damnit, I want Lantan Back

[CyberThread]

If I have to have a 5e Forgotten realms that snipped in the bud of the mortal casters having huge high level magic then I want Lantan back.

This is a perfect chance for Gond to get back into power as a major god. I want steampunk in forgotten realms to be a thing. We just came out of the dark ages with the sundering, lets have some age of enlightenment stuff now.

Here you folks go, wondering what am talking about. http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Lantan

[Nagalipton]

I don't even know much about Lantan and I agree with you. Maybe its just been the influx of dark age/post apolocolypse stuff lately, but yeah I wouldn't mind at all playing a game in a place/time where things were actually going well for once.

[CyberThread]

I don't even know much about Lantan and I agree with you. Maybe its just been the influx of dark age/post apolocolypse stuff lately, but yeah I wouldn't mind at all playing a game in a place/time where things were actually going well for once.



I dont mean good wins over evil, just standards of living.

[Nagalipton]

I know. That is what I meant. I guess I've just played one too many games lately where being a dirt farmer means "Hey, I have land! I'm doing pretty well." It would be a nice change of pace to have more games with a better standard of living ya know?

[rlc]

some early renaissance stuff would be great, actually. it can help to make the world seem more realistic and less stagnant. obviously, nobody's suggesting a loss of magic in favor of technology, or anything, but just a little more progress in society would be a nice touch.

[T.G. Oskar]

This is a perfect chance for Gond to get back into power as a major god. I want steampunk in forgotten realms to be a thing. We just came out of the dark ages with the sundering, lets have some age of enlightenment stuff now.

I doubt that'll be a thing, if only because of the response towards Eberron. That is: Eberron has its fans (myself included), but for the new edition, people want a proper High Fantasy world, and they ALL point to the Realms as one.

In terms of history, the Sundering (and thus, the course of the campaign setting's history post-Sundering) will be a return to status quo: the glorious return of the Weave (and thus Mystra), the return of deities and familiar concepts, except Dragonborn and Tieflings will be a thing. Post-Sundering FR will behave as a sort of retcon to the history, after having to conform to 4e concepts for so long.

If the FR suddenly develop steam technology one way or another, people will cry in outrage. One of the reasons why the people that loathe Eberron (and happen to overlap with being Realms fans) do so is because they loathe the idea of technology in their world, when all they want is a High Fantasy world; the Eberron thread in ENWorld (done by none other than the creator of Eberron itself) often has people downright lambasting the creator by saying "I don't like Eberron because of X", and insist on explaining why when the creator shrugs and says "well, sure, you don't like it; that's fine, that means Eberron's not for you, thanks for pointing that out!". In other words; people that loathe Eberron SO MUCH that they INSIST on telling why the system is wrong when the creator of the setting recognizes they don't like it and seeks to go forth. They especially loathe the Warforged, which were tucked into the Realms via a backdoor through one of the articles in 3.5-era Wizards site (it's on the archives and everything). Now, imagine steam technology gets its way; the outcry will be immense, constantly hearing people say "get steampunk out of my Realms!"

Which is another reason why steampunk shouldn't be on the Realms: the existence of Eberron as a setting, which deals with dungeonpunk (to an extent). Eberron IS already the setting where Magitek is a thing, what sets it apart from other worlds (just like "post-apocalyptic" is what sets Athas apart, and "unexplainable horror" what sets Ravenloft apart); the only concept people accept overlapping is High Fantasy worlds, if Greyhawk (Oerth) and the Forgotten Realms (Toril) show (and also Dragonlance [Krynn], though Tinker Gnomes are a thing there).

Judging by the popularity and the vocal audience, people apparently prefer High Fantasy worlds, and would like those worlds to evolve but never change beyond their favored setting (think Rokugan, from Legend of the Five Rings; stagnant technology- and society-wise, but the world has changed A LOT on the years in which the game has developed). Wizards of the Coast are aiming towards that strategy with the events that begun since 4e and Encounters, and are now developed as Organized Play (probably the only reason why I'm so loathe to do Organized Play, since that means I'd have to delve into the Realms, which I don't really like; for High Fantasy play, I'd go straight into the more familiar waters of Greyhawk for that).

[Occasional Sage]

Lantan has always been a favorite of mine, I'm with you. I don't want magitech to pervade the entire setting, but if I were to run a FR campaign I'd absolutely brew it in.

[Theodoxus]

It worked for Pathfinder - Golarion is nicely divided up by region that covers everything from high fantasy to gothic horror to magictec and steam. With devilish and demonic overtones in some places and old one influences in others. And you can make it as seamless or cordoned off as you like. If Paizo can do it, I'm sure WotC can too - especially with SpellJammer supposedly making a come back. Just need to bust open the crystal shards and bring worlds together. Hmm... be a good opening for another Star Wars reboot - hehe.

