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What is the best version of El? This poll is closed. |
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|---|---|---|---|
| Elminster |
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20 | 6.45% |
| Elmara |
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20 | 6.45% |
| Entwine |
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13 | 4.19% |
| GURPS |
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99 | 31.94% |
| El Kabong |
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153 | 49.35% |
| Elves |
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5 | 1.61% |
| Total: | 310 votes | ||
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Kai Tave posted:One of Eberron's notable hiccups is that as a setting it's drastically underpopulated. There are whole huge swathes of the map full of nothing, which is okay from a "plonk down your own towns here!" perspective but then you get to Sharn, which is supposed to be magical New York City, and it has a population of like two million people. New York City in 1920 had a population more than twice that size, and the next biggest city in the setting has a population in the low six figures. I like bustling population centers and I think Eberron benefits from having a bunch of people live in it so I always just ignored those numbers  I describe Sharn as vertical Ankh-Morpork.
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Aug 3, 2014 04:35
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If wizards and gods can go tooling around on Earth and bring poo poo back to the Realms, then somewhere out there is there Temple of Gond whose acolytes are illuminating schematics for the Betamax?
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Aug 3, 2014 04:36
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Cyphoderus posted:I like bustling population centers and I think Eberron benefits from having a bunch of people live in it so I always just ignored those numbers Yeah, that's how it's usually portrayed by every GM who runs it. I mean don't get me wrong, I think there's plenty of room for bucolic countrysides and stuff, but Khorvaire is like a dozen places of interest separated by vast tracts of undeveloped nothing, and that's despite there being at least two methods of mass transportation (both of which function even after 100 years of murdering everybody). Which reminds me that Stoutfish is right with regard to magic trains. More fantasy settings ought to have trains.
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Aug 3, 2014 04:42
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Kai Tave posted:
Hell, I gave the players a magic train in a Spelljammer game.
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Aug 3, 2014 04:44
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My favorite dumb combo in Weapons of the Gods had nothing to do with combat stuff, but some of the Loresheets. If you were descended from the right two emperors, you could develop anachronistic technology once a campaign, and make a massive permanent infrastructure change to the setting, again, once a campaign. One of the examples for the first was "The steam engine". Combine it with the second? And you can develop the transcontinental Wulin Railroad. Wuxia fights atop moving trains everywhere forever.
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Aug 3, 2014 04:47
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Zereth posted:Fair enough! It's kinda a cheat because he's always been statted up as a rogue, but I'm gonna say Jarlaxle. His whole gimmick is basically a utility belt (and hat!) of magic items, so he is a magic user. Anyway, Jarlaxle is cool because he is a more ambiguous foil to Drizzt. Their backstories are remarkably similar, but Jarlaxle was saved from being sacrificed because Lolth wanted him as an agent of chaos. He hasn't exactly fulfilled her wishes, or perhaps more correctly, he has too thoroughly fulfilled them. Either way, he is an interesting anti-hero who always seems to be one step ahead, but is really just bullshitting his way through everything by relying on his bag of tricks. E: as for the practical magic angle, FR may not have magic trains, but it does have airships, continual light, alarm and other practical spells are a basic facet of civilization, an enterprising mage started a mail order service using teleport magic, and Mulhorand employs steam and other engines that use spells and other magic components. Magic powered grain mills are a common sight in Faerun. And FR has a pretty decent level of technology for a fantasy setting. Printing presses and gunpowder exist. Literacy is fairly common. It's really not a "medieval" setting. It's better seen as an "early modern" setting, more Fifteenth Century than Thirteenth. PeterWeller fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Aug 3, 2014 |
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Aug 3, 2014 04:54
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^^In other words, it's the Generic Anacronistic Fantasy time frame. Another problem with FR is that every group of villains are a bunch of hilarious chumps. People can downplay the intrusive metaplot NPCs all they like, but one of the worst things about them is they've already repeatedly kicked evil's rear end from Waterdeep to Phlan and beyond. Not only are the villains often absurdly monochromatic (and I say this as somebody who likes a bit of EvilEVil mixed in with the now-cliche shades of grey), but they're also complete dopes. The Zhents are the most obvious example, but really, can anyone name any evil or antagonistic faction that doesn't meet the PCs having already been thrashed repeatedly over and over again? How does anybody take these people seriously? Who of them is actually scary anymore? Thay? Kinda? Again, 4e made some efforts to curtail this, adding new foes and bringing back ones from history, giving foes more interesting and substantive roles (like the thayan exiles), but that's all no doubt for the retcon chopping block, and from the sound of it the Villains this time around are the Cult of the Dragon, in new extra-generic form. Kai Tave posted:One of Eberron's notable hiccups is that as a setting it's drastically underpopulated. There are whole huge swathes of the map full of nothing, which is okay from a "plonk down your own towns here!" perspective but then you get to Sharn, which is supposed to be magical New York City, and it has a population of like two million people. New York City in 1920 had a population more than twice that size, and the next biggest city in the setting has a population in the low six figures. A Catastrophe fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Aug 3, 2014 |
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Aug 3, 2014 05:22
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A Catastrophe posted:2 Mil is London in 1840. Checks out, imo. That's kind of the wrong time period for Eberron though, it's supposed to be analogous to post WWI. I mean, not 100% or anything, but the influences are pretty clear. Between 1911 and 1921 London's population was around seven million (about 4.something in Inner London with the rest in outer boroughs).
