Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Just read the whole thing. I think it's a mistake to say WotC doesn't know about having a core story for Eberron -- if you read the proposals published in that mega-PDF (available for free from RPGNow.com), you'll see that WotC asked all the designers who the heroes are and what they're meant to accomplish. That's one way of asking what the core story is. (And the bizarre replies they got from most of the contributors published in the PDF shows why most of them didn't get past the first round and also suggests that WotC needed to do a better idea explicating this argument.)
In any case, Mearls' idea of how to run Eberron is pretty much how everyone I know already runs it. The Indiana Jones vibe is strong, and Indy basically is just a WW2 era D&D adventurer whose dungeons tend to go kablooey on the way out the door. (And, frankly, unless you intend to re-use the setting later on, what's the purpose in NOT doing this? A lot of DMs I've played with have been blowing up dungeons for years -- that's the way my first White Plume Mountain adventure ended, for instance, despite any real reason for it to erupt other than it being cool.)
I also think going through the ECS actually supports this style of play nicely -- there's very little there that supports anything else (although you can be all sorts of flavors of adventurer, maybe one or two too many for such a small area, frankly), and the other stuff supports the Sam Spade fantasy noir stuff, which should appeal to all the WWGS folks out there.
Really, I think a lot of the discussion on the LiveJournal comes off as people wanting to present arguments to a situation without a real problem. Unless sales drop off to the level that it can be said that ECS and FR are cannibalizing off each other (which is the real error TSR made, not producing products without core stories -- Mystara had the same one as FR, for instance, which helped it not at all, despite being even more detailed in many cases) -- I don't see any harm in FR and ECS occupying essentially the same niche. Not every DM who wants the "Cup O Soup" system wants to go with FR; it's got a lot of baggage at this point and a lot of people react to the baggage and want no part of it.
It's interesting that the Greyhawk approach was such a calculated decision. I hadn't heard that before, but it makes a lot of sense in retrospect. Still, I would think updating the core book for 3.5 and incorporating RPGA material into it would be appropriate and appreciated, even for DIY DMs.
In any case, Mearls' idea of how to run Eberron is pretty much how everyone I know already runs it. The Indiana Jones vibe is strong, and Indy basically is just a WW2 era D&D adventurer whose dungeons tend to go kablooey on the way out the door. (And, frankly, unless you intend to re-use the setting later on, what's the purpose in NOT doing this? A lot of DMs I've played with have been blowing up dungeons for years -- that's the way my first White Plume Mountain adventure ended, for instance, despite any real reason for it to erupt other than it being cool.)
I also think going through the ECS actually supports this style of play nicely -- there's very little there that supports anything else (although you can be all sorts of flavors of adventurer, maybe one or two too many for such a small area, frankly), and the other stuff supports the Sam Spade fantasy noir stuff, which should appeal to all the WWGS folks out there.
Really, I think a lot of the discussion on the LiveJournal comes off as people wanting to present arguments to a situation without a real problem. Unless sales drop off to the level that it can be said that ECS and FR are cannibalizing off each other (which is the real error TSR made, not producing products without core stories -- Mystara had the same one as FR, for instance, which helped it not at all, despite being even more detailed in many cases) -- I don't see any harm in FR and ECS occupying essentially the same niche. Not every DM who wants the "Cup O Soup" system wants to go with FR; it's got a lot of baggage at this point and a lot of people react to the baggage and want no part of it.
It's interesting that the Greyhawk approach was such a calculated decision. I hadn't heard that before, but it makes a lot of sense in retrospect. Still, I would think updating the core book for 3.5 and incorporating RPGA material into it would be appropriate and appreciated, even for DIY DMs.