Eberron isn't Steampunk

[MerakSpielman]

Having a car/home/mortgage/flatscreen TV/computer/DVD/outdoor BBQ/etc. does not make you better than penniless. It just means you have more toys that you have to work to pay off (read enslavement).

Actually, that sounds more like indentured servitude.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Eberron will most likely have a mix of societies but with just the trickle of info so far it is only speculation to say that it will be anything in particular. Most likely there will be a nation on the map that will encompass each style of society and economic system, but the vast majority of gamers find those kind of details boring.

Speak for yourself buddy! My group is all about details, culture, etc...

 

[romp]

Speak for yourself buddy! My group is all about details, culture, etc...

That makes at least two of us then, I love reading and figuring what makes a particular culture tick and have based entire campaigns on that stuff, unbeknowst to the players.

How many of us there are out there I do not know though ... maybe we should do a poll ...

 

[Nightfall]

rouncer,

yeah I think you're right. The bling-bling is all in da benjamins as you're sitting around moving just like dat.

 

[nopantsyet]

That makes at least two of us then, I love reading and figuring what makes a particular culture tick and have based entire campaigns on that stuff, unbeknowst to the players.

How many of us there are out there I do not know though ... maybe we should do a poll ...

I think there are more of us than others give credit for. There are plenty of cerebral players who enjoy a rich and subtle setting where the things you learn are as important as the things you do. Where the interaction with the world is a modus operandi, and you actually have a sense of inhabiting a place.

And, oh yeah--it all provides a context for having adventures. But there are only so many adventure motifs. What makes any given adventure unique is the subtleties of the characters and locales.

Personally, I don't get the sense of there being any "punk" about Eberron. They've commented that they're maintaining the same sociality that has always been standard to D&D, and adapting it only to account for the magitech. It's certainly not steampunk, even if there is steam, because elemental steam is not dirty like coal-fired steam, and doesn't require hordes of underpaid miners and rail-layers to run. There's no indication of a dystopic society--urban decay, poverty, oppression--where the "seedy underbelly" is the only place of opportunity for the average person.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

I don't really want to call it pulp fantasy because pulp fantasy, really... is Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith. Conan and swords & sorcery. Their stories were first published in 30s pulp magazines. So I'd go with fantasy pulp, a la Garrett P.I. or Doc Sidhe. Although I take it that there aren't any cars in Eberron, are there?

I'm surprised so few people have mentioned Glen Cook's Garrett books. After reading the website description, it sounds amazingly like it's taking place after the end of the Garrett books' storyline.

If anything, that makes me likely to at least look at it, rather than ignore it, since I had a half-idea (like a lot of people) that it was steampunk.

Brad

 

[psychognome]

According to Merriam Webster's Online Dictionary:

Pulp is a mixture of cellulose material, such as wood, paper, and rags, ground up and moistened to make paper.

Punk is dry decayed wood, used as tinder.

Go figure.

 

[mythusmage]

What about the rest of the citations?

Publishers of a certain type of fiction and "true story" magazines used a low quality paper to print their product on. Made primarily of wood pulp the paper gave us "the pulps" as a term for those magazines. Stories published in these magazines became known as pulp fiction. Which in turn became a catchphrase for writing of particularly poor quality.

The pulps also became known for a particular style of fiction. Lots of action and gosh wow stuff with little characterization and minimal plotting, aimed at an adolescent to young adult male audience (the girls had their own magazines). Stories, I should add, with an irrepressible optimism . No matter how dire the situation, how overwhelming the opposition, the hero or heroes would win through.

That's the difference between pulp on one side, and noir and punk on the other, hope. In noir you can win, but there's always loss of some sort. In Casablanca, for example, Rick gives up the love of his life to ensure important intelligence reaches London. In punk you don't have even the hope of winning anything substantial. Life is just plain hopeless. What victories you do win are empty, for The Man remains in power.

From what I've seen of the setting, I find pulp fantasy most applicable. Adventure, travels, exotic lands and people. Dark cults, conspirators and cabals, steadfast allies, all the tropes of pulp fiction in its glory days.