[Occasional Sage]

It worked for Pathfinder - Golarion is nicely divided up by region that covers everything from high fantasy to gothic horror to magictec and steam. With devilish and demonic overtones in some places and old one influences in others. And you can make it as seamless or cordoned off as you like. If Paizo can do it, I'm sure WotC can too - especially with SpellJammer supposedly making a come back. Just need to bust open the crystal shards and bring worlds together. Hmm... be a good opening for another Star Wars reboot - hehe.

Yeah, but Golarion does it BADLY, like everybody's homebrewed setting got one country dropped in, with some sloppy stitching to hang it together long enough to get to print. I'd look elsewhere for an example.

[MunkeeGamer]

Snip

All that is fine but it would be helpful if there was an explanation for how so many geniuses could live in the world and not start getting some advanced engineering in the works.

Take Game of Thrones, they have vicious cycles of magically destructive winters. There is so much death and famine that the brightest people don't have sufficient resources to make large technological strides. Therefore, you have a planet trapped in 1400's Earth level technology for 10's of thousands of years.

It would be nice to have that sort of explanation.

[Sartharina]

If the FR suddenly develop steam technology one way or another, people will cry in outrage.
Given that we're asking for something back, it's pretty damn clear FR already had steam technology.

[Scirocco]

Didn't FR gnomes make "smokepowder" and clockwork Gondsmen? It's not Eberron levels of everyday magitek items, but it's there in the setting.

Edit: Did not read OP, fail.

[toapat]

*Well written post*

really, i have 2 responses to this post:

1: Eberron: I used to dislike this setting because i felt like it was an extremely poorly fleshed out setting for DnD that has too many ideas working simultaineously for it. I realized this opinion is wrong, because it is trying to blame the end results of whe objective that is hidden under itself. When i realized that the Twelve houses are Megacorperations, with Transnationalism. That is when the veil ceased to exist. I realized that Eberron is a poor attempt at cloning Shadowrun in DnD. People dont like it because its trying to split the difference between Mideval stasis of Faerun and the Dystopian Shadowrun Earth and it doesnt work. the seams are poorly sanded. Sure its fun in its own form. but can we just have shadowrun?

2: I find the distaste of steam-tech in high fantasy to be kinda, out of place. It typically is treated as part of the technology within the roman to late renaissance social era blend that High Fantasy fuses together. It just flows into the world organically. Maybe its like how Rich has included steampunk into this book of OotS, There are places of high-steampunk, but they almost exclusively are around sources of steam as opposed to coal mines or other sources.

[T.G. Oskar]

really, i have 2 responses to this post:

1: Eberron: I used to dislike this setting because i felt like it was an extremely poorly fleshed out setting for DnD that has too many ideas working simultaineously for it. I realized this opinion is wrong, because it is trying to blame the end results of whe objective that is hidden under itself. When i realized that the Twelve houses are Megacorperations, with Transnationalism. That is when the veil ceased to exist. I realized that Eberron is a poor attempt at cloning Shadowrun in DnD. People dont like it because its trying to split the difference between Mideval stasis of Faerun and the Dystopian Shadowrun Earth and it doesnt work. the seams are poorly sanded. Sure its fun in its own form. but can we just have shadowrun?

Aside from belonging to a string of other corporations (i.e. first FASA then WizKids which is not affiliated to Wizards of the Coast, THEN Catalyst, though the videogame rights belong to Microsoft, of all people. Ironic, no?), Eberron and the world of Shadowrun (heck, the world of Earthdawn) are only tangentially similar.

You can say that the Twelve Houses are Megacorporations and then work around that (the Twelve being the counterpart of the Corporate Court, for example), but they don't behave much like the typical megacorp. In Shadowrun, Ares and Aztechnology are at heads with each other, because they're the competition. In Eberron, the only known divides are Deneith and Tharashk in terms of mercenaries, Phiarlan/Thuranni because of family divide for the control of information gathering and Orien/Lyrandar for transportation. Otherwise, all merchant guilds work by controlling the trade in their specific areas, are family-based (in Shadowrun, only one megacorp is family based) and don't have corporate extraterritoriality (i.e. they control their own territory; not even Deneith has pulled that off). You can say that the extraplanar horrors like the Daelkyr and the Quori behave a lot like the Insect Spirits, the actual Horrors and the Shedim in Shadowrun, but that can be also attributed to other sources (the Cthulhu Mythos being a strong example).

