Alexander123
First Post
I just placed an order for the ECS (3.5) and I wanted to know your opinion about Eberron in general for those who have played in Eberron. What do you like about it, how is it different from other settings like FR etc.
Eberron
- Thread starter Alexander123
- Start date
The ECS is one of my favorite 3.x books. I like the scope, the level of detail is just enough without being overwhelming, and I like the idea of Eberron in general.
A few features of Eberron stand out for me:
1. Pulp/noir feel to certain parts of the setting
2. Interesting spins on orcs, gnomes, and goblinoids
3. The use of magic to improve everyday life
4. The differentiation between social/political/religious influence of NPCs and their class levels/HD, i.e., most humanoids have relatively low levels, so PCs that reach 10th level or higher are something special
5. The dragonmarked houses as magically driven merchant houses that transcend national boundaries
6. Murky alignments for things like clerics and dragons
7. The non-standard cosmology, i.e., no Great Wheel
8. Distant, some would say non-existent, gods
9. Airships!
A few features of Eberron stand out for me:
1. Pulp/noir feel to certain parts of the setting
2. Interesting spins on orcs, gnomes, and goblinoids
3. The use of magic to improve everyday life
4. The differentiation between social/political/religious influence of NPCs and their class levels/HD, i.e., most humanoids have relatively low levels, so PCs that reach 10th level or higher are something special
5. The dragonmarked houses as magically driven merchant houses that transcend national boundaries
6. Murky alignments for things like clerics and dragons
7. The non-standard cosmology, i.e., no Great Wheel
8. Distant, some would say non-existent, gods
9. Airships!
I love Eberron. At least how I run it.
It's set up nicely for political intrigue, swashbuckling (both air and water), lovecraftian horror in the outlying areas, metal gear solid style infiltration / spy missions, Seven Samurai w/ orcs as the good guys, wild west with velociraptor riding halflings, mystery with murder on the orient express scenarios and sherlock holmes in the city, several nations with populations of sentient monsters, and thats all on the same main continent.
You've got indiana jones with tribal indigenous drow living in a maddening jungle of cyclopean/giant ruins.
You've got a bunch of psionicly gifted humans ruling most of another continent of blindly oppressed agrarian humans with subtle mind control such they don't even realize they are sheeple (think NKorea and ComChina, only much less aware of thier oppression). An even smaller group of psionic humans hiding in the peaks of mountains fighting the first group. Meanwhile, the other sentient monsters and free humans on this other continent have a frontier feeling.
Then you have an entire continent of dragons. Most are isolationist, others are actively interfering with and manipulating events in the world.
Then you have the planes. My fav is the fae one, as in kidnap your children and lead you into torture you with magical nature for amusement type fae... and those are the good seelie kind. You don't even want to think about the unseelie court.
It's set up nicely for political intrigue, swashbuckling (both air and water), lovecraftian horror in the outlying areas, metal gear solid style infiltration / spy missions, Seven Samurai w/ orcs as the good guys, wild west with velociraptor riding halflings, mystery with murder on the orient express scenarios and sherlock holmes in the city, several nations with populations of sentient monsters, and thats all on the same main continent.
You've got indiana jones with tribal indigenous drow living in a maddening jungle of cyclopean/giant ruins.
You've got a bunch of psionicly gifted humans ruling most of another continent of blindly oppressed agrarian humans with subtle mind control such they don't even realize they are sheeple (think NKorea and ComChina, only much less aware of thier oppression). An even smaller group of psionic humans hiding in the peaks of mountains fighting the first group. Meanwhile, the other sentient monsters and free humans on this other continent have a frontier feeling.
Then you have an entire continent of dragons. Most are isolationist, others are actively interfering with and manipulating events in the world.
Then you have the planes. My fav is the fae one, as in kidnap your children and lead you into torture you with magical nature for amusement type fae... and those are the good seelie kind. You don't even want to think about the unseelie court.
kitsune9
Adventurer
I didn't play this campaign, but I've enjoyed the premise to it immensely. I liked the concept of the warforged, a war-ravaged continent, and alignment not tied to common creatures.
Love of Awesome
First Post
Some of the things that drew me into Eberron were:
1. You can run a fantasy version of any action, mystery, suspense film ever made. A lot of science fiction stories translate well into the setting also.
