The Best & Worst of 3rd Edition: Ultimate 3E: Unearthed Arcana, Eberron, Pathfinder

[Samurai]

I have to second what Syltorian said, and I voted for Eberron too. Besides all the things he listed, there are just so many cool ideas in the setting, like the Dragonmarked Houses and the magitech, as seen with the Artificer, Warforged, Lightning Rail, etc. I'm a sucker for magitech, and I hope 4e Eberron maybe has either a book or a section of a larger book devoted to it. I also enjoy the nation of psions, the new races (especially Changelings), the whole Xen'drick idea (even though the book on it was a huge disappointment... I want backstory, plot ideas, artifacts left from the ancient cultures (and what those cultures were like, are there any descendants or survivors, what is left lurking in their ruins and what treasures or lost lore might be discovered, etc), not a book full of quick encounters. I wanted the big picture, not "Room #2 has 5 Goblins (stats:...)"

 

[PoeticJustice]

So hey, if anything I'm more interested in hearing why people AREN'T voting for Eberron - if they feel that it's something that could be addressed in a future edition. (If you just hate everything about the setting and feel it's not even worth burning to stay warm in the winter, there's not much I can do aside from making sure the next edition is more flammable.)

Since you asked...the reason why my Eberron campaigns were prone to falling flat on their faces is that a lot of information needed to be absorbed in order to "properly" play something.

Also, Sharn is surprisingly hard to convey, map, and adventure in.

 

[blargney the second]

Also, Sharn is surprisingly hard to convey, map, and adventure in.

That's also been my experience. Reading the Eberron novels has helped me a lot. City of Towers and Left Hand of Death are both particularly great for Sharn inspiration.

 

[Treebore]

Which is funny, because I was thinking that exact opposite. We had just ended the Shackled City game half-way through, because it didn't hang together well at all, while Rise of the Runelords hangs together extremely well. I particularly liked the unusual take on goblins in the first module which dropped hooks for later modules IN the first module and explained the overall arc from the beginning (and how to pre-sage future modules and enemies). The second module's take on classic horror tropes are excellent, as are the disturbing villains of the Hook Mountain Massacre, and so on. My players have loved every minute of 'Runelords'.

UA had some fantastic ideas, but none of them ever really found their way into our games. Some of them were simply too 'out there' for what we wanted. Eberron was a grand setting with some great crunch and would be a very close second for me, but somehow it never quite gelled with our group.

I think the differences of experience with Runelords just shows that the DM is still important to a successful game. I know that when I run Runelords its going to be a great campaign that the players will want to come back to each week.

Style and preferences of play also play a role in how much Runelords is liked or disliked. I just know for me it is awesome.

 

[PoeticJustice]

That's also been my experience. Reading the Eberron novels has helped me a lot. City of Towers and Left Hand of Death are both particularly great for Sharn inspiration.

Don't know about Left Hand of Death but City of Towers is one heck of novel, I agree.

 

[SSquirrel]

We own a few of the Eberron books besides the ones that Keith wrote, but my wife wasn't very impressed by them and that has made me less worried about getting to them anytime soon. We both enjoyed Keith's trilogy tho, good stuff man.

I voted for Eberron (Ptolus is out after all) if for no other reason than this is truly a game that comes from us. The little people who play D&D. I said when my wife and I entered that even if we didn't win (we didn't even place, but the brainstorming was lots of fun) we definitely needed to pick up the eventual winner's book. It was definitely NOT the angle I expected things to go and I liked it. There is an old Dragon from the later 2E days that had a great article about the impact of magic on D&D society and I always wondered why it was never given any real nod in the game itself. Step forward several years and see settings like Ptolus and Eberron, embracing the edition fully, not hand-waving the effects of magic on society, things followed to logical conclusions (or just being "D&D turned up to 11!" as Monte claimed).

3E and the games of it I played w/friends got me re-energized in D&D, but they also burnt me out to be re-invigorated again by Arcana Unearthed being released. The D&D contest was also a very cool thing, reading updates on things daily here on ENWorld, wondering who would be the eventual winners. I have yet to ever actually play a game set in Eberron, but I own the core book and Sharn (plus, free music cd is always good) and enjoy them a lot.

Thanks for the hard work Keith and I'm glad to see that work is going into the 4E Eberron. Personally I thought the complaints from moving the timeline forward a whole 2 years was a smidge silly of people, but hey, ya gotta have yr baby sometimes right?

