Snoweel said:
These signature elements weren't even a part of Eberron to start with!!! So where'd they come from? WotC's design department?
This has actually been clarified in multiple posts on the WotC message boards, but I'll give the short form here. And if you don't want to believe it, no problem -- I'm an Illuminati fan myself.
It's true, the warforged were not part of the original
ten page proposal. I emphasize this because it was difficult to squeeze the world into 125 pages, let alone 10. In addition, I had intentionally limited the number of new races (though the kalashtar/Inspired and changelings were there from the start) because I guessed that the setting should focus on the core books, and thus I'd put a greater focus on defining the role of the core races in the world.
However, while warforged were not specifically mentioned, they were a perfect fit to the tone of the world. Eberron was always a place where magic was an integral part of advanced civilizations, and a major part of the idea (and again, at 10 pages, we're talking very broad strokes) was how magic might affect communications, transportation, and warfare. The warforged are simply an extension of that idea.
When WotC picked the final three, they brought each of the finalists to Seattle to talk about the settings and what caught their eye -- why the setting had made it to the final three. At this point, WotC was paying $20K for the world, and they knew what they liked about it -- but I didn't. I sat in a room with Bill, James, Christopher Perkins, and a few others and talked about the world: what I liked about it, what they liked about it, where I might go with it. There was no corporate mandate, no "You need a construct race because that's our vision." Instead, someone said "One of the things we'd like to see is more new races. Do you have any thoughts on that?" This evolved into a discussion of the way in which magic is a part of Eberron, and the idea of a construct race came up as something that hadn't been a focus in the past and that fit the idea of the world and the war. We discussed all sorts of different ways this could be addressed, from half-golems to what ultimately evolved into the warforged; I took those vague ideas from that conversation -- "It might be interesting to do something with constructs built for the war" -- and expanded upon it as I wrote the 125-page bible. When Eberron was finally chosen, James and Bill and I sat down again to discuss what I'd done with them, and what ideas they'd had based on that. I believe that brainstorming can produce some of the best ideas, and that's what this was. There was no WotC telling me what to do -- instead, it was those of us who were going to be working on the book talking about what excited us about the world and trying to find ways to build on that.
Snoweel said:
I was just trying to draw him into spelling it out, y'know?
As you wish. I meant it less as "this is a private joke", and more as "I'll shrug this off with a smile, even though you're insulting my creative ability and something I spent months and months working on." I assume that you didn't mean it as a personal attack, and were instead speaking hypothetically -- again, about what
you would do if you were in charge. Conspiracy theories are fun, and life's a game. And hey, it could be the truth, you never know! Thus, all I can really do is be glad you weren't in charge, as I prefer my reality to your conspiracy. Or, as I said before...
