Customizing Published Settings?

[Palanan]

For those of you who run games in published settings, how much do you customize those settings, and in what ways?

I'm open to comments on any of the 3.P settings, such as Greyhawk, Krynn, Golarion, Forgotten Realms, etc. I'm just curious what sorts of individual modifications people make when running games in those settings.

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[Falontani]

the creator of Eberron has essentially told everyone to use #ime (in my eberron) because a large portion of the setting is specifically left ambiguous for the DM to choose what happened, or have no correct answer. Eberron as a setting is highly adaptable to what you want for it

[afroakuma]

Dragonlance
I ignore the Fifth Age stuff and stick to the original War of the Lance timeline or earlier. Just personal preference.

Forgotten Realms
I call it "An Old Man Died Today." The tl;dr is that Elminster is dead, and the Chosen are depowered, leaving the world to adventurers once more.

Greyhawk
No modifications.

Planescape
I've written about my modifications already in... a couple of threads. I'd direct you there.

Spelljammer
I connect it with Planescape.

Birthright, Dark Sun, Eberron, Mystara, etc.
Haven't played, haven't played, won't play, won't play, yada yada.

[Falontani]

Eberron
won't play, yada yada.

Any particular reason?

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by afroakuma
Forgotten Realms
I call it "An Old Man Died Today." The tl;dr is that Elminster is dead, and the Chosen are depowered, leaving the world to adventurers once more.

That does seem like a simple way to remove those particular issues, if they would be troublesome for a campaign.


Originally Posted by afroakuma
Eberron
won't play, yada yada.

I’m also curious about this. Is it the attempt at noir style in the setting, or something more nuts and bolts?

[Psyren]

Our own campaign (3.P) is a hybrid of Golarion and FR. Gods from both will answer your prayers, and they are very cagey on whether they are truly separate entities or just aspects of one another that are called by different names by different peoples. The geography is mostly FR, but our GM has used some aspects of the Inner Sea (particularly the Shackles, which isn't too far from the Sword Coast.) The Chosen and other major NPCs aren't necessarily dead but they are very much absent (other planes or planets). Halaster is still around, but primarily for the purposes of trolling by our GM if we need to go to to Undermountain or the Underdark for some reason. Firearms, alchemy, and psychic magic are much more prevalent than in regular FR. We're pretty sure Netheril and Shade are back in the sky somewhere.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Psyren
Our own campaign (3.P) is a hybrid of Golarion and FR.

Now that wouldn’t have occurred to me. But what you describe sounds like a “best of both worlds” approach.


Originally Posted by Psyren
Halaster is still around, but primarily for the purposes of trolling by our GM if we need to go to to Undermountain or the Underdark for some reason.

Yup, I had a 3.5 DM who trolled us with Halaster when we were trapped in Undermountain.

Apparently I was the only player who actually read the FRCS, because I was the only one to recognize who it was. :smallsigh:


Originally Posted by Psyren
Firearms, alchemy, and psychic magic are much more prevalent than in regular FR.

Very interesting. The FRCS doesn’t have psychic magic, of course, but now I’m trying to remember if alchemy and firearms had much of a native presence in FR. A quick check of the index doesn’t show either term, but Wizards has always been index-challenged.

[Tvtyrant]

I frequently rip chunks out and stick them together with new names if that counts. Cormyr is a fantastic setting for The Red Hand of Doom during its succession crisis, for instance, and I can pretty much be assured that with a few name changes and goblins/orcs/dragons turned into any other groups of monsters players won't recognize either.

[Psyren]

Now that wouldn’t have occurred to me. But what you describe sounds like a “best of both worlds” approach.

More like a compromise :smallbiggrin: I would have personally preferred pure Golarion, but FR is my GM's wheelhouse, so we collaborated on this approach.



Very interesting. The FRCS doesn’t have psychic magic, of course, but now I’m trying to remember if alchemy and firearms had much of a native presence in FR. A quick check of the index doesn’t show either term, but Wizards has always been index-challenged.

Yes, and that's another good example - Our GM put some dead/impeded/wild magic zones in the Anauroch desert (side-effects of Netheril's fall), functioning similarly to the Mana Wastes in Golarion. That allowed us to stick Alkenstar there, and that became one of the primary sources/exporters of firearms for the modified Realms, out of necessity.

Alchemy we simply had be widespread since in PF, you don't need magic to make them. We're using Golarion goblins so they are also big proponents due to their pyromania.

As far as Psychic magic, we simply use that in place of psionics for ease of play (no need to add psionic loot to monster treasure for instance.) Mindflayers and such are sorcerers like in the core MM, but with the psychic bloodline. There are various FR articles explaining where psionics is likely to pop up in the Realms, so those are the source for psychic magic.

[Troacctid]

My #1 most common change to published settings is probably "Make NPCs queerer." It shouldn't be that hard to include, and yet I don't know of any canon 3.5 material for any setting that has even a single openly gay couple or nonbinary human—and those are the two easiest forms of LGBTQ+ representation to add to a game.

[Psyren]

My #1 most common change to published settings is probably "Make NPCs queerer." It shouldn't be that hard to include, and yet I don't know of any canon 3.5 material for any setting that has even a single openly gay couple or nonbinary human—and those are the two easiest forms of LGBTQ+ representation to add to a game.

Golarion is good at this, including queer representation among several of their class iconics.

[el minster]

My #1 most common change to published settings is probably "Make NPCs queerer." It shouldn't be that hard to include, and yet I don't know of any canon 3.5 material for any setting that has even a single openly gay couple or nonbinary human—and those are the two easiest forms of LGBTQ+ representation to add to a game.

I think Forgotten Realms has something. I may be wrong though.

[Nifft]

My #1 most common change to published settings is probably "Make NPCs queerer." It shouldn't be that hard to include, and yet I don't know of any canon 3.5 material for any setting that has even a single openly gay couple or nonbinary human—and those are the two easiest forms of LGBTQ+ representation to add to a game.

Greyhawk had several, but was pretty low-key about it.

If you play the video game Temple of Elemental Evil, in the intro area you can see that the two male lords of the place defer to each other like a married couple, and they live in a castle with exactly one bedroom, and one big bed in that bedroom. (IIRC Rufus and Burne were their names.)


=== ====== ===

Anyway, what I do for settings mostly is pare down the intrigue palette.

If I'm running in Eberron, for example, there are in total far too many threats of different sources and natures, so I need to pick a handful and focus on those. (I usually add a few "background noise" threats & events, one which might sometimes turn into a foreground threat / event if it would be relevant, but which mostly just serve as stuff to talk about with NPCs and read about in the paper.)

The original handful will be in the campaign pitch / background doc, or I'll give a larger list and ask the players to vote on which ones the campaign will be about. This will be the first step of Session Zero so players will have enough context to make characters who are relevant to the campaign.

[nijineko]

For those of you who run games in published settings, how much do you customize those settings, and in what ways?

I'm open to comments on any of the 3.P settings, such as Greyhawk, Krynn, Golarion, Forgotten Realms, etc. I'm just curious what sorts of individual modifications people make when running games in those settings.
.

The degree of customization varies from setting to setting, and I only use 3.x or earlier official settings:

Birthright - Borrow ideas and mechanics concepts from.
Blackmoor - Borrow ideas and mechanics from, especially the sci-fi, and thus by extension also borrow from the Star Probe and Star Empires material which is where the sci-fi aspects of Blackmoor came from.
Council of Wyrms - Haven't used it yet.
d20 Modern - Heavily borrow ideas and mechanics from; since D&D is also d20 and both are official, why not use what works?
Dark Sun - Heavily borrow ideas and mechanics from, as well as use many of the core concepts for wasteland settings.
Dragon Fist - Don't use, besides, Green Ronin owns it now anyway.
Dragonlance - Borrow ideas and mechanics from.
Eberron - Borrow ideas and mechanics from.
Forgotten Realms (includes Al-Quadim, The Horde, Kara-Tur, Malatra, and Maztica) Heavily borrow ideas and mechanics from them all.
Ghostwalk - borrow mechanics from, but I'm not fond of the setting fluff or ideas.
.
Greyhawk - This is the default origin of my three D&D campaign settings: Goldenhawk (set in the distant past and possibly becoming a branch alternate timeline of Greyhawk, depending on player choices), Shattered Spheres (set in the post-apocalyptic far future of Greyhawk), and Psi-Rhennee (the title is a double pun on a manga and a Gazetteer entry; it is also a potential player choice alternate timeline set in 'current day' Greyhawk). All three are a melding of all the other TSR/WotC campaign settings that I use into one. Whenever I borrow something from elsewhere, it ends up in one or more of these campaign settings.
.
Jakandor - Don't use.
Kingdoms of Kalamar - while no longer part of D&D, those books that were, I borrow ideas and mechanics from.
Lankhmar - Don't use.
Mystara (includes Hollow World, Savage Coast, Thunder Rift) - Borrow ideas from.
Pelinore - Haven't used yet, but on my list to research.
Planescape - Heavily borrow ideas and mechanics from
Ravenloft (includes Masque of the Red Death) - Borrow some ideas and mechanics from.
Rokugan - Another one that is no longer with D&D, but I still borrow ideas and mechanics from the books that were.
Spelljammer - Heavily borrow ideas and mechanics from.
Warcraft - Only one book, haven't used it yet, but it's on my list to research for possible use.
Wilderlands of High Fantasy - Don't use.



General universal modifications:

Cold Iron has the same properties against arcane that it does in folklore.
Charm/Dominate/Mind Control type effects only work if the target willingly accepts it (roleplayed).
Changed epic rules to be more in line with the concepts of the BECMI materials.
Stacking rules expanded to apply to everything; anything that could produce an infinite or near-infinite loop only works for one loop max, and then only if it does not violate stacking rules.
Clarified how death and the afterlife works.
Magic of any kind can only be obtained via Contract with a Source (roleplayed).

[Tiktakkat]

I've run a series of campaigns for a group set in Greyhawk for 21 years and counting.
Events and resolutions from prior campaign arcs carry over, and regularly feature in new campaigns. The most notable geography affecting ones are:
Keoland has reestablished control over the Sheldomar including the Hold of the Sea Princes.
The Pomarj has been liberated by adventurers originally from Keoland and currently mostly autonomous.
The hills at the northern tip of the Barrier Peaks have been organized into a small country allied to Keoland.
The Scarlet Brotherhood is collapsing due to an ancient curse from destroying an artifact being unleashed on them by an adventurer who infiltrated them explicitly for the purpose of inflicting the curse on them.
Turrosh Mak has discovered the underground "road" beneath the Lortmils and abandoned the Pomarj, allowing it to be liberated as above, and is currently readying his orc hordes to invade Verbobonc from the below and the west.

Other elements are mostly background, with some associated house rules, related to various background essays I have written about the setting over the years.

[Asmotherion]

My custum setting is in many ways a combination of Eberon and the Forgoten Realms.

The main World used to be one planet, but a war between Titans and Gods divided it into two, with one orbiting the other as a sort of moon.

One of the worlds is prospering with steampunk-themed magitechnology (practically eberon on steroids).

The other is in decline, with only some spots having full magic (mostly big cities and ancient places) wile the further you go from a city, the lower the maximum spell level you can cast, with a default of cantrips in the wilderness being the default. There are Ancient Ruins that remind modern real world technology (think train rails, drones etc), but nobody really knows what they are supposed to do. The last people who knew either died long ago, or are not willing to share the knowlage.

Kings of both planets are shapeshifting Draqons, so in a way, it has some Dark Sun influences as well.

There's even a Matrix Themed "Mind" plane on the astral that the Old Ones (since I'm legally not allowed to use the term that rhymes with "Find Players") created as a source for an augmented psychic energy resource, and act as "agents" in it.

It's also heavyly influenced by multiple world mythologies.

Is it basically copying stuff and adding them together? Sure. But in a way, isn't all modern fiction basically copying stuff and developing on it?

As long as you avoid copyrighted material, and can fluff your world as something unique, you can do whatever you want.

Also, if you don't intend to publish or DM in an official game, nobody forces you to follow the campain's canon.

Finally, when creating a Campain and/or Adventure your Canon as a DM overites the published cannon. It's just assumed that, unless specified otherwise, the campain's default canon applies.

[NigelWalmsley]

I’m also curious about this. Is it the attempt at noir style in the setting, or something more nuts and bolts?

I don't know that I wouldn't play Eberron, but I do think that a lot of the world-building it tries to do is kind of a miss. I like the idea of a magical industrial revolution, but Eberron feels like it spends too much time making things that are "X thing from the IR, but magic!", which I find intellectually uninteresting. The Lightning Rail is a Magic Train, but it's ultimately just a train. If you want to put a train in your setting, you should just make it a train. Making it a Magic Train just puts it in an awkward grey area where I can't be totally sure if the things I know about trains apply, but the aesthetic doesn't give you anything else to work with. A setting that was either genuinely different from the industrial revolution, or willing to just have trains and guns and zeppelins to go with its wizards would be much more compelling.

