So..tell me about Eberron

[blargney the second]

Now..how to keep the characters from jumping on an airship back to Sharn?

Tell the players that the game is going to take place in Xen'drik. It's their job to come up with why their character is there and why they're motivated to stay there. I got some great results from that method.

 

[Asmor]

I just had an amusing thought...

Imagine Xen'drik meets circa 1700s Australia... Xen'drik is a giant penal colony where the dregs of society are sent to rot.

 

[Rechan]

However......

The more I read of Xendrik....the more the setting appeals to me. I can see me taking and running with the ball as regards to a Xendrik (only) campaign. It's a quite a bit less cosmopolitan, and quite a bit more moldable to my tastes. I'm getting all manner of ideas/plot hooks, etc reading though the book..

Wait til City of Stormreach comes out in February. That should give you enough of a "Home base" to run your Xen'drik off. Or, just dump your PCs so far away from Stormreach that they really can't go home. Downed airship, etc etc.

What manner of campaigns are you running or playing in?

I'm running two campaigns online.

1) Mystery/Intrigue. One PC owns a PI agency in Sharn, and they take the jobs that walk through the door (and those tangled in the web of their backstory). Right now, they took a job with Medani, sending them to Q'Barra to look into a missing Medani agent. Which will lead to dealing with a cult. Later I'm running them through Chimes of Midnight; the Campaign will revolve around the Dreaming Dark, Viktor Saint-Demaine, and a few sundry things. I feel a little guilty leaning too heavily on Published adventures, as I do love coming up with my own stuff (albeit it being so dang hard). If the PCs kill Saint-Demaine though, then that leaves a whole lot open.

This campaign is fun, but a headache. The PCs have this habit of just saying "You, plot! I don't like you! Imma stab you the kidney!" This is because they are clever and don't take guff from big nasty organizations lurking in the shadows. Also, it's going way too slow for my tastes, and the PCs are not made to deal with combat very well. One of the players asked me to run this game, and I did so happily (because I want to run the Chimes adventures). It's an exercise in roleplay, but I still feel it could be more if I put the effort into it.

2) Action/Horror in the Demon Desert. The PCs are sent into the Demon Wastes, by the Aundairian government, to clean up Desolation of all the nasties living there. The Aundairians are sending their Cyran refugees to Desolation, and the PCs are charged with basically babysitting the Cyrans for a year, making sure the town gets built, stays protected, everything is underway. I plan on having various "Traditional Campaign" stuff, intermixed with dealing with the locals under their protection.

Right now, the PCs are moving through the forsaken abandoned town, killing everything. So it's like a dungeoncrawl but very open ("Let's go into that building over there now"). However, there are still things at play; a Dolgaunt psion and a Dusk hag playing the PCs against a mad undead Silver Flame inquisitor torturing the monstrous inhabitants.

The PCs being in charge of the Cyrans leads to lots of nice little plot hooks. Like: "A strange, fiendish virus has been circulating through the town, and Remove Disease isn't holding it at bay. The medicine the Aundairians sent is late. Today, you receive a message. 'You haven't gotten the medicine? There's reports of pirates in the Eldeen Bay. Probably got the medicine. We've got more important things than to spend resources tracking them down.' Do you go inland to hunt for medicine, or do you hunt down the pirates?" Since one of the PCs is a barbarian of the Children of Winter, this particular plot hook would be intriguing.

This campaign I just wanted to really run. I took on the workload because I was really itching to run a horror campaign. Which, as luck woudln't have it, the players seem utterly unphased by creepiness. The players really get into their characters (Two from Cyre and taking their mission with passion), while it does get annoying at times (The Rogue just insisting on taking that dagger off the shrine to the Mockery). I wish I could get the PCs to level a little faster, but otherwise, this is fun.

 

[FalcWP]

I would like to ask those of you who play in Eberron currently:

What manner of campaigns are you running or playing in?

Currently, we're doing a Last War game. Which has been a bit more 'traditional dungeon crawling' recently - the PCs are all fighting for Aundair. We've got a mercenary kobold sorc, a marked member of House Sivis who in theory is there as communications, though I think she's forgotten that she has a Dragonmark, a priest of the Host who was born in Aundair, a half-orc who learned from the Druids in the Reaches and, while there's still some tension between the nations, he's fighting for Aundair because he wants to be able to oppose Karrnath.

