I hope Eberron is a flop. Am I evil?

[MrFilthyIke]

Am I evil?.

No, just another try-hard, anti-establishment gamer.

You are NOT alone (or remotely evil).

 

[Hellcow]

My point was that what Eberron lacks, for good or ill, is the "lived in" feel of a setting that was someone's homebrew game world for a few years before being published.

That's certainly fair: while, as I said, many elements come from my homebrews, the world as it stands in the CSB is newly forged (though of course, I'd been running games in it at home for almost a year and a half before it finally hit the shelves of your FLGS). I'm sorry to hear that it doesn't work for you, Nisarg -- but with the many other excellent settings out there (not to mention homebrews) I'm sure you've got worlds that work well for you.

 

[Nisarg]

So?
This is an obnoxious minimization of the work that went into it, whether or not you mean it as so. And surely hints at an ignorance of amount of the work Keith put in to it.

Then you toss out this "Hasbro" "marketeer" stuff. Again, ignorance at the level of separation between WotC's operations and Hasbro's management. You drop it out there as in such a way that folks would draw a dark inference that WotC is in thrall to some nefarious anonymous "marketing board at Hasbro".
.

Hmm, well when I said 1 page I didn't mean to say that was all the work Keith did, only that this was the extent of his independent work before having a group of people vetting and changing his original concept to fit what they wanted.

I'd wager a guess that if R. Bumquist Randomdesigner had won the contest in place of Keith you'd still see at least 50% of the tropes you see and think of as "characteristic" of Eberron, because they're what WoTC wants so they can market out novels, the online game, sourcebooks, miniatures, etc etc.

Perhaps I should have said "marketing board at WoTC" rather than Hasbro, because I in no way meant to imply that Hasbro is some kind of "evil entity", or even that marketing itself is evil. Far from it.
It is just a reality, however, that Eberron as a setting is very much pre-fabricated to match their target markets as best as possible. Again, in certain ways (the business sense, for example), this is hardly a bad thing. It doesn't mean that the guys at WoTC were sitting around wringing their hands thinking "BWAH HAH HAH how can we make Eberron suck?"
Rather, they were sitting around thinking "How can we make Eberron fun and appealing to the largest possible group of people?".

Like I've said already, I hope they succeed. Unfortunately, their effort to do so has meant that the demographic they are gunning for is certainly not mine. I can accept that for the greater good of the hobby.

Now, if you want to debate about whether their marketing choices were wise or whether they've ended up trying to make Eberron too much at once, that's another story...

Nisarg

 

[Henry]

...But as others have said, I think it's a pipe dream to believe that if Eberron fails the powers that be would say "Why don't we give Planescape another chance? That was our big mistake." And I have to agree with Buzz that negativity rarely solves any problems. If you want a setting back, is there an active, positive way to pursue your goals -- like the Planewalker.com people are doing -- as opposed to just saying "I hope that everything that isn't my favorite thing fails"?

I think Keith (and a previous poster who I can't recall) hit on a VERY important point here: Companies engage in largesse more often in times of prosperity - it's human nature. So if Eberron somehow smashes tons of sales records, WotC WOULD be more prone to say, "hey, why not do something a little extra for the fans" rather than say, "We have to cut everything that doesn't make money RIGHT NOW!" In my company, we are more apt to upgrade desktop computers and fax machines in fat times than lean times, so why not for any other business? Rather than say, "I hope their latest effort bombs", instead hope it succeeds, and lobby for your favorite setting to make a return as a one-shot!

 

[Nisarg]

Well...

First off, as has been alluded to by others, while Eberron in its coherent final form was not a world I had been running games in, it drew on ideas from multiple homebrew settings I'd run. Not the same thing as FR, no question, but not made up on the spot either. Furthermore, yes, one page is easy. I sent in seven of those. Ten pages isn't that hard. But that final 125,000 word story bible? If you think that's a trivial amount of work or creativity, I have a few projects I could use your help on.

Hi Keith,

First of all, let me say that I didn't express myself clearly, and I apologize but it was never my intention to imply that you only did 10 pages of work. I'm sure you had to do a great deal of work to get your name on the cover, and I congratulate you on your hard work paying off in such a lucrative way.