Eberron is somewhat disjunct, but its focus is on pulp adventure at the end of a great (dare I say "World") war that divided a once-glorious human nation into five, and the repercussions of what happened. Indeed, there are many powers that are biding their time, and are mostly on a "cold" war scared of re-igniting the great war once again (thus showing the war never ended; it just reeled from the Day of Madness). Shadowrun is nowhere near that; there is no Third World War in the distance, and while there are many powers, they usually have their proper name (those "hidden powers" are usually Dragons, and people know about those either: one happens to have its own megacorp!). Playstyle is very different, as well: the usual type of adventure in Eberron is delving for artifacts in jungle-laden Khyber, rather than pulling a job against a megacorp just because a Johnson asked for it (with the foregone betrayal). Sure, you can pull off a shadowrun in Eberron (the concept of doing a run and the setting), but that involves fundamentally changing the nature of the corporations into bitter rivals that are willing to sabotage each other for money. That would involve the end of the Twelve, at the very least.


2: I find the distaste of steam-tech in high fantasy to be kinda, out of place.

I agree to this, though. I'll give the example of the thread done by Keith Baker regarding the support of Eberron in 5e (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?367594-Please-Support-Eberron!). Pages 3 and 6 onwards have very vocal people expressing what they loathe about Eberron, and most of it resumes in "it doesn't feel like Tolkien/D&D inspirations, it's not High Fantasy, don't get technology in my High Fantasy world". You'll notice that there's overlap between Eberron haters and Realms lovers when they place the Realms as THE High Fantasy world (with heaps of mentions to Greyhawk, as well).

Now, tell those people that FR will have a sort-of Industrial Revolution, maybe ONLY in one place, and spearheaded by gnomes or Gorn-worshippers. They might have an outcry and use the same argument: even if you mention that steam technology existed before, that will make no difference. The Forgotten Realms are known for their High Magic inclinations, where you're more than expected (nay, obliged) to find ultra-powerful Wizards (I mean, one such ultra-powerful Wizard is one of the setting's poster boys); to say that technology should run its course would be blasphemy to them.

That said, even in high-magic worlds, you can definitely justify the existence of early Industrial Revolution technology: it's natural that someone finds a way to simplify work and apply it en masse. It's also very likely to see magic fuse in, with Fabricate helping with that mass production, to allow commoners to have easy work without the need of magic. You can even find firearms (early firearms, of course) in the hands of PCs...and that's probably where the "suspension of disbelief" kicks in; when you expect Lord of the Rings and you end up with, say, The Patriot or any 13 Colonies/French Revolution story. It ruins the DM's vision of the world, particularly one that's highly established by stories. Eberron never had such thing (to be frank, though, no author has become popular enough by writing Eberron stories to be considered as someone to define the world, much like R.A. Salvatore did for Drizzt and the Underdark, nor has the setting creator as a prolific writer, as Ed Greenwood or Margaret Weis does with their worlds); it never had a specific way to play, just a canvas where to play many kinds of stories. In a way, it's not a story turned campaign, but a setting designed to be played from the very beginning.

Oh, and one of the posters in said thread does mention you can play espionage/theft stories a la Shadowrun, but also emphasizes on pulp stories a la Indy, which I find also a thing.

[hiryuu]

really, i have 2 responses to this post:

1: Eberron: I used to dislike this setting because i felt like it was an extremely poorly fleshed out setting for DnD that has too many ideas working simultaineously for it. I realized this opinion is wrong, because it is trying to blame the end results of whe objective that is hidden under itself. When i realized that the Twelve houses are Megacorperations, with Transnationalism. That is when the veil ceased to exist. I realized that Eberron is a poor attempt at cloning Shadowrun in DnD. People dont like it because its trying to split the difference between Mideval stasis of Faerun and the Dystopian Shadowrun Earth and it doesnt work. the seams are poorly sanded. Sure its fun in its own form. but can we just have shadowrun?

Not really - It's much worse: Eberron (at least, Khorvaire) is a bit more like Renaissance Italy/France with merchant guilds mixed with the best parts of Birthright.


2: I find the distaste of steam-tech in high fantasy to be kinda, out of place. It typically is treated as part of the technology within the roman to late renaissance social era blend that High Fantasy fuses together. It just flows into the world organically. Maybe its like how Rich has included steampunk into this book of OotS, There are places of high-steampunk, but they almost exclusively are around sources of steam as opposed to coal mines or other sources.

It really is weird - my own setting is more Diesel/Ameripunk, and people seem to recognize it as high fantasy right away. "I don't care that we're on an airship powered by steam and also a ghost of an ancestor, we're about to wrestle a hurricane! With Grapple checks! From the back of pterodactyls!"

As in. Once your players are having fun. They won't care what setting it is.

[Baveboi]

There is already plenty of steampunkish things going on for Faerun, to be honest. Aside from Lantan and the high cities, like Waterdeep, you already have very high-end technobabble flying around, if you take some stories to the letter. In Baldur's Gate 2, Irenicus' Dungeons were always high-end techno-magic stuff with controls and pipes and all, but always powered by magic, including Spellhold! You have the Planar Sphere which is magical, but full of pipes, levers and technobabble.