[Nifft]

I don't know that I wouldn't play Eberron, but I do think that a lot of the world-building it tries to do is kind of a miss. I like the idea of a magical industrial revolution, but Eberron feels like it spends too much time making things that are "X thing from the IR, but magic!", which I find intellectually uninteresting. The Lightning Rail is a Magic Train, but it's ultimately just a train. If you want to put a train in your setting, you should just make it a train. Making it a Magic Train just puts it in an awkward grey area where I can't be totally sure if the things I know about trains apply, but the aesthetic doesn't give you anything else to work with. A setting that was either genuinely different from the industrial revolution, or willing to just have trains and guns and zeppelins to go with its wizards would be much more compelling.

The very obvious trouble with that sort of thing -- which you're free to discover yourself if you want to try it -- is the prevalence of armchair engineer players who will try to use whatever techno-magic interaction you've dreamed up to break your setting wide open. It starts out with you trying to define calories of heat per caster level per 5 ft. square, and then there's some furious scribbling, and then a few time units later someone is angrily demanding that you allow him to use a customized Spell Engine to convert a cord of wood and a small newt into 1.37 million GP worth of salt every six seconds.

Eberron sidesteps that entirely, by not having any such interaction, and just replicating the props and trappings directly. Whatever aspects of railroad travel you want it to contain, it will contain exactly those aspects, and nobody can "prove" your choices wrong because it's magic and you don't gotta explain squat.

You can't "prove" your DM wrong, either, but that shouldn't matter if you trust each other. Just ask about the train things you care about, or if you are the DM just tell your players that those train things are valid.

[NigelWalmsley]

The very obvious trouble with that sort of thing -- which you're free to discover yourself if you want to try it -- is the prevalence of armchair engineer players who will try to use whatever techno-magic interaction you've dreamed up to break your setting wide open.

That ship sailed when Permanency listed Wall of Fire as a valid target, entitling any 12th level Wizard to make himself an unlimited number of fantasy nuclear reactors. Which Eberron ignored in favor of inventing new magic stuff. That's not a problem per se, as settings can and should introduce new elements, but if you're going to write a setting where people do magic at the economy, you should probably use a system where A) there are substantive rules for the economy and B) doing that doesn't cause the world to explode.


Eberron sidesteps that entirely, by not having any such interaction, and just replicating the props and trappings directly.

You understand that doesn't make any sense, right? Trains don't have any techno-magic interactions to sidestep. They're mundane things that actually exist. You don't have to create some potentially game-breaking interactions to get trains, you just declare that you can in fact run a steam engine, and bam, trains. Now sure, there could be some rough edges between trains and the rules, but the Lightning Rail can't sidestep that. If the players try to run a train into a monster, or blow up a train with Fireballs, the rules have to do something, and declaring that your trains run on arbitrarium doesn't solve any problems at that point.

Insofar as this argument is generally correct, it's an argument for adding really weird stuff. If you're just going to rely on DM fiat to smooth over the rough edges, you don't need to limit yourself to trains. Add a magic internet, or magic space stations, or magic nanotech. If you're going to ask me to suspend my disbelief for a magic industrial revolution, it needs to be different from the actual industrial revolution, because that is a thing that really occurred and requires no suspension of disbelief. It's like having sticks with enchantments of hardness and sharpness instead of swords. You could do that, but what's the point?


You can't "prove" your DM wrong, either, but that shouldn't matter if you trust each other.

It's not about "proving the DM wrong". It's about reducing friction. When a character drops something, we can assume that it will fall to the floor. Similarly, I can assume that tables are basically tables, and walls are basically walls, and so on for all the elements of the environment. I don't need a bunch of back and forth to establish that I can order a mug of ale from the tavern, pay for it with money, put it down on a table, and have it stay there. But once you add magic, that goes out the window. Does a Fireball start fires? I don't know. I can't know, or make a reasonable assumption, because Fireballs don't actually exist. That means you should only add fantasy elements when they fill some role the real world does not. And a great deal of what exists in Eberron does not pass that test.

[Nifft]

if you're going to write a setting where people do magic at the economy, you should probably use a system where A) there are substantive rules for the economy and B) doing that doesn't cause the world to explode. D&D players do nothing in terms of the economy.

D&D isn't a game with a realistic economy.

That truth is not limited to Eberron.


You understand that doesn't make any sense, right? It looks like you didn't see the point I was making, and you're kinda flaming me instead of trying to figure out what I meant.


Insofar as this argument is generally correct, it's an argument for adding really weird stuff. If you're just going to rely on DM fiat to smooth over the rough edges, you don't need to limit yourself to trains. The DM needs to smooth out the rough edges no matter what. There is no answer to this scenario which removes the need for DM work and DM fiat.


It's not about "proving the DM wrong". It's about reducing friction. When a character drops something, we can assume that it will fall to the floor. Similarly, I can assume that tables are basically tables, and walls are basically walls, and so on for all the elements of the environment. I don't need a bunch of back and forth to establish that I can order a mug of ale from the tavern, pay for it with money, put it down on a table, and have it stay there. But once you add magic, that goes out the window. Does a Fireball start fires? I don't know. I can't know, or make a reasonable assumption Or you could, you know, read the rules (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fireball.htm).

Here's what the rules say:



A fireball spell is an explosion of flame that detonates with a low roar and deals 1d6 points of fire damage per caster level (maximum 10d6) to every creature within the area. Unattended objects also take this damage. The explosion creates almost no pressure.

You point your finger and determine the range (distance and height) at which the fireball is to burst. A glowing, pea-sized bead streaks from the pointing digit and, unless it impacts upon a material body or solid barrier prior to attaining the prescribed range, blossoms into the fireball at that point. (An early impact results in an early detonation.) If you attempt to send the bead through a narrow passage, such as through an arrow slit, you must “hit” the opening with a ranged touch attack, or else the bead strikes the barrier and detonates prematurely.

The fireball sets fire to combustibles and damages objects in the area. It can melt metals with low melting points, such as lead, gold, copper, silver, and bronze. If the damage caused to an interposing barrier shatters or breaks through it, the fireball may continue beyond the barrier if the area permits; otherwise it stops at the barrier just as any other spell effect does.

tl;dr - Eberron did good things for good reasons, and fireballs are not an unknowable mystery.

[Falontani]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C. Clarke

The thing is. They did have an industrial revolution. But rather than steam power, electricity power, chemistry, and the like. The used magic. Our world either does not have magic, or it's a branch of science we somehow sidestepped and never discovered.

The most advanced chemistry that Eberron has afaict is some of the alchemical items. Which is alchemy (pseudoscience that evolved into chemistry) that requires magic to do. They can make alchemist's fire. Which isn't difficult to do. We did it back in ancient Greece and probably earlier.

So, everything you know about chemistry and all the fields related to it (read: most modern day scientific fields) does not work in Eberron.

Next take a look at the Crossbow. Compare the statistics of a crossbow with various real world crossbows through the ages, and find that they are different than what we can make.

In essence their lightning rail isn't a train. The science behind trains and the lightning rail are so different that calling them the same thing would just be wrong. But they share similarities. They both transport people/cargo. They both have tracks. Ish. So while we can look at the lightning rail and say train, and they could look at or train and say lightning rail, we could not have an engineer that knows all about trains to be able to look at a lightning rail and detail exactly how it works. Nor could their artificers do the same thing with our trains.

Remember that we use combustion engines, which use many mini controlled explosions to function. This is every day for us. Them tapping into the elemental properties of an air elemental using Khyber Dragonshards and elemental lodestone while infusing 1/458th of their Dragonmark's power every 8 seconds may be everyday to them.


So if you boil it down to what they represent in our world, then whatever, it isn't all that different. But if you look at what the differences represent and don't outright say, it is literally, a world of difference.

[NigelWalmsley]

That truth is not limited to Eberron.

No, it isn't. But Eberron chooses to center that aspect of things by having a setting where various economic uses of magic are central to the concept. The Dragonmarked Houses are supposed to be various sorts of industrialists. Having economic rules that don't make sense is fine if all you want to do is go into dungeons and fight monsters. But if you want me to care about an organization whose entire purpose is "do magic to the economy", that needs to be an action that causes zero things to explode.


It looks like you didn't see the point I was making, and you're kinda flaming me instead of trying to figure out what I meant.

You'll note that this is the exact thing you did. Except I made substantive arguments, and here you are insisting that those arguments totally don't apply without bothering to explain why. I personally don't find that persuasive, but I can't speak for anyone else.


The DM needs to smooth out the rough edges no matter what.

That's not a reason for any particular rough edge. Again, what do we get for having Magic Trains instead of actual trains? Because we are paying a cost, so we should be accruing a benefit. Otherwise the tradeoff we're making is bad, even if it is inevitable that we must make some tradeoffs.


Or you could, you know, read the rules (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fireball.htm).

You missed the point. The point was not that "does Fireball light things on fire" or "you have to ask your DM if Fireball lights things on fire", but that you can't know a priori, in the same way you can know a priori that humans have two arms, or that the sun is out during the day and not the night (which I had assumed was clear from context). What Fireball does in any particular set of rules is irrelevant, because it could just as easily do other things under other sets of rules, and there would be no reasonable argument that one version or the other was more or less correct. Whereas if your rules asserted that humans normally have eight arms, people would quickly identify that as bizarre.


Eberron did good things for good reasons

I certainly imagine that might be true. Given the absence of any such good reasons (or any reasons at all) in the post you actually wrote, it seems somewhat unfair to claim this as a "TL;DR". Also somewhat strange to slap one of those on a post that's got maybe eight sentences of non-quoted content.


In essence their lightning rail isn't a train. The science behind trains and the lightning rail are so different that calling them the same thing would just be wrong. But they share similarities. They both transport people/cargo. They both have tracks. Ish. So while we can look at the lightning rail and say train, and they could look at or train and say lightning rail, we could not have an engineer that knows all about trains to be able to look at a lightning rail and detail exactly how it works. Nor could their artificers do the same thing with our trains.

You seem to be missing the point. The point is not that the Lightning Rail is literally the same as a train. Obvious it is powered by technobabble and trains are not. The point is that it does the same things to the setting as a train, and that as a result the technobabble does not add anything, because trains wouldn't be out of place in the setting. Now, you could imagine settings where that wasn't the case. If Eberron was an Iron Age setting, except with the Lightning Rail, that would be interesting, because an Iron Age setting wouldn't normally have trains. Similarly, if instead of Magic Trains you had a Magic Internet or a Magic Space Shuttle, that would also be interesting. But just slapping "magic" on a setting element you could simply use doesn't add anything but confusion.

[Nifft]

No, it isn't. But Eberron chooses to center that aspect of things by having a setting where various economic uses of magic are central to the concept. The Dragonmarked Houses are supposed to be various sorts of industrialists. Having economic rules that don't make sense is fine if all you want to do is go into dungeons and fight monsters. But if you want me to care about an organization whose entire purpose is "do magic to the economy", that needs to be an action that causes zero things to explode. Eberron is a D&D setting. There is no sane economics in D&D. That's a universal truth which isn't specific to Eberron, and isn't changed by Eberron.

There are economic trappings in Eberron, but there is no rules-based economy. D&D is not that type of game.

Eberron does not pretend to have rules about an economy.

D&D games in Eberron are not about an economy.

You're making an attack on a thing which does not exist.


You'll note that this is the exact thing you did. Except I made substantive arguments, and here you are insisting that those arguments totally don't apply without bothering to explain why. I personally don't find that persuasive, but I can't speak for anyone else.
I'm not flaming you. I'm not telling you that you're speaking nonsense.

I think you're not engaging the points which I'm talking about.


That's not a reason for any particular rough edge. Again, what do we get for having Magic Trains instead of actual trains? Because we are paying a cost, so we should be accruing a benefit. Otherwise the tradeoff we're making is bad, even if it is inevitable that we must make some tradeoffs. We get to discount terrible armchair engineering tropes like this one:


That ship sailed when Permanency listed Wall of Fire as a valid target, entitling any 12th level Wizard to make himself an unlimited number of fantasy nuclear reactors. That sort of thinking kills games -- and happens to be wrong, but that's irrelevant because the whole point here is that Eberron avoided that whole midden-heap of disruptive player shenanigans.

It looks like you don't agree that there is a problem, but that's not really any kind of substantive argument. I do see the problem, and I like that this particular setting solved it for me, in a way that sets player expectations to a useful default set.


You missed the point. The point was not that "does Fireball light things on fire" or "you have to ask your DM if Fireball lights things on fire", but that you can't know a priori, in the same way you can know a priori that humans have two arms, or that the sun is out during the day and not the night (which I had assumed was clear from context). What Fireball does in any particular set of rules is irrelevant, because it could just as easily do other things under other sets of rules, and there would be no reasonable argument that one version or the other was more or less correct. Whereas if your rules asserted that humans normally have eight arms, people would quickly identify that as bizarre. You're posting in the in the D&D 3.x forum, specifically in a thread about published settings.

Published settings for D&D 3.x is the correct context to assume.

[afroakuma]

Any particular reason?


I’m also curious about this. Is it the attempt at noir style in the setting, or something more nuts and bolts?

I quite simply don't like anything about it. I'd only play it if the only alternative was Golarion, in which case my warforged artificer and I would enlist in an expedition to Xen'drik before you could say "daelkyr."