Pathfinder hasn't interested me from Day 1 and UA is nifty, but I remember seeing several house rules in it that were pretty much what my friends and I had already come up with, so large parts of the book were just not needed for me. I'm glad the toolbox exists and puts so much information into the OGC pool, I just prefer a well polished setting.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Re: Warforged - yes, that's one of the things I strongly dislike about Eberron (uh-huh, I'm another one of those.) I like a lot of other things about the setting, however. It has a (to me) surprising amount of depth and overall appeal, and I can see that an unusual degree of care is evident in many aspects - all of which is pretty much a pleasant discovery, any old time.

I might end up M&Ming Eberron sometime. . . which could kick so much ass, now I think about it, well I almost have to do it.

 

[GammaPaladin]

I voted for Eberron.

I got into D&D in 5th grade. We all had uber kill anything munchkin characters of course.

Between then and high school, I got much more interested in the roleplaying element of things, and eventually got fed-up with D&D as a whole. Too formulaic, too constrictive, too much "been there, done that". And despite having a couple of the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms novels, I realized I really didn't care for the settings... They just seemed very artificial, put together for the sole purpose of making it a viable lifestyle to wander around the countryside robbing goblins of their money and treasure.

3rd Edition came out, and I was well into my twenties. I was long done with D&D, having moved on to GURPS, champions, various White Wolf games, Exalted in particular. Still, I bought the Player's Handbook for nostalgia and to see what they'd done with the system. I liked the changes, but I still wasn't going to play in those tired old settings.

When I read Eberron that all changed. It's a real world. Not just a set of artificial conflicts. It breathes, it has real politics based on real pressures. A real economy... You even have the option of your characters being in someone's employ and earning paychecks in a realistic manner, not merely subsisting off scavenged loot.

And it's so different! The magical "technology" changes the world so much, and makes it make so much more sense! Besides, the appeal of airships, the lightning rail, warforged, artificers, and everything else along those lines is just inescapable. Traditional medieval european themed fantasy was something I was tired of. Especially since the old settings were in my opinion totally unrealistic, bizarrely warped reflections of it.

I love basically everything about Eberron. The fact that the gods don't intervene in things, the fluid alignments, the ability to delve into shades of grey where the true roleplaying lies, in my opinion... I've always been a fan of psionics as well, so I liked their inclusion. I'd rather like to see Incarnum given an explicit integration to the setting as well, but we can't get everything we want.

When I run campaigns in the setting I don't have to change much at all, and I've been a MAJOR homebrew type GM, going so far as to create my own whole system and setting at one point (Which was strikingly similar to Exalted, I kind of had a bit of deja-vu when that came out), so me taking a setting and leaving it mostly alone is a compliment! But yeah, aside from making the magical "tech" a bit more pervasive and developed, I leave the setting remarkably untouched.

 

[Lazaro]

I love Pathfinder and Eberron, but my vote has to go to Pathfinder.

After several horrible attempts to run and play in Eberron games, I started to wonder if I was the only one in my group who like this setting. Most of the people I associated with didn't like some Eberron's design elements.

Some of those being(These are there opinions not mine)...

-That the gods may or may not exist. But if they do they don't interfere with mortal affairs. "Heck atleast in the Realms I can have a sit down chat with my god."

-Warforged/Changeling/Shifter. "If I wanted to play a robot/doppleganger/werewolf I would".

-Shades of Gray. "How is it a NG Queen could want war, and a Vampir King wants peace"

-No moving Timeling. "If the Realms does, why not this"

-Too much is left for the DM to dicide. "At least the Forgotten Realms books tells me what I need to know."

-Trains. "So since there's trains, can I have a car"

-Native Outsiders. "So you're telling me that we even though we killed that group of Rakshasas, they're just going to come back?"

-The way the planes are set up.

-That there is no Sigil. "How are we supposed to get to Greyhawk and the Realms than?"

-That there are not enough high/Epic level NPCs to "pal" around with. "In my last game Elminster was my best friend. We would go drink and tell tales."

-To plot heavy. I still can't see what they meant by this one

The list goes on.

But after running through the first part of RotRL most of the old group is now back. Most of them feel that Pathfinder has a "classic", for lack of better term, feel to it.

Pathfinder brought peace back to the gaming table for now. And if my players are happy than I'm happy.


P.S. I have added somethings I like from Eberron into my Pathfinder games though. (ex., Soon my PC's may find themselves up against a small group Warfoged. Created long ago by those that inhabited Runeforge)

 

[Edymnion]

Some of those being(These are there opinions not mine)...

So basically, their reason for not liking the setting is because it isn't Faerun, and doesn't give them the options to turn it into Faerun.