I always look at magic, religious writ and mundane stuff in the same way I look at scientific realizations of our era: to us the effectiveness of a thin-pointed javelin over a broad-headed arrow is completely irrelevant, but what about to people in Faerun? Putting that into perspective helps with technological advancements in all areas.

Professional thieves will hold mechamagical hand-lights; Veteran mercenaries will wear crossbows tethered to their waists with unlockable iron chains; wizards will research new inks and papers and who knows, maybe someone inadvertently invented the automagical press and is pumping out books left and right!

Putting those things into perspective helps create a world more similar to ours, closing the gap for immersion, but also gives depth to a world filled with magic and wonder.


EDIT: Also, a gun? Is a one-charge Wand that deals physical damage.

[toapat]

*snip*

Actually Harebrained Schemes has the rights to Shadowrun videogames, hence the pretty decent Shadowrun Returns.

I know Eberron isnt Shadowrun in DnD. I want to see Ravnica Campaign Setting be that, to take the relationships the 10 guilds have and really flesh them out beyond what the already existing material for the setting does. Eberron to me just feels like a bunch of good ideas Kieth Baker had/read about/stole but could never decide any defining archthemes from. it feels like it is trying to be Shadowrun with its own ideas added in, but it fails one of the best ways to make something truly robust: Start with something simple, refine complexity from it. Most other good DnD settings do that really, really well. Darksun is the evils of magic, ravenloft is the Dracula's castle for Dracula, Faerun is The gods are real and subsist on faith as generated by action. Planescape is getting to talk to those gods, while Spelljammer is high fantasy Star Trek. But Eberron? you cant sumarize effectively without self referential terms.


Not really - It's much worse: Eberron (at least, Khorvaire) is a bit more like Renaissance Italy/France with merchant guilds mixed with the best parts of Birthright.

can i get a link to birthright somewhere? Either way theres no point where you cant just point at the Twelve and call out how terrible that the houses are mechanically for the rest of the setting (along with the other 100,000 poorly reinforced ideas that eberron has going).

although Rule of Cool trumps everything, the world should itself once examined hold together from a fairly robust structure. I pretty much cant poke and explode eberron.

[Baveboi]

although Rule of Cool trumps everything, the world should itself once examined hold together from a fairly robust structure. I pretty much cant poke and explode eberron.

I respect your wits a lot, toapat, but you have to admit that it's kind of a personal taste there. Eberron is not nearly as well fleshed out as some settings (greyhawk, ravenloft and forgotten comes to mind), but it's strength lies in that the setting is very malleable. I will agree it is hardly a well-structured setting, for sure, but I guess it is supposed to be that way; to bend like the bamboo stall instead of standing tall like the oak tree.

I feel like you can do pretty much anything in Eberron as long as you don't step on anyone's toes. At least anyone at the table, for all that the rest matters.

[toapat]

I respect your wits a lot, toapat, but you have to admit that it's kind of a personal taste there. Eberron is not nearly as well fleshed out as some settings (greyhawk, ravenloft and forgotten comes to mind), but it's strength lies in that the setting is very malleable. I will agree it is hardly a well-structured setting, for sure, but I guess it is supposed to be that way; to bend like the bamboo stall instead of standing tall like the oak tree.

the idea im kinda trying to convey is how robust the setting is conceptually, Faerun and Ravenloft are settings i can emulate just on their concept pretty well, where as Eberron you have to get into alot of fine details which are rarely extrapolated. There is no singular defining direction of the setting. Sure this makes it more real then Faerun but from a purely conceptual standpoint, i dont have something where i can latch the wierd things that go on onto, like how in Faerun the drow logically should be either Extinct or all female (as a result of magical "pollution" in the form of a certain magic item) but then theres Lolth and the archetheme there to at least patch over the holes with "Lolth is kinda arbitrary and likes having a drow Society" to justify the existence of the works of RA Salvatore. Where as with Eberron, i can tell you that Lady Vol wants to reclaim the power of her dragonmark, and nothing else about her decision making. I cant tell you what will happen with the Dragonic Prophecy, i cant say anything about what the leaders of flamekeep want. I cant tell you what the next moves of the Stormlords or the Dragonmarked Houses are intended to be. Eberron exists not as a living setting but as a world frozen in a single frame. there just isnt any natural state of the setting. It exists, nothing more, nothing less.

[Sartharina]

Actually Harebrained Schemes has the rights to Shadowrun videogames, hence the pretty decent Shadowrun Returns.

