Is it time for a new setting?

[Aria Silverhands]

I just like gorram. It's cool.

Why I don't Like Eberron

1. It's poodoo.

2. It's a melting pot of everything D&D. In unreasonable ways. It's like they tried to take every splatbook, every monster manual, and every monster and race out of those books and cram them all into one setting. Along with steamcrunk.

3. It's disjointed. Even though it's a melting pot, it's more like a um... mixing pot where the oil and water are missing the emulsifier or whatever it is that's used to blend the elements together.

4. It wasn't created to be unique or have a specific theme. It was created specifically for a silly contest. Something as important as a campaign setting should be more than just something you throw together. It should have meaning to the builder. It should make sense overall. It shouldn't feel like a patchwork quilt from different D&D sources. Unles of course it specifically is a patchwork through planar tears in the barriers between primes and other stuff...

It just irks me that it's a for profit campaign setting, rather than the creator's homebrew that was good enough to be professionally published. Sure, it's an irrational thing to dislike about Eberron, but it wouldn't be irrational if I was rational about it. I didn't even enter the thing. I knew my setting would never be chosen based on the guidelines for it.

So there's why I dislike Eberron as a whole. Like I said before, there are gems buried in the refuse, but all the shiny in the world doesn't change Eberron for what it is, imo.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Say, what ever happened to Derren and who is this Aria?

I am not sure if we need a setting. I don't know all the exist ones yet. Greyhawk, Forgotton Realms, and Eberron are the ones I know, all the other 2E and earlier settings are unknown to me.
I like what I see from the "Points of Lights", but I don't see a need to make it a fully fledged setting. Its strength is being pretty open to anything, without becoming over-detailed. A DM can use it as a starting point to do whatever he wants. Defining it in 3 setting books might take that away.

That said, maybe a setting strongly based on the Points of Lights concepts would be nice.

Eventually, I can only decide if it's time for a new setting if I see the new setting and can decide whether I like what I see or not. I don't really know what I _want_ precisely from a setting. I know that I still might try to homebrew something (based on the Core Rules PoL) ...

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I glossed over the artificer class

I own the damned book. I've read it, almost cover to cover

One of these things is not like the other, one of these things does not belong o/~



My primary reason for liking Eberron? I can have a hilarious and silly game, and a dead serious and heavy concentrated game at the same time, in the same setting. And I can do it with both myself and the players having an absolute blast.

...And there's no preset "HERE I COOOOME TO SAVE THE DAAAAAY" NPCs like SOME settings.

I'm looking at you, Forgotten Realms.

 

[Aria Silverhands]

One of these things is not like the other, one of these things does not belong o/~

What part of "almost cover to cover" did you not comprehend? I'm sure I can provide definitions from dictionary.com to help you understand what almost means in that context.

 

[Kishin]

I just like gorram. It's cool. .

You're missing the point.

The Firefly/Eberron similarities run strong. Very strong. To use the former to criticize the latter is like being an environmentalist who drives a Humvee.

2. It's a melting pot of everything D&D. In unreasonable ways. It's like they tried to take every splatbook, every monster manual, and every monster and race out of those books and cram them all into one setting. Along with steamcrunk.

3. It's disjointed. Even though it's a melting pot, it's more like a um... mixing pot where the oil and water are missing the emulsifier or whatever it is that's used to blend the elements together.

Your vague generalizations do nothing to clarify your point. Please give examples of things in Eberron that are disjointed and do not mesh well with their intended place in the setting.

All you've done up to this point is rant without providing any clear points. I can't think of one thing that doesn't make sense in Eberron. About the only thing you could criticize in that regard are the sidebars in the Player's Guide to Eberron that suggest possibilities within the setting for things like Incarnum and Goliaths. But, seeing as you haven't even read anything outside of the Core campaign setting by your own admission, those are obviously not what you're referring to.