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Aug 3, 2014 05:53
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A Catastrophe posted:
The Empire of Shade
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Aug 3, 2014 05:57
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A Catastrophe posted:^^In other words, it's the Generic Anacronistic Fantasy time frame. Fair enough about the timeframe. But I think your question about villains is loaded. Most of them were introduced through novels, so of course you will find examples of them being thwarted. Even the new for 4E villain groups have already been defeated in novels. It's just a side-effect of the metaplot, and I won't protest if you have an issue with that. It's a fair reason to dislike the setting. Few of the villain groups, though, are as keystone kops as the Zhents and CotD. The Netherese have been mentioned. The new Night Masks are a meaningful threat (as is their 4E incarnation as part of Manshoon's new Zhentarim). The Kingdom of Many Arrows can be, depending on how groups want to take it. The Sithilisian Empire was a rising force throughout 3E. 3E also really pushed the various Serpent Kingdoms. The High Captains of Luskan have resisted every attempt to "liberate" their city. Many of the Sword Coast secret societies were incredibly powerful throughout the late 2E and 3E eras. And there are many more. You can find novels where these groups suffer defeats, but it's really no big deal because 4E wasn't the only edition where they added new threats. Heck, the big RSE heralding 3E was the return of the aforementioned Empire of Shade.
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Aug 3, 2014 06:38
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I've got three major problems with FR. That isn't to say FR is bad, just that these are my issues with them. I'll mostly be comparing to Eberron because, well, I really like Eberron a lot! 1) REALMSLORE. Yeah, you knew this one was coming, and would probably be first. The thing with REALMSLORE is just that - everything is canonical. Baker has explicitly stated with Eberron that nothing outside the books is canonical. Not his writings on the internet, not whatever fiction they publish, not even the adventures. If it's not in the campaign setting or the two or three other books that came out during 3e, it is there as an option. While FR claims you don't have to use all the REALMSLORE, it doesn't change that it's still sitting there in the corner, growling menacingly at you. The actual FR books tend not to help this that much either; every single one I've read includes references to a ton of poo poo outside the book, turning the REALMSLORE into a tightly woven web from which there is no escape. To take Arivia's own example, you're reading through Neverwinter, gosh this is a good book, but then it starts dropping poo poo about Thay and Waterdeep and all these other places. So you start looking THEM up, and now you're getting references to all these other places and all the various fiction that's been written about them and etc, etc, etc. 2) Theming. Eberron has it's themes and by god it sticks to them. Eberron is a setting filled with conflict. There's good guys, there's bad guys, and there's lots of spaces in between, and everything is straining. FR tends to lack that direction. Here's lots and lots of places. Why do the players care? Lolidunno. Every detail in Eberron is connected to a theme and to a conflict. Everything regarding the Quori is a fight against stagnation and the status quo. Everything connected to the Silver Flame is about GOOD vs EVIL, except EVIL isn't always so easily understood. Everthing in Eberron is a fight against something. But with Forgotten Realms, so much of the Realms are just sorta...sitting there. Existing. Which leads to... 3) It lacks punch. Eberron is a very punchy setting. You read the setting book and adventure is leaping at you. This is sorta related to number 2; Eberron is a pulp setting built around conflict, so it's all about strong heroes with strong jaws punching giants while hanging from the rope of their airship. Indeed, the 4e Eberron books are probably the best setting books like, of all time, because they are 100% centered on "Here's cool poo poo to do in game" for both players and GMs. The opposite of this - my LEAST favorite setting book of all time - is easily the 3e FR book. It is the densest motherfucker of a book I've ever seen for D&D, and it's 90% unrelated bullshit. Every bad guy in Eberron is doing something that needs to be stopped post haste, whereas so many FR villains or villainous groups are just mostly existing. Do you know why Neverwinter was a good book? It had punch. "Here's the villains, they're ALL doing something bad. Here's the state of Neverwinter, it's FILLED with things that YOU, THE ADVENTURER, need to interact with and change." Almost every detail in Neverwinter linked back to an activity for the PCs to engage in. In a way, I think FR and Eberron sorta reflect the 2e/3e and 4e divide. FR is very 2e/3e - and rightfully so as that's when the lion's share of books for them were written. Here's tons and tons and tons and TONS of small details on everything, but nothing at all on how to use them in an actual game. FR was first written to be a setting for telling stories in, not for adventuring in, and it shows. Eberron is very 4e. It's written from the perspective of "The PCs are ADVENTURERS and that's unique." Everything is linked to adventure, and details are generally kept short and straight to the point. Everything links back to that core theme. Which goes back to Neverwinter. Neverwinter was a very 4e styled book! It had strong themes, it had lots of punch, it didn't get bogged down in its own lore. Like, Arivia, you know this tease is out of love, but there was a part of me that absolutely laughed a bit in your FR recruitment on giving details and the discussion we had on proper names for Realms characters. That appeals to lots of people, but I am absolutely not one of them. I want ADVENTURE!
