D&D 5E First Eberron campaign!

[pukunui]

We finished The Murkmire Malevolence last session, and we leveled up the PCs. Next I'm going to run Keith Baker's Trust No One (it's the second of a planned trilogy, but the first adventure is kinda meh and the third was never written). I'll also run The Stygian Gambit from Golden Vault and might also run The Joy of Extradimensional Spaces (bumped up for 2nd level) before leveling them up to 3rd.

At 3rd level, I'll run Pudding Faire, Reach for the Stars (GV), and Rime or Reason (Convergence Manifesto).

I'm going to skip Shadows of the Last War because I didn't run the 1st level starting adventure, and I don't like the layout of the Cannith facility and can't be bothered redoing it. I might still run Whispers of the Vampire's Blade and Grasp of the Emerald Claw later, though.

 

[Retreater]

This is timely. I pulled out my copy of Eberron: Rising from the Last War last night. I had a TPK on Saturday and was wanting to try something new to renew my interest in 5e.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem Eberron is it. I just can't put my head around what it's supposed to be. Pulp action, epic heroic, film noir, etc. I don't even understand how those genres go together, much less with steampunk and D&D thrown in.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This is timely. I pulled out my copy of Eberron: Rising from the Last War last night. I had a TPK on Saturday and was wanting to try something new to renew my interest in 5e.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem Eberron is it. I just can't put my head around what it's supposed to be. Pulp action, epic heroic, film noir, etc. I don't even understand how those genres go together, much less with steampunk and D&D thrown in.

It's not "steampunk", it's basically pseudo-1928, the period of pulp adventure and film noir. Take a look at Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

 

[Bolares]

It also doesn’t have to be pulp, noir and epic heroic all at the same time. The setting has rooms for all this genres but doesn’t need to be all of them together.

 

[pukunui]

I had a TPK on Saturday and was wanting to try something new to renew my interest in 5e.

I don’t really want to derail my own thread, but was this TPK in your Curse of Strahd game? You’ll have to post the details in your own thread!

 

[pab02]

Sorry if this is too late to be of use. I ran the official campaign modules in 3.5E over the course of years - Forge of Fury, Shadow of the Last War right through to Voyage of the Golden Dragon on level. Then to continue the campaign I ran a load of the 4E Dungeon magazine modules back-converted to 3.5E and up-levelled as appropriate. Finally I finished the campaign with Eyes of the Lich Queen back-converted and up-levelled, which took them from 10 through 13 level. It's a high adventure and epic-feel adventure so adapts well to higher levels.

I think I'm allowed to self-promote within reason as I also have the first two parts of a 5E Eberron campaign that I'm actively developing up on DMs Guild. Search for "Chasing Shadows" for the first installment (or I can message you the link) if you want something more "ready to run".

 

[pukunui]

I ran Keith Baker's Trust No One adventure over the weekend. Managed to get it all done in one session. The players enjoyed themselves. Since they are members of the Clifftop Adventurers' Guild, they didn't want to bribe the watch officer or interact with the Boromar Clan lest they sully their reputation (and that of the guild), so instead they chose to shadow the dead-drop pickup person.

With the auction fight, they had a bit of fun interacting with the different groups. I swapped out the weakened quori for a slightly weakened allip. Due to some lucky rolls, the PCs took out Nolan quickly. I forgot to have his minions use their Relentless Endurance trait to stay up at 1 hp. Two PCs went down for the count during the fight, but the party had enough healing to get them both back up. I didn't have the extra two minions or hobgoblins show up later in the combat, mainly due to time constraints. Jolgar got away but of course he was caught off-screen, so now the bard PC has a fancy magic item.

Next up is The Stygian Gambit from Keys from the Golden Vault.

 

[pukunui]

I've decided to hold off on The Stygian Gambit and run it for the PCs when they're at level 3. Instead I'm going to run Forgotten Relics from the Eberron book. I only need to add an extra goblin here and another kobold there, and the adventure should play out fine for my party of level 2s.

I've also decided that I won't run any of the Candlekeep Mysteries adventures for this group. I'll save them for the Strixhaven campaign I put on hold so I could run this episodic Eberron campaign first. I think they'll fit better in the more open-ended, university campus setting. Between the Clifftop Adventurers' Guild, the Golden Vault, the Trust, and a few others, I think my Eberron party's dance quest giver card is full up.

 

[pukunui]

There's a 25% off sale on all Eberron content on the DMs Guild at the moment, so I purchased a whole lot of stuff. Mostly adventures but also Dread Metrol and some of the older edition books (Sharn, City of Towers and Five Nations).

Tonight I ran the first part of "Forgotten Relics", upscaled for 2nd level PCs. It went very well.

 

[pukunui]

I've now run both "The Stygian Gambit" and "Reach for the Stars" from the Golden Vault book. Next up is a bit of silly fun in the form of "Pudding Faire".

I'm reworking the gods who appear in the adventure as archfey, meaning there will be a strong Thelanis influence. I'm undecided as of yet whether to place the adventure in Zilargo or Breland.

If I put it Zilargo, I'd most likely place the town somewhere near the feyspire of Pylas Pyrial. As intrigue is one of my weak points as a DM, I'd most likely ignore any Trust-related shenanigans. I'd probably also turn most of the halflings in the town into gnomes. I might keep some, though, and sprinkle in some dinosaurs to go with them.

If I put it in Breland, I'll probably place it somewhere along the northern border, where the climate is more temperate, whereas in Zilargo the woodlands are technically jungle. I can also keep it as a mostly halfling-populated town with gnomes visiting from the nearby forest (which most likely has a Thelanis manifest zone in it).