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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Graf" data-source="post: 1646405" data-attributes="member: 3087">This isn't meant to be an Eberron hater post...(I'm fairly positive on the setting right now)I assume that the first few official adventures that come out are supposed to capture the themes of a new campaign world. The word intrigue comes up a lot in the Eberron book, "you don't know who's on your side, and who isn't" type stuff. The characters run through the whole game and discover at the end that x was actually y, or they've been duped. The adventure in the campaign book and Dungeon are pretty much straight forward DnD adventures with one exception: Lots and lots of people ambushing the PCs. [Aside] In my experience there is nothing players hate so much as being ambushed, AKA attacked without warning (i.e. a round or less) by somebody they know little or nothing about or are poorly prepared to deal with at that time.People don't get to use their special powers, they often have weak tactical positions, or use their powers ineffectually.Generally in my experience this leads to an unplesant table dynamic. The attack has happend, the characters are engaged in a frentic battle and making snap decisiions. Meanwhile players are stalling, asking lots of questions and generally trying to buy time and tease out hints about the bad guys powers.It's not that I don't do ambushes, (I do) but I tend to feel that it's a cheap way to create suspense. The players are forced into a passive role in the game; if they use a lot of resources, or are prevented from doing what they were trying to do in the first place they feel thwarted. If ambushes happen a lot people tend to get jaded about the whole thing.[/aside]Anyway, the campaign setting is a bit worse than the adventure in Dungeon but they both involve a lot of ambushing AND don't have much intrigue.Suspense is built through two irritating 'tricks' both of which are overused: the aforementioned ambush and the "then the person who approached the PCs and made a cryptic delivery of boxed text wanders off and they can't go after them".The second one is even more irritating that the ambushes. The adventures make it clear that the PCs can't get more about the story now, they have to wait, and they can't follow the NPC as they "disappear into the crowds".Furthermore everyone who appears in the adventures is basically what they say they are, there's an exception or two in Dungeon but as it's written the people who players are naturallyg going to expect to be evil types generally are. Everybody else is up front about what they're up to shot term and vague about their long term goals.[font size="1"]Spoiler (highlight to see):[/font]Though it may just be me but "the noble guy who hired you is evil" is about the most common "gotcha" there is. And the agent of the Emerald Claw who approaches them is typically "evil". He shows up, offers gold for a lost item in an appropriatly vague and sinister way and then fades away. I don't think people will be surprised when he shows up later to attack.Furthermore all of the evil NPCs are just that: evil villians who are out to trick, steal from and/or kill the PCs. The PCs who wander around on "detect evil" "kill evil" mode will do better than playing "in-genre".Obviously: There is nothing terrible about the adventures as generic DnD adventures (except for the incessant ambushing). People are free to play games they like, and you can easily take the pieces in the adventure and change the motiviations of the players so that there are people with hidden agendas or things aren't what they expect.Or maybe I just have a different idea of what intrigue means.</blockquote>

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