Why are you looking forward (or not looking forward) to Eberron?

[WizarDru]

Eberron seems to further the trend to rip the imagination out of the game and replace it with rules frosted with flavor rather than the other way around.

[homer] Mmmmm. Sugar-frosted rules with Eberron flavor. [/homer]

 

[jasamcarl]

It's not worth the investment. If I want to tell the types of stories that Eberron seems suited for, then I can do so on my own while having a far more unique setting.

The whole magic is pervasive deal is....boring. "Explaining" how all these things work is also boring. It really leaves little mystery. Also, I know that being a low level caster will be even more difficult if everyone gets to use some magic. It's not as if a lvl 1 wizard can melee!

Eberron seems to further the trend to rip the imagination out of the game and replace it with rules frosted with flavor rather than the other way around.

That is the impression I get from the previews. I can the impression that things are repackaged a bit, tossed around, but that no real research has gone into fleshing it out to more than eighteenth century Europe with magic rather than tech.

I could end up being wrong and I know that other people will enjoy the setting.

However, I find it boring with a lack of depth. The previews would have excited me when I was 15 or if I just started gaming, but I do not see what this setting offers to me after 11 years of gaming.

Just some thoughts.

Dave

Ok, I know what you are trying to say; the details released so far seem bland and don't really evoke anything for you. But it would help you cut down on the pretensious phrases such as 'lack of depth', because ironically, when someone is forced to sound so definitive, they usually are lacking in an ability to articulate why it doesn't evoke something for them. Care to name your preferred campaign setting (homebrew or published) and describe it in a few paragraphs? Then I can come out with a glib characterization. Believe me, it wouldn't be difficult.

What seems to have been lost in this conversation is that all previews are about the context the consumers bring to it, i.e. the pieces of the puzzles that they use to fill out the setting. A successfrul preview would thus evoke a lot of positive possbilities in as large a range of potential customers as possible; it is attracting a set of individuals, and thus there is no objective notion of a quality preview. I have no reason to think that the Eberron previews have failed on this count, and think that making quick judgments to that effect would be wrong-headed.

This is true of the complete campaign setting as well, because regardless of the text of the published setting, the majority of its flavor will be in fact an interpretation by both dms and players in the actual game. This is why i'm always amused by the 'my setting is bigger/better than yours' discussions. It's like saying 'you should share all my tastes and the background and experiences that go with it!!!'. I'm more conscerned with group chemistry than a campaign setting.

That being said, Eberron does something for me. It has a broad hook/gimmick that evokes a large number of pop artifacts that have influenced me (pulp, 19th century scientism) writ large with DnD style fantasy. Now any hook is likely to become stale if that is all i was given to think about and could give me the impression that it lacks depth. Luckily, given my experience with Wotc (the FRCS specifically), I know that the setting will be made on the small details which draw on the background while also evoking a dnd style adventure hook. I've seen nothing in the previews that says it won't and, given the page count they certainly have enough space. Thus the preview works for me. In fact, I could even pretentiously read some sort of statement into the choice to apply victorian/enlightment notions of science and progress to dnd; mmmmmm, so much depth....or it could just be me.

 

[~Johnny~]

New Eberron Images

GamingReport has new images of Eberron campaign setting products from the GAMA D&D Dinner marketing event. It sounds like the attendees left very excited about Eberron.

For the full article, click here.

New/Confirmed Information:

The campaign setting book will be 288 pages
Three supplements to follow in 2004 alone
- Shadows of the Last War adventure
- Sharn, City of Towers sourcebook
- TBA

Images:

Looks like the cover has been very "tweaked"
Big map of Eberron
Bigger map of Eberron
Map closeup: Breland and Zilargo
Map closeup: Khorvaire
Eastern Khorvaire
Archer fighting beast
Iconic Artificer
Menacing army
Flying on eagleback to a floating city
Arena action
Spooky city
New monster
High-flying action
Color airship

Note: This is a cross-post from the WotC boards. But hey, at least I didnt' start a whole new thread this time.

 

[Altalazar]

I'm looking forward to it because it is an entirely new, official, D&D game world at a time when we haven't had one of THOSE in a VERY long time (from Wizards).

And it is the very first new, unique game world to be created post 3E, so I'm extra curious to see just what it is like.

 

[WizarDru]

GamingReport has new images of Eberron campaign setting products from the GAMA D&D Dinner marketing event. It sounds like the attendees left very excited about Eberron.

Wow, that's some interesting stuff, there.

Have you submitted that to Morrus as news?

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

Wow! There was a lot of info in the link. A few comments:

More D&D PR for the 30th anniversary. More emphasis on getting the D&D brand to the masses. Maybe we'll finally start seeing some commercials!

Environment books? The first is called Frostburn. My guess is that it's a book for adventures in a cold weather region. I'd guess forest, desert, and ocean books are on the way. A mountain book would be cool too as well as a caves and caverns book. Actually, I'd love to see a dungeon book with info on all sorts of interesting dungeon dessings.

I don't particularly care for the MMIII cover, but it does look like a lot of the Eberron art will "have a context" instead of just being static images. This is good.

Couldn't see Eberron's cover very well.

The new D&D starter set looks like it might be worth picking up for some of us old-timers.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Flying on eagleback to a floating city

I found this image particularly evocative. I suuuuure hope those ain't floating islands in the background... I knew I should have included floating islands in my submission! (laughs loudly!)

Cheers

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

I found this image particularly evocative. I suuuuure hope those ain't floating islands in the background... I knew I should have included floating islands in my submission! (laughs loudly!)

Cheers

I had them. Didn't seem to do much for mine.
Actually, Eberron is pretty similar to my submission in a lot of ways.

