D&D General Let's Talk About Eberron

[Xenonnonex]

Eberron Rising is all you need. Frankly. It has everything to create adventures. It has the spark of the setting.
Your players do not know much about it. That is good. Make the setting your own. Insert your own take.

 

[Reynard]

What's your "Eberron Appendix N"? I know the original setting book had a short list of inspiration by Baker, but there's a lot more out there. What books, movies, tv shows, video games and even music feel especially Eberron to you?

I will say that I get a real Eberron vibe off Carnival Row.

 

[collin]

As far as short adventures for the setting... the adventures written for the 3.5 release are all good in my opinion. There's the group of four connected adventures -- The Forgotten Forge (found within the Eberron Campaign Setting book), Shadows of the Last War, Whisper of the Vampire's Blade, and Grasp of the Emerald Claw that all form a really nice bunch of adventures that hit many areas of Khorvaire and Xen'drik and show off a lot of what makes the setting cool. The longer Eyes of the Lich Queen adventures is also really nice for showing how the dragons of Eberron interact with the setting, and highlights the southeast corner of Khorvaire (Q'Barra and Llhazaar Principalities) and Argonessen in a way that most other Eberron material does not. Q'barra is cool because Keith Baker uses the area in it called Hope as a location for a "wild west" kind of adventure setting and has talked about what he's do with that on his blog. Q'barra is also the nation recommended for placing Ghosts of Saltmarsh (if you own that book and want to use those adventures within the setting.)

I am in agreement with DEFCON1. I played through the first adventure series in D&D 3.5 with the Forgotten Forge modules; they were not only thoroughly good fun to play and pretty well written, but they also gave a very nice look and feel for what makes Eberron Eberron.

 

[iserith]

Does anyone have any experience with the conversions/updates on DMsGuild for these?

I recently converted some of them to D&D 5e for my Eberron campaign (now finished as of last month). Those adventures may have been good to my eyes when I ran them originally in D&D 3.5e, but I see they are very badly designed with 15 more years of experience with D&D. I had to gut most of them, taking just bits and pieces that spoke to the setting lore and redo everything else. Frankly it would have been easier to just not use them at all, but I wanted to give them a nod as my players were Eberron newbies and one of the goals I set during campaign planning was to use as much "canon" as possible. I suggest saving yourself the time and not using them. Or at least be prepared to do some serious rewrites, if you're into that sort of thing.

 

[MarkB]

I figure my best bet is to do a "whirlwind tour" style campaign -- an edventure in Sharn, and then one in the Mournland, and then one in Xendrik, and so on. Rather than a "home base" campaign. Although I guess an airship sould be a mobile home base...

That's the approach I took in my current campaign - a pursuit / investigation adventure starting in the Lhazaar Principalities, going by ship to Karrnath, then by Lightning Rail to Arcanix and on to Sharn, at which point the party acquired a prototype airship that could be flown without an heir of the Mark of Storms, and then ventured even further afield.

It's a good way to establish the setting as a whole, though there's certainly a lot to be said for doing a deeper dive into a specific location.

 

[Zaukrie]

I just moved a new campaign to Eberron. I also have a product on DMSGUILD called unusual living spells. Buy it or not, it needs to be edited and re-laid out, but the content won't change much. It has combat and role playing living spells, and a really nice sorcerous origin.

Putting that aside.......I am running the two intro boxed sets. The key so far is to have orcs and goblins in Phandalin that aren't bad guys. Also, I basically described the bar as having a roomba in it. I describe the town as having been partially destroyed in the War. The goblins in the caves are wearing old military garb. Eventually, the main cave will have a forge in it based on shards. The oozes in the Dwarven Excavation are replaced with iron defenders.

As for adventures, you can't go wrong with adventure stuff and other stuff from Kobold. And, anything in/around Zobeck has lots of gearforged, which may as well be warforged.

I think the key is to mix in things that make the world feel like Eberron. I plan to write that up on my blog soon.....maybe next week. Partly for others, mostly for me to remember how I want to do all that.

 

[Reynard]

I think the key is to mix in things that make the world feel like Eberron. I plan to write that up on my blog soon.....maybe next week. Partly for others, mostly for me to remember how I want to do all that.

When the Wayfinder's Guide first came out, we were between campaigns and I ran both Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury in Eberron and did something similar. I kept the goblinoid bad guys, but they were a troop of mercenaries that had turned to banditry, not "evil humanoids."

 

[Zaukrie]

When the Wayfinder's Guide first came out, we were between campaigns and I ran both Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury in Eberron and did something similar. I kept the goblinoid bad guys, but they were a troop of mercenaries that had turned to banditry, not "evil humanoids."

Oh, I'm pulling Sunless Citadel, the lower level, into the game. The green dragon is going to be replaced with a druid that left the gatekeepers after being corrupted by the Gulthias tree. Explains why the "good" druid won't fight her, they were friends.

 

[Zaukrie]

Oh, I'm pulling Sunless Citadel, the lower level, into the game. The green dragon is going to be replaced with a druid that left the gatekeepers after being corrupted by the Gulthias tree. Explains why the "good" druid won't fight her, they were friends.

damn, I described the green dragon last game. I really need to remember this stuff better......

 

[ninjayeti]

In terms of adventures I agree both the Forgotten Forge and Shadows of the Last War work really well as an intro to Eberron. The last two in that series are fine, but skip-able if you don't want it to feel like an adventure path.

Steel Shadows by Keith Baker from Dungeon#115 (still available from Paizo as a PDF) is one I would consider a must-run in terms of presenting warforged in an interesting way.

What's your "Eberron Appendix N"? I know the original setting book had a short list of inspiration by Baker, but there's a lot more out there. What books, movies, tv shows, video games and even music feel especially Eberron to you?

One of my favorite things about Eberron is that it really lets you play around with other genres besides fantasy. Pulp and Noir are the two that get mentioned most often, but things as diverse as Westerns and cheesy 80's action movies work as well. Baker has talked about one campaign he did based of the tv show Lost, which really shows how far afield you can go to find inspiration.

So my Appendix N would have stuff like: Die Hard; 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Inception, Blade Runner, The A-Team, Westworld, Firefly/Serenity, 3:10 to Yuma, and the Mistborn novels.