I know Eberron isnt Shadowrun in DnD. I want to see Ravnica Campaign Setting be that, to take the relationships the 10 guilds have and really flesh them out beyond what the already existing material for the setting does. Eberron to me just feels like a bunch of good ideas Kieth Baker had/read about/stole but could never decide any defining archthemes from. it feels like it is trying to be Shadowrun with its own ideas added in, but it fails one of the best ways to make something truly robust: Start with something simple, refine complexity from it. Most other good DnD settings do that really, really well. Darksun is the evils of magic, ravenloft is the Dracula's castle for Dracula, Faerun is The gods are real and subsist on faith as generated by action. Planescape is getting to talk to those gods, while Spelljammer is high fantasy Star Trek. But Eberron? you cant sumarize effectively without self referential terms.The only thing that Shadowrun and Eberron have in common is the "Noir" genre that they can both use (Eberron based on 1920s era of Al Capone, and Shadowrun based on Cyberpunk, which is Noir set 20 minutes in the future).


the idea im kinda trying to convey is how robust the setting is conceptually, Faerun and Ravenloft are settings i can emulate just on their concept pretty well, where as Eberron you have to get into alot of fine details which are rarely extrapolated. There is no singular defining direction of the setting. Sure this makes it more real then Faerun but from a purely conceptual standpoint, i dont have something where i can latch the wierd things that go on onto, like how in Faerun the drow logically should be either Extinct or all female (as a result of magical "pollution" in the form of a certain magic item) but then theres Lolth and the archetheme there to at least patch over the holes with "Lolth is kinda arbitrary and likes having a drow Society" to justify the existence of the works of RA Salvatore. Where as with Eberron, i can tell you that Lady Vol wants to reclaim the power of her dragonmark, and nothing else about her decision making. I cant tell you what will happen with the Dragonic Prophecy, i cant say anything about what the leaders of flamekeep want. I cant tell you what the next moves of the Stormlords or the Dragonmarked Houses are intended to be. Eberron exists not as a living setting but as a world frozen in a single frame. there just isnt any natural state of the setting. It exists, nothing more, nothing less.Eberron is "The pulp mashup of the 20s, 30s, 50s, and 60s in a Dungeonpunk world". To understand what's going on with Eberron, it helps to be familiar with famous pulp fiction from the 20's.

[Steel Mirror]

Eberron you have to get into alot of fine details which are rarely extrapolated. There is no singular defining direction of the setting.Really? I always introduced Eberron as the "industrial magic steampunk setting", and that seemed to get it's schtick across pretty well. Sure there is plenty of stuff to the setting beyond that, but that's true for any of the settings you mentioned. For a core identity though, I think Eberron's is pretty widely recognized. So well recognized, in fact, that you get all the haters lamenting how magic-y and steampunk-y it is.

[Sartharina]

There isn't any steampunk in Eberron, though. It's closer to Dieselpunk, anyway. But with bound elementals instead of diesel engines.

[MeeposFire]

Yea I can't say I had any trouble trying to get a concept across from Eberron. It is fairly distinct however I will say the setting is designed on purpose to have a lot of open ended options so that your campaigns can have a lot of freedom and making tow DMs games in the setting very different depending on how they see everything. For instance how and why the Day of Mourning happened. On the other hand FR tends to be a lot more controlled and explained and that is how it has been since its start. It also had the benefit of being from the time when TSR would allow a bunch of small books and the like to discuss just the fluff of tiny parts of the world which is something you don't see at all for any setting anymore.


Eberron lends itself to very different games than most FR tables and after playing in it my players were very pleased with it. The noir flavor works really well and it is well supported in the game. It will not be for everybody but if you like the sort of games it supports then it is great. I do think FR has a big advantage from novels and games. Unlike Eberron they actually are part of the setting (for better and for worse) and I think that most authors understand the more standard fantasy that is represented in FR than the more unusual style used with Eberron which I think only a few could utilize effectively.

[jedipotter]

If the FR suddenly develop steam technology one way or another, people will cry in outrage. One of the reasons why the people that loathe Eberron

It would not be ''sudden'', the Forgotten Realms is just about at the ''18th century'' or so mark with all ready existing things like steam engines, printing presses and such as canon.

And the reason lots of us loath Eberron is as it was made to be the anti-Realms. Just take the top three things from the Forgotten Realms: Powerful magic and powerful characters, lots and lots and lots of gods and huge physical size. Now, take all three away, and you have: Eberron.

[toapat]

Really? I always introduced Eberron as the "industrial magic steampunk setting", and that seemed to get it's schtick across pretty well.

It gets the concept of the world's basis of technology across quickly, Its not actually anything to do with taking one idea and making that the driving force of the whole setting (and a driving force is WAY more important). Eberron doesnt have an idea driving it at all. You dont just bs and wing it with eberron, you have to do all of the research, align people with 5-6 different factions, and determine where in the dragonic prophecy someone goes if at all. In Faerun there are so many strings attached to the "Dieties being Dieties" that even without giving anyone migration patterns, everyone has sufficiently defined objectives to set them on some murdercourse. the Leaders of Flamekeep, or the Stormlords (because i have read those ones specifically, along with the Lord of Blades) Dont attempt to give you an idea of how these people even interact with eachother, let alone their goals. All we know about anyone in eberron is their position in some local political hierarchy.

