So..tell me about Eberron

[Rechan]

The original, best seller for me is the re-invention of the races. Dwarves are pretty much the same, but elves, halflings and gnomes have different cultures. Orcs are actually important to the setting. Various monsters get props, and appear to actually exist in the setting as entities, rather than 'the ogre in the basement'.

I also like the badguys, and how you can pull of basically anything (You want to play Cyberpunk? You can. YOu want to go for Cthulu horror? It's build right in).

The thing iI actually dislike is just how everything is boxed in. It feels like if I want to use psionics or kalashtar, it feels like I MUST use the Dreaming Dark, because they are so intimately tied. If I want Aberrations, it feels like I MUST use the Daelkyr. I'm also kinda sick of the Daelkyr, with how much press they get. And I'm sick of all the attention Sharn gets - most of the adventures start or are Sharn-focused, at least in Dungeon and several others.

 

[JeffB]

I had a rather lengthy post typed up and then hit god knows what key and deleted the whole dang thing. :\

Suffice to say, thanks much for all the excellent insight, and I would certainly welcome more! I find this all very interesting.

I managed to order a used copy of the ECS for $17 and a near new copy of Xendrik for $5 through an amazon used bookseller. Hopefully they will be here early next week.

 

[Desdichado]

And using Indiana Jones as an explicit inspiration for explorations of a mysterious jungle continent ... I could happily run/play an unlimited number of campaigns where the group were exploring Xendrik at the behest of Morgrave University. (Although a joked-about riff on the X-Men using Eberron races instead of mutants could be really cool, too, if handled with a certain degree of seriousness.)

That's right; a PC group made up of a female changeling rogue named Mystique, a tiefling shadowdancer named Nightcrawler, a female shifter named Rahne and a few other ideas like that would make a very interesting tongue in cheek one-shot, played more or less straight. More or less.

 

[Rechan]

I managed to order a used copy of the ECS for $17 and a near new copy of Xendrik for $5 through an amazon used bookseller. Hopefully they will be here early next week.

As an aside, Xen'Drik isn't a guide to running Xen'Drik. Really, it's just a "Here's some information on the continent in general, and here's some adventure sites you might like to use."

Here is a thread about which books you might want to pick up.

 

[Rackhir]

Shilsen's Story Hour in my sig is a moderately long running campaign set in Eberron. If you feel like reading it. The first couple of posts are kinda dry since they are basically the DMs notes, but it gets much more loquacious and there's plenty of asides and behind the curtain moments.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I like the Magic equals Technology theme - the setting does not pretend to be medieval.

Certain problems need to be solved, regardless of whether they are solved with magic or technology - travel and communication being big ones. If the mages of a setting has the ability to create flying carpets then they have a partial solution to hand.

I like the lightning rail and airship. I like the fact that wizards are turning their hands to the most traditional of wizardly tasks - making money!

The Auld Grump

 

[blargney the second]

[...] most of the adventures start or are Sharn-focused, at least in Dungeon and several others.

This is unfortunately true.

Fortunately, it's very easy to adapt them to other locations. I just took one that was supposed to go from Sharn to Talenta and back to Sharn. I modified it to go from Newthrone to Talenta and then on to Sharn. The built-in travel options make it easy to do things like that.

 

[JeffB]

As an aside, Xen'Drik isn't a guide to running Xen'Drik. Really, it's just a "Here's some information on the continent in general, and here's some adventure sites you might like to use."

Here is a thread about which books you might want to pick up.

Thanks much! I actually have browsed through the Xendrik book a few times and it's probably the reason my interest has piqued in Eberron lately. It reminds me of the homebrew setting I've messed around with on and off since I was a kid

(which in a nutshell is: 200 hundred years ago, the 2 main continents of the world were destroyed due to a catclysm ..the survivors of all the free races fled for a "lost continent" that was in ages past the main settled continent but largely abandoned due to wars with not so nice things. I.e. its a "points of light" setting :the lost continent is slowly being (re)settled after 1000s of years due to necessity and leaves alot of space for all manner of plots/adventures )

At any rate, for the $5 price tag I just had to grab a copyof Xendrik.

 

[JeffB]

Shilsen's Story Hour in my sig is a moderately long running campaign set in Eberron. If you feel like reading it. The first couple of posts are kinda dry since they are basically the DMs notes, but it gets much more loquacious and there's plenty of asides and behind the curtain moments.

I will def check it out..thanks!

 

[LonePaladin]

Here are the two primary reasons I'm running my next campaign in Eberron.

First is the issue of alignments. Nothing in Eberron is fixed to a specific alignment (except paladins and perhaps animals, vermin, and mindless undead). Dragons can be of any alignment, as can medusae, mind flayers, goblins, everything. Essentially, change every Alignment entry in the Monster Manual that says "Always" to "Usually". In addition, clerics are not restricted to their deity's alignment, and do not lose spell access based on it. Good clerics can cast animate dead if the need arises (or they're just feeling malicious), and not every clergyman of the Church of the Silver Flame is lawful and good — heck, some are downright nasty. Churches can be corrupt, which makes a place for prestige classes like the gray guard and the shadowbane inquisitor.

Faiths in Eberron are just that: faith. With the exceptions mentioned earlier, the primary force in a cleric's beliefs are his beliefs, not the idea that he must follow his deity's dictates because said deity just might be around the corner.

Second is the long-term view of magic. They basically asked, "What if the magic system existed in this form for thousands of years, with all the human ingenuity, dwarven and gnomish craftsmanship, elven artistry, to work with it?" Combining that with a fairly readily-available means of enhancing magical effects (via dragonshards), and you get things like eternal wands, everbright lanterns, and skyships. (There was a thread once on WotC's message boards regarding the effects of casting continual flame on food. Good for laughs, but it gives you an idea of what people will think of.)