[NigelWalmsley]

You're making an attack on a thing which does not exist.

Yes. Because that thing should exist, because huge swaths of the setting are based on their impact on that thing. Imagine that Eberron was a Mad Max knockoff which postulated that adventures would involve driving around in scavenged vehicles, but did not provide any vehicle rules. That would be a failure of the setting, even though D&D does not have vehicle rules to begin with. If the primary actors in your setting are economic, you need economics rules.


It looks like you don't agree that there is a problem, but that's not really any kind of substantive argument.

There are two arguments.

First, the problem is an absence of rules. If there were rules for how much energy output you could get out of a Wall of Fire in various setups, we wouldn't have a problem. In the same way that people don't derail games to have arguments about whether or not the prices of Longswords made sense. It's precisely the insistence that we shouldn't be upset about leaving massive holes in the mapping between fluff and crunch, or that we should silo things behind the DM saying ... whatever it is you think the DM should be saying instead of "you do that, it does this" that is causing this problem.

Second, the specific distinction of "Lightning Rail" v "Train" does not solve this problem. If you look at the Wall of Fire example, the problem is precisely that we have an element that is made of arbitrarium trying to interact with the rest of the world. You don't get the problem with regular, non-permanent fires, because people know what those do. If we are concerned about people rules-lawyering around the edges of the magic system, the thing to do is to reduce the number of edges the magic system has as much as possible. And that is an argument for mundane trains.


Published settings for D&D 3.x is the correct context to assume.

Yes, if I had made that argument out of nowhere. But I made it in response to an argument in the context of 3e that you did not understand. Obviously I was talking about a broader context. But honestly, what point are you trying to win here? I've explained myself now, all your antagonism is doing is making your complaints about "flaming" look more hypocritical than they already did.

[Nifft]

Yes. Because that thing should exist, because huge swaths of the setting are based on their impact on that thing. There would be no impact. D&D games do not need economics simulators. D&D games feel no impact at all when economics are hand-waved. You're aggressively striking out at an "issue" which does not apply to the game.

The setting is not based on any sort of economics rules. The foundation of your argument is an error.


First, the problem is an absence of rules. If there were rules for how much energy output you could get out of a Wall of Fire in various setups, we wouldn't have a problem. Incorrect, there would be several potential problems. I've alluded to at least one of them.


Second, the specific distinction of "Lightning Rail" v "Train" does not solve this problem. If you look at the Wall of Fire example, the problem is precisely that we have an element that is made of arbitrarium trying to interact with the rest of the world. You don't get the problem with regular, non-permanent fires, because people know what those do. If we are concerned about people rules-lawyering around the edges of the magic system, the thing to do is to reduce the number of edges the magic system has as much as possible. And that is an argument for mundane trains. I've seen significantly more rules-lawyering about attempting to apply real-world engineering concepts to magic than otherwise.

This is because when the magical not-an-engine is powered by unobtanium rather than something "real" like steam, the DM does not feel any need to adhere to real-world numbers nor power output. The game can proceed as laid out in the rules. The damage output for a device of the magical kind isn't some napkin-math pyramid of bad assumptions, but rather some number which arises from the game's rules and guidelines.

The game's rules are terrible at physics and engineering, but that's fine because the game is not about physics or engineering.

The game's rules are also terrible at economics simulation, but that's also fine, and for the same reason.



Yes, if I had made that argument out of nowhere. But I made it in response to an argument in the context of 3e that you did not understand. Obviously I was talking about a broader context. But honestly, what point are you trying to win here? I've explained myself now, all your antagonism is doing is making your complaints about "flaming" look more hypocritical than they already did. Actually, I've been calmly explaining the mistakes in your arguments.

I still am.

[Troacctid]

Yes. Because that thing should exist, because huge swaths of the setting are based on their impact on that thing. Imagine that Eberron was a Mad Max knockoff which postulated that adventures would involve driving around in scavenged vehicles, but did not provide any vehicle rules. That would be a failure of the setting, even though D&D does not have vehicle rules to begin with. If the primary actors in your setting are economic, you need economics rules.
This seems like an extremely weird argument to me. How exactly do House Cannith's financial statements matter for the purpose of a pulp action or noir adventure? Eberron is about dark plots, brave heroes, and cinematic swashbuckling action. Players aren't going to be hired to study the potential economic impact of a new lightning rail station in Zarash'ak using data analysis and statistics. They're going to be hired to figure out who murdered the foreman on the project. Oh, it turns out a Cult of the Dragon Below ritually sacrificed him to weaken a daelkyr's bonds? Quick! Audit the cultists' taxes! 😛

[redking]

My #1 most common change to published settings is probably "Make NPCs queerer." It shouldn't be that hard to include, and yet I don't know of any canon 3.5 material for any setting that has even a single openly gay couple or nonbinary human—and those are the two easiest forms of LGBTQ+ representation to add to a game.

Just use the Pathfinder setting. Its so queer that heteronormative NPCs stick out like a sore thumb.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by NigelWalmsley
…even though D&D does not have vehicle rules to begin with.

This is an odd thing to say, given the rules in A&EG and other sourcebooks.

I’m also including Golarion in this thread, and Pathfinder has an extensive set of vehicle rules.


Originally Posted by Troacctid
They're going to be hired to figure out who murdered the foreman on the project. Oh, it turns out a Cult of the Dragon Below ritually sacrificed him to weaken a daelkyr's bonds? Quick! Audit the cultists' taxes!

I wouldn’t cross off economics out of hand, since some games will veer in that direction, especially if the PCs are trying to govern any sort of territory. There are kingdom rules and downtime rules (at least in Pathfinder), and while they may be fairly abstracted, they do expect some engagement of the PCs with game world economics.

As for auditing taxes, never forget that’s how a certain real-world crimelord was taken down. If the campaign involves investigation of shady dealings, then hunting down those clues could be part of the storyline, and Eberron would be the perfect setting for that.

[Nifft]

I wouldn’t cross off economics out of hand, since some games will veer in that direction, especially if the PCs are trying to govern any sort of territory. There are kingdom rules and downtime rules (at least in Pathfinder), and while they may be fairly abstracted, they do expect some engagement of the PCs with game world economics. 3.5e also has abstract rules for running a business, which I think was in the DMG2.

None of those rules require simulating any particular kind of economy, and the rules apply across settings (Eberron, Greyhawk, Planescape, etc.).

Economic troubles are an excellent background for adventure and dangerous events, but you don't need any specific economic rules for that.


As for auditing taxes, never forget that’s how a certain real-world crimelord was taken down. If the campaign involves investigation of shady dealings, then hunting down those clues could be part of the storyline, and Eberron would be the perfect setting for that. Sure, but it would happen through narration, not by giving your players 700 pages of general ledger hand-outs and saying "here find the bad numbers".

Imagine watching Law and Order, and the prosecution slaps down a thick manila folder. The file contents aren't shown to the audience, but the existence and contents of the file are assumed to be both accurate and incriminating.

The PCs can do the file-slapping. That's accessible to a general audience. But the players probably shouldn't be expected to do actual forensic accounting.

[Troacctid]

There are kingdom rules and downtime rules (at least in Pathfinder), and while they may be fairly abstracted, they do expect some engagement of the PCs with game world economics.
Eberron is very much NOT focused on kingdom management. It's a setting for adventurers who go on adventures. Kingdom management is for NPCs. Sure, your party might get their own island in the Lhazaar Principalities or whatever, but the expectation is that managing it will be either a jumping-off point for adventures or a passive source of income, not "We're all going to be playing Tropico now instead of D&D!"

[NigelWalmsley]

The setting is not based on any sort of economics rules.

"The setting is not based on economics rules" is not an argument in favor of not having economics rules. It's an admission that I am correct in my assessment that Eberron does not provide rules for economics. You may not care. That's fine, you're under no obligation to want rules for economics. But it is flatly absurd to suggest that a character who's background is "fantasy Rockefeller" has no use for economics rules.


Incorrect, there would be several potential problems. I've alluded to at least one of them.

You'll note that "I've alluded to an argument" is rather different from, and substantially less persuasive than, "I've made an argument" let alone "this is the argument". It's statements like this that make your claim to have been pointing out the holes in my position ring hollow.


I've seen significantly more rules-lawyering about attempting to apply real-world engineering concepts to magic than otherwise.

You continue to agree with me. If you are concerned about applying real-world engineering to magic, more magic is not going to fix your problem.


This is because when the magical not-an-engine is powered by unobtanium rather than something "real" like steam, the DM does not feel any need to adhere to real-world numbers nor power output. The game can proceed as laid out in the rules. The damage output for a device of the magical kind isn't some napkin-math pyramid of bad assumptions, but rather some number which arises from the game's rules and guidelines.

Again, there is absolutely no reason you need Magic Trains to do this. We manage to use game rules for swords without insisting that they instead be enchanted sticks to avoid arguments from people who feel they know a great deal about swords.


This is an odd thing to say, given the rules in A&EG and other sourcebooks.

Maybe that's a bad example, but the general point stands. Not having rules is fine if you don't do those things. But Nifft's insistence to the contrary, a game where your character can be the heir to an economic empire does in fact want economics rules. In the same way that a pirate game wants boat rules. If you want to make the argument that the DMG2 business rules are totally sufficient to "do economics" in a satisfying way, you can make that argument, but the argument that a game where the major groups PCs can come from include "bankers", "industrialists", and "totally-not-coal miners" doesn't need rules for that is simply nonsense.


As for auditing taxes, never forget that’s how a certain real-world crimelord was taken down. If the campaign involves investigation of shady dealings, then hunting down those clues could be part of the storyline, and Eberron would be the perfect setting for that.

It's frankly kind of baffling. Following paper trails for actionable information seems like the exact kind of thing that is a perfect fit for Eberron, as do various things that would require economics rules. Troacctid says "audit the cultists' taxes" like it's a punchline, but "the cultists needed Livewood for their doomsday device, let's see if any local businesses received an unusually large shipment recently" seems like exactly the sort of thing you want people to suggest in an Eberron game. And, sure, you could abstract that to various degrees. But the notion that the only acceptable answer is "you do the thing and get the next action sequence" is kind of bizarre. If I'm playing a Noir game, I absolutely want to be leaning on seedy business owners or exploring criminal dealings, in the same way that if I'm playing a Military Fantasy game I want to be moving troops around.

Similarly, Eberron seems like the perfect home for an adventure premise like "you represent the local office of a trading company and need to effectively manage your budget while dealing with the local underworld" or "you're a group of upstart tinkerers challenging established economic powers for dominance", both of which absolutely want useful rules for economics. It's certainly true that you could have all your adventures be Indiana Jones style dungeon-delving, but if that's what you want it seems like Eberron contains a bunch of junk you're never ever going to care about.

[Falontani]

As far as published content goes, I don't think Eberron strays too far off from base dnd rules. It does supply a world that works amazingly as a dnd world.
However, the creator probably does have a fair bit of economy rules that could be used. Probably does have a list of different economic developments ready, and the like. This creator is very passionate and was told that he couldn't print a 300 page book only on the dinosaurs of the Talenta Plains. The editor wouldn't let him. He tried.

I think he could and would be willing to give you the rules you want, but he doesn't have the time, and his editors won't let him publish something like that.

[Nifft]

"The setting is not based on economics rules" is not an argument in favor of not having economics rules. It's an admission that I am correct in my assessment that Eberron does not provide rules for economics. You may not care. That's fine, you're under no obligation to want rules for economics. But it is flatly absurd to suggest that a character who's background is "fantasy Rockefeller" has no use for economics rules. Your argument was actually:


but if you're going to write a setting where people do magic at the economy, you should probably use a system where A) there are substantive rules for the economy
If you want to concede that argument and make a new one, we could discuss a new one, but your assessment was not correct.


You'll note that "I've alluded to an argument" is rather different from, and substantially less persuasive than, "I've made an argument" let alone "this is the argument". It's statements like this that make your claim to have been pointing out the holes in my position ring hollow. Okay.

You're not engaging any of my core points, so I'm left to assume you cannot do that, and you're attacking semantic nuances and tone because that's the best argument available to you.


You continue to agree with me. If you are concerned about applying real-world engineering to magic, more magic is not going to fix your problem. You are incorrect.

I am not agreeing with you.

Removing the opportunity for a problematic disagreement to occur is good. What you're proposing would be the opposite.


Again, there is absolutely no reason you need Magic Trains to do this. We manage to use game rules for swords without insisting that they instead be enchanted sticks to avoid arguments from people who feel they know a great deal about swords. D&D swords are broken into fixed categories which map real sword types in order to circumvent some arguments about real swords.

I've played with people who know a great deal more about swords than I ever will, and their specialized knowledge wasn't mechanically useful to them. This is good. It puts all players on an even standing when engaging with the rules of the game.

His specialized knowledge was amazingly useful when he wanted to add flavor to the game, but everyone at the table was his mechanical equal when it came to stabbing jerks in the face for profit.

This is similar to how removing engineering reality from the game puts all players on the same mechanical foundation with respect to train engines.

