Dungeons & Dragons Online is slowly changing my mind about Eberron

[Henry]

Actually, the sentence about Nazi Golems on the roof of a Lightning Car has inpired me. I can see a plot with the Lord of Blades' minions trying to pull a lightning rail heist to steal some valuable artifact and get off in motion while the PCs try to foil them.

I did actually pull off a Halfling Pteradactyl bombing run on a lightning train while the PCs fought back once.

 

[Ahzad]

The same thing happened to me. I took a break from table top games (gm burnout after 20 odd years) but still missed gaming. I looked at this hiatus as a way to explore some things I've been interested in but never had the time for, like play by post and mmos. The mmo I gravitated to was DDO, b/c it was free to try and it had all the D&Disms I wanted in a computer game and Age of Conan. The pbp is a lotr using the fantasycraft rules.

I've been playing DDO for over a year now on the Cannith servers and have really gotten interested in the Eberron setting b/c of it, so much so that I tracked down all the books for it on ebay. It's a really cool setting that I should've looked at a bit closer back when it was all new and shiny. Thanks to DDO I was able to discover it.

 

[Aoric]

The fact it was free to play interested me. I tried it for a bit and got bored with it after two weeks. This is not a dig against the game or the setting. As Everquest and WoW don't really get my attention. I prefer the face to face interaction of a good old table top game.

From what I hear the setting was very well written an inventive. Many people I know have used the warforged as the original golem's from an age when magic was at its pinnacle.

I prefer the Greyhawk setting but any setting especially those with a new twist deserve a look at. I think the same goes for editions. I was a big fan of 2E though I currently play 3.5E. All editions have there differences its the story and those you share it with that makes the game for me.

Best of luck with your DDO experience.

 

[IronWolf]

I then braced myself for the Eberron setting, figuring I would be fighting Nazi-esque golems on the roof of a magical train or flying around a city 10 times bigger than Ancient Rome at it's peak in an airship

I... That... Wow. I don't know how it's humanly possible to list off things like that with the implication of having a negative opinion on them.

I can't speak for all the Eberron detractors, but I know my early thoughts towards Eberron were the same as wingsandsword. The nazi-esque golems (and warforged) felt like robots, magical train felt like a bit much technology, even if it is simply enterprising use of magic and airships rubbed me the wrong way for the same reasons. Magic as industrial revolution, while logical - did not fit with my idea of a fantasy world I wanted to play in.

 

[Klaus]

I don't mind the lightning rail or airships or flying buttresses. What I'm not too keen on are "cleaning charms" used as washing machines and other "too-everyday" magic.

 

[WayneLigon]

I find myself learning more about the setting from a first-person perspective and while it has a different feel than Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, or even other "different" settings like Dark Sun or Spelljammer, it doesn't have the "not D&D" vibe I had always assumed I'd get from it.

Well, yes and no. Stormreach in the computer game is much more like a traditional D&D setting with some Eberron elements grafted onto it because it's a primitive outpost away from the main thrust of civilization. There are still train-commuting bugbears punching steam-timeclocks in Sharn.

Eberron doesn't have a lot in the way of 'technology analog' magical devices save a bare few scattered here and there. What it does have is an evolving sense of culture, moving away from the medieval towards the modern.

 

[smtwtfs]

This reminds me of a bowl of Life cereal.

 

[amerigoV]

I don't mind the lightning rail or airships or flying buttresses. What I'm not too keen on are "cleaning charms" used as washing machines and other "too-everyday" magic.

I hear where you are coming from, but 3ed made the "medieval times with magic grafted on" harder to buy into when even average folk can potentially cast spells (just need an 11 in Int/Wis/Chr to have the potential for magic use up to first level spells). It just does not make sense the Monte Python method of identifying a king would work in a 3ed world.

Thats what I really like about Ptolus and Eberron - the settings reflects what the system implies.

I ran Expedition to Castle Ravenloft in Eberron and found it fit like a glove when I reflected all the political machinations of the setting.

 

[wingsandsword]

I hear where you are coming from, but 3ed made the "medieval times with magic grafted on" harder to buy into when even average folk can potentially cast spells (just need an 11 in Int/Wis/Chr to have the potential for magic use up to first level spells). It just does not make sense the Monte Python method of identifying a king would work in a 3ed world.

Thats what I really like about Ptolus and Eberron - the settings reflects what the system implies. .

Then again, in the real world somebody with an 11 INT could go and get a mediocre University education, but college education wasn't common until the last few decades despite being around for around 1000 years, and even then it's not available to everyone for economic and social reasons. I'd imagine magical education is much the same way or worse: there is a gulf of difference between what is theoretically possible and what is economically and socially practical.

As for CHA 11 casters, as sorcery talent is inborn the DM could just say that the vast majority of people just plain don't have it, it's not just having 11 CHA and arbitrarily deciding to become a spellcaster. It's totally arbitrary by genetics.

11 WIS comes with being a cleric, and whatever rules and strictures that come with the faith.

All of these come with the idea that you'll never be able to cast above 1st level spells. Will a Wizard's college really waste valuable class space on somebody who will never improve? Will a clerical order take a novice that isn't wise enough to see the deeper mysteries?

Eberron isn't as much the "1920's redone with magic-as-technology" as I thought, but I still think people who assume that because the rules say something is possible that it is mandatory.

 

[Jhaelen]

Beyond there, on to the main city of Stormreach, it is clearly a little more magical than typical D&D settings (taverns that float in the air, ect), but had a lot more of a feel of being D&D than I ever expected it to be.

As a minor aside, 'City of Stormreach' is one of my favorite 3e supplements. If that supplement doesn't make you want to start playing an Eberron campaign right away, nothing will!

It's a pity is was released so late into 3e. At the time it was already overshadowed by the first 4e reviews.