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Aug 3, 2014 07:32
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ProfessorCirno posted:In a way, I think FR and Eberron sorta reflect the 2e/3e and 4e divide. FR is very 2e/3e - and rightfully so as that's when the lion's share of books for them were written. Here's tons and tons and tons and TONS of small details on everything, but nothing at all on how to use them in an actual game. It was very much a sort of eighties-nineties thing in general. Take MERP, for instance. It's got a book where it tells you where the stationery in the Black Gate is kept but there's precious little of anything to tell you how you're even supposed to use the splatbooks.
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Aug 3, 2014 07:50
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To be fair Eberron had a bunch of lore too, it's just most of it was published back in its 3.5 incarnation. A lot of the interesting setting details, like its treatment of religion, didn't really get fully fleshed out until it got a more detailed writeup in supplemental material.
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Aug 3, 2014 07:50
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I think the harsh reaction to the Realms in some areas boils down to the stereotypical Realms Scholar. For example, by this thread's definition, Greyhawk is also pretty drat generic, even if it is the First Campaign™. Mystara, despite clearly being the best D&D setting, has some of the same issues that people are objecting to in this thread. It's been slapped together from various different creators' works, it's not tightly designed since it's a retrofitted world, there's lots of material spread out across tons of books and articles and most of them out of print or buried in the depths of Pandius, etc. However, no one in the D&D community really gasfaces at these settings like they do FR. I'm certain it's a combo of how pushed it was and remains, and because people have had or fear run-ins with some crank melting down because Storm Silverhand wasn't in the Moonsea in 1356 DR. Stories about the phenomenon are still pretty common, even though that doesn't happen nearly as often as it did at the height of FR Novel Mania. In comparison to FR, the number of players who've had a run-in with fans who deeply care about the length of Mordenkainen's beard or that the tartan on Brannart McGregor's kilt is correct can be counted on one hand, probably. A Catastrophe posted:Another problem with FR is that every group of villains are a bunch of hilarious chumps. People can downplay the intrusive metaplot NPCs all they like, but one of the worst things about them is they've already repeatedly kicked evil's rear end from Waterdeep to Phlan and beyond. Not only are the villains often absurdly monochromatic (and I say this as somebody who likes a bit of EvilEVil mixed in with the now-cliche shades of grey), but they're also complete dopes. I've always thought of the Zhentarim as the Forgotten Realms version of HYDRA. They have legions of henchmen, leaders dueling for control of the organization, etc. Beneath the surface bumbling and henchmen having their heads knocked together like the Three Stooges, they probably have some scary poo poo going on that we don't know about, like they secretly run the Harpers or control Baldur's Gate. That's how I treat them in campaigns I've run, at least. PeterWeller, Arivia, I've been a Realms fan for aeons but compared to me you guys are experts. Has there been any treatment of the Zhents that makes them out like this? Until Secret Warriors, fans often felt the same way about HYDRA that A Catastrophe does about the Zhents. If there's been no such treatment, then they have a lot of potential and I hope the 5e Realms writers realize that angle. ProfessorCirno posted:Eberron is very 4e. Funny that you say that, actually. I remember when Eberron came out, it was seen as emblematic of all that was "wrong" with 3e by the grognard contingent back then. I remember people screaming about how it was just a ripoff of Blackmoor. Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 08:25 on Aug 3, 2014 |
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Aug 3, 2014 08:18
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Lightning Lord posted:Funny that you say that, actually. I remember when Eberron came out, it was seen as emblematic of all that was "wrong" with 3e by the grognard contingent back then. I remember people screaming about how it was just a ripoff of Blackmoor. I mean Baker himself has said that. Like when 4e was first being shown he was upfront in stating that not only would Eberron have a 4e setting book, it would be far better then 3.x, and when people were complaining about some of the 4e-isms in Eberron, his response was "yeah we're adding new stuff like Eladrin but 4e may as well be the Eberron edition."