Players being able to engage with the mechanics of the game and contribute solutions to the game's challenges are good things. A layer of magical vagueness contributes directly to the game's accessibility.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Troacctid
Kingdom management is for NPCs.

I can’t speak for Eberron, but in Pathfinder there is the opportunity for some very fine-grained kingdom management, especially in the Kingmaker AP.

It’s not everyone’s cup of klah for exactly that reason, but our group definitely went into the details. There were prophecies to avert, rival kingdoms to foil and mysterious magics to overcome, but we also had to deal with the nuts and bolts of keeping our brand-new state in fiscal shape.


Originally Posted by NigelWalmsley
Following paper trails for actionable information seems like the exact kind of thing that is a perfect fit for Eberron, as do various things that would require economics rules….. But the notion that the only acceptable answer is "you do the thing and get the next action sequence" is kind of bizarre. If I'm playing a Noir game, I absolutely want to be leaning on seedy business owners or exploring criminal dealings….

Similarly, Eberron seems like the perfect home for an adventure premise like "you represent the local office of a trading company and need to effectively manage your budget while dealing with the local underworld" or "you're a group of upstart tinkerers challenging established economic powers for dominance", both of which absolutely want useful rules for economics.

Fair to say that I agree with this section. I think both of your premises could make for fun adventures, although I can see how some players would quickly change it to “you represent the office of the local underworld and need to effectively manage your budget while evading the authorities,” for the same reasons that many seafaring campaigns end up as pirate campaigns.


Originally Posted by Falontani
This creator is very passionate and was told that he couldn't print a 300 page book only on the dinosaurs of the Talenta Plains. The editor wouldn't let him. He tried.

Is this on his blog? Because I’d love to read more about this.

Also, shame on that editor for not at least whittling it down to a paperback supplement. I would’ve bought that in a heartbeat.

[Nifft]

Fair to say that I agree with this section. I think both of your premises could make for fun adventures, although I can see how some players would quickly change it to “you represent the office of the local underworld and need to effectively manage your budget while evading the authorities,” for the same reasons that many seafaring campaigns end up as pirate campaigns.

Following paper trails is absolutely supported.

Simulating the whole economy behind the paper is not, and of course isn't necessary for the adventures.

[Falontani]

Is this on his blog? Because I’d love to read more about this.

Also, shame on that editor for not at least whittling it down to a paperback supplement. I would’ve bought that in a heartbeat.

http://keith-baker.com/bts-exploring/

I believe this was the page that talked about it

[Troacctid]

I can’t speak for Eberron, but in Pathfinder there is the opportunity for some very fine-grained kingdom management, especially in the Kingmaker AP.
It's possible in Eberron, but it's not a focus of the setting. There's like a throwaway line in the description of the Lhazaar Principalities acknowledging it as a potential hook for the region, and that's about it.

[NigelWalmsley]

I think he could and would be willing to give you the rules you want, but he doesn't have the time, and his editors won't let him publish something like that.

Frankly, my impression is that the pre-Eberron setting that Keith ran is games in was dramatically better than what we actually got. There are a lot of things that seem like they were watered-down from something interesting to something bland.


If you want to concede that argument and make a new one, we could discuss a new one, but your assessment was not correct.

What contradiction do you think you see here? Because it looks to me like you are quoting two posts saying "there are no economics rules and that is bad". Really, this seems to be a trend with your posts, and it's making it very tiring to engage with you. You seem very fond of talking about your arguments, but largely unwilling to actually make them. The assertion "I am disproving your points" does not really hold up when it comes in the middle of a stream of similar claims married to no actual disproof.


You're not engaging any of my core points

I think you'll find that's because you're not making enough points for any of them to reasonably be described as "core".


Removing the opportunity for a problematic disagreement to occur is good. What you're proposing would be the opposite.

Yes. Which is why we should use things that exist, which have real properties about which we can agree, or strictly-defined mechanical concepts which the rules have set for us. Exactly like we do with swords. Your proposal of "more things made of arbitrarium" creates the exact problem you are trying to solve. That's just what it does, because at some point the arbitrarium will have to interact with the rest of the rules, at which point there will inevitably be a dispute.


A layer of magical vagueness contributes directly to the game's accessibility.

Only insofar as it puts everyone on the same level of knowing nothing and not being able to make reasonable decisions. For accessibility, you need to give people things to interact with. "Arbitrarium block that does arbitrary things" can't meaningfully be interacted with. If it was a real world thing, you could interact with it on that basis. If it had well-defined rules, you could (upon learning the rules), interact with it on that basis. But "magical vagueness" means that the only possible interaction is "play 20 questions with the DM". Which, sure, that equalizes players out of game knowledge. But it does that in a way that is extremely terrible.


It’s not everyone’s cup of klah for exactly that reason, but our group definitely went into the details. There were prophecies to avert, rival kingdoms to foil and mysterious magics to overcome, but we also had to deal with the nuts and bolts of keeping our brand-new state in fiscal shape.

Yes, exactly. Not every group is going to use those rules. But they need to exist, because of what the setting is selling itself as. To expand on the other example from my previous post, consider a different subgenre: Military Fantasy. Now, it's totally true that you can tell stories that are set "in a war" but about a small group of spec ops dudes doing spec ops things. But while that is true, if that's the only thing your Military Fantasy setting delivers, it is obviously a failure as a Military Fantasy setting, even if you happen to personally run only spec ops adventures.

[Troacctid]

Yes, exactly. Not every group is going to use those rules. But they need to exist, because of what the setting is selling itself as. To expand on the other example from my previous post, consider a different subgenre: Military Fantasy. Now, it's totally true that you can tell stories that are set "in a war" but about a small group of spec ops dudes doing spec ops things. But while that is true, if that's the only thing your Military Fantasy setting delivers, it is obviously a failure as a Military Fantasy setting, even if you happen to personally run only spec ops adventures.
What I've been saying is that Eberron is not sold as an Economics setting. It's not a major theme or focus of the setting. The focus is on action and adventure.

Here's a blurb from the Dragon Magazine article that first introduced Eberron to players.

Tone and Attitude
The setting offers a traditional medieval fantasy world filled with pulp noir-style action and adventure delivered with cinematic flair. Keith described it in his original one-page proposal as being like “Lord of the Rings meets Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Maltese Falcon.” If you can imagine what your favorite DUNGEONS & DRAGONS adventure would be like if it were turned into a Hollywood action-adventure blockbuster, you’ve got an idea of the kind of experience your characters will have in EBERRON.
Where in that are you getting the idea that Eberron is selling itself as a dedicated Economics And Bookkeeping setting?

[PairO'Dice Lost]

My #1 most common change to published settings is probably "Make NPCs queerer." It shouldn't be that hard to include, and yet I don't know of any canon 3.5 material for any setting that has even a single openly gay couple or nonbinary human—and those are the two easiest forms of LGBTQ+ representation to add to a game.

My own group is all gay guys, so any setting I run for them ends up looking a lot gayer than normal. Not necessarily "all NPCs are gay unless noted otherwise" levels of gayness, but definitely at least "LGBT+ nobles are common enough that laws around bloodline succession and adopting heirs take that into account as a matter of course and no one bats an eye" levels of gayness.


But Nifft's insistence to the contrary, a game where your character can be the heir to an economic empire does in fact want economics rules. In the same way that a pirate game wants boat rules.

Asking for complex economics rules because PCs can have a background of "is an heir to an international cartel" isn't like asking for ship rules in a pirate campaign, it's like asking for detailed rules for tides and weather patterns that affect one's pirate voyages, or for upkeep and recruitment of the navies that pursue one's own pirate fleets. A closer analogy to "ship rules for pirate PCs" is "resource and connection rules for House heir PCs," which Eberron does in fact provide with the various Favored in House mechanics.


Yes, exactly. Not every group is going to use those rules. But they need to exist, because of what the setting is selling itself as. To expand on the other example from my previous post, consider a different subgenre: Military Fantasy. Now, it's totally true that you can tell stories that are set "in a war" but about a small group of spec ops dudes doing spec ops things. But while that is true, if that's the only thing your Military Fantasy setting delivers, it is obviously a failure as a Military Fantasy setting, even if you happen to personally run only spec ops adventures.

I'm always in favor of adding subsystems to let you explore different parts of the game, but "Eberron fails because it doesn't have an economy simulator" runs into two major issues:

1) Any subsystem that's as large and sprawling as an economy simulator is going to have problems with its level of detail. One intricate and complete enough to let PCs figure out if Baron Al d'Capone is cheating on his taxes is going to be unusably complex for most DMs to deal with, so those DMs just aren't going to use it and will handwave something instead, the same way a system for determining the current tides based on the positions of all of Eberron's twelve moons is going to involve a bunch of math that DMs will ignore in favor of "Okay, half the moons are full right now, it's a really high tide. How high? Uh...really high."

2) Singling out Eberron for its lack of economy makes no sense when it's not a problem unique to Eberron at all and, as noted, it's not even a focus of the setting. AD&D had an explicit expectation that parties transitioned from dungeon crawling at low levels to realm management at mid levels, and the extent of the detail given to that was "at name level, a fighter has a keep poof into existence with a bunch of servants and soldiers that gives him ongoing income, and the DM can figure out the details." Birthright is focused around actually playing all the domain rulers, not just being members of a House, and it abstracted everything to time passing in month-long domain turns, resources being valued in "gold bars" with handwaved gp conversion ratios, and so on.

Obviously 3e is more detailed and concrete in general than AD&D so one expects 3e-native settings to be more fleshed-out, but it's hardly fair to expect a setting themed around noir and pulp adventures to include more detailed economics and political rules than a setting actually themed around economic and political rulership does, and every point about "PCs in Eberron should be able to [economic thingy]" applies equally to Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance and all the rest (the Lords of Waterdeep and the Dragonarmies can be cheating on their taxes too, y'know).

[afroakuma]

Dragonarmies can be cheating on their taxes too, y'know).

They'd better not be cheating on Takhisis...

[SangoProduction]

The entire point of TTRPGs is to make the story your own.

The reason to use a published setting is to help create an anchor for you to build the story in, without needing to personally define how things happen.

Aside from the anchor point - the "default setting" of the chosen world - you should feel free to have things change as much as the story requires.

"Yeh know that 32 Int wizard in the hill over yonder? He probably knows a spell that could save the world from this crisis. Go fetch him!"
*Arrives at the hill. Turns out he died to a brain aneurysm some time ago, leaving his research unfinished. How ever will the heroes save the world? Tune in next time.*

[Fizban]

It's frankly kind of baffling. Following paper trails for actionable information seems like the exact kind of thing that is a perfect fit for Eberron, as do various things that would require economics rules. Troacctid says "audit the cultists' taxes" like it's a punchline, but "the cultists needed Livewood for their doomsday device, let's see if any local businesses received an unusually large shipment recently" seems like exactly the sort of thing you want people to suggest in an Eberron game. And, sure, you could abstract that to various degrees. But the notion that the only acceptable answer is "you do the thing and get the next action sequence" is kind of bizarre. If I'm playing a Noir game, I absolutely want to be leaning on seedy business owners or exploring criminal dealings, in the same way that if I'm playing a Military Fantasy game I want to be moving troops around.

Similarly, Eberron seems like the perfect home for an adventure premise like "you represent the local office of a trading company and need to effectively manage your budget while dealing with the local underworld" or "you're a group of upstart tinkerers challenging established economic powers for dominance", both of which absolutely want useful rules for economics. It's certainly true that you could have all your adventures be Indiana Jones style dungeon-delving, but if that's what you want it seems like Eberron contains a bunch of junk you're never ever going to care about.
Eberron even provides feats like Research and Investigate, with no clear line on how those are actually supposed to be used- because as optional feats, like Track, they can't actually be central to anything. And thus, are meaningless. Ironically, I've noticed some adventures from the old freebie pile that actually say things like "X characters of Y level, and one of them should be able to track." But then the big published adventures won't go for this (that I've noticed), because it would constrain prospective players.

And Eberron has this whole thing about Sivis notarized documents and traveling papers- with only the barest mention of how they're actually used, and with conterfeit papers appearing in the same book as a matter of course just to make sure they don't actually matter.

You could write an adventure where characters with Research and/or Investigate could follow a paper trail to undermine a rival, but what would it actually do? What sort of thing do you have to catch them in, what would it do to them, and what would it take to bring them down? DM, make something up.


What I've been saying is that Eberron is not sold as an Economics setting. It's not a major theme or focus of the setting. The focus is on action and adventure.

Here's a blurb from the Dragon Magazine article that first introduced Eberron to players.

Where in that are you getting the idea that Eberron is selling itself as a dedicated Economics And Bookkeeping setting?
It's not presented as an Economy setting, but it is presented as a Houses and Guilds* setting. And for Houses and Guilds to make any amount of sense, they need to have some sort of rules or even guidelines for how they actually interact (and their current standing), and the biggest factor behind any interaction is cash cash cash. Which Eberron seems to completely lack any useful information on. Everything is up to the DM, with no guidance even for them.

What do we do, and how much will it benefit our guys, or hurt theirs? DM, make something up.

*Though the biggest named houses in Eberron are actually Guilds, and the Houses are the other houses of the Five Nations and whatnot.