2. Dieselpunk Elements.
3. There are all kinds of interesting PC concepts to explore. You could have a group with a caped crusader who wears a knight helmet as a mask who is called The Hound", a singer who is trying to start the "new" trend in Khorvaire who somehow keeps getting sucked into crazy adventures, a sentient construct trying to figure out his place in the world, and a repentant mafia member shapeshifter, and it wouldn't seem the slightest bit out of place in Eberron. Try doing this in any other setting....
Some important differences in Eberron to Traditional D&D is:
1. Grey Morality. Alignment has no presidency in determining a characters actions. For instance you have a NG queen who wants war so that she can attain the throne of Galifar, and you have a LE vampiric tyrant who wants nothing more than peace, and to rebuild his crumbled nation to splendor. You have a LG organization who almost completed a genocide against an entire group of creatures who weren't all evil to begin with. You could have a CE character who really is just a rebelious teenage punk, who likes to break minor rules, and cause mayhem, but could never kill anyone or cause anyone serious harm. Does he need to be punched? Probably, but he doesn't deserve to be beheaded or anything. He'll probably grow out of this phase anyway.
Another thing to keep in mind is that monsters aren't bound by traditional limits to alignment. For instance you could have a gold dragon who is a horrid, sadistic villian, while you have a red dragon who is a noble, kind soul with a love in his heart for all of the creatures in his domain. I mean a black dragon, and a group of orcs helped to save the world from cosmic horrors, and bound them to Khyber. Probably the only other race to sacrifice more to save the world than the orcs, are the Coutl.
2. Unexpected twists. Today, you could be fighting the Inspired to save the kalashtar orphans from their evil clutches, while the next day you could be fighting alongside them to save the world from the destructive forces of the lord of dust.
3. The PC's are the heroes. the average person is a level 1 commoner, with characters above level 5 extremely rare. Most of the epic level characters are villains. The PC's are the ones who stop these villains. By level eight your, your own best friend at this point.
Another thing that helps to define PC's are action points. Basically there extra die rolls that help them out in tight situations.
This is all i've got at the moment. I have to go.
1. You can run a fantasy version of any action, mystery, suspense film ever made. A lot of science fiction stories translate well into the setting also.
2. Dieselpunk Elements.
3. There are all kinds of interesting PC concepts to explore. You could have a group with a caped crusader who wears a knight helmet as a mask who is called The Hound", a singer who is trying to start the "new" trend in Khorvaire who somehow keeps getting sucked into crazy adventures, a sentient construct trying to figure out his place in the world, and a repentant mafia member shapeshifter, and it wouldn't seem the slightest bit out of place in Eberron. Try doing this in any other setting....
Some important differences in Eberron to Traditional D&D is:
1. Grey Morality. Alignment has no presidency in determining a characters actions. For instance you have a NG queen who wants war so that she can attain the throne of Galifar, and you have a LE vampiric tyrant who wants nothing more than peace, and to rebuild his crumbled nation to splendor. You have a LG organization who almost completed a genocide against an entire group of creatures who weren't all evil to begin with. You could have a CE character who really is just a rebelious teenage punk, who likes to break minor rules, and cause mayhem, but could never kill anyone or cause anyone serious harm. Does he need to be punched? Probably, but he doesn't deserve to be beheaded or anything. He'll probably grow out of this phase anyway.
Another thing to keep in mind is that monsters aren't bound by traditional limits to alignment. For instance you could have a gold dragon who is a horrid, sadistic villian, while you have a red dragon who is a noble, kind soul with a love in his heart for all of the creatures in his domain. I mean a black dragon, and a group of orcs helped to save the world from cosmic horrors, and bound them to Khyber. Probably the only other race to sacrifice more to save the world than the orcs, are the Coutl.
2. Unexpected twists. Today, you could be fighting the Inspired to save the kalashtar orphans from their evil clutches, while the next day you could be fighting alongside them to save the world from the destructive forces of the lord of dust.
3. The PC's are the heroes. the average person is a level 1 commoner, with characters above level 5 extremely rare. Most of the epic level characters are villains. The PC's are the ones who stop these villains. By level eight your, your own best friend at this point.
Another thing that helps to define PC's are action points. Basically there extra die rolls that help them out in tight situations.
This is all i've got at the moment. I have to go.
Thasmodious
First Post
I agree with Mentatt about the ECS being a favorite 3.5 book. The ECS is just an incredibly well put together campaign guide. It paints broad strokes, with lots of adventure seeds, zooms down for detail on enough areas to get you going, presents a succinct overview of the world and its various factions. That's the book.
