaking of which, could you stop burning books outside my house?) - but I think the Paizo support is invaluable for the people who are using the setting, and I for one am grateful for that support.

 

[Swiftbrook]

Our research tells us that most of our readers don't use _any_ of the official settings.

WoW! Not that's new to me!

-Swiftbrook

 

[Krieg]

They may "appear" in the sense of "there's an illustration of a warforged adventurer", but Steel Shadows is the only one of the three adventures that actually includes warforged in the adventure. None of them include the lightning rail or airships.

Maybe I am just being contrary, but what is the point of doing Eberron adventures if they don't take advantage of the facets of Eberron that set it apart from other settings?!

Lightning rails, airships and warforges are what make Eberron unique. I can find generic adventures anywhere, if you are going to do adventures set in Eberron for goodness sake at least take advantage of the medium!

Where are the high flying train robberies & continent spanning adventures? Where is the swashbuckling noir pulp adventure we were promised?

Generic adventures be damned, if you are going to do it...do it right!




P.S.- Erik, while you are here...don't you think it is high time to do a 3E update of Fedifensor?

(Just nod your head and put someone to work on it. )

 

[jester47]

If Greyhawk was the perfect, generic setting for everyone then it would be promoted and sold through WotC. It would have books, PC games and other ancillary merchandise built around the franchise.

I disagree. A generic setting by the very name needs limited support. Overdetail it and it ceases to be generic. d20 Greyhawk is pretty bare bones, and that is why it is a good place for adventures where the setting is unnamed.

I mean if Greyhawk = Generic then why not have salt flavored salt rather than generic flavored salt? It would make the sidebars you suggested more feasible and less wonky.

I don't follow you. Could you explain how using Greyhawk as a backdrop helps an Eberron or FR DM rather than using a generic backdrop?

Well, salt is salt right? So no matter what you call it, it still tastes the same. Greyhawk and Generic are the same, no matter what you call it still tastes the same. So why not just give it a cool brand name like "Greyhawk."

Well this could get wonky if you try to support too much with them...

If you believe Eberron is so far fetched that you can't put its modules in Greyhawk than the elements that are in Eberron have the potential to interfere with Greyhawk modules. The least I'm asking is that Dungeon take this into consideration when designing their Greyhawk backdrops and create sidebars for every adventure to showcase these differences.

You completely missed my point. My point was that a sidebar that would cover how to convert an adventure to three different settings could get rather long and take up good page space.

To answer your points, I do not think that Eberron is far fetched at all. My original point was that the more campaign specific you make an adventure, the harder it is to "drop and run." However, its eaiser to add parts than it is to subtract. So you can take a Greyhawk adventure (in the generic sense) and add eberronisms to it to customise it to Eberron more than you can take out Eberronisms to customise it to the Realms. However this is largely theoretical as conversions from Eberron to Realms is actually quite easy, but I am talking about those who want to drop it in their campaign and run it with no work. Oh, and please don't quote only part of that last sentance, if you quote it, quote the whole sentence. I think they have the "in your campaign" sidebars to help people move campaign specific adventures to other camapigns. This works better in my opinion than Genric to Realms and Eberron setting because both settings are huge and if the DM does not even put it in the area that they suggest then its just a waste of space.

You would be shocked at the number of times in our discourse that I have had to retype the name Eberron.

How often have they put "Grayhawk" on the cover? I'm just pointing it out as another example of their minor mistreatment of the setting's launch.

Thats not my point. Eberron can be mispelled lots of different was and still read right. Ebberron, Eberon, Ebberon. Greyhawk is easier to catch. Its a slight mistake not a slight.

Aaron.