1) Any subsystem that's as large and sprawling as an economy simulator is going to have problems with its level of detail. One intricate and complete enough to let PCs figure out if Baron Al d'Capone is cheating on his taxes is going to be unusably complex for most DMs to deal with, so those DMs just aren't going to use it and will handwave something instead, the same way a system for determining the current tides based on the positions of all of Eberron's twelve moons is going to involve a bunch of math that DMs will ignore in favor of "Okay, half the moons are full right now, it's a really high tide. How high? Uh...really high."
But it doesn't need to be that detailed. It needs to exist, in any form, at all.

PHB2 Affiliations are the only 3.5 mechanic that actually does this, as a near-throwaway in a player focused book, which most people only even notice because they give some minor PC benefits. It has obvious holes, but at least it actually tries.

The Web Enhancement for Waterdeep has a list of every single noble house in the city, with their resource limits. Dozens of quick one-line entries that will let you immediately pick out who's who and launching points for how screwed one is if another decides to get rid of them.

Cities have populations and generated NPCs which can be formed into armies, or used as a rough value for economic power, which could have simple adjustments for rich/poor resources. Nations have lists of major cities and overall population total. Add some arbitrary statements about the gear, fortifications, and big magic items like airships or golems they have, name and level the important NPCs, and you've got the data to interact directly with the PCs and make war at least.

The Houses and Guilds in Eberron are a backdrop for pulp adventures- literally a backdrop, with no substance. Nothing is actually supposed to happen to them, they're just there no matter what you do, no matter what the nations do, a more inviolate and unchanging part of the setting than even the character classes themselves. Which means I don't care about anything they "do" or stand for. Much the same way people hate Elminster and the various other uber-NPCs of FR for existing as untouchable static pieces of the setting, except unlike Eberron's houses and guilds, those NPCs have stats.

In fact, because the guild houses are all held up by blood-inherited powers, which are specifically corrupted if they mix bloodlines, they are all but literally prevented from actually taking over each others' affairs. Their intrinsic nature is static, they don't do anything. Any conflicts are petty and pointless, only internal scheming can actually amount to anything. Because of this, it's probably not fair to describe it as a Houses and Guilds setting, since their guilds don't actually function that way. It's actually the opposite of a Houses and Guilds setting, since it's engineered to be static.

(Incidentally for anyone getting tired of hearing me rant about Eberron every time its mentioned, I think I just figured out my short response).

Obviously 3e is more detailed and concrete in general than AD&D so one expects 3e-native settings to be more fleshed-out, but it's hardly fair to expect a setting themed around noir and pulp adventures to include more detailed economics and political rules than a setting actually themed around economic and political rulership does, and every point about "PCs in Eberron should be able to [economic thingy]" applies equally to Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance and all the rest (the Lords of Waterdeep and the Dragonarmies can be cheating on their taxes too, y'know).
PHB 2 spends about 10 pages combined on the base mechanics and creating your own section, and the organization data (rather than PC benefits) for a single group can be described in a paragraph. The basic concepts for DM background use could be distilled into half a page if you don't want any dice or mechanical restrictions involved. Heck, even before that Complete Adventurer had an organization format, which lacks the critical growth/loss mechanics for org v org, but still at least gave number and level of members and usable resources (poofing out of nowhere at a ludicrous gp rate being its own problem of course). I find it kind of offensive that any published setting which claims to have Houses and Guilds as a significant thing couldn't be bothered to do the same- though indeed, it is apparent that Eberron is not actually about that.



As for modifications to settings- seeing as how they lack what I feel is one of the most critical things a setting should have, I'm not likely to specifically play in a Published Setting unless I'm running a published adventure in that setting, and the details of that can be modified and/or built up from as desired. Something like declaring that any sufficiently large population center with a sufficiently leveled crafter will have x/y/z setting-changing item, a large procedural set of changes, effectively becomes a new setting such that having it tied to a published one is more of a hindrance. Though because FR actually does include edition changes in its history, a newer layer of emerging magitech based on the 3.x rules and guidelines would be highly appropriate.

I do kinda like the Ghostwalk setting- it's probably similar to this or that corner of FR, but without all the FR ties. The only problem is that whole pesky "anyone who dies becomes a ghost for free" thing, so one could dump or downsize the ghosts in Ghostwalk and play in the region without the city of Manifest. The Bazareene nobles and their female sorcerer lines could make for the additions of some magical girl classes as they're raised on the idea that everything is fine and then have to try and fix the woes of the world while having latent super magic (the monks of course get monk fixes). But being centered on Manifest and the ghost stuff it would get pretty thin if you dumped that.

Similarly, running OA stuff without seriously using the clans or taint doesn't seem like it would much work. I think you could mash the two together pretty well though, the shadowlands stuff with a more biting contrast and greater danger in taint corruption than just being offed by some nebulous pile of undead, a city where the dead all turn up and can stick around giving in your face reasoning to honor your ancestors and making pilgimages and offerings. And the relatively thin nations in Ghostwalk (sorcs and monks, enlightened pacifists, plains nomads, and arts and stuff) can exist alongside and/or be subsumed into the clans easily.

[NigelWalmsley]

Asking for complex economics rules because PCs can have a background of "is an heir to an international cartel" isn't like asking for ship rules in a pirate campaign, it's like asking for detailed rules for tides and weather patterns that affect one's pirate voyages, or for upkeep and recruitment of the navies that pursue one's own pirate fleets. A closer analogy to "ship rules for pirate PCs" is "resource and connection rules for House heir PCs," which Eberron does in fact provide with the various Favored in House mechanics.

This is a strawman. You don't need a particularly complicated economic system, just as you don't need a full model of the tides. What you need is a system that does not explode when people do things they are explicitly established to be doing. For example, using Fabricate for manufacturing causes D&D's economy to explode. In a normal setting, that can be handwaved by assuming there aren't a significant number of people who want to do that. But Eberron postulates a massive, multi-national organization comprised of people who can and do use Fabricate for manufacturing. And it doesn't fix the issues that causes. Which means that the setting doesn't work.


Singling out Eberron for its lack of economy makes no sense when it's not a problem unique to Eberron at all and, as noted, it's not even a focus of the setting.

This is just false. The focus of the setting is the Dragonmarked Houses, who are economic actors. You don't get to have multinational corporations as the face of your setting and then turn around and say "no it's totally a low-level Noir setting why would you expect economics to be important". That doesn't pass the smell test.


Eberron even provides feats like Research and Investigate, with no clear line on how those are actually supposed to be used- because as optional feats, like Track, they can't actually be central to anything.

Which is why the "make it a feat" model of 3e was doomed to failure. "Research" should be, at most, a usage of a skill.


You could write an adventure where characters with Research and/or Investigate could follow a paper trail to undermine a rival, but what would it actually do? What sort of thing do you have to catch them in, what would it do to them, and what would it take to bring them down? DM, make something up.

I don't know that this is entirely fair. Almost any set of rules is going to require some level of DM making stuff up. The combat rules are the most fleshed out part of D&D, and even they don't come with fully-formed encounters.


In fact, because the guild houses are all held up by blood-inherited powers, which are specifically corrupted if they mix bloodlines, they are all but literally prevented from actually taking over each others' affairs. Their intrinsic nature is static, they don't do anything. Any conflicts are petty and pointless, only internal scheming can actually amount to anything. Because of this, it's probably not fair to describe it as a Houses and Guilds setting, since their guilds don't actually function that way. It's actually the opposite of a Houses and Guilds setting, since it's engineered to be static.

I've said it before, but Eberron would be much more interesting if it positioned itself as "upstart Artificers are clashing with the established Dragonmarked Houses". That also flows substantially better from the mechanics of how Dragonmarks work compared to magic items.

[Troacctid]

This is a strawman. You don't need a particularly complicated economic system, just as you don't need a full model of the tides. What you need is a system that does not explode when people do things they are explicitly established to be doing. For example, using Fabricate for manufacturing causes D&D's economy to explode. In a normal setting, that can be handwaved by assuming there aren't a significant number of people who want to do that. But Eberron postulates a massive, multi-national organization comprised of people who can and do use Fabricate for manufacturing. And it doesn't fix the issues that causes. Which means that the setting doesn't work.
You're right, if Cannith manufacturing were based on fabricate, it would make no sense. Luckily that's not what their manufacturing is based on. At all.


This is just false. The focus of the setting is the Dragonmarked Houses, who are economic actors. You don't get to have multinational corporations as the face of your setting and then turn around and say "no it's totally a low-level Noir setting why would you expect economics to be important". That doesn't pass the smell test.
Which book has a dragonmarked house on the cover? Could you be more specific?

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Troacctid
Which book has a dragonmarked house on the cover?

Presumably the one called Dragonmarked, although I’m not that familiar with the sourcebooks.


Originally Posted by Falontani
This creator is very passionate and was told that he couldn't print a 300 page book only on the dinosaurs of the Talenta Plains. The editor wouldn't let him. He tried.

Thanks for the link to his blog. Looking at that post, it seems as if the comment about 300 pages on dinosaurs was a joke rather than a book proposal.

[NigelWalmsley]

You're right, if Cannith manufacturing were based on fabricate, it would make no sense. Luckily that's not what their manufacturing is based on. At all.

Then either they're idiots for focusing on something less productive than Fabricate, or the setting is even more warped by the existence of something that breaks the economy even more.


Which book has a dragonmarked house on the cover? Could you be more specific?

If I need to answer this question for you, it seems to me you probably don't know enough about Eberron to be trying to defend it. That, or you think "there's not a picture of a Dragonmarked House on a book" is an argument that will make people do anything other than laugh at you.

[Fizban]

Which is why the "make it a feat" model of 3e was doomed to failure. "Research" should be, at most, a usage of a skill.
Oh plenty of things work most efficiently when they're portioned off into feat- Eberron's own idea of putting Significant spells into feats to spread them through the setting is a perfect example (before walling them into bloodlines anyway). But research, investigation, and tracking, things which you would use as examples of basic skill use, are obviously screwed. Someone decided that being able to track with just a basic skill would be too powerful and walled Track into a feat, and then Eberron followed suit. Which is extra funny because tracking already has an obvious line you can draw for actual use, having normal uses track at half speed, so they can't catch up, but Feated or highly skilled users go full speed for the chase.

Not that it's a hard fix of course. Bigger problem is figuring out just what knowledge skills are supposed to mean and whether or not they're actually the right thing for research actions, since the research action in the Eberron feat is just reading books that are in front of you. I guess it's supposed to be that skimming them effectively requires pre-existing knowledge? But what skill do you use for examining shipping records? It's almost like actual knowledge isn't compatible with d20 rolls and monster identification categories.

I don't know that this is entirely fair. Almost any set of rules is going to require some level of DM making stuff up. The combat rules are the most fleshed out part of D&D, and even they don't come with fully-formed encounters.
Yeah, but we're both calling for some sort of economic data to actually back up the supposed guilds and houses. The setting claims to have laws and documentation and bureaucracy, the DM shouldn't have to make all of that up, and the whole point of that stuff is to provide alternatives to "eh just deal with the local lord." Meanwhile a monster in an empty room is still a functional encounter, the blandest possible but it still has all the necessary information, and every monster entry has further info on their behaviors, organization, and often even reproduction. Why do supposedly major pillars of the setting have no stats?

Like, in theory you could write such an adventure, but is it actually even supported? Seriously, I don't know the answer. Everything seems to present the dragonmarked houses as inviolate non-interchangeable setting backdrop monopolies, so is espionage even possible against them? Does it even make sense to have an adventure where the PCs try to stop guild activity via investigation and law, or is everything limited to personal blackmail because the guilds are actually above the law and all that faff about documentation and bureaucracy was bogus? Are they specifically supposed to be immune to that stuff and exist only as questgivers/feat and feature backing? The answer seems to be "ask the DM," but anything else in the game and that answer is considered bad. If a feat read "you now have permission to ask the DM how you can do X," it would be laughed out. Eberron seems to read, "you now have permission to make up stories that involve guilds which may or may not be untouchable, may or may not leverage powerful magic, etc." Gee thanks.


But enough raging: Drilling down through the muck it really does turn out that Eberron isn't about anything more than a hollywood backdrop, expertly painted with re-fluffed magic items and Named Things and integrated player-use mechanics to the point that it looks like there's something there. But it isn't any different from FR or any other broad published setting, where only a dedicated regional book will actually start answering questions. Troacctid is right that the setting isn't actually about the dragonmarked houses- from a player and mechanical perspective they sure make it look like those Dragonmarked Houses are important, until you look at the rest of the books.

The section of Dragonmarked which is actually about the houses is only 71 pages, divided between 12 houses. That's a hair less than 6 pages per house, and that's including artwork and statblocks for random people. Sure there's theoretically more linked to various mechanics, but not really, PrC fluff writeups are only ever fluff. Faiths of Eberron has 96 pages for only 5 major religions, 19 pages each. Five Nations has 143 for five nations, 28 pages each. Sharn has its own book. Xen'drik has like 2 1/2 books: it's own, plus Stormreach which is located there, plus Explorer's which is mostly about going there. Sarlona has its own book. Even "dragons" have their own book, including their own region with 56 pages.