[Sartharina]

It gets the concept of the world's basis of technology across quickly, Its not actually anything to do with taking one idea and making that the driving force of the whole setting (and a driving force is WAY more important). Eberron doesnt have an idea driving it at all. You dont just bs and wing it with eberron, you have to do all of the research, align people with 5-6 different factions, and determine where in the dragonic prophecy someone goes if at all. In Faerun there are so many strings attached to the "Dieties being Dieties" that even without giving anyone migration patterns, everyone has sufficiently defined objectives to set them on some murdercourse. the Leaders of Flamekeep, or the Stormlords (because i have read those ones specifically, along with the Lord of Blades) Dont attempt to give you an idea of how these people even interact with eachother, let alone their goals. All we know about anyone in eberron is their position in some local political hierarchy.Actually, you can just wing it with Eberron, and it's really damn easy. There is a single driving force behind the whole setting "1920's-60's Pulp Magazine stories IN D&D!"

[toapat]

Actually, you can just wing it with Eberron, and it's really damn easy. There is a single driving force behind the whole setting "1920's-60's Pulp Magazine stories IN D&D!"

except none of the NPCs have motivations and the Alignment stamp doesnt matter in eberron. im not kidding either, everyone ive read about is completely devoid of objectives, opinions, traits, or anything that defines who someone is beyond an unnecessarily complex backstory defining their current social status.

Besides that, "cheap to print sensationalist media" doesnt make a setting compelling either, or give it objectives or even a framework of how it works. Everything in DnD draws from the stuff pulp magazines dumped into the market, by simple virtue of saturation. As does all good media because each piece adds to the grand lego-abomination that is each prior piece to create a greater whole.

[Steel Mirror]

Ironically, toapat, it sounds to me like you are describing the Realms, not Eberron. I had all the problems with FR that you are saying you have with Eberron: difficulty seeing how pieces are fitting together, confusion about what is supposed to make the Realms hang together as a setting (I still don't understand that really), confusion about what defines the various factions and how a player is possibly supposed to use any of it with a character that makes any sense at all. It wasn't until Eberron came out that I felt that I finally understood anything about what made a published D&D setting tick, or felt like I could make a character that fit in coherently with the world he was supposed to have grown up in!

Not saying that you are wrong of course, I believe that that is how Eberron makes you feel. Just funny that you and I have essentially mirrored opinions of the issue.


There isn't any steampunk in Eberron, though. It's closer to Dieselpunk, anyway. But with bound elementals instead of diesel engines.For getting the point across, steampunk always worked for me. Maybe it's because I don't have any players who know enough about the subculture for the distinction to matter. If I said "dieselpunk" to them I would get blank stares. If I said "steampunk" they would go "oh, time to roll another warforged!"

[toapat]

Ironically, toapat, it sounds to me like you are describing the Realms, not Eberron. I had all the problems with FR that you are saying you have with Eberron: difficulty seeing how pieces are fitting together, confusion about what is supposed to make the Realms hang together as a setting (I still don't understand that really), confusion about what defines the various factions and how a player is possibly supposed to use any of it with a character that makes any sense at all. It wasn't until Eberron came out that I felt that I finally understood anything about what made a published D&D setting tick, or felt like I could make a character that fit in coherently with the world he was supposed to have grown up in!

Not saying that you are wrong of course, I believe that that is how Eberron makes you feel. Just funny that you and I have essentially mirrored opinions of the issue.

Alot of the problem with doing such in Faerun comes from each character either having too much backstory for their character description (Drizz't, Elminster), or just not really understanding how you have to view certain lenses of character definition (Alignment and Patron deity). And im severely underselling exactly how painstaking that is. It also doesnt help that in most editions, there are no hard and fast "10 commandments" for each god and that their dogma is typically spread across 3-6 books

and it's not not seeing how the pieces fit together, it's seeing anywhere these pieces could change to affect the setting. Faerun characters have motications that are at least reasonably accepting of extrapolation, but rarely a place in the world, but Eberron characters have, typically, extremely well defined places in the world (with the exceptions of the villians who baker wanted more "mobile") and poorly defined characterization. The gears of Faerun are all constructed but dont fit together, while the gears of Eberron fit together but have no teeth with which to turn eachother.