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Aug 3, 2014 08:30
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Eberron always had the Feyspires though and a bunch of fey would blip into Khorvaire every so often on some inscrutable lunar cycle and be like "hey, what's up?" and then blip back out again. The only thing he had to do for 4E was go "the thing that made the Feyspires phase in and out of conjunction with the material plane got stuck in the 'on' position probably because A WHOLE COUNTRY BLEW UP HOLY poo poo, and now eladrin are playable."
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Aug 3, 2014 08:34
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Lightning Lord posted:PeterWeller, Arivia, I've been a Realms fan for aeons but compared to me you guys are experts. Has there been any treatment of the Zhents that makes them out like this? Until Secret Warriors, fans often felt the same way about HYDRA that A Catastrophe does about the Zhents. If there's been no such treatment, then they have a lot of potential and I hope the 5e Realms writers realize that angle. The late 2E book, Cloak & Dagger, I've mentioned a few times presented a reinvigorated Zhentarim led by Fzoul and in control of the Moonsea region via a puppet regime in Yulash. They were working to spread the worship of Xvim in the region, and Fzoul had made a non-agression pact of sorts with Khelben. The only hiccup was that Sememnon was getting woried about his own security out west and was relying more and more on Cyricists, setting up a potential schism leading to two Zhentarims with serious divine backing.
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Aug 3, 2014 08:50
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ProfessorCirno posted:I mean Baker himself has said that. Like when 4e was first being shown he was upfront in stating that not only would Eberron have a 4e setting book, it would be far better then 3.x, and when people were complaining about some of the 4e-isms in Eberron, his response was "yeah we're adding new stuff like Eladrin but 4e may as well be the Eberron edition." Yeah I wasn't refuting you, just remarking on how things change. PeterWeller posted:The late 2E book, Cloak & Dagger, I've mentioned a few times presented a reinvigorated Zhentarim led by Fzoul and in control of the Moonsea region via a puppet regime in Yulash. They were working to spread the worship of Xvim in the region, and Fzoul had made a non-agression pact of sorts with Khelben. The only hiccup was that Sememnon was getting woried about his own security out west and was relying more and more on Cyricists, setting up a potential schism leading to two Zhentarims with serious divine backing. So basically the Red Skull was gonna throw down with Baron Strucker. Did this ever go anywhere or did 3E wash it away?
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Aug 3, 2014 08:55
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Ariva, or someone else, can you explain what the changes made to FR in 4e were, and why they were made? Also what's likely to be reset in the sundering, I think that's the title of the edition change cataclysm, for 5e? I just really love hearing the meta background for this type of nerd poo poo. The reasoning behind design and setting decisions and changes is so weird and human/inhuman at times.