We could see a zeppelin adventure some day.

So wait. Hold judgement until the setting guide (or whatever they call it) comes out. Then give it a good looking over and let us know what you think.

Once I couldn't stand dark chocolate. Then I grew old enough to appreciate it.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Of course, the relative levels of penniless are quite different today than they were in the Middle Ages.

Technology was responsible for a massive redistribution of labor. The mill helped turn farmers into bankers.

Clearly it didn't. However, it did address many of them. When was the last time you had a bad case of cow pox? Small pox? Polio? When was the last time you had ricket or scurvy? When was the last time a group of viking raiders swept through your town, burning, looting, and pillaging?

The point is not that every adventure involves the Ark of the Covenant. Not every D&D game involves a quest to recover an artifact. The point is that those memes are available to draw upon and are supported by the system.

I mean really, are the hand, eye, and head of vecna really worth all the trouble to track down? Why should I go looking for the Rod of Seven Parts! I can just make magic items that duplicate some of their abilities on a smaller scale.

It might be better to think of it in terms of the Maltese falcon. The Maltese Falcon was valuable, it was unique, but it wasn't powerful.

Thus, the PCs could find themselves hired to head of to the recently rediscovered Lost City of Xixichulbzatl to recover a few samples of pre-dynastic collapse Xixichubzatlian pottery. Maybe they pots they're looking for are tools for an evil arcane ritual . . . or maybe their employer is a lazy archeologist.
--G

Well, you certainly won't hear me complaining about penicillin and vacinations, but the point still holds that you can't get a realistic setting without a lot of suck. Looked at globally, and from a certain generalizing standpoint, not a lot has changed and those changes that do exist are related to a lot more than technology.

I mean there's a lot to go off on here, seriously farmers got turned into bankers?, but the point is that their is a dangerous fiction to the whole magic=technology which forms society in its image trope.

So though, that's a minor strike. I'm here for the literary fiction not the fiction of history. But I just don't know that I trust a high magic setting to create more problems for the pulp then it brings benefits.

Partly because pulp already has a very set way of using magic, and if you change that a lot of 'memes' seem to become inaccessible.

It's a problem and I'll be interested to see how the setting fixes it.

It may not in which case it will probably be a mostly 'punk' setting since indemic threat will have to come from the system of things instead of solely ranging from discrete elements.

Pulp, on some level, thinks that problems with the way things are are solvable or bearable and compensated for. Voila technology solves the problems of the middle ages, what problems remain in common will be eliminated as the system perfects itself. Henry V: Longbows will take of our martial woes.

Mind you I don't know that pulp is really all that optimistic, it's simply recognizes discrete change and challenge rather than total. Sometimes it's just that the system works with you or compensates for its flaws. That's why you got Conan and Indiana Jones in this genre. Indiana ain't totally happy within the system but he's got some faith in it, Conan's system isn't worthy of faith or optimism, but within it he is very optimisitic that he can work with it.

Pulp needs magic as something outside of the system. Something that is either a threat or a hidden support. If everything is wrapped up in the system than pulps got nothing to vanquish or resolve. The action then turns punk.

For Punk, on the other hand, magic is just one more thing that people can do. Another aspect of the churning, unending dynamic struggle of the systems and the problems.

Punk ain't hopeless by the way, it just has less global hopes and more risks. Also, although you can't win in punk like you can pulp, neither can you loose like you can in pulp or noir. The system and problems constantly recreate things or cycle them around, there's no way it can beat you just like there's no way you can beat it.

Noir is somewhere in between the two and the most hopeless. It's really just pulp with punk sensibilities.

Casablanca isn't noir. The film has noir elements, but the fact is nearly everyone gets out alive. And people become less corrupt rather than more. It's just pulp with noir dressing.

Now Chinatown, that's noir.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Glen Cook's stuff came to my mind pretty fast, and Glen Cook's stuff is pretty noir, though way more punk than most noir.

Also, I think the major city doesn't have too much technological or magical superiority over the middle ages, it's just culturally fantastic.

Great books though, I love Glen Cook.