So it should be no surprise that the dragonmarked houses, as supposedly important and tied to player mechanics as they are, exist only as impervious backdrop with no interaction. They've only got like 6 or 7 pages of dedicated information each, always presented as seed ideas, never in hard detail. The vast majority of the published material, even in the base setting book, is about the nations and adventuring regions. It's obvious why Cannith is the only one I ever even remember, since making magic items and an entire race and actually being tied to the ancient civilizations means it's the one with the adventure series and regular mention everywhere- the rest barely even exist, and even Cannith exists as justification rather than an actual group. (And further, why I never remember much of the nations, as they have no serious mechanical representation by comparison, especially in the main book).

But that mechanical link is so strong in the mechanically minded, the people that stick with 3.x, the people that will look at a false coat of paint and rip it off looking for the promised reasoning, that the dragonmarked houses just make the thing look bad. Just skimming around checking stuff for this post has made the setting look a lot more interesting, and suggests one simple change:

Take the Dragonmarked Houses out of Eberron. Take or leave the *even more vague* Draconic Prophecy/physical dragonmarks thing, but replace the guilds with actual guilds based on actual game mechanics and given actual guild stats. Actually. Which pretty much just amounts to admitting the dragonmarks aren't the real power anymore- they were useful in forming the houses, but the secret is that they aren't actually needed now, aside from keeping those in power in power by trying infrastructure to their bloodlines.

I've said it before, but Eberron would be much more interesting if it positioned itself as "upstart Artificers are clashing with the established Dragonmarked Houses". That also flows substantially better from the mechanics of how Dragonmarks work compared to magic items.
True. The obscene variability (and access of spells 2 levels faster than Clr/Wiz) of the Artificer class challenges any and all established purveyors of magic, while stripping away any pretense that world-changing item X/Y/Z wasn't invented because the right person didn't take the right feat to figure it out. But this concept is squandered on fiat airships with contradictory fluff. Because as established, Eberron wants to actually be as static as possible until the DM decides what direction they want to go and finishes writing the setting.

This is plenty compatible with the existing material- you could keep the dragonmarks and the bloodline nonsense that have been supporting the dragonmarked houses, and meet them with the rise of the setting-crushing Artificer and freedom from hereditary lords they represent. This could take the form of an Artificer's guild (or multiple), assigning Affilation stats to everything, forming alliances, and duking it out. The personal drama of high ranking House artificers, marked or not, realizing that they don't need the marked agenda. That they can make items which duplicate all the common marked house powers cheaply and quickly (and possibly with straight up unlimited daily use), which work for anyone and accumulate over time until they outnumber the marked. And so on.

[Troacctid]

Presumably the one called Dragonmarked, although I’m not that familiar with the sourcebooks.
It has a picture of a dragonmarked dude just kinda standing there posing, not really doing anything related to his house's operations AFAICT. I'm not sure that's the best example.


Then either they're idiots for focusing on something less productive than Fabricate, or the setting is even more warped by the existence of something that breaks the economy even more.
Are you sure you know how dragonmarks work? 🤔

House Cannith trains magewrights (and experts) via the Fabricators Guild, typically using magecraft or unseen crafter to create manufactured goods. They also serve as a regulatory body, setting safety standards and things like that. Item production isn't done on an assembly line with high-level Cannith heirs coming in once a day for a single casting of fabricate and then clocking out; the bulk of it is done by independent crafters who are licensed and certified by House Cannith. The closest thing they have to our manufacturing would be the Creation Forges, which are eldritch machines (basically artifacts) that can only be operated by someone with a Mark of Making. Creation Forges are the only known way of creating warforged, which means Cannith had an effectively unbreakable monopoly on all warforged production during the Last War.


If I need to answer this question for you, it seems to me you probably don't know enough about Eberron to be trying to defend it. That, or you think "there's not a picture of a Dragonmarked House on a book" is an argument that will make people do anything other than laugh at you.
You claimed that the Twelve are the face of the setting. Shouldn't that mean they're prominently featured in artwork?

[NigelWalmsley]

I guess it's supposed to be that skimming them effectively requires pre-existing knowledge? But what skill do you use for examining shipping records? It's almost like actual knowledge isn't compatible with d20 rolls and monster identification categories.

Knowledge is only about half monster identification categories. I imagine a lot of research topics would be Local, History, or Nobility and Royalty, but there's stuff there that fits for most stuff. You might want to add a Finance category or something, but that's not really any different than adding Knowledge (Psionics).


Yeah, but we're both calling for some sort of economic data to actually back up the supposed guilds and houses. The setting claims to have laws and documentation and bureaucracy, the DM shouldn't have to make all of that up, and the whole point of that stuff is to provide alternatives to "eh just deal with the local lord."

Sure. The point I'm trying to make is to counter arguments like Dice's that ask for an unreasonable level of detail. Obviously you want more than what exists, but a lot of that can be general rules or pre-defined monster-equivalents.


True. The obscene variability (and access of spells 2 levels faster than Clr/Wiz) of the Artificer class challenges any and all established purveyors of magic, while stripping away any pretense that world-changing item X/Y/Z wasn't invented because the right person didn't take the right feat to figure it out.

It's not that. It's that magic items scale in a way that people don't. If your power is that you can cast Fabricate once a day, that's it. The only way you can grow your operation is having kids, and if you're not keeping pace with population growth you're falling behind. But if you can make an item that casts Fabricate once a day once a week, your operation grows month in and month out. So if you postulate that Artificers are a new development, coming on the heels of the Last War (as economic developments so often do), you get a dynamic conflict that's a lot more interesting than the setting presented.


Item production isn't done on an assembly line with high-level Cannith heirs coming in once a day for a single casting of fabricate and then clocking out; the bulk of it is done by independent crafters who are licensed and certified by House Cannith.

Then either A) that is more efficient than casting Fabricate would be or B) House Cannith is composed exclusively of idiots who don't understand how to use their abilities to do their jobs. Neither one makes the setting coherent. This is a circle you cannot square. If you give people Fabricate, and postulate that they make things for a living, their process must be at least as efficient as Fabricate. Nothing else makes sense.


You claimed that the Twelve are the face of the setting. Shouldn't that mean they're prominently featured in artwork?

They are. They even got a book written about them (Dragonmarked). Yes, there aren't literally pictures of organizations, but that doesn't make any sense. Insofar as it does make sense, pictures of Dragonmarked people are the exact thing you are asking for.

[Fizban]

Knowledge is only about half monster identification categories. I imagine a lot of research topics would be Local, History, or Nobility and Royalty, but there's stuff there that fits for most stuff. You might want to add a Finance category or something, but that's not really any different than adding Knowledge (Psionics).
Which the setting should have already done for you.

But if you can make an item that casts Fabricate once a day once a week, your operation grows month in and month out.
Which I directly addressed during my final paragraph, "which work for anyone and accumulate over time until they outnumber the marked."

They are. They even got a book written about them (Dragonmarked). Yes, there aren't literally pictures of organizations, but that doesn't make any sense. Insofar as it does make sense, pictures of Dragonmarked people are the exact thing you are asking for.
The argument that they need to have a picture on the cover goes nowhere, but is easily countered by how their mechanical player integration in pretty much every book makes them the first (and quite possibly only) part of the setting someone making a character interacts with, right down to magic items (houses!) and transportation (houses!) and food (houses!). The best argument for why they're not is how even in the Dragonmarked book they only have like 6 pages of info for each house, as I pointed out, but this has nothing to do with the appearance of the setting- and in fact with another half a book dedicated to more mechanical player integration, the book only makes them look more important.

But it is pretty poor writing to make such an obvious face and then immediately pivot to anything else. It's like if Mass Effect made a huge deal of all those brand names on the gear you find and you had skills linked into them and got discounts from them and everyone was always talking about how important they are. . . and then the main plot is all about the Reapers which you happened to find out about because the random Tech Corp you picked for your backstory was slotted into the empty spot for questgiver.

[Troacctid]

It's not that. It's that magic items scale in a way that people don't. If your power is that you can cast Fabricate once a day, that's it. The only way you can grow your operation is having kids, and if you're not keeping pace with population growth you're falling behind. But if you can make an item that casts Fabricate once a day once a week, your operation grows month in and month out. So if you postulate that Artificers are a new development, coming on the heels of the Last War (as economic developments so often do), you get a dynamic conflict that's a lot more interesting than the setting presented.

Then either A) that is more efficient than casting Fabricate would be or B) House Cannith is composed exclusively of idiots who don't understand how to use their abilities to do their jobs. Neither one makes the setting coherent. This is a circle you cannot square. If you give people Fabricate, and postulate that they make things for a living, their process must be at least as efficient as Fabricate. Nothing else makes sense.

Which I directly addressed during my final paragraph, "which work for anyone and accumulate over time until they outnumber the marked."
"If I were an NPC, I would simply gain more levels and develop more advanced technology. RIP to them but I'm different."

Cannith heirs who can cast fabricate are not exactly a dime a dozen. It's a greater dragonmark ability. The ones who can cast it can typically only cast it once a day unless they have a (very expensive) focus item. I'm not a mathematician or anything but I don't think that's enough to supply all of Khorvaire with manufactured goods.

Meanwhile, fabricate machines haven't been developed yet in the setting (unless you count Creation Forges). That doesn't mean they couldn't be developed. If a non-Cannith artificer came up with plans for such a device, Cannith would have an interest in acquiring the technology for themselves, or even sabotaging it to maintain their stranglehold on the market. This would be a great hook for an intrigue adventure. Even if it's developed by a member of House Cannith (which is honestly more likely as they have the biggest R&D budgets), the house is fractured enough that the three branches could fight amongst themselves over it. But in the year 998 YK, this chain of events hasn't happened...yet.


The argument that they need to have a picture on the cover goes nowhere, but is easily countered by how their mechanical player integration in pretty much every book makes them the first (and quite possibly only) part of the setting someone making a character interacts with, right down to magic items (houses!) and transportation (houses!) and food (houses!). The best argument for why they're not is how even in the Dragonmarked book they only have like 6 pages of info for each house, as I pointed out, but this has nothing to do with the appearance of the setting- and in fact with another half a book dedicated to more mechanical player integration, the book only makes them look more important.

But it is pretty poor writing to make such an obvious face and then immediately pivot to anything else.
They're not the first thing. They're actually the eighth thing, if we're counting. (ECS p9)

[PairO'Dice Lost]

But it doesn't need to be that detailed. It needs to exist, in any form, at all.

PHB2 Affiliations are the only 3.5 mechanic that actually does this, as a near-throwaway in a player focused book, which most people only even notice because they give some minor PC benefits. It has obvious holes, but at least it actually tries.

The Web Enhancement for Waterdeep has a list of every single noble house in the city, with their resource limits. Dozens of quick one-line entries that will let you immediately pick out who's who and launching points for how screwed one is if another decides to get rid of them.
[...]
PHB 2 spends about 10 pages combined on the base mechanics and creating your own section, and the organization data (rather than PC benefits) for a single group can be described in a paragraph. The basic concepts for DM background use could be distilled into half a page if you don't want any dice or mechanical restrictions involved. Heck, even before that Complete Adventurer had an organization format, which lacks the critical growth/loss mechanics for org v org, but still at least gave number and level of members and usable resources (poofing out of nowhere at a ludicrous gp rate being its own problem of course).

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say Eberron is targeted unfairly. The affiliation rules were first published in 2006 and Waterdeep was published in 2005, two years and one year respectively after Eberron came out; the only rules before that were, by your own admission, incomplete and nonsensical, and came out in 2005. Dragonmarked, the book that details Favored in House benefits for each House and talks in depth about playing a member of a House, came out in late 2006 and was in development at the same time as PHB2.

So basically, WotC went 5-6 entire years without writing a single usable ruleset anywhere in the entire game for organization membership of any sort, and when they finally did get around to writing some it was a halfhearted effort sprinkled around between core, FR, and Eberron...and it's somehow a crippling flaw of Eberron that the ECS didn't drop with a comprehensive organization affiliation system while Forgotten Realms, a setting that had been in print for 17 years by then and is infamous for being detailed down to the square inch and full of noble-on-noble intrigue, gets a pass for a chart or two in a web enhancement?


The Houses and Guilds in Eberron are a backdrop for pulp adventures- literally a backdrop, with no substance. Nothing is actually supposed to happen to them, they're just there no matter what you do, no matter what the nations do, a more inviolate and unchanging part of the setting than even the character classes themselves. Which means I don't care about anything they "do" or stand for. Much the same way people hate Elminster and the various other uber-NPCs of FR for existing as untouchable static pieces of the setting, except unlike Eberron's houses and guilds, those NPCs have stats.

In fact, because the guild houses are all held up by blood-inherited powers, which are specifically corrupted if they mix bloodlines, they are all but literally prevented from actually taking over each others' affairs. Their intrinsic nature is static, they don't do anything. Any conflicts are petty and pointless, only internal scheming can actually amount to anything. Because of this, it's probably not fair to describe it as a Houses and Guilds setting, since their guilds don't actually function that way. It's actually the opposite of a Houses and Guilds setting, since it's engineered to be static.