[MeeposFire]

This is unfortunate that you think it is somehow difficult to just do a start up game in Eberron. I can understand that you may not care to start one but that is a far cry from it being difficult. You can seriously do any game in Eberron. Sure some types of games do not make much use of much of the uniqueness but one can make the same point about some types of games in FR. As an example of a simple game you could just be a group of adventurers in Sharn (why Sharn it is the biggest city it would be like starting in Waterdeep which I think is a fairly common starting point for a number groups) and the city guard need some new blood to help them with a job and are willing to hire out. This is so simple it would work in FR and it also works in Eberron. So are there advantages in doing an Eberron game with the uninitiated? Actually yes there are a few.


Smaller map and scope. Eberron takes place in an "smaller" world. Relative to FR there are far fewer countries (especially ones that you would expect to use in a new game) which makes them easier to choose and to use. Also while FR places do have different backgrounds it is often easy to confuse some of them due to their similar names at times (is Icewind Dale part of the Dales? no? whoops) and sheer number of nations to choose from with small overlap. As an example Tethyr and Cormyr are both monarchies but are in fact very different but if you have many dozens of countries to choose from you may confuse the differences and forget where they are. In comparison there are less than a dozen nations that you are likely to start with in Eberron and each has a unique quality for you to hang on to (Breland has a proto democracy, Karnath has undead armies, etc). While FR has the unique nations there is a lot to sift through and some are just city states in areas and not even full countries like Baldur's Gate.

The organizations give you automatic hooks to grasp if you so choose. Are you a dwarf? Would like to be part of a Draognmarked family? Yes or no? If you say yes then you have an auto connection in the world that you can use to help the new player get used to the world. This is similar to asking a FR player would you like to be a Harper but with far less baggage since Dragonmarked characters generally don't have to be that secretive.

The lack of automatic alignment works towards your advantage. Everything has an alignment in Eberron but the trick is that something like a Red Dragon are not automatically evil (though THAT one could be). Every character has an alignment and so does every creature. Most typical creatures do not have set alignment that you can put on every creature such as that Red Dragon but that does not mean you cannot get a feel for characters or races in Eberron. Most of the races have been given traits that set them apart culturally. This is far better than just silly old alignment which really does not tell you much anyway. It is far more fun and interesting to me to just show the halfling player a picture of him on his dino mount on the Tallenta planes to give him inspiration than saying "most halflings are lawful good" (if you are going to show him some traditional halfling art to inspire him from FR then that is simlar to what I would do in Eberron).

Forgotten Realms does have the advantage of being closer to the standard. That means that if you just play things by stereotypes with no knowledge of the setting you will probably be closer to what is actually there than Eberron but to me if you are going that generic you may as well have no setting. Forgotten Realms also has a nice ability for you to go "I want to play a character from this real historical society" and that probably exists somewhere on Faerun. On Eberron that would take a bit more thought to find which fits best whereas in FR you can be much more literal.


You can totally do Eberron off the cuff with new players. Ask my old players that is the setting they first played in and did their first games playing and DMing and it was easy and they love it.

[hiryuu]

Most other good DnD settings do that really, really well. Darksun is the evils of magic, ravenloft is the Dracula's castle for Dracula, Faerun is The gods are real and subsist on faith as generated by action. Planescape is getting to talk to those gods, while Spelljammer is high fantasy Star Trek. But Eberron? you cant sumarize effectively without self referential terms.

I like to think of settings as the answer to a question.

Ravenloft: What if D&D had been written by Mary Shelley?
Faerun: What if gods were an actual daily problem?
Planescape: What if your beliefs could become the truth?
Spelljammer: What if the physical model Kepler believed in was right?
Eberron: What if people treated magic as part of the world, rather than apart from it?

Eberron is also neck-deep in a cold war. You look at our planet just thirty years ago and you couldn't poke it without everything exploding. It's intentional. Also. PLAYER CHARACTERS. In Eberron you're not supposed to be reading about Drizzt or Elminster. PCS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THOSE GUYS. They spend four pages talking about how hardcore the king of Breland is and when you read his stats he's like a level 8 Fighter/Aristocrat and for some reason that means people say it's a "low level" setting. It's not. It's a high level setting. In Eberron, you hit level 10 and the Lords of Dust are after you, you are not hearing about how cool someone else is in a supplement, put down that supplement book, YOU ARE IN THE JAEGER COCKPIT AND THERE IS A KAIJU COMING UP THE HELL RIGHT NOW. HE KILLED YOUR PARENTS. HIS AXE IS ON FIRE. WHAT DO.

I'll reiterate: PCs are supposed to poke Eberron, and it's supposed to explode. That is why it explodes when you poke it.

Complaining Eberron falls aparts/reacts harshly to people messing with its delicate balance of power is weird to me. It's like complaining that miner's picks are good for mining but terrible for cooking flapjacks.


can i get a link to birthright somewhere? Either way theres no point where you cant just point at the Twelve and call out how terrible that the houses are mechanically for the rest of the setting (along with the other 100,000 poorly reinforced ideas that eberron has going).