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Aug 3, 2014 09:11
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Lightning Lord posted:So basically the Red Skull was gonna throw down with Baron Strucker. Did this ever go anywhere or did 3E wash it away? Hehe, sorta, but more like Strucker killed the Skull, and now Zola is making friends with AIM again in case Strucker decides to kill him next. Also, in this analogy there are scores of insane Red Skulls running about because he cloned himself a ridiculous number of times. What I'm saying is Manshoon is a pretty great comic book villain.  It all got squandered in 3E with the eastern Zhents returning to tired old schemes and the western Zhents becoming more like bit players in Cyricist plots. fez_machine posted:Ariva, or someone else, can you explain what the changes made to FR in 4e were, and why they were made? Also what's likely to be reset in the sundering, I think that's the title of the edition change cataclysm, for 5e? I'll try not to get too long winded with this. In short, the changes were a 100 year time advance, the replacement of a number of real world analogs with more fantastical regions, the destruction of a few regions, a pantheon trimming, and the introduction of new character races and classes and villain groups. It was done by a cataclysmic event called the Spell Plague caused by the murder of the goddess of magic which made magic go screwy and caused the world to merge with its sister world and swap some parts. There are a few reasons why they did this. The first is simple: FR always changes to adapt to the new edition, and there is always a serious metaplot event to explain the changes. The others are more complex. 4E was making bigger alterations to the fluff than previous editions, so FR had more changing to do. Also, they IMO misguidedly tried to make the setting more appealing to people who have problems with it like those ProfessorCirno explained above. The reason why I believe this was misguided is because they turned off many longtime FR fans in an attempt to appeal to people who weren't very interested in the first place and had a setting that already addressed those problems. There are a lot of cool ideas in the 4E Realms. It's a good iteration of the setting hamstrung by an uninspiring campaign guide and a relative lack of development. The Sundering looks to be setting up more of an "ultimate" version than a straight throwback to how things were before the Spell Plague, so I hope some of the cooler ideas from the 4E version survive, but with the way 5E looks to be turning out, I'm not holding my breath.
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Aug 3, 2014 09:43
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Yeah, the Shadow Weave stuff and random kingdoms reappearing stuff being a lot of the book.. like a lot of 4th edition (at least to me), I think a lot of folks were looking for something iterative (familiar but updated) , and instead got something totally different with so many new things that felt like they were shoehorned in whether they were good fits or not. Or in other words, grogs said "This is something.. but it's NOT (D&D/The Forgotten Realms)"
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Aug 3, 2014 10:36
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Kai Tave posted:That's kind of the wrong time period for Eberron though, it's supposed to be analogous to post WWI. I mean, not 100% or anything, but the influences are pretty clear. Between 1911 and 1921 London's population was around seven million (about 4.something in Inner London with the rest in outer boroughs).
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Aug 3, 2014 10:51
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Hey PeterWeller, if the Zhents are HYDRA, who's SHIELD? Would the Harpers qualify or do they have too much of an elite secret society angle to them? Then again, I guess with what Jonathan Hickman did, so does SHIELD. Maybe the Harpers are the Avengers? Maybe I'm taking this metaphor way too far? One of my dream Realms campaign ideas is a bunch of crazy organizations basically have a shadow war across Faerun - the Kraken Society and the Cult of the Dragon and the Arcane Brotherhood and the Harpers and the Zhents and so on all smash into each other. It would have a "weird espionage" feeling like Ed Brubaker's Captain America. I'm even thinking about using the Legion of the Chimera from Icewind Dale II. What more obscure groups would be good for this sort of game? PeterWeller posted:Also, they IMO misguidedly tried to make the setting more appealing to people who have problems with it like those ProfessorCirno explained above. The reason why I believe this was misguided is because they turned off many longtime FR fans in an attempt to appeal to people who weren't very interested in the first place and had a setting that already addressed those problems. That aspect of 4e Realms was a classic case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. 3e FR absolutely had too much focus on the iconic NPCs, no disagreement there. Hell, the FR Campaign Setting is absolutely stuffed with statblocks, there's one like every four or five pages. It gave a bad first impression. The damage control that was attempted though, it felt like the designers said "Hey guys, we killed all those jerks and drove that butthole Elminster you hate so much insane. Are we cool now?" It was wasted potential to not try and mold those characters into being of use to GMs instead of something that felt like an obligation, presented clearly in the 4e style. Why else buy a setting book if not for the setting? Isn't the whole point to get hooks you can use? Why take stuff out of the box like that? To be fair, they did make some new stuff to replace the old, and a lot of it was cool. I also think 4e FR was a dry run for how they were going to treat classic settings in that edition. I'm pretty sure the designers took a look at the reaction to 4e FR and decided that for Dark Sun, instead of molding the world to fit the tropes of 4e, they would go the other direction. Hence goliaths as half-giants and dragonborn as dray and so on. I just wish we could have gotten like, dragonborn as saurials for FR. Who doesn't want to play a firebreathing dinosaur man? I could have named him Grimlock... In the end though, I never took it to be some sort of some deep insult, it was just partially a creative misfire. It happens. The Neverwinter and Menzoberranzan books were really good too. Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 12:09 on Aug 3, 2014 |
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Aug 3, 2014 11:15
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aegof posted:and that atheist wall thing from Neverwinter Nights 2, which was a pretty hilarious tease. No, PC, you do not get to destroy the most horrendously evil thing you've ever encountered, that would be too satisfying of an ending. I think in the super evil path, you eat it.
