D&D 5E Eberron popularity in 5E

[Corpsetaker]

Without rehashing the Problem with the Forgotten Realms debate, you've pretty much proved my point.

FR deals with the internal inconsistency of Uber NPC heroes and Villains by using them when convenient and ignoring them when it isn't. That's the nature of the setting. Every setting has those kind of internal WTFs: Eberron has a race of shapechangers allowed to walk freely. Ravenloft has borders with nothing but mist and a giant hole in the center of the continent. Dragonlance forces every mage to join a single order or die. Greyhawk has a living GOD as ruler of a nation and he hasn't managed to conquer all of the Flanaess yet. And on and on. Hell, even a 30 second march outside RPGs into other pop culture yields plenty of this (How did Jedi go from guardians of the Republic to a myth and ancient religion in 18 years? Why is it the public accepts the Avengers as heroes and the X-Men are feared and hated?)

Every setting is going to have its detractors and every setting has its problems. Take the good with the bad.

Exactly!

And It's not like you have to include any of these NPC's in your home games.

 

[Xvartslayer]

Right now I am running and Eberron game based very loosely on the late 17th - early 18th century North American colonies. It is based around a Great Powers conflict the precedes the war at the start of the standard setting.

What little "magitech" that exists is unsubtle and inefficient compared to the standard Eberron setting. If and only if the players decide to care, they might learn that many of the elementals resent the hell out of being bound, and researchers are actively working on how to distill the power from the elementals while obliterating their personal agency in the process. As it stands now, the party is preoccupied with the fact that the Houses are actively trying to create a slave economy in the New World.

These kind of moral issues are exactly what makes Eberron a compelling setting. In addition to "elemental enslavement" (what a peculiar thing to fixate on!) you have Warforged rights, the disposition of refugees from Cyre, the tenuous position of Shifters and Lacynthropes in conflict with the Silver Flame, plucky little Adar opposing the tyranny of Rhiedra (shadows of Tibet?), the monster nation Droaam (are your characters fighting evil, murdering civilians or committing an act of war among nation-states?) You can ignore, address or modify any of these things to fit your needs.

During 3e I run a game centered on the rights of Goblinfolk living in the lower parts of Sharn, featuring a gnomish reporter for Sharn's equivalent of the New York Post as an ongoing NPC. Think of the social and civil unrest in the '70s, but with magic.

What some see as a problem I see as an opportunity.

 

[Shasarak]

You look at something like the Rise of Tiamat, it really is a question of how one even puts together an army of 1000 people with intent on marching on major cities without having Elminster pop in, point to the army and utterly wipe the entire thing from existence within 5 minutes and then popping back to whatever he was previously up to.

Ok, so if Elminster pops in to destroy this army of yours then what do the other Lvl 30 NPCs do that are waiting for Elminster to do something or get distracted or some such?

 

[Azurewraith]

Ok, so if Elminster pops in to destroy this army of yours then what do the other Lvl 30 NPCs do that are waiting for Elminster to do something or get distracted or some such?

The cold war is real man.

 

[TwoSix]

The cold war is real man.

"Call Elminster back or we'll fire the Manshoons. Yes, ALL the Manshoons."

 

[Azurewraith]

"Call Elminster back or we'll fire the Manshoons. Yes, ALL the Manshoons."

Now now lets not say things we can't unsay now...

 

[Shasarak]

Firing all the Manshoons is already a thing, right?

Or did they retcon that away along with the Spellplague?

 

[Beleriphon]

Firing all the Manshoons is already a thing, right?

Or did they retcon that away along with the Spellplague?

I think The Manshoons made more Manshoons.

I hear you like Manshoon. So I put some Manshoons on your Manshoon.

- El-xibit​

 

[TwoSix]

I think The Manshoons made more Manshoons.

 

[rebbeman]

As a great fan of Eberron, I have been reading this thread with interest. A few things:

1 I am not thrilled with the UA material for Eberron, but it works fine and I plan to run an Eberron game in 5e using it. I am confident it will work just fine.

2 I am also confident that we will - eventually - see some support. In fact we already have, with at least one adventure and the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide including conversion notes to Eberron and other settings. I suspect that we will continue to see such conversion notes in other products and that, at some point in the next few years, we will see something like the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide for Eberron, but the support (other than conversion notes in other products) will probably end there.

3 As for the relative merits of Eberron vs other settings, I agree that Eberron is a niche setting and will probably stay that way. That's OK. But i always liked it because I felt the setting had more internal logic than FR, especially with respect to its politics and the use of magic. It never made sense to me that FR was so high fantasy with lots of magic around and yet it was never used to advance the tech level of the world. Eberron makes sense in that the abundance of magic leads to using magic for "mundane" purposes and more generally among the populace. And the politics of dealing with the aftermath of a war also seemed more internally consistent than FR's politics.