 

[mearls]

Mike, speaking as someone who passed on 2nd edition, could you qualify this a little more? I'm just curious what it means, really (i.e. too dry, too mechanically oriented, too silly?)

Sure, no problem. It's a bit vague, and I didn't have time to fully explain last night/this morning.

The guiding principle of 3e is that anything goes. If you want to play a wizard who fights with a sword, you can do that. You might suffer penalties, but it's possible. There's a lot of places where a designer has to step back and allow a DM or gamer to do whatever he wants, rather than what the designer wants.

Under 2e, the opposite was true. Everything was strongly driven by what the designers wanted to happen. In the 2e PHB, there was a long section at the start of character creation that came out and said that anyone who liked high stats was a munchkin. "Good" players enjoyed having lots of 7's and 8's. I didn't like that tone at all back in 1989. My attitude was, I paid $20 for this book, I'm going to do whatever I want with it.

The 2e settings had a similar approach. Most of the races had a limited niche. If you wanted a dwarf wizard, you just couldn't do it. Darksun had a massive plot that completely altered the world. The designers were very upfront about forcing their vision of a game on to the audience.

So, what does this have to do with the warforged? I'm not saying that it goes as far as 2e, but I get a sense of it in the design. Here's what it boils down to:

* Their natural armor isn't natural armor. Look at the picture on page 89 of Dragon 318. We see a warforged ranger wearing what looks like a chain shirt and a leather helmet. But, according to the rules, he can't do that. If you look at the picture on page 86, it doesn't really look like the warforged is wearing bulky armor or anything that would stop him from putting on a chainshirt or wizard's robes.

There's also a question of consistency. If you look at the MM, there are monsters that are far more heavily armored that have natural AC bonuses, not armor ones. Compare the warforged to the gorgon, iron golem, and so on.

I understand why they gave the warforged an armor rather than a natural AC bonus - the designers want you to take the warforged feats. IMO, that's not a strong enough reason to make that design decision. I'd rather leave that choice up to the player, not take it away from him.

Furthermore, it leads to a bit of dissonance between Eberron as depicted in the art previews, and Eberron as depicted in the rules. It would be as if dwarves were always drawn as tall as humans, with long, slender legs, and then the rules said they had a 20 ft. speed because they were short and had stumpy legs.

To me, that strikes me as 2e because we saw that all the time back then. Gandalf, the iconic wizard, runs around with a sword, but he couldn't do that in the game. It's one of those common sense things that the rules go directly against.

There's also a question of balance - at low levels, an arcane caster warforged has a +2 bonus to AC at the cost of a 5% spell failure rate. At around 10th level, that AC bonus essentially becomes worthless. The creatures you fight have good enough attack bonuses that they're going to hit a warforged mage all the time. Nevermind that mage armor provides a better AC bonus without a drawback. Yet, the warforged caster is stuck with that penalty all the way through his career. OTOH, a character with a -2 starting penalty to his casting class's attribute can eventually overcome that with magic items, stat improvements, or even a lucky roll at character creation.

* The warforged's other abilities are all passive in nature. You get a ton of immunities to stuff that may or may not come up in the game. Light fortification is nice, but it isn't particularly exciting. You ignore 1 out of every 4 critical hits - that might come up once every 2 or 3 adventures. The other races receive more active benefits, stuff they can use to do cool stuff - the elf's proficiencies, dwarf's stonecunning, halfling's bonus to attacks and skill checks, gnome's spells, half-orc's Str bonus.

* The warforged are essentially built around a selection of feats that you need to take to make them viable. If you want to play a warforged fighter, you HAVE to take one of the armor feats to have a viable character. Again, that comes down to the designers dictating what you can do, rather than the other way around.

So, that's why I see it as 2e. FWIW, my warforged get a natural bonus, they don't get most of the immunities or light fortification, and they suffer a divine caster failure chance. In return, they gain martial weapon proficiency, light armor proficiency, faster natural healing, player selected ability modifiers (you pick what gets a penalty, what gets a bonus), and choices from list of minor design benefits (combat spikes, concealed compartments, other stuff you might expect to see in a robot.)

The divine caster failure chance is an artifact of my campaign - the warforged are seen as an abomination by the gods. There's a feat you can take to remove it. To get it in the game, a warforged must be submerged in holy (or unholy) molten metal and have religious symbols etched all over its body, purifying it and making it holy/unholy.

I'm also toying with the idea of using a random table to determine a warforged's designer and creator, and introducing minor effects based on that. That's another foible of my plans for my next campaign - the players each roll on tables to see who their old masters, friends, and rivals were while they trained, and they gain minor bonuses and a reputation based on that.

 

[WizarDru]

The guiding principle of 3e is that anything goes. If you want to play a wizard who fights with a sword, you can do that. You might suffer penalties, but it's possible. There's a lot of places where a designer has to step back and allow a DM or gamer to do whatever he wants, rather than what the designer wants.

Under 2e, the opposite was true. Everything was strongly driven by what the designers wanted to happen. In the 2e PHB, there was a long section at the start of character creation that came out and said that anyone who liked high stats was a munchkin. "Good" players enjoyed having lots of 7's and 8's. I didn't like that tone at all back in 1989. My attitude was, I paid $20 for this book, I'm going to do whatever I want with it.

Wow, that was some fascinating, insightful stuff. Thanks for going into that. I had noticed that the warforged seemed somewhat...odd, in that respect, though I hadn't really reviewed them too closely.

I wonder if the warforged are a concept that was somewhat hamstrung by the need to not vary too far from the rules? That is to say, in an effort to hang close to the core, could they have effectively self-censored the warforged's design (and thereby watered it down, some)?