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Aug 3, 2014 12:44
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stoutfish posted:FR is boring but Eberron has magic trains. In Eberron you can be hired by an amoral megacorporation to steal a prototype from one of its rivals, dive out of a skyscraper, land on the roof of a passing train, and escape into the goblin slums from the magic sky cops. Plus, Shadowrun is poo poo.
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Aug 3, 2014 13:15
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The thing with FR and the problem with 4e FR is that...well, FR isn't a 4e setting, at least not it's main thing. Like I'm iffy on FR. I wouldn't say I dislike it, but it's definately not something I'd go out of my way to play; give a cool group and cool DM and I can get into it. But I don't think FR is bad, it's just not my jam. 4e FR tried to take FR and make it my jam, which I appreciate, but like...don't! Because I shouldn't be the target audience there. I think the only reason you saw 4e FR in it's state was because, in every edition, there has to be FR. Seriously, FR is still D&D's biggest selling anything, especially once you take the fiction into account. It's why 5e is making FR it's core setting (and will probably ruin it in the meanwhile even as they claim to bring it back to it's roots ahahahaha). So in 4e, they knew they had to make FR. But 4e isn't 2e or 3e. I don't mean mechanically; 3e and 2e are very different games, after all. I mean in terms of general philosophy. 2e was all about the settings and the minor setting details. 3e was all about...well, just pounding in as many minor details into anything possible that they could. But 4e goes for much broader, wider swipes, which doesn't fit FR. As for why people dislike FR so much, I think it's a mix of things. If FR isn't your jam, there's going to be some aspects of it that rub you the wrong way, and I guarantee those aspects are usually what're going to be advertised the most. Then you add that FR, due to the fiction, is exceptionally possible, so now that minor irritation is omnipresent. Last, FR has a long history of absolutely loving garbage mechanics. 3e FR books gave the Incantatrix, a PrC so hilariously broken that 3e charops have literally declared it null and void, as well as several parts of the Killer Gnome / Shadowcraft Mage. Almost all other 3e FR materials were boring and lovely to the point of being entirely forgotten, so there wasn't much "lukewarm" here. In 2e you had FR Specialist Priests from the Faiths and Avatars trio of books, which could do anything in the game, better then their respective classes could...AND they were given Druid XP tables, which were, outside of the thief, the quickest leveling. So yeah, FR has been synonymous with "it's everywhere," "too much lore," and "broken poo poo" for non-fans.
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Aug 3, 2014 13:51
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LightWarden posted:
Thus answering the ancient question, "Can Elminster devise a spells so ridiculous he himself cannot cast it?".
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Aug 3, 2014 14:21
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Kai Tave posted:
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Aug 3, 2014 14:35
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MadScientistWorking posted:To hell with that. I want fantasy cars. I want the fantaasy cannonball run god dam it. This sounds like a fantastic premise for an Eberron game: a race across Khorvaire in these new 'lightning carts'. They don't need rails! Every dragonmarked house and guild wants to win the prize! The Lord of Blades has entered a warforged on wheels! ...if I had the time, I'd totally run this.
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Aug 3, 2014 14:55
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The only problem is the second you put in cars people start complaining about how it isn't real fantasy or start trying to do stupid engineering and chemistry bullshit like build automatic weapons or fuel air explosives. That said, fantasy cannonball run is a cool idea.
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Aug 3, 2014 15:02
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Eberrron technology is almost entirely built on the backs of bound elementals, not science. Fire elementals carry the airships, air elementals power the lightning rails, etc etc etc. Follow the natural chain of logic to inventing guns and you get--wands of magic missile. Which is fine.