While the half-orc and the priest spent some time on the front lines (we opened the game in an Aundair town under siege by Karrnath - the PCs managed to escape and escort a high-ranking officer away), they've all been assigned to a few dangerous missions recently - investigating some trouble on the Aundair-Eldeen Reaches border, where they dealt with a cult of the Keeper that was stirring up trouble, and then going to Q'barra to negotiate with a lizardfolk tribe to bring in some lizardfolk mercenaries. Once they arrived, the lizardfolk asked them to clear some Karrns out of a sacred temple/tomb... which happens to be covered in Infernal writing and is from the Age of Demons. We're having fun with that at the moment. (They may disagree, but mummy rot will make you do crazy things like that)

So... traditional D&D recently. Dungeon crawls, beating up undead and evil cultists. But heavily Eberron flavored - the history of the places they've adventured in is all about Eberron (the priest has a vague idea about all the stuff that must have happened in this temple, and the cursing in and out of character when they found out that a Karrnath expedition was in the tomb of lizardfolk warriors was priceless). It could certainly be run in any other setting without many changes, but the little details of Eberron make it work well for us.

The next game I run in Eberron will likely be similar to what Spatula described - 'archeology'/tomb raiding. PCs might work for a variety of sponsors - Morgrave University, the Arcane Congress, the Wayfinder Foundation... I'll really go for an Indiana Jones/The Mummy/Tomb Raider/Allen Quartermain (One of my potential adventure ideas is pretty heavily influenced by King Solomon's Mines... with dragonshards in place of diamonds, of course) type feel, because its something I think the setting does really, really well (as I've said numerous times, I know). Other ideas that have crossed my mind have included a group in the employ of House Phiarlan (So... spies. I might rent a bunch of Bond movies before running this) and a 'Wild West' type setup, in either Q'barra or Xen'drik (which would draw on some of the stories about folks like Soapy Smith and 'Texas' Jack Vermillion). My ideas don't generally tend to be intrigue-heavy, because I'm not great at running that sort of game, but its obviously a great fit for Eberron.

 

[Patrick O'Duffy]

I would like to ask those of you who play in Eberron currently:

What manner of campaigns are you running or playing in?

I've been running a campaign for most of the year, but thanks to erratic scheduling we've only had 6-8 sessions. Ah, adulthood.

Anyway, it's been a reasonably-standard 'getting mixed up in stuff'' campaign, where I'm trying to move between urban-(ie Sharn)-based investigation and red-line-on-the-map excursions into the wider world, with minimal dungeon-crawling. The PCs are reasonably typical adventurer types, although most have a personal reason for getting involved in things over and above cash.

The plots so far have been:

- Uncovering a daelkyr-worshipping cult in Sharn that's recruiting or kidnapping Cyran refugees

- Travelling to New Cyre to prevent the cult from releasing a giant aberration from beneath the Dragon's Crown

- Retreiving an angel statue from the slum district of Fallen in Sharn (the Dungeon adventure 'Fallen Angel')

- Teaming up with a Sentinel Marshal to stop a Lyrandar excoriate from stealing an airship with the aid of a powerful schema

Once we get the campaign going again (we took a break while one of the players finished writing his new novel) I'll be running a modified version of Whisper of the Vampire's Blade, which lets me get the group out of Sharn again and show them more of Khorvaire. Then it's back to Sharn for a story or two (probably running 'Steel Shadows' from Dungeon) before getting into Eye of the Lich Queen.

That'll probably be a good point to end the campaign, but if people are keen I'll probably take them back to Sharn so they can deal with all the fallout from their previous adventures, as their enemies team up to take them down.

I don't know if there's anything there I couldn't do with in a more traditional D&D setting, but that's not a bad thing. I haven't taken full advantage of the pulp elements as yet, but we're slowly getting more into that feel, with things like the set-piece encounter in the Lyrandar airship tower last session. For all the railroading problems Whispers has, it's good at providing some of that tone and feel, and I should be able to maintain that while freeing up the plot a little.