The setting itself is one of my favorites. It feels more quintessentially D&D than any other setting out there. Everything has its place, including about every conceivable genre/playstyle of D&D game. High intrigue, spy, straight adventure, jungle, pirates, Indiana Jones style archaeology, war, about anything you can come up with has a place in Eberron built just for that, and somehow it all fits together. It's my favorite non-homebrewed setting.
The setting itself is one of my favorites. It feels more quintessentially D&D than any other setting out there. Everything has its place, including about every conceivable genre/playstyle of D&D game. High intrigue, spy, straight adventure, jungle, pirates, Indiana Jones style archaeology, war, about anything you can come up with has a place in Eberron built just for that, and somehow it all fits together. It's my favorite non-homebrewed setting.
Lancelot
Adventurer
I'm not a huge Eberron fan - it's not that I actively dislike it, but I prefer most of the other D&D settings.
Having said that, there are still a number of things I appreciate about the setting...
Having said that, there are still a number of things I appreciate about the setting...
- Warforged. They've become one of my favorite races, simply because of the humor value. The players in our group tend to over-emphasize their "robotic" traits, which results in frequent hilarity at the table. Robot accents, failure to understand human emotion, single-minded focus on sometimes trivial tasks. It may not be "high fantasy", but it's fun.
- The lack of established lore. Every grognard and his dog has an opinion on the Red Wizards of Thay, or the Zhentarim, or Iggwilv and Iuz, or Graz'zt, or any of the other 20+ year villains of the D&D milieu. But not so much has been written about the Shadow in the Flame, or the Emerald Claw, or the Lords of Dust. They're still largely undefined, which makes them easier to customize for the DM... and more uncertain for the player.
- Sharn and Xendrik. If I was going to call out two particularly interesting and flavorful locations, it'd be these two. There aren't too many D&D cities that are built "up" rather than "across", and the artwork/maps for Sharn make it look very distinctive. Xendrik is just fun: pulp jungle exploration, with shades of Indiana Jones and the Tomb of the Giant kings.
- Magic-as-Common-Science. Probably the thing that distinguishes the setting most from any other, with the partial exception of Mystara (which also had some of this, in certain areas). Lightning trains, homunculi, arcane tools and attachments. It makes an interesting change.
- Eberron Drow. They're like regular drow, but... uhh... they like scorpions instead of spiders. And they're... uhh... they're a patriachal society! Yeah, that's it. Oh, and their driders are actually drorpions. So, totally different from regular drow. Yeah.
- The Daelkyr. I'm a reluctant believer that Lovecraftian elements are too prevalent in D&D, and wayyy too codified. There was already a concept of the Far Realm in D&D; a strange and unknowable place from which madness issues. The Daelkyr (to me) are an attempt to anthropomorphize the insanity of the Far Realm. They turn insane creatures like aboleth into "creations" rather than "cosmic accidents" and "things which should not be". And that diminishes the whole thing for me. It removes a lot of the mystery. If you want Big Bad Evil Guys who are responsible for a lot of the vileness in the world, use the Lords of Dust (or some of the traditional archfiends like Obox-Ob, Dagon or Baalzebul).
Completely agree! I love Eberron and consider it one of the best 3.5 settings published.
The only knock I have against the setting is that the WotC competition that Eberron was created for required that everything in the Monster Manual be included. Which is how we got halflings riding dinosaurs.
Primitive Screwhead
First Post
I enjoy Eberron because of the depth, and vagueness, of its history. I have yet to find a campaign or module that doesn't fit pretty neatly into the setting.
The Coils of Set just screams Q'Barra, with a great twist of travelling back in time to the days of the barbaric halfing who live side by side with Dinosaurs..
War of the Burning Sky fits neatly into either pre-Last War in the 5 Kingdoms, or better into the distant past in Sarlona {which is where I am running it}
Unlike, say Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms, there is enough wiggle room in the setting to fit alot of plots.
The Coils of Set just screams Q'Barra, with a great twist of travelling back in time to the days of the barbaric halfing who live side by side with Dinosaurs..
War of the Burning Sky fits neatly into either pre-Last War in the 5 Kingdoms, or better into the distant past in Sarlona {which is where I am running it}
Unlike, say Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms, there is enough wiggle room in the setting to fit alot of plots.
stonegod
Spawn of Khyber/LEB Judge
Eberron is by far my fav D&D setting for many of the reasons above. All the "Secrets" books are great (Secrets of Xen'drk being the best), many of the other books good as well (Magic of Eberron being my fave). The only complaint I have of the ECS is that DM & PC info tend to be side by side: Something they fixed in the 4E version at the cost of some depth.
