Straight Dope on Eberron . . .

[diaglo]

Oh God, please not the drow again. I would personally be perfectly happy if there were no drow in Eberron.

I vote for the orcs.

the buzz at Gen Con Indy was the "Year of the Yuan-ti"

i expect the changelings to be some form of serpent.

 

[Hardhead]

I hate to be the one to break this to you, but I'm pretty sure I've already seen info on Drow in Eberron. Can't cite a source, but I'd bet $5 on it.

Oh, I expect they'll be there. "Everything from the core rules" and all that. I just hope they're not the main badguys.

Yuan-ti would be cool.

 

[Greatwyrm]

Agreed, Yuan-Ti would be very cool. I think they rate right up there with Illithid and Beholders as cool bad guys go. Probably one of the most under-used "enemy" races.

 

[johnnype]

Keith Baker is also the author of Crime & Punishment from Atlas Games. I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in adding law enforcement to a campaign. It includes rules for bounty hunters, justicars, mage hunters and spies among other useful material.

http://www.atlas-games.com/product_tables/AG3223.html

I also recommend the companion book Dynasties and Demagogues.

 

[Ashy]

the buzz at Gen Con Indy was the "Year of the Yuan-ti"

I am eagerly waiting on the "Year of the Flumph"....


EDIT: johnnype - thanks for the addition - I *KNEW* Keith had done something else for Atlas....

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi all!

the buzz at Gen Con Indy was the "Year of the Yuan-ti"

i expect the changelings to be some form of serpent.

I agree with the other posters that Yuan-Ti would be a cool setting uber-foe race; and it actually makes sense in keeping with the overarching Pulp 'feel' we get from Eberron.

 

[Psion]

Agreed, Yuan-Ti would be very cool. I think they rate right up there with Illithid and Beholders as cool bad guys go. Probably one of the most under-used "enemy" races.

It seems to me a lot of d20 settings are using Yuan Ti. I don't think it's exactly under-used. It is a hidden treasure that has been discovered.

 

[Hellcow]

to pull this horribly careening hijack back on topic... Keith - what will role will creatures from the outer planes play in Eberron? Will there be any involvement from fiends, celestials, loths, or so forth? Also, since you will be able to tap into closed content (I assume) will there be any ties to the Far Realm? Eberron seems PERFECT for a supplement or adventure in that direction....

Also, come to think of it - will any of Eberron be open?

I'm afraid I don't have a clue whether any of it will be open or not -- I just write stuff. As for the outer planes, Eberron has its own cosmology, which provides a places for existing outsiders. At the outset, some are more entrenched in the world than others -- there is a strong use of one of my favorite outsiders, which in my opinion havn't seen enough use in other settings. At the moment, the cosmology already includes something similar to the Far Realm, but you could certainly connect the Far Realm if that doesn't do it for you.

As a slight note on "Everything in D&D is in Eberron", that doesn't mean that everything is crammed together. The goal is to provide some place in the world where a particular creature/whatever makes sense. Since you can travel across the world, if you really like that creature, well, here's where it belongs. To take drow as an example: Drow exist in Eberron. They are not the Drow of FR, by any means, but they are still dark elves. As things stand, they do not play a major role in the game -- they are not in Khorvaire, the continent players are likely to call home. However, if you like the Drow a little, you can send your players on an adventure that takes them into Drowland (no, that's not a real name). If you just can't get enough of the Drow, you can have the Drow decide to leave Drowland and infiltrate Khorvaire; you know where they come from and what they can do, and if you want them to play a more important role than they do at the start, that's your call. If you hate the Drow, never send your players near Drowland and you can pretend that they don't exist. Likewise with the famed dinosaurs: there is a part of the world where there are dinosaurs, and we have tried to do something interesting with the dinosaurs (hence, the halfling dinoriders). That does not mean that you find dinosaurs everywhere you go, and again, if you hate dinosaurs, stay away from that part of the world.

In regards to the "How's mass transit affect traveling encounters" question: without revealing anything more about the lightning rail or airships, think of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indy can hop the red line to get to South America -- but once he gets there, he still has to make his way through the jungle to find the ruined temple. And even the red line may not be safe, depending on the whims of the DM; consider the incident on the boat in The Mummy. Magical tranportation will provide you with a way to experience a wide range of environments, to deal with the fact that not every monster or what have you can be found in one place, and it allows the race across the continent to beat the bad guys to the sacred widget -- but it is not simply teleportation that takes you wherever you want to go in the blink of an eye.

Oh, and since someone mentioned this before, the kalashtar are not an elvish subrace. The kalashtar, shifters, warforged, and changelings are new races with no mechanical ties to any of the standard races. Subraces don't play a major role in Eberron; the focus is more on cultural differences than physiological differences. There are multiple elven nations that are quite different, but in terms of statistics,they're all elves.

Oh, and if you want to see the list of what I've written, go to www.bossythecow.com . I've been woefully negligent in updating the news, and it doesn't mention Deathnet (the Polyhedron minigame that game out two issues ago), but everything is more or less up to date. I'm glad someone liked Crime & Punishment.

Now, I must get back to work. Thanks for your interest.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I always thought the only real originality that ED had was that it was set in a post apocalyptic world. It's more like fantasy twilight 2000 or mad max than anything else.

Odd, we always play ED as a growing world. Sure, there's a lot of scarred lands out there, but it's not a wasteland by any means. Only a small, small percentage of the populace lived long enough to remember the way it was before the Scourge so they aren't that affected by the way the world looks.

Combine that with the remants of the Crystal Raiding war and Barsaive's struggle for independence and it seems a lot like Eberron.

I personally always thought that ED's character generation and handling were it's second worst aspect.

To me those were its strength. Sure, it wasn't "traditional" but it had a caste system in the disciplines combined with a point-buy mechanism. That and after Champions complexity or Runequest's year-by-year detailed character creation I'm pretty much numb.

Character management was difficult because everyone had abilities that required XP to use but it was so incredibly flexible. Between oaths, Named magic, Group patterns, Thread items, and blood magic, the characters became complicated beings just as a matter of course.

Oh, there was a learning curve but it really wasn't that bad as long as you started at 1st circle.

Adepts are far too rigid for any sort of characterisation or customisation (except on the most basic level).

Only if you played single discipline characters and didn't take advantage of the skills. In 1st Ed, at 6th circle everyone picked up multiple disciplines; I ended up with three.

We actually played one campaign with non-adepts relying on skills only. It was a bit more XP intensive, but our skills couldn't be dispelled like Talents can.

2E isn't nearly as multi-discipline friendly but it heavily emphasizes skills and has much better balanced disciplines.

Its worst aspect was its editing - it takes FOREVER to find anything in that game...

I didn't think so. There only thing I ever had trouble finding was the danged step chart. Then we got character sheets with the chart on it and everything was fine. Of course I can probably recite that chart from memory, despite not playing the game for at least two years....

 

[LostWorldsMike]

I was well and truly psyched by everything I'd seen about Eberron up until I came across the name of the main continent...

Khorvaire

So, what we're looking at here is a land mass that's unsafe at any speed? Or am I one of the few who remember that car?

Seriously, though, last night I was hunting dragons in my pajamas. How they got in my pajamas I'll never know.

Okay. All jocularity aside - for real - the continent's name does bother me, but not nearly enough to make me even have a moments worth of doubt about how cool this setting sounds so far.