Have you been disillusioned by Eberron?

[I'm A Banana]

That's true of any setting. Campaign settings aren't there because they are "better" than homebrew games. They are there because the DM doesn't have the time, inclination or talent to build a homebrew to the level the campaign setting has.

Nor would I expect it to be better. But different. I would expect any campaign setting to give me a reason to keep playing it beyond "it's easier."

From what I can tell, FR, GH, and DL (not to mention some of the other 2e settings) all do that, to a certain degree. Anyone can run an adventure about ancient lost treasures beneath a desert, true. But FR has an entire metaplot constructed around those ruins in the desert. It has extraplanar beings of wierdness infesting the corners of lost worlds. It has the rescources, as a setting, to deal with the consequences of hidden secrets of ancient origin being brought to modern light. You explore some desert ruins, and it means something different in FR than it means in almost any other setting. If I wanted to play on extraplanar beings of wierd magic coming to light with the disturbing of ancient remains deep below the earth in a climate of often-open hostility between nations, FR offers me that in a way that it would be hard to just cherry-pick from. That is FR's hook, that is part of what differentiates an FR game from any other D&D game.

Similarly, if I wanted to play on heroics, world-spanning saviors, and planet-uniting events in an atmosphere of recent great accomplishments on a planetary scale, DL offers me that in a way that the other settings don't. And in a way that makes it different from playing a homebrew.

Eberron doesn't seem to offer me, at the moment, anything to sell it. It doesn't seem to have a hook, something that makes it different from playing a normal D&D game. It tries to cultivate an atmosphere of action-adventure whizz-bang kitchen-sink amazement, but the methods it uses to do that fall a bit flat (action points, fer instance). FR gives me a reason to want to run an FR game as opposed to a homebrew. I don't see any reason to run an Eberron game instead of a homebrew.

A campaign setting, IMHO, should offer me something different. I don't need a place to set my homebrew. I need something new, something different, something inspiring. Eberron, I think, certainly has that potential. It just hasn't been using it very well.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Eberron is one of the only campaign settings I have willingly run 'out of the box', and the main reason for that is that the worlds history and politics are in the campaign book.. not in some 45 book series that I would have to read in order to clean the nuances of high powered interactions. Its mostly in the main book.

The best part of the settings are the built in conflicts.. the 5 Nations, Darguun, Draom, hunting for shards, Valenar vs Karnnath, Inspired vs Kalashtar, Silver Flame vs Lycan.
Even in the sourcebook for Sharn thier are multiple..and competing.. theives guilds.
Dropping into espionage, as one of the modules displays, there are plot lines galore.

The initial modules were mainly a grand tour of the setting.. and I was gratefull to use them in getting my feet wet. My current campaign is focused on the Druidic Order of the Guardians and a massive plot line by the Delkyr to break one of the seals keeping Xoriat at bay... the group is only 2nd level right now, but the machinations are in play.
{yes, it is a PC's must save the world.. but not because they are the only ones who have the abilities.. its bacause they will be the only ones who know of the danger until it is too late}

Eberron is best for non-epic play. Its not 'normal' DnD. Its DnD with a richly developed, and plausible, history.

Also.. the whole thing with the train? Dudes. It tops out at 30 mph. A Magebred horse can go faster than it. Its main use is hauling heavy cargo and beats normal cavans by virtue of travelling all day. {not to mention not having to carry feed for the Oxen} Its a great place to run 'murder on the Orient Express' and have wild west ambush scenes. Also nice for getting PC's from point A to point B rather quickly.

For me, Eberrons selling point is the depth of the potential plot-lines. They are not neatly laid out for you, and there is no humongous meta-lot spanning the entire setting. Instead there are ..umm... 'individual stringettes' Potential plotlines hiding in the warp and woof of the world that a DM can emphasis or ignore. The whole Dal'Quor situation is enough to numerous campaigns.

Anyway.. thats my 2 cents.