The only thing I meant by the 10 pages comment was that Eberron was not a world that was wholly fleshed out years before Wizards got it, it was something you thought up, thought of some key elements, and no doubt other people at WoTC, people for whom Marketing is important, would tell you what things to emphasize and which not to, give you certain elements to add (either in the form of a raw idea or a final product) or in other ways "contribute" to the final product, so that the end world was something that was not just born of your imagination but also out of the marketing priorities of WoTC and its parent company.

Now, since I've apparently got you here, let me address with you the one foremost and major beef I have with Eberron: Why did you try to make it both "medieval" and industrial, absolutist and relativist, swashbuckling and victoriana, and why in the world did you feel that you needed to include Psionics and every monster/item/trope under the sun? Was the idea to be "all things to all people" your own, or was that WoTC's target-marketing demographics influence? Because above all, that's what turned me off of Eberron. The second I read in the introduction that the "medieval world" of Eberron had "magic that mimics technology from the 1800s" I knew that Eberron was a lost cause for me.

Eberron would have been great if it had been what people had sometimes been buzzing it would be like before it came out: A world where the impact of magic on society was really applied. Instead, you don't get a society that is deeply changed because of the presence of advanced magic, you get a society where the TECHNOLOGY changes and yet somehow miraculously the culture itself remains pretty much the same. Its the disappointment that hurts; I actually had hopes that Eberron would be a humanties buff's dream: a world that would really be about societal themes. Sadly, I am clearly NOT the target market demographic for this game. Or if I was, Wizards would be in trouble...

Nisarg

 

[Hellcow]

...so that the end world was something that was not just born of your imagination but also out of the marketing priorities of WoTC and its parent company.

The main people I worked with were Bill Slaviscek, Christopher Perkins, and James Wyatt, all of whom are part of Wizards R&D. You're right in that going into the 125 pager and in the period following its selection, they did say "Here's what we really like, here's what we didn't like, here's what we want to emphasize." However, again, they are R&D people. I don't actually even know who is in charge of marketing at WotC, and there certainly wasn't a shadowy marketer or Hasbro overseer sitting in the room and telling us what to do. And I certainly don't recall anyone ever saying "You MUST add element X to the setting -- find a way to make it fit"; instead, our work was more a matter of brainstorming, "How can we highlight the war... what would be the consequences of the Mourning... Do we need to change the number of dragonmarks..." and that sort of thing.

Your following question has a lot of entirely different issues, so I'll break it down.

why in the world did you feel that you needed to include Psionics...

Because psionics have been a part of D&D since first edition. Yet they just don't fit into most published settings at all. I wanted people who like psionics to be able to actually have a valid and logical place in the world, not to have to say "Well, strangely, nothing in this world seems to acknowledge that psionics exist, but I bought the book and love it, so I'm this weird mutant."

Just as I felt that magic should have an impact on society, I felt that psionics would as well. Hence, Sarlona, where arcane magic has taken the back seat to psionics. If you want to play a psionic character, you can have a connection to Sarlona. If you want a truly heavy psionic campaign, set it in Sarlona (though as it stands, you'll have to make a lot of stuff up to do that).

But if you don't like psionics, you don't have to use them at all. The Kalashtar are such a small part of the population that they can easily be ignored or shifted to sorcerers; the mindlink power has its ability described so you don't even need to use the SRD. Sarlnoa is a distant and isolationist nation, so you never have to go there. And as interesting as the Dreaming Dark is, you're never going to be forced to use it. Note that neither of the currently published adventures use psionic characters. And frankly, I've yet to have someone play a kalashtar in MY campaigns, though I've got the Dreaming Dark in the background. The goal was to provide an option for people who enjoy psionics and to make an inclusive world -- not to force people to get the book.

...and every monster/item/trope under the sun?

I didn't, and still don't. My goal was to create a world where YOU the DM could find a place for your favorite elements of D&D -- not to say that all those things have to be there. The Monster Manual includes a vast range of critters and an almost ridiculous range of intelligent humanoid races. Now, let's take yuan-ti. I actually think yuan-ti are fun villians. But, we have said absolutely nothing about where yuan-ti fit into the world. If you don't like yuan-ti, what do you know, never use them and pretend that they don't exist. If you do like them, you could say:
* They are children of Khyber and have their own civilization beneath Khorvaire, aligned with the Cults of the Dragon Below.
* They have a vast empire hidden in Xen'drik, as yet undiscovered by humanity.
* They have just appeared in the Mournland; these newborn yuan-ti are the remnants of former Cyrans, twisted into a new and terrible form.