 

[WhatGravitas]

It's like they tried to take every splatbook, every monster manual, and every monster and race out of those books and cram them all into one setting. Along with steamcrunk.

Where did you get this from?

Cheers, LT.

 

[Aria Silverhands]

You're missing the point. The Firefly/Eberron similarities run strong. Very strong. To use the former to criticize the latter is like being an environmentalist who drives a Humvee.

yeah whatever. Firefly and eberron have nothing in common. Try again.

Your vague generalizations do nothing to clarify your point. Please give examples of things in Eberron that are disjointed and do not mesh well with their intended place in the setting.

The whole damn setting. It's been stated by Keith that the setting was specifically made to try and put in as much of D&D as possible and WotC has been doing that ever since.

All you've done up to this point is rant without providing any clear points. I can't think of one thing that doesn't make sense in Eberron. About the only thing you could criticize in that regard are the sidebars in the Player's Guide to Eberron that suggest possibilities within the setting for things like Incarnum and Goliaths. But, seeing as you haven't even read anything outside of the Core campaign setting by your own admission, those are obviously not what you're referring to.

They're crystal clear points, imo.

 

[Cirex]

Where did you get this from?

Cheers, LT.

I supposed that from that "If it's in a book, it exists in Eberron" quote. I can't remember the exact quote, but it was something like that. Which means that you can find a way to fit any race, class, prestige class, item or whatever in the setting, not that is a mix of everything.

I don't know what a poodoo is, but doesn't sound too nice.

My knowledge about campaign settings is quite limited. I know FR and Eberron, then a bit of Ravenloft and that's pretty much it, so, for me at least, it doesn't look like a "mix of everything".

And I disagree with the "silly contest" statement.

 

[WhatGravitas]

The whole damn setting. It's been stated by Keith that the setting was specifically made to try and put in as much of D&D as possible and WotC has been doing that ever since.

The kitchen sink aspect of things is one of the most misunderstood aspects of Eberron. The quote so often taken out of context is "If it exists in D&D, it has a place in Eberron." Not "it exists in Eberron"... but rather, there's a place for it if you want there to be. More often than not, this is accomplished through one of three things:

• Xen'drik, the Dark-Continent-Meets-Atlantis. An unexplored continent twisted by magic, it's the perfect place to stick a never-before-seen-civilization-of-whatever-you-want.
• Khyber, the underdark. Following the pulpy feeling, this again gives you the opportunity for the Vril, the Lost World, Agharta, etc. Derro have no official place in Eberron. I have no plans to use derro in my game. But if I WANTED to, PCs stumbling onto a lost city of Derro in Khyber fits the setting perfectly.
• The Mourning, the bizarre-magical-cataclysm-that-warped-an-entire-country. Any monster could emerge from this bizarre event.

So, *I* prefer to focus on few races and few monsters and build up the cultures of each. As it stands, Eberron doesn't have wood elves, wild elves, purple elves, etc. It has the Valenar, the Aereni, the Qabalrin, the Gyrderi... all of whom are genetically elves with very different cultures. Want to use wood elves? Make 'em a weird tribe in Xen'drik. But *I'm* not going to use them. Likewise, you like abeil? Make them a culture in Xen'drik that's only just been discovered. Say that the Mourning transformed a human city into an abeil hive and now they're spreading like wildfire. There's a PLACE for abeil in Eberron... but only if you want to take advantage of it.

So, I certainly sympathize with the "I hate everything being crammed into one world" syndrome. But the point is that Eberron makes it easy TO include what you want from any D&D book... not that it's all automatically there by default. Me? I leave a lot of it out!

From here. I think you perhaps mis-interpret some things said by Keith Baker, though I grant you that later WotC ads and books have distorted that statement. But we're talking about the main book, right?

Cheers, LT.

 

[MindWanderer]

Kara-tur (...preferably decoupled from FR)

We'd get either Kara-tur as part of FR, or Rokugan as its own setting, I'd bet.