Yes, the Houses are a static background element, and that's the whole point. They're a fixed part of the setting just like the nations and the churches and every other organization, just like the major guilds and nations and so forth in every other published setting.

No one has ever published a Forgotten Realms module with the goal of taking down the entire Church of Waukeen, or complained that the Wizards of High Sorcery "aren't supposed to have anything happen to them," or similar things revolving around taking down a setting fixture, and every time an official novel or adventure does try to change things up like that (the Prism Pentad taking out some Sorcerer-Kings, the Spellplague nuking a bunch of nations) everyone complains. Why should Eberron do the opposite of all those others?

For comparison, look at Shadowrun: the megacorps are absolutely integral to the Shadowrun setting at every level (they're contacts, mission clients, mission targets, plot hook generators, allies, enemies, and more) and any long-time player can rattle off tons of facts about Aztechnology and Renraku and the rest, but the game isn't about the megacorps or their economic shenanigans at all, and the idea that a given team of shadowrunners can take down (or even survive trying to take down) a megacorp is ludicrous. And so there are zero rules whatsoever about players interacting with them except on the basis of what you can buy from them or wheedle out of them and anything about espionage or stealing plans or tracking down tax fraud or whatever is left completely up to the GM to fill in, precisely the same way Eberron handles the Dragonmarked Houses.


So it should be no surprise that the dragonmarked houses, as supposedly important and tied to player mechanics as they are, exist only as impervious backdrop with no interaction. They've only got like 6 or 7 pages of dedicated information each, always presented as seed ideas, never in hard detail. The vast majority of the published material, even in the base setting book, is about the nations and adventuring regions. It's obvious why Cannith is the only one I ever even remember, since making magic items and an entire race and actually being tied to the ancient civilizations means it's the one with the adventure series and regular mention everywhere- the rest barely even exist, and even Cannith exists as justification rather than an actual group. (And further, why I never remember much of the nations, as they have no serious mechanical representation by comparison, especially in the main book).

But that mechanical link is so strong in the mechanically minded, the people that stick with 3.x, the people that will look at a false coat of paint and rip it off looking for the promised reasoning, that the dragonmarked houses just make the thing look bad.

I don't see where you're getting the idea that the Houses are somehow uniquely special in terms of player mechanics.

Regarding the use of seed ideas without hard detail...you did notice that the entire setting is written that way, with every plot point and faction given multiple suggestions a DM can run with to make the setting their own, right? Up to including the actual cause of the Mourning, also known as the single most important plot point in the entire setting because it indirectly stopped the Last War and has every faction paranoid about restarting it, never even being hinted at to avoid the appearance of giving a single official answer?

Regarding the "mechanically minded," by which I assume you mean "dirty powergamers who only look at the setting for the optimization potential," Eberron is hardly synonymous with "Dragonmarked Houses" in the online community. If you were to make a Top 10 list along those lines, the most coveted spots would go to the druids (Planar Shepherd, Greenbound Summoning, etc.), then the Inspired (Tashalatora, quori shenanigans, etc.), then Karrnath (Bone Knights, Karrnathi skeletons, etc.), then maybe a two-way tie between Valenar and Talenta for their fancy exotic weapons...then waaay down the list you'd have the Houses, with their fun-but-not-particularly-powerful dragonmarks and House-specific PrCs. Lynchpin of the setting, they are not.


Take the Dragonmarked Houses out of Eberron. Take or leave the *even more vague* Draconic Prophecy/physical dragonmarks thing, but replace the guilds with actual guilds based on actual game mechanics and given actual guild stats. Actually. Which pretty much just amounts to admitting the dragonmarks aren't the real power anymore- they were useful in forming the houses, but the secret is that they aren't actually needed now, aside from keeping those in power in power by trying infrastructure to their bloodlines.

So basically, take the House-backed guilds that already exist and have plenty of flavor around them and simply flesh them out mechanically, just like you could do with the Houses themselves?


It's not that. It's that magic items scale in a way that people don't. If your power is that you can cast Fabricate once a day, that's it. The only way you can grow your operation is having kids, and if you're not keeping pace with population growth you're falling behind. But if you can make an item that casts Fabricate once a day once a week, your operation grows month in and month out. So if you postulate that Artificers are a new development, coming on the heels of the Last War (as economic developments so often do), you get a dynamic conflict that's a lot more interesting than the setting presented.

Then either A) that is more efficient than casting Fabricate would be or B) House Cannith is composed exclusively of idiots who don't understand how to use their abilities to do their jobs. Neither one makes the setting coherent. This is a circle you cannot square. If you give people Fabricate, and postulate that they make things for a living, their process must be at least as efficient as Fabricate. Nothing else makes sense.

As Troacctid noted, here you're basically complaining that not every craftsperson is a 9th+ level wizard instead of a 1st-3rd level magewright, and that custom items of at-will fabricate haven't been invented in-setting...precisely as is the case with, y'know, literally every other published setting.

Eberron is not a post-Industrial Revolution setting with magitech falling out its ears, and it has never claimed to be:


In many ways, Eberron’s pseudo-medieval culture already shares many elements of a later renaissance society. This is an important point, because it underscores the fact that the benefi ts granted by the wide-scale manipulation of magic are not provided by arcane factories of mass production. Instead, Eberron’s magical wonders remain the purview of individual practitioners, artisans, and expert crafters.

While skycoaches fly among the soaring towers of Sharn, it is important to remember that each skycoach is the product of individual effort by skilled designers, builders, and spellcasters. Though blacksmiths might chant spells to improve they way they work, their individual forges continue to spit out items just one at a time. While airship travel allows fast, safe, and expensive transport across large distances, each airship is a one-of-a-kind product produced by Zilargo workshops that are themselves unique foundries of often-competitive talent. While the streets of many cities are illuminated with everbright lanterns, their magic is individually cast and maintained by ranks of professional spell chandlers. No central reservoir of magical energy powers these and other wonders through some sort of industrial-age magical “grid.”

If anything, it should be the Realms that people complain about, given that people stereotype it as having 10th-level fighters tending every bar and 15th-level wizards swooping in to killsteal every low-level adventuring party (which is, of course, just as much a distortion of the actual Realms as the image of Houses as post-industrial megacorps around which society revolves is a distortion of the actual Eberron).


Meanwhile, fabricate machines haven't been developed yet in the setting (unless you count Creation Forges). That doesn't mean they couldn't be developed. If a non-Cannith artificer came up with plans for such a device, Cannith would have an interest in acquiring the technology for themselves, or even sabotaging it to maintain their stranglehold on the market. This would be a great hook for an intrigue adventure. Even if it's developed by a member of House Cannith (which is honestly more likely as they have the biggest R&D budgets), the house is fractured enough that the three branches could fight amongst themselves over it. But in the year 998 YK, this chain of events hasn't happened...yet.

Indeed. One important aspect of Eberron magical infrastructure often glossed over is that things like airships and Creation Forges aren't the product of years of research taking off at an exponential rate like computers in the early Information Age, they're archaeotech just like the artifacts of fallen civilizations in lots of other settings.

Lots of House magic items rely on Siberys shards and dragonmarks not because the Houses necessarily want to maintain a monopoly (though they very much do) but because they don't know how to make magic items that do the same thing without them. Airships use elemental binding tech supposedly invented by the gnomes of Zilargo, but they're lying, they actually rediscovered an ancient technique originally developed by the Sulatar drow of Xen'drik roughly 40,000 years ago. Warforged were supposedly invented by House Cannith, but they're also lying, they actually retrieved some ancient schemas of warforged specs originally developed by the Quori, also roughly 40,000 years ago--heck, Cannith definitely doesn't even know how the creation process actually works, because they weren't expecting warforged to come out with souls and personalities and all.

So while Eberron has a veneer of modernity with its magical infrastructure and transportation, in many ways the setting is less magically advanced than several others, especially if you look at FR's ancient magocracies or Birthright's domain magic.

[Fizban]

"If I were an NPC, I would simply gain more levels and develop more advanced technology. RIP to them but I'm different."
You are aware that cities already have high level NPCs that could do this yesterday, right?

Cannith heirs who can cast fabricate are not exactly a dime a dozen. It's a greater dragonmark ability. The ones who can cast it can typically only cast it once a day unless they have a (very expensive) focus item. I'm not a mathematician or anything but I don't think that's enough to supply all of Khorvaire with manufactured goods.
Fabricate creates goods measured in cubic feet regardless of their composition or difficulty in construction. It takes lol-months to craft things under the normal rules, Fabricate does so instantly, tripling the value. No math required, if there is any high value/low volume good that needs to be made then Fabricate smashes it into tiny little pieces.

Meanwhile, fabricate machines haven't been developed yet in the setting (unless you count Creation Forges). That doesn't mean they couldn't be developed. If a non-Cannith artificer came up with plans for such a device, Cannith would have an interest in acquiring the technology for themselves, or even sabotaging it to maintain their stranglehold on the market. This would be a great hook for an intrigue adventure. Even if it's developed by a member of House Cannith (which is honestly more likely as they have the biggest R&D budgets), the house is fractured enough that the three branches could fight amongst themselves over it. But in the year 998 YK, this chain of events hasn't happened...yet.
Except that's not how it works. Eberron fails to stipulate an actual rule that says you have to research how to create a "new" item. The Etch Schema feat doesn't even require custom item approval. The only reason it hasn't happened, is that the apparently no one has had the idea- thin reasoning, and highly implausible with them already suggesting mass-produced Continual Flames (much lampooned for not working that way either).

Cannith can't "sabotage the technology" unless they kill every Artificer that has the idea, nor do they need to do anything to replicate it, aside from whatever the DM makes up. Eberron doesn't actually function according to mechanics, as already known.

They're not the first thing. They're actually the eighth thing, if we're counting. (ECS p9)
Sure, that's the first place players read. The introduction. Not the classes, races, feats, spells, or items. Yup, the introduction is totally the most important thing, the part that people look up multiple times while building a character and refresh themselves on for discussion.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say Eberron is targeted unfairly. The affiliation rules were first published in 2006 and Waterdeep was published in 2005, two years and one year respectively after Eberron came out; the only rules before that were, by your own admission, incomplete and nonsensical, and came out in 2005. Dragonmarked, the book that details Favored in House benefits for each House and talks in depth about playing a member of a House, came out in late 2006 and was in development at the same time as PHB2.
Ah, thanks for looking up the dates, it did seem likely. And yes, I did come to the conclusion that it is actually the perception and expectations that are the problem- considering the rest of the information, I don't think they actually would have used Affiliations for them even if they had existed at the time. But I maintain that if they were meant to be more than static backdrops, then they should have come up with something, no free pass on that.

So basically, WotC went 5-6 entire years without writing a single usable ruleset anywhere in the entire game for organization membership of any sort, and when they finally did get around to writing some it was a halfhearted effort sprinkled around between core, FR, and Eberron...and it's somehow a crippling flaw of Eberron that the ECS didn't drop with a comprehensive organization affiliation system while Forgotten Realms, a setting that had been in print for 17 years by then and is infamous for being detailed down to the square inch and full of noble-on-noble intrigue, gets a pass for a chart or two in a web enhancement?
If direct competition was actually supposed to be a major thing, then yes, that would be a crippling flaw. FR, I'm honestly not aware of significant noble on noble action in the more general books, they always came off as similar to what it turns out Eberron really is, focused on adventuring locales and naming a few leaders- but a list of every noble in the city for a city book? Yeah that's flipping huge.

Yes, the Houses are a static background element, and that's the whole point. They're a fixed part of the setting just like the nations and the churches and every other organization, just like the major guilds and nations and so forth in every other published setting.

No one has ever published a Forgotten Realms module with the goal of taking down the entire Church of Waukeen,
Not the same as nations and churches. Nations and nobles have territory and armies and can be made war on. Churches have specific temples and worshippers, often with no real role in society other than "being the dominant local religion," and their champions can even be magically identified, and made war on- and being backed by gods you can't seriously expect to destroy them short of killing the god itself.

A guild is a mercantile enterprise, not backed by a literal god, and supposedly vulnerable to the same forces as any mortal enterprise, just on a larger scale. They are usually presented as players in the game on the same level as noble houses, which is reinforced by being called noble houses here, and yet they're actually as fundamental as the gods themselves in other settings? Not a natural assumption if you ask me.

or complained that the Wizards of High Sorcery "aren't supposed to have anything happen to them,"
Uh, the Wizards of High Sorcerery spend most of their time holed up in their towers afriad of getting their butts kicked, if they even exist, depending on time period. You could absolutely take them down, and the book on them even includes some details on the defenses of their very specific and limited strongholds which you would have to attack. And as I recall, they don't function as a guild or house- only as a group of powerful wizards with fairly loose ties altogether, influencing events through direct action rather than an economic or leadership engine.

and every time an official novel or adventure does try to change things up like that (the Prism Pentad taking out some Sorcerer-Kings, the Spellplague nuking a bunch of nations) everyone complains. Why should Eberron do the opposite of all those others?
Well I've never had a problem with such things happening in an adventure. I can see people complaining about it happening off-screen in some novel they don't read, particularly when those novels are actively despised by a significant portion of the audience. And when it happens nakedly as part of an edition change which rips up all the things they like about the game.