One person's poorly reinforced ideas are another person's GM leeway >_>

Anywho, Eberron got a lot of flak in the early days of its release as being a Birthright rehash. That's actually the most common complaint I hear about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthright_%28campaign_setting%29

[MeeposFire]

Wait people remember Birthright? Lol I kid...mostly.

[Sartharina]

I like to think of settings as the answer to a question.

Ravenloft: What if D&D had been written by Mary Shelley?
Faerun: What if gods were an actual daily problem?
Planescape: What if your beliefs could become the truth?
Spelljammer: What if the physical model Kepler believed in was right?
Eberron: What if I wanted to punch out Robot Nazis in the Jurassic Park Outback?
Fixed it for you! :smalltongue:

[hiryuu]

Fixed it for you! :smalltongue:

oh god its trueeeee

[Occasional Sage]

I like to think of settings as the answer to a question.

Ravenloft: What if D&D had been written by Mary Shelley?
Faerun: What if gods were an actual daily problem?
Planescape: What if your beliefs could become the truth?
Spelljammer: What if the physical model Kepler believed in was right?
Eberron: What if I wanted to punch out Robot Nazis in the Jurassic Park Outback?



Fixed it for you! :smalltongue:




I now want to see one of my favorite graphic novels (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780980930207-2) ported to D&D.

[toapat]

Eberron: What if people treated magic as part of the world, rather than apart from it?

I'll reiterate: PCs are supposed to poke Eberron, and it's supposed to explode. That is why it explodes when you poke it.

Complaining Eberron falls aparts/reacts harshly to people messing with its delicate balance of power is weird to me. It's like complaining that miner's picks are good for mining but terrible for cooking flapjacks.

1: Eberron may ask that question but it doesnt do the answer justice like with the Tippyverse.

2: do realize ive been talking about the DM materials for eberron, where everything needed to do what ANYONE is claiming happens doesnt exist whatsoever. Without exception, the named NPCs have a complete lack of motivations/objectives. No one has opinions or ideas or active goals. claiming that the setting is intended to explode at the lightest tap runs countermeasure to the actual printed material. So everyone Attacking my arguments has apparently had an awesome DM who suffered through having to dredge through the setting books for hours to find who lived here in city X, only to have to completely wing who they are once they get there.

Eberron may have the best spectacle of any of the settings so far, but behind that there is very little substance

[hiryuu]

1: Eberron may ask that question but it doesnt do the answer justice like with the Tippyverse.

Tippyverse treats people like they're components of a math equation and makes leaps with the item creation rules like they're laws of physics and not simple guidelines. Tippyverse, at its core, requires that every wizard operates in a vaccuum until they hit level 20.

"Treating magic as part of the universe" also includes all of the religious and sociological consequences, not just what you can do if you have a GM who won't say "no" and unrestricted access to 20th level wizards who somehow get to ignore text that doesn't suit their purposes.


2: do realize ive been talking about the DM materials for eberron, where everything needed to do what ANYONE is claiming happens doesnt exist whatsoever. Without exception, the named NPCs have a complete lack of motivations/objectives. No one has opinions or ideas or active goals. claiming that the setting is intended to explode at the lightest tap runs countermeasure to the actual printed material. So everyone Attacking my arguments has apparently had an awesome DM who suffered through having to dredge through the setting books for hours to find who lived here in city X, only to have to completely wing who they are once they get there.

Eberron may have the best spectacle of any of the settings so far, but behind that there is very little substance

Wait, the Quori, the opposing sides of House Cannith, the Ashbound, the Lords of Dust, King Kaius, the hags, the Greenkeepers, and just about every named House, government, or evil organization don't have goals? That's news to me. And it seems to run counter to the reason why you don't like it. Those are the ones off the top of my head - like, the Ashbound want to end all arcane magic. The Quori want to conquer the world by controlling dreams at the source. House Cannith has at least two opposed factions who want all the moneys. King Kaius is ready to sacrifice anything and anyone for the ability to make his people safe and happy - even the souls of his children. Even his own soul. He's already done that. There are motivations everywhere. You don't even have to look: the goals emerge organically from the beliefs of the organizations and people in question. Which is sort of the opposite of the Realms: Zhentarim seem like cartoon evil because they -are- cartoon evil. They have no goals other than "be evil, spy on things."

Again, this is just off the top of my head. I actually haven't touched D&D for like ten years in favor of homebrewed nearly everything, FATE, and nWoD.

Maybe instead of us all having or being "awesome DMs," you've just had bad ones?

Either way, this is all just opinion. I'm not a huge fan of Faerun, as an example, and that mostly comes from the history courses I've taken (not a huge fan of medieval Turkey being about less than thirty miles from 1700s Spain, and so forth).