Eberron: Is it *really* a swashbuckling kind of campaign setting?

[AFGNCAAP]

Warning: minor Eberron module SPOILERS

I'd have to side w/ the "Eberron is Pulp" camp. Eberron is the current D&D campaign my group is playing, and throughout all of the modules that we've played (including 1 of the Dragon magazine modules), the game's had a pulp feel to it.

Take the most recent module (Vampire's Blade): Our group has been on the road constantly, zipping from locale to locale in pursuit of our quarry. Pretty much every time we get close, we wind up getting into a fight. Every major mode of mass transportation we've used so far has wrecked/been destroyed while we've been on it.

Also, there's been quite a few recurring villains as well: the Emerald Claw & warforged serving the Lord of Blades are the notable ones so far. Sure, we may defeat the individuals sent after us, but the organizations are still present to cause us trouble. There's a good amount if intrigue in the module, & violence isn't the only way to solve the problem (but be sure that while violence may not be needed then, it will be needed later).

Sharn has a London/NYC sorta feel to it with its towers and central focus in the modules as a base of operations. The gnome town in Zilargo (in Vampire's Blade) had a Venice feel to it (even had PCs travel from place to place in town by boat). The Mournlands might as well be the post WWI war-torn fields of France, or even Hiroshima soon after the atomic bomb. Pretty much each adventure had us go to some sort of ruin, whether it's an old battlefield, lost temple, or ancient ruin/catacomb.

And, there's a fair amount dealing with ancient/lost knowledge/relics, too (sorta more in an Indiana Jones/Maltese Falcon sort of way), like the Vampire's Blade from Whispers of the Vampire's Blade or the schema from Shadows of the Last War.

Change out the Eberron elements for more modern/20's-30's tech, & it'd be along the lines of a Indiana Jones movie. Switch out the Vampire's Blade for Excalibur or the Spear of Destiny, & the schema with DaVinci's notebook or one of the "lost" Dead Sea Scrolls, & it meshes just oh so well.

I'm just waiting for the Extreme Explorer/rogue with a magic whip & a hat of good luck to show up.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Seems more like a "high action" type of campaign with elements of noir and swashbuckling able to be included easily but not necessarily the primary focus. Action points, psionics, odd races and other elements point it in the "Summer Blockbuster" mode.

 

[drnuncheon]

Most of the action-adventure heroics seem to come from my action point house rules and some other stuff I've developed. I tend to handle them in a much more open, flexible way than the core rules. We found that the action point rules as written didn't pack enough oomph.

So...you gonna share? And do they tie in with the BoIM?

J

 

[WizarDru]

Great old show. Influenced me more than Raiders... I found it for sale here...

http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/my-zshop/S9KARQ6ZVCB2N/104-4877483-6967160

Just a quick FYI, so no one is confused: that collection, from GoldMonkey.com, is a fan bootleg, essentially. The video quality is basically VCR rips to a DVD format. Universal currently holds the rights to any such compilation, and so far they haven't chosen to release one.

 

[JackGiantkiller]

Some of the old pulp stories were just as wierd.

 

[qstor]

Turjan calling it a "kitchen sink" is about right it is a catch all world but the game also harkins to the early days of TV and radio, before true science was added to fiction, you have airships, swords, trains, Ming and Flash Goblin, all wrapped into one.

I think the "kitchensink" approach is appropriate cause Keith Baker himself said there's NOTHING in D&D that doesn't fit in Eberron. That's different from say Dragonlance which has no orcs or drow.

Mike

 

[Morpheus]

From the small amount I played it doesn't feel swashbuckler like. Right now it feels like a Forgotten Realms type world. Then again we only played 2 games, both were TPK's. We all died in the module in the back of the book, then the DM had our 1st and 2nd level characters fight a 5 headed Hydra, so Ebberon is still a little iffy in my book.

Different DM, different game...I guess if Dagger had to give his opinion now, he might say it's more like a Raymond Chandler novel than a pulp novel. That's the 'noir' aspect of Eberron-of course, no Chandler PI ever had to against a cockatrice in a game of Six Stones, either...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

So far our Eberron campaing has been very cyberpunk feel to it. The royal houses are the corporations, their agents are Mr. Johnsons, and the magic is the cool tech.

And the Warforged make it possible to stead a whole lot of ideas from Transhuman Space, which has Artificial Intelligences and bioroids - artificial biological life forms.