If I run another campaign - and I'd like to - it might focus on pirates and Inspired shenanigans in the Lhazaar Principalities, exploring giant ruins and outlandish dungeons in Xen'drik, or a heavily, heavily modified version of Shackled City that compresses the level progression and makes it into an epic anti-Dragon-Below-cult campaign. All of those sound like fun.

 

[JtG]

I would like to ask those of you who play in Eberron currently:

What manner of campaigns are you running or playing in?

I'll be starting a new campaign next sunday. I thought at first about running a vanilla campaign like the last time, but in the end decided against it in favor of something... completely different. BTDT ad infinitum you see. So the new game could be described more like Cthulhu-meets-Final-Fantasy-meets-Faust. Essentially it'll start lightheartedly enough, but as the game continues it will be more sombre and serious.
It will be hard to play up the horror angle, but I think we'll do just fine. Less gore, more Mindf*** seems to be a good guideline..

We'll see how it turns out.

 

[jasin]

Whoever described the meaning of "hyperbole" to you got it wrong. All of those things are easy within the ruleset.

Moving 30 ft. and then using Whirlwind Attack?

 

[jasin]

I would like to ask those of you who play in Eberron currently:

What manner of campaigns are you running or playing in?

Indiana Jones style.

We went on an expedition to Xen'drik to explore an ancient proto-Aerenal temple, racing against a group of Valenar racial supremacists. Back in Sharn we were joined by a kalashtar and from him we found out that the temple is also somehow connected the Quori.

 

[Wik]

What game am I playing in?

The PCs are in Karlakton, a city right next to the Mournland. They're trying to bust a pal out of prison, so they can start investigating missing children.

A few bad seeds from Jorasco, Cannith, and Vadalis are taking children amidst the city's current turmoil (many different factions in a shadow war for control of the city - the recently-returned Blood of Vol, a fantatic cult of the Silver Flame, some Socialist/Communists who want to overthrow the city, House Denieth, and the Karnnathi national guard) and stealing disillusioned warforged.

They then kill the brain of the child (without killing the body), and age the body using magic - guided by Vadalis experts who magebreed animals. Then, after making a human body that is near PERFECT, they implant it with a warforged soul component. Making... Soulforged - warforged that look like people.

Pretty dark, noir game with elements of horror, all on an urban background. Fun stuff, really.

 

[Hairfoot]

Oh my....this discusssion certainly got out of hand over the past several days.

Largely due to my comments.

This is something that has always troubled me with Eberron. I hated it at the outset, but gradually grew to like it in - in some respects.

Unfortunately, if you say that you like Eberron, but don't love and adore it to the exclusion of all other settings, you're attacked by Eberrophiles for failing to see its all-encompassing brilliance, and resented by old-schoolers for giving credence to a setting which features robots as a core race.




To recap:

I am firmly of the opinion that exotic races and classes are a ready-made substitute for player creativity...so I view with some distaste a setting which implies that teams of shape-changing devils and monsters are a common sight.

That was overly critical. I do think that some players choose unusual races to compensate for creating interesting PCs, i.e. a a dwarf fighter is common and dull, but a warforged fighter is novel just for being what it is, without any characterisation or embellishment necessary.

I believe that some players may be able to portray a PC of an exotic race as a truly original and interesting character. I just haven't seen it in the last 20 years of D&D I've played.

Moving 30 ft. and then using Whirlwind Attack?

I imagine you mean to say that those actions aren't possible within a single round, but my point is that the rules allow a character to jump thirty feet in the first place - a concept which takes suspension of disbelief and wipes its arse with it.

So… you don't want the PCs to be the heroes of Eberron? Or is it, you don't want the PCs to be THE heroes of Eberron?

The latter I can understand, but the former just baffles me.

The latter. Being heroes of the campaign is the whole point of playing, but I don't find it motivating when a sixth-level PC can say "great! I'm the strongest (insert class) in the nation. I'd better find an army to destroy or command."


All of this comes down to a simple, individual judgement: Eberron is a novel and compelling setting which I find inspiring. It is perfect for players who embrace the 3E model of superhero PCs who are destined for greatness and stand head and shoulders above all NPCs.

However, for players who prefer adventures and adventurers to take place on a more mortal, modest level, the setting requires some modification.