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Aug 3, 2014 15:07
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Lightning Lord posted:I also think 4e FR was a dry run for how they were going to treat classic settings in that edition. I'm pretty sure the designers took a look at the reaction to 4e FR and decided that for Dark Sun, instead of molding the world to fit the tropes of 4e, they would go the other direction. Hence goliaths as half-giants and dragonborn as dray and so on.
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Aug 3, 2014 16:09
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Yea, I never got why some people were obsessed with proper guns in Eberron, my group did 'guns' by saying there was a special kind of wand that had rapid, simple, recharging but a small charge capacity so, say, you had a wand of magic missile that had six charges and had to use a second small dragonshard object that can be built as a ring or something to 'reload' it quickly. So we had badass gunfights on moving trains with magic wands while bandits tried to hijack the magical elemental controlling the train. It could have fairly easily been normal guns but a nutball Halfling bandit raider blasting fireballs into the group felt way more cool and fitting than some dude firing a shotgun.
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Aug 3, 2014 16:13
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If anything, House Cannith would go out of their way to staunch development of gunpowder technology, since it's a direct threat to their stranglehold on the weapons industry. I always like to think that trying to invent gunpowder on Eberron is the number one way of "accidentally" dying in an alchemy lab explosion, capicé?
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Aug 3, 2014 16:22
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Yea, I never got why some people were obsessed with proper guns in Eberron, my group did 'guns' by saying there was a special kind of wand that had rapid, simple, recharging but a small charge capacity so, say, you had a wand of magic missile that had six charges and had to use a second small dragonshard object that can be built as a ring or something to 'reload' it quickly.
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Aug 3, 2014 16:32
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Kwyndig posted:The only problem is the second you put in cars people start complaining about how it isn't real fantasy or start trying to do stupid engineering and chemistry bullshit like build automatic weapons or fuel air explosives. Call those people dumb nerds and tell them to stop being so dumb. I actually remember someone on RPGnet complaining about how unrealistic and bad Eberron was because it had airships but no tanks, and to illustrate his point he bought up RTS tech-trees as an example. "How did they jump from infantry to airships!?!?! It just makes no sense!"
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Aug 3, 2014 17:46
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Clearly, the solution is for armies to construct and train squads of Apparatus of Kwalish pilots.
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Aug 3, 2014 17:48
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Lightning Lord posted:Hey PeterWeller, if the Zhents are HYDRA, who's SHIELD? Would the Harpers qualify or do they have too much of an elite secret society angle to them? Then again, I guess with what Jonathan Hickman did, so does SHIELD. Maybe the Harpers are the Avengers? Maybe I'm taking this metaphor way too far? The closest thing to SHIELD is probably Khelben's Harper splinter group, the Silverstars. They're more tightly organized with more top-down control and more "ends justify means" than the Harpers. For your other question, Cloak & Dagger is the perfect source for that sort of campaign. It details all sorts of secret socieities from the well known Zhents to the obscure Men of the Basilisk. ProfessorCirno posted:Like I'm iffy on FR. I wouldn't say I dislike it, but it's definately not something I'd go out of my way to play; give a cool group and cool DM and I can get into it. But I don't think FR is bad, it's just not my jam. 4e FR tried to take FR and make it my jam, which I appreciate, but like...don't! Because I shouldn't be the target audience there. Yeah, exactly. That's the whole reason why they have multiple settings in the first place. Along those lines, I tend to think Eberron would have been a better launch setting for 4E because it more closely adheres to 4E's ethos, and that would have reduced the pressure they felt to really shake up the FR and give them more time to come up with interesting new stuff. Mystic Mongol posted:Eberrron technology is almost entirely built on the backs of bound elementals, not science. Fire elementals carry the airships, air elementals power the lightning rails, etc etc etc. Follow the natural chain of logic to inventing guns and you get--wands of magic missile. Which is awesome because then you get to call adventuring wizards "wand slingers."
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Aug 3, 2014 18:36
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PeterWeller posted:Which is awesome because then you get to call adventuring wizards "wand slingers." There's actually an official wandslinger PrC. So yeah.
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Aug 3, 2014 18:41
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Mystara had a straight up saloons-and-spitoons wild west with wandslingers and folk songs and cattle rustling. Then hollow earth added orc cowboys.
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Aug 3, 2014 18:50
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