People say that Eberron is a kitchen sink, but the goal was never to cram everything in at once. I simply wanted to provide enough room -- using things like Xen'drik, Khyber, Droaam, and the Mourning -- for DMs to find a space for their favorite aspects of D&D, without forcing them to use things or saying that they can't. We've mentioned that there are drow somewhere in Xen'drik. Like drow? Set up a drow invasion plotline, with the drow sneaking into Khorvaire. Hate drow? Xen'drik is a big place, you can simply never run into them.

And as for using all tropes, drow aside one thing we specifically haven't used is subraces -- right now, we don't even use wood elves, grugrach, or the other subraces described in the MM. Again, if you want to use them you can, but I wouldn't expect to see them in any official Eberron product.

Why did you try to make it both "medieval" and industrial, absolutist and relativist... Eberron would have been great if it had been what people had sometimes been buzzing it would be like before it came out: A world where the impact of magic on society was really applied. Instead, you don't get a society that is deeply changed because of the presence of advanced magic, you get a society where the TECHNOLOGY changes and yet somehow miraculously the culture itself remains pretty much the same.

This is the big topic, and I simply can't address it fully here (in part because I need to actually get some work done today!). First, WotC was looking for, first and foremost, a fantasy world. And for most people,"fantasy" includes some trappings of medieval life. The further you go from that, the less comfortable many people will be with it. What many people who like Eberron enjoy about it is being able to mix the two -- being a knight in shining armor while still getting to have a fight on top of a train. If you said "Well, now we have trains, chivalry is dead" that fan loses their dream. It is a fantasy world as opposed to an exercise in sociology, and while it may not always make perfect sense, the goal is to create a world that is a fun setting for adventure.

A secondary element is that there was limited space in the book, and we still haven't really explored the impact of magic on the lives of the people and the culture of their nations. In other threads, you've mentioned that you feel cheated that you haven't seen more detailsabout the ways in which magic has affected the economy, and exactly how the dragonmarked houses influence the world. Simply put, there was only so much space and for most people that wasn't going to be what they needed most for their stories. But in the future, I do expect to see the subject explored in greater detail. I know that may be too late for you -- but the impact of magic on society is one of the themes that has always interested me, and it is a subject that will continue to be developed as time goes by.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Why did you try to make it both "medieval" and industrial, absolutist and relativist, swashbuckling and victoriana, and why in the world did you feel that you needed to include Psionics and every monster/item/trope under the sun?

I'm not Keith (unless the mad scientist I hired to teleport me his success has really screwed up), but the reason I like the fact that he did that is really simple:

It's fun. A lot of fun. And it provides a host of options and possibilities. It adds potential, without removing much. I like that. A lot.

Instead, you don't get a society that is deeply changed because of the presence of advanced magic, you get a society where the TECHNOLOGY changes and yet somehow miraculously the culture itself remains pretty much the same.

As far as I can tell, all this technology change is incredibly recent.

It's like measuring the impact of the desktop computer during the late '80s. It hadn't yet had the chance to change much about the culture. After you've been playing an an Eberron campaign for 10 in-game years, things should change...but at the outset, the change isn't instantatneous. And even with this recentness, the change is starting -- they're getting newspapars, for cripes! The social change is something for your own campaign to explore, not something to be present when life is just starting to tick again after the first years of not trying to kill each other in a long time...

Technology hasn't been around for long enough to impact culture much...tell me how much change resulted in the capability of cloning in the real world so far, how much culture has changed, to give a comparison -- recent technologies aren't an instantaneous effect.

 

[buzz]

It is just a reality, however, that Eberron as a setting is very much pre-fabricated to match their target markets as best as possible.

Post edited due to Hellcow stepping in and proving the above is total BS while I was composing it. NOTHING TO SEE HERE. PLEASE MOVE ALONG.

 

[Sorren]

Evil? No.
Foolish? Yes.

WOTC isn't going to risk bringing back a setting that has already failed if it's hurting for money. If they feel comfortable that they can take a potential loss, then you might see a dead setting reborn.

If you ever want to see Greyhawk, Planescape, Dark Sun or any of those other worlds alive again, you had better hope and pray Eberron is a best seller.

 

[buzz]

No, just another try-hard, anti-establishment gamer.

What establishment?

Buzz, divisiveness-hater