 

[wingsandsword]

Note that someone can take the notion of being disillusioned back a ways. Maybe I was "illusioned" the first couple of weeks I heard aboout it, but as soon as I read magic bullet trains and robot PC's, I got pretty disillusioned.

I'll agree with this. I thought the idea of a big setting search, taking submissions from the fans was a really neato idea. I didn't send one in (not having a homebrew setting of my own), but I watched as other DM's sent in their ideas (and having played in a few of those settings myself, and knowing the details of those settings, I knew how good they were).

I was excited, the idea of a D&D setting taken from the masses, a homebrew getting the ultimate honor of being made official. The first blurbs were vague, and kept my interest.

Then it started getting wacky. Robot PC's & magic railroads. A futuristic Coruscant-like supercity in D&D, and the artificial conceit of there being no high level NPC's yet the world is very high magic. So you have airships (I like Final Fantasy too much to bash airships though), and magic railroads and flying cars, but high level casters are ultra rare and the PC's are the duly appointed people to regularly save the world. The setting even seemed to have very modern attitudes about warfare, politics, and class. It started looking like some weird high-magic/low-level D&D steampunk game that seemed more like a Victorian-era d20 Modern game with a lot of D&D elements ported in. Then the setting comes out, and it's not so much steampunk as spellpunk, and some of the perceptions were bungled marketing, but I don't want anything-punk as a main D&D setting.

When it was a brand new concept, I was enthusiastic, but as soon as they decided to make it a huge deviation from the Tolkienesque medieval European into a pseudo 1920's pulp blending the 20th century with D&D I stopped liking it. Admittedly, they could have done a feudal Asian themed setting too and I would probably have liked that, or something truly fantastic (like Planescape or Spelljammer were), but the more I saw of it, the less I liked it.

 

[fafhrd]

Anyone can run an adventure about ancient lost treasures beneath a desert, true. But FR has an entire metaplot constructed around those ruins in the desert. It has extraplanar beings of wierdness infesting the corners of lost worlds. It has the rescources, as a setting, to deal with the consequences of hidden secrets of ancient origin being brought to modern light. You explore some desert ruins, and it means something different in FR than it means in almost any other setting. If I wanted to play on extraplanar beings of wierd magic coming to light with the disturbing of ancient remains deep below the earth in a climate of often-open hostility between nations, FR offers me that in a way that it would be hard to just cherry-pick from. That is FR's hook, that is part of what differentiates an FR game from any other D&D game.

Maybe I just lack familiarity with the subtleties of modern FR, but your example looks like it could be transplanted almost wholesale(maybe change desert to Jungle continent) into Eberron.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Maybe I just lack familiarity with the subtleties of modern FR, but your example looks like it could be transplanted almost wholesale(maybe change desert to Jungle continent) into Eberron.

And how many Eberron products have you seen encouraging that gameplay? That is part of Eberron's problem, to be sure. The breadth harms its deapth.

But more than that, if I uncover something in the jungles of Xen'drik it reveals something about the giants, something about the drow, something about the history of something distant and of merely academic interest. If I uncover something in FR, it reveals something about the entire universe, the way the forces of magical nature work, the lost history of every PC and every race in the setting. It taps the supernatural history of the entire campaign setting, and resonates deeply from the poor to the rich, changing the way the world is viewed and the very underpinnings of society. That ancient secret, forgotten to the ages and defended by wierd and wild magicks, is exactly what FR is about.

Nothing I can uncover in Xen'drik is going to get me closer to what this CS is about, what it offers. It can be a fun adventure, but it'd be a fun adventure no matter what map I used or what races inhabited the jungle.

It *could* get me closer to what Eberron is about, closer to what makes Eberron special rather than just a generic setting for adventure. But so far as the support for the setting has been concerned, it doesn't. The support has been saying "You can do anything in Eberron!" but it hasn't told me what Eberron offers that makes me want to do anything in it as opposed to somewhere else.

