Eberron's Worth...

[Remathilis]

My minor problem with Eberron is the fact that they made every race interesting except for dwarves. Elves now worship death gods. Gnomes have secret societies. Orcs are druids. Halflings are tribal warriors. Dwarves? They live in mountains and mine...just like in every other fantasy universe. .

You missed the subtleness of it. They are clannish. Have deep codes of honor. Control the banking and much of the wealth. Obsessed with treasure. Easily offended.

They're the Eberron MAFIA!

Aside from that, it's a good setting, very much in the vein of the games I like to play (I'm a fan of magi-tek and modernisms....creative anachronism is fun for me). I love much of what it's done, and I'm glad it's a part of the game

My first game had airships, "giant golems", factories, firearms, and lots of other not-in-D&D elements. Of course, I was heavily inspired (as were you) by Final Fantasy (specifically IV and VI)...

 

[Remathilis]

Over at RPG.net someone did a good spoof on Ed's new campaign setting and called it Generica. I feel that way too many fantasy campaign tend to suffer from that. Heck, too much fantasy fiction tends to suffer from that.

Link?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You missed the subtleness of it. They are clannish. Have deep codes of honor. Control the banking and much of the wealth. Obsessed with treasure. Easily offended.

They're the Eberron MAFIA!

Sounds like a good topic for a meaty Roger E. Moore-style Dragon article to me. Revisiting the ____ Point of View series, but for Eberron, would probably be pretty helpful and popular.

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

I don't have a problem with Eberron.

I like the ideas behind the setting (pulp adventuring, alternate fantasy axis, [semi] steampunk), but I haven't been wowed enough to buy any of the books. But I'm not unhappy that WotC is pushing/supporting the campaign world.

The only Eberron-related thing that has remotely irked me was the DDO game -- and that's just because I really wanted a great, modern Greyhawk setting game. But I don't think most people really care.

 

[RedFox]

Eberron is awesome.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Aren't golems by the RAW non-sentient, or is it a gray area?

Not sure about golems per se, but there are certainly other examples of sentient constructs.

 

[Boondoggle]

I love the modern societal feel of Eberron. I think it is by far the defining characteristic. I think embracing magic as technology rather than some obscure, guarded, secret club is a wonderful change. To paraphrase Clarke & Niven, sufficiently advanced technology and magic are indistinguishable from one another. As for warforged, I view them more akin to Frankenstein's monster than a robot from Asimov. Robotic creation was very deliberate and controlled. Warforged creation is very mysterious and not understood.

I think medieval fantasy works better with subtle magic, mysterious and enigmatic races, strange feral monsters and a predominantly human world. D&D is a far cry from that. The idea of Merlin or Gandalf lobbing a fire-ball is absurd. The game mechanics give rise to a much more modern feel for me.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Dwarves? They live in mountains and mine...just like in every other fantasy universe.

I do think the part about the founding of the dwarven nations (getting kicked out of the underdark type realm by the real dwarves until they learned honor) was a nice enough twist to the regular dwarf "dying race" stuff, but yeah. Running the vaults of Khorvaire isn't exactly atypical of fantasy dwarf stereotypes.

Aside from that, it's a good setting, very much in the vein of the games I like to play (I'm a fan of magi-tek and modernisms....creative anachronism is fun for me). I love much of what it's done, and I'm glad it's a part of the game.

I think the main thing I like about Eberron is that you can gloss over travel with some of their methods (rail or airship), but still strand the PC's in the middle of a jungle. It also encompasses a bit more areas that I find make sense in their locations and idealogies compared to say, FR or GH, where it just seems completely random where a given nation is located.

The Robot discussion has always irked me, simply because the attributes that a Warforged might share with a robot of common thought, are shared by so many other types also in D&D. They're a sentient created race, paralleling such things as intelligent undead or awakened plants or elementals, let alone golems.

Which, really, is the main thing I don't like about these discussions. Most often it's put forth that an Eberron element is all pervasive (like the lightning rail. It's not really everywhere, but detractors often present it that way) or act like these elements weren't already in the game (like airships, which are pretty common).

 

[Vocenoctum]

They are as close to robots as Isaac Asimov's creations. A mousetrap fits the definition of a 'real' robot - so does an automated welder, neither is all that interesting. Asimov's Bicentennial Man on the other hand is also what a lot of people think of when the term Robot is used.

Warforged can also partake of Pinocchio, take your pick between the fairly hapless protagonist in the Disney version or the rather darker original. Darker still they can be modeled on Frankenstein's monster.

What sprang to mind for me, was the range from frankensteins monster to edward scissorhands.

 

[GAAAHHH]

Warning: Rant mode engaged!


It's funny to think that some people compare Eberron unfavorably to Mystara because Eberron has airships...

And Greyhawk has Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, with a freaking space ship (Pure Awesome). If I'm not mistaken, this ship was the lead-in to Jim Ward's Metamorphosis Alpha campaign. How is that not mixing genres?

People who say that sci-fi and fantasy don't (or shouldn't) mix obviously haven't read a lot of fantasy. Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Howard, Lin Carter, Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Barbara Hambly, Raymond E. Feist, Anne McCaffrey, Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time), Roger Zelazney, Jack L. Chalker, and C.J. Cherryh to name a few (not so few, now that I think about it. It really did start out as a smaller list, I swear...) authors who mixed the two genres. Even Glen Cook's Black Company series (a really good series, by the way) has some sci-fi stuff towards the end.