Hellcow
Adventurer
Eberron Novels
Just as a note:
I've seen a number of posts on this board addressing the fact that in Eberron, the novels "Aren't canon."
I don't know if that's actually true.
I know it's true in MY novels, because there's an important magic item which appears in Secrets of Xen'drik which intentionally says nothing about the events surrounding it in its appearance in The Dreaming Dark trilogy.
For me, one of the foundational aspects of Eberron since the very begining is that if the world is a novel or a movie, your PCs are the heroes. I don't want you overshadowed by novel characters. For me, events in a novel should serve as inspiration; this COULD happen in my campaign, but MY players would be the hero. Thus the item in SoX/TDD - I want YOUR players to be able to get that artifact, and the story that evolves as a result may be entirely different from what happens in The Shattered Land.
But that's MY preference. I've said in a lot of places that it's what I prefer, and that it's how *I* will write things. But I don't know that WotC itself has even made this official.
Onto the question of RSE, and "Does a setting need RSE in novels to succeed"... in my opinion, a story doesn't need to be earth-shattering to be successful. The original one sentence description of Eberron was "Lord of the Rings meets Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Maltese Falcon."
I like all three of those stories, and each one is completely different.
The Maltese Falcon is ENTIRELY self-contained. It affects the lives of a half-dozen fairly amoral people. No one else in the city, let alone the world, is affected by the outcome of the story. But it's a great story. While I certainly wouldn't put my own writing skills on that level, for me City of Towers and "Principles of Fire" all fall into this category - a few days in the lives of people in Sharn. And "Principles of Fire" is my personal favorite of everything I've written to this point.
Raiders of the Lost Ark is the "Toys in the Box" story. It DOES involve a threat to the entire world: what could happen if the Nazis are able to harness the amazing powers of the Ark? But in the end (shocking spoilers ahead!) they fail, and the Ark is taken away by "Top Men". It's dramatic, it's over the top... and ultimately, no one in the world knows about it except for Indy and Marian. That's the remaining two novels of The Dreaming Dark. You COULD decide to make them canon, and it still wouldn't require you to throw out anything in the ECS. It presents an EXPANDED threat... but a threat that the rest of the world knows nothing about.
Finally, we have Lords of the Rings - the true, world-shaking, epic series. I'm not opposed to events of this magnitude happening in Eberron. But when they happen, I want YOU to be driving them. Even if you aren't the prime movers, I at least want you to be at the heart of the action. Eberron is based on that idea that YOU are among the most remarkable people of the age, whether you are heroes our villains.
As a result, *I* prefer to write stories closer to Raiders or The Maltese Falcon. I want novels to INSPIRE your adventures; I don't want them to end up making your characters sit on the sidelines while someone else makes a real difference in the world.
Just as a note:
I've seen a number of posts on this board addressing the fact that in Eberron, the novels "Aren't canon."
I don't know if that's actually true.
I know it's true in MY novels, because there's an important magic item which appears in Secrets of Xen'drik which intentionally says nothing about the events surrounding it in its appearance in The Dreaming Dark trilogy.
For me, one of the foundational aspects of Eberron since the very begining is that if the world is a novel or a movie, your PCs are the heroes. I don't want you overshadowed by novel characters. For me, events in a novel should serve as inspiration; this COULD happen in my campaign, but MY players would be the hero. Thus the item in SoX/TDD - I want YOUR players to be able to get that artifact, and the story that evolves as a result may be entirely different from what happens in The Shattered Land.
But that's MY preference. I've said in a lot of places that it's what I prefer, and that it's how *I* will write things. But I don't know that WotC itself has even made this official.
Onto the question of RSE, and "Does a setting need RSE in novels to succeed"... in my opinion, a story doesn't need to be earth-shattering to be successful. The original one sentence description of Eberron was "Lord of the Rings meets Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Maltese Falcon."
I like all three of those stories, and each one is completely different.
The Maltese Falcon is ENTIRELY self-contained. It affects the lives of a half-dozen fairly amoral people. No one else in the city, let alone the world, is affected by the outcome of the story. But it's a great story. While I certainly wouldn't put my own writing skills on that level, for me City of Towers and "Principles of Fire" all fall into this category - a few days in the lives of people in Sharn. And "Principles of Fire" is my personal favorite of everything I've written to this point.
Raiders of the Lost Ark is the "Toys in the Box" story. It DOES involve a threat to the entire world: what could happen if the Nazis are able to harness the amazing powers of the Ark? But in the end (shocking spoilers ahead!) they fail, and the Ark is taken away by "Top Men". It's dramatic, it's over the top... and ultimately, no one in the world knows about it except for Indy and Marian. That's the remaining two novels of The Dreaming Dark. You COULD decide to make them canon, and it still wouldn't require you to throw out anything in the ECS. It presents an EXPANDED threat... but a threat that the rest of the world knows nothing about.
Finally, we have Lords of the Rings - the true, world-shaking, epic series. I'm not opposed to events of this magnitude happening in Eberron. But when they happen, I want YOU to be driving them. Even if you aren't the prime movers, I at least want you to be at the heart of the action. Eberron is based on that idea that YOU are among the most remarkable people of the age, whether you are heroes our villains.
As a result, *I* prefer to write stories closer to Raiders or The Maltese Falcon. I want novels to INSPIRE your adventures; I don't want them to end up making your characters sit on the sidelines while someone else makes a real difference in the world.
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