Campaign settings are a dime a dozen. Eberron has potential, it just hasn't been used very well yet. That jungle adventure in Xen'drik could be something unique and revelatory about the nature of Eberron itself (and would be different from an FR adventure doing the same thing). But so far as the support has been concerned, it seems more important to show that your campaign fits into Eberron that showing what Eberron can add to your campaign. Anyone can do a desert exploration adventure. It takes a campaign setting to make that meaningful in a global sense, and that global meaning should be different from setting to setting.

 

[Pants]

Campaign settings are a dime a dozen. Eberron has potential, it just hasn't been used very well yet. That jungle adventure in Xen'drik could be something unique and revelatory about the nature of Eberron itself (and would be different from an FR adventure doing the same thing). But so far as the support has been concerned, it seems more important to show that your campaign fits into Eberron that showing what Eberron can add to your campaign. Anyone can do a desert exploration adventure. It takes a campaign setting to make that meaningful in a global sense, and that global meaning should be different from setting to setting.

Or perhaps... maybe, the adventures AREN'T supposed to reveal any big secrets or big metaplots about Eberron. Maybe they're designed so that you can make of Eberron what you will. It's only been out for a year now, as opposed to the 20 years of FR.

Sure, some settings may be designed with a sort of metaplot in mind (Midnight comes to mind) and some settings evolve over time.

Back in the day when FR was still young, was Chult even there? Did those big secrets exist back then or were they the domain of the DM and his group? I'm honestly curious, but the small factoids of info that I've read about FR in the early days paint it as a sparse setting that evolved over time. That could happen with Eberron (though I hope it doesn't), but right now it exists as a kind of playground, with hints of big secrets (the Draconic Prophecy, the origins of the Warforged, what the 'gods' are, the continent of Argonessen, etc.) and metaplots, but it falls to the DM to take it where he wants. And yes, you could potentially do 'anything' in Eberron, though I guess I just don't see it as a bad thing.

 

[fafhrd]

if I uncover something in the jungles of Xen'drik it reveals something about the giants, something about the drow, something about the history of something distant and of merely academic interest.

The creation of the warforged seems to be directly tied to discoveries in Xen'drik. Couple that with possible connection between the devastation of Xen'drik and the Mourning, the recurring invasions from planes, the Qabalrin and their ties to the House of Vol, and it seems like the history of Xen'drik has persistent, causal and potentially world shaking influences on much of the world outlined in the ECS.

I'm really at a disadvantage in discussing the relative qualities of FR and Eberron since I don't have any FR material and haven't even looked at the setting since 2nd Ed. Can you point to some specifics? As it stands, I just don't see what you're talking about.

 

[Morte]

I was perhaps a little disillusioned when it came out, because it seemed to be the same old same old. They already had FR and Greyhawk which are pretty near identical, and then along came a third vanilla setting. I would have like it to be different in the way that Planescape or Birthright or Midnight are different.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

I rather like it. I wasn't too impressed by Whispers of the Vampire's Blade, which

Spoiler

was quite annoying in that EVERY SINGLE BLOODY ENCOUNTER HAPPENS AT NIGHT

, but the source material is quite nice.

One thing I'm a bit less than happy with is action points. They're theoretically for cinematic purposes, to help you succeed when it'd be appropriate, except adding 1d6 to your result really doesn't influence it much. I feel that they should be a bit more substantial, like SWd20's Force Points.

Brad

 

[Nightfall]

Considering I am a hardcore and diehard SL fan, it's hard for me to be disillusioned in a setting I've got little/no vested interest in. That being said, I congradulate and adore the work and time Keith's put into this bad boy. Unlike another setting creator, Keith manages to keep his ego in check without using an NPC to "represent" himself. He deals in the world not a particular character. This isn't to say another setting's creator does it wrong, I just grow weary of seeing the same ego tripping in settings. Probably why I like Eberron in terms of very few powerful NPCs. But I also feel it tends lack an epic punch when/if your PCs decide Eberron isn't enough.