Neither of those are what I'm actually saying Eberron should have done, if they had meant their guilds to be interactible- which is to give them actual stats for interaction- and not even interaction with players, just with each other, for DM use. Plenty of NPCs have stats, most people only seem to complain when the stats are too high. I even said I would settle for relative comparisons without a system.

For comparison, look at Shadowrun. . . the game isn't about the megacorps or their economic shenanigans at all,
Yes, this is the conclusion I have come to about Eberron.

and the idea that a given team of shadowrunners can take down (or even survive trying to take down) a megacorp is ludicrous.
As would the idea of a single group of adventurers taking down a high scale Affiliation actually. But with the backing of an equally sized Affiliation, sure, high level PCs can be an instrumental piece for tipping the balance of that war- though draining them dry would take so many battles it would be a campaign of its own, after they were high enough level to even try it, giving them plenty of chances to die and fail along the way, and the DM could even determine that only an improbably perfect run would go far enough to prevent a return to stalemate.

I don't see where you're getting the idea that the Houses are somehow uniquely special in terms of player mechanics.
The fact that there are an order of magnitude more pages on game mechanics the players can use attached to the houses than there are on any given house?

Regarding the use of seed ideas without hard detail...you did notice that the entire setting is written that way, with every plot point and faction given multiple suggestions a DM can run with to make the setting their own, right? Up to including the actual cause of the Mourning, also known as the single most important plot point in the entire setting because it indirectly stopped the Last War and has every faction paranoid about restarting it, never even being hinted at to avoid the appearance of giving a single official answer?
Yes, I noticed the connection between how the setting that refuses to detail anything also refuses to detail this thing.

You seem to be reading the thought process of my realization as more of a continued attack. That section is in response to Nigel, as I realize I've switched sides from criticizing Eberron for failing to live up to its word, to realizing it was a misinterpretation caused by presentation rather than an actual promise. They didn't make a response to that in particular, but I don't think it moved them.

Regarding the "mechanically minded," by which I assume you mean "dirty powergamers who only look at the setting for the optimization potential,"
There's a whole heck of a lot of people who've spent the last decades of 3.x only reading mechanics for optimization. And there's also people like me, who want their settings to make mechanical sense and provide the DM with more than just flashy one-liners.

If you were to make a Top 10 list along those lines, the most coveted spots would. . .
The "face" of a setting, the expectations it sets up based on what it presents, have nothing to do with what char-op cherry picks after the fact.

I don't see how both of you find this hard to grasp. A player opens ECS to see what kind of cool new Eberron stuff is available. The very first listing under races, for humans, mentions dragonmarks, which are mentioned again under all the other PHB races if they're looking. They get four new races, the most unique of which is a magic robot made by a dragonmarked house. There's a class that can make any magic item, and then in the feats section there's Dragonmarks, literally in the pictures even before they come up in the text, which direct to a whole extra section on all the different house options for getting spells out of feats. The first PrC on the list? Dragonmarked Heir. Non-magical equipment? Littered with references to the DH, same with the magical equipment. Then there's an entire book just for expanding the Dragonmarked stuff, and every time basically any sort of service or magic item is mentioned, it has to do with some House.

Maybe you as a DM read the whole book cover to cover and aren't attached to particular mechanics, but the casual player? Come on. Even from just a fluff standpoint you can officially say "I belong to this noble house because I have this feat, which also casts a spell!" How does that not paint them as incredibly important?

Lynchpin of the setting, they are not.
You literally just compared them to the megacorps of Shadowrun, more untouchable than nations and more important than gods.

So basically, take the House-backed guilds that already exist and have plenty of flavor around them and simply flesh them out mechanically, just like you could do with the Houses themselves?
You can't flesh out the houses based on the Dragonmark Powers, because their powers either aren't significant, or actually using them would break the setting. Specifically changing the tone from "oh the dragonmarked houses are so important they do everything" to "oh look at the hereditary lords who think they actually still matter" is a hell of a change.

Indeed. One important aspect of Eberron magical infrastructure often glossed over is that things like airships and Creation Forges aren't the product of years of research taking off at an exponential rate like computers in the early Information Age, they're archaeotech just like the artifacts of fallen civilizations in lots of other settings.

Lots of House magic items rely on Siberys shards and dragonmarks not because the Houses necessarily want to maintain a monopoly (though they very much do) but because they don't know how to make magic items that do the same thing without them. Airships use elemental binding tech supposedly invented by the gnomes of Zilargo, but they're lying, they actually rediscovered an ancient technique originally developed by the Sulatar drow of Xen'drik roughly 40,000 years ago. Warforged were supposedly invented by House Cannith, but they're also lying, they actually retrieved some ancient schemas of warforged specs originally developed by the Quori, also roughly 40,000 years ago--heck, Cannith definitely doesn't even know how the creation process actually works, because they weren't expecting warforged to come out with souls and personalities and all.

So while Eberron has a veneer of modernity with its magical infrastructure and transportation, in many ways the setting is less magically advanced than several others, especially if you look at FR's ancient magocracies or Birthright's domain magic.
Oh really? Then why isn't there a general rule enforcing all of this?.

Congratulations- I've accepted the fact that the published material never actually presented the dragonmarked houses as functioning noble houses and thus their lack of useful stats makes sense, and you've found an even more important and even simpler mechanic they couldn't be arsed to put in.


But hey, put that on the list of modifications to make to published settings: any setting which wants to claim it uses magic logically, must have rules added limiting the "invention" of new magic items (and probably introducting "known item" lists, which no one will want to track or enforce), because open-ended published items already loophole around the custom item rules, which themselves only institute a practical limit of "DM says y/n."

[Troacctid]

You are aware that cities already have high level NPCs that could do this yesterday, right?
Maybe they could (I'm not sure exactly which NPCs you're referring to here), but they clearly haven't. Why would they? Maybe they have the means, but do they have the motivation? The imagination? The materials? And for all we know, it was already developed, and House Cannith already suppressed it! Like you're saying, it would threaten their monopoly, so they would presumably have a pretty strong interest in doing so.

All this is also glossing over the fact that there isn't any item in canon D&D 3.5 (AFAIK) that can cast fabricate at will—so what exactly are they supposed to be crafting?


Cannith can't "sabotage the technology" unless they kill every Artificer that has the idea, nor do they need to do anything to replicate it, aside from whatever the DM makes up. Eberron doesn't actually function according to mechanics, as already known.
Most of the artificers work for Cannith. Most of the supply chain is controlled by the Twelve. Dragonmarked houses regulate their respective industries and have substantial political power. Is a lone artificer going to challenge them? Maybe. Is that artificer likely to be successful? Seems like the odds are against it. And frankly, challenging Cannith seems like a pretty dumb move—why not sell the technology to them instead?

It could happen, but it obviously hasn't yet as of 998 YK.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

First up, an apology:


You seem to be reading the thought process of my realization as more of a continued attack. That section is in response to Nigel, as I realize I've switched sides from criticizing Eberron for failing to live up to its word, to realizing it was a misinterpretation caused by presentation rather than an actual promise. They didn't make a response to that in particular, but I don't think it moved them.

Yeah, I basically was reading it that way, and that's my bad. There've already been at least two separate threads that basically came down to "Nigel hates that Eberron was published without an economics simulator" that I've seen and it looked like you were jumping in with him to hammer on all of the same points. Upon rereading things in that light, a lot of my objections and quibbles go away. Mea maxima culpa.

A few remaining responses, though:


Except that's not how it works. Eberron fails to stipulate an actual rule that says you have to research how to create a "new" item. The Etch Schema feat doesn't even require custom item approval. The only reason it hasn't happened, is that the apparently no one has had the idea- thin reasoning, and highly implausible with them already suggesting mass-produced Continual Flames (much lampooned for not working that way either).

Eberron is pretty upfront about the fact that it leans on flavor restrictions more than some other settings, so Eberron not putting any mechanical or ask-the-DM notes in Etch Schema itself is in line with other setting aspects.

For instance, Forgotten Realms splatbooks printed dozens of [Regional] feats with long lists of race and region prerequisites dictating who can take them (I think the most I've ever seen is 15 race/region combos in one feat) and has special Knowledge (Local) rules just to let you take feats from different regions even though regional background isn't hugely important in FR; meanwhile, Eberron goes out of its way to remind you repeatedly that only Zil gnomes and Sulatar drow (plus maybe a few Cannith spies) know how to bind elementals, yet the Bind Elemental feat is a normal feat like any other with no race or region-based prerequisites.

In that context, not giving any rules about custom item creation--in-setting, I mean, out-of-game it's obviously the usual "ask the DM and he'll okay or veto it and figure out a price and prereqs based on DMG guidelines"--isn't particularly noteworthy.


Not the same as nations and churches. Nations and nobles have territory and armies and can be made war on. Churches have specific temples and worshippers, often with no real role in society other than "being the dominant local religion," and their champions can even be magically identified, and made war on- and being backed by gods you can't seriously expect to destroy them short of killing the god itself.

A guild is a mercantile enterprise, not backed by a literal god, and supposedly vulnerable to the same forces as any mortal enterprise, just on a larger scale. They are usually presented as players in the game on the same level as noble houses, which is reinforced by being called noble houses here, and yet they're actually as fundamental as the gods themselves in other settings? Not a natural assumption if you ask me.

Keep in mind that Dragonmarked Houses aren't guilds themselves, they merely own and run guilds (multiple per House, and monopolistic ones at that) on top of being noble families like any other (albeit ones who don't owe allegiance to any one nation), complete with territory and military forces and so on. Sure, the Korth Edicts technically and legally prevent the Houses from owning land and limit the sizes of their enclaves and militaries, but it's an explicit plot point that the Houses have been pushing back on the Edicts for years (Deneith has loopholes upon exceptions for its mercenary force, Cannith has all manner of black sites, and Lyrandar has Stormhome, for instance) and there's nothing the Five Nations can do about it.

Add onto that all of the Houses having their own magical research facilities to rival Aundair's (The Twelve vs. the Arcane Congress); Lyrandar, Orien, and Vadalis sharing total control over the entire transportation infrastructure of Khorvaire; and Jorasco and Lyrandar cutting the continent's two major religions off at the knees with secular healing and their own priesthood, respectively; and, well, each individual House is indeed backed by just as much martial and magical power as a minor nation or religion and several working together could go toe-to-toe with the Church of the Silver Flame or any of the Five Nations.


Uh, the Wizards of High Sorcerery spend most of their time holed up in their towers afriad of getting their butts kicked, if they even exist, depending on time period. You could absolutely take them down, and the book on them even includes some details on the defenses of their very specific and limited strongholds which you would have to attack. And as I recall, they don't function as a guild or house- only as a group of powerful wizards with fairly loose ties altogether, influencing events through direct action rather than an economic or leadership engine.

The Orders of High Sorcery are only ever taken down by the gods and/or changes in the local magical metaphysics between Ages. When they aren't depowered by godly meddling, they represent the sum total of all arcane power on Ansalon and are basically invulnerable, and even in Ages when they're severely weakened a single Tower of High Sorcery remains more than capable of fending off concerted attacks from any other faction. So even if they're more "mysterious dudes in robes" than "active and functional part of the economy" they're still intended as a static background setting element more than something to be engaged and possibly overthrown without a heaping helping of DM fiat.


But hey, put that on the list of modifications to make to published settings: any setting which wants to claim it uses magic logically, must have rules added limiting the "invention" of new magic items (and probably introducting "known item" lists, which no one will want to track or enforce), because open-ended published items already loophole around the custom item rules, which themselves only institute a practical limit of "DM says y/n."

I know you're being at least somewhat if not entirely sarcastic here, but I actually agree that explicit rules around the invention of new spells and items would be a good addition to any setting. My point has never been that Eberron does everything right, far from it, just that it shares basically all of its issues in common with at least one other setting and changing the flavor veneer from the "fantasy Iron-Age-to-Medieval Europe" of Dragonlance or "fantasy pseudohistorical kitchen sink" of FR to the "fantasy post-WW1-Europe" of Eberron shouldn't suddenly have it held to a dramatically higher standard than all the others.

D&D is full of spells named after famous wizards and ancient artifacts from fallen civilizations but the sum total of the rules about that is "come up with something that sounds cool and work with the DM," and there are bunches of high-magic civilizations in various settings with their own special items and magical traditions (most notable FR, obviously, but even Dragonlance and Dark Sun get in on the game), so it actually [I]would be nice if there were rules to let PCs create their own little high-magic fiefdoms and help less experienced DMs make custom spells and items in a more balanced and consistent way.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by PairO’Dice Lost
There've already been at least two separate threads that basically came down to "Nigel hates that Eberron was published without an economics simulator”….

Without commenting on anyone’s gaming preferences, I’ll just say that this aspect of the discussion isn’t really providing what I’d hoped for in this thread, and is pretty clearly crowding out everything else.


Originally Posted by PairO’Dice Lost
Yeah, I basically was reading it that way, and that's my bad…. Mea maxima culpa.

A lot of people would just keep arguing regardless, so well done for this.