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My first actual contact with the Ebberon book was when I saw it up on the shelf of my local Hastings. I had some time to kill, and decided to sit down and glance through it. After 30 minutes of reading I found myself purchasing it, eager to get home and start researching it thoroughly.
Ebberon's setting is VERY high magic. It's a world of sentient constructs, airships, magical items in abundance, cities floating in the sky, even a rail system connecting kingdoms powered by lightening elementals. Anyone who is a fan of Final Fantasy will feel at home with the tone of this game.
The tone for this setting, by the way, is that of high adventure and cinematic style. The standard beginning of the campaign takes place in the two years following a huge civil that took place between five kingdoms. In this time of uneasy peace, many opprotunities arise as nations begin to rebuild from the rubble of war. Adventure ideas can be anything here; from exploring remains of ancient civilizations to participating in political struggles between kingdoms and houses to even performing jobs in huge metropolitan cities. Literally any style of campaign or adventure can occur in this setting with plenty to work off of.
The setting introduces four new races and a new class (called Artificers. More on them later.) Changelings are a race of half-dopplegangers that can make subtle changes to their appearances, and usually make for good rogue-ish characters. Kalashtar are a race of beings who hail from the planes that dreams come from, designed to be a race of mostly psionic and monastic people. Shifters are decendants of Lycanthropes (which are exceedingly rare) that possess minor animalist attributes when they shift. Lastly, there's the Warforged, special war golems that have gained sentience and are now a playable race. Many will feel that the Warforged is a very twinkish option, since they are pretty much bred to be war machines. But their flaws represent group problems as well, as they do not heal naturally. Also, clerical healings are halved with sentient Warforged, and can only be fully healed by Artificers. All the other standard D&D races are here as well with their own twists. Elves seem to have a very different culture then in most fantasy games, almost as if they're portraying anicent cultures similar to the Mayans. Halflings are portrayed as a nomadic race, usually at home wandering the plains on small dinosaur mounts.
Artificers make for a nice addition to the classes. They are pretty much a class of magical inventors. Though they can't cast spells themselves, they are given special spell like abilities and feats that they can imbue into items. They're also allowed to use magical items, and even craft regular magical items using a special pool of points that are used in place of EXP. Yes sir, tinker gnomes...MOVE OVER.
Also, the setting introduces The Dragon Marked. DragonMarked are people of different races who are broken up into different houses, each with their own purposes and agendas. Though the houses are technically neutral in the affairs of the five kingdoms, members often find themselves mixing politics between houses and state. Players are able to purchase dragonmarks as feats, increasing the potency as they level up. The marks themselves act pretty much like minor forms of tatoo magic like you'd see in other game settings.
New races. High magic. Dragonmarks that add abilities. Sounds like a munchkins wet dream doesn't it? Oh yeah, forgot to mention that the setting implements the use of Action Points like those found in Unearthed Arcana. This is to help add to the cinematic and high-adventure/pulp feel of the world. Some players and DM's will be turned off by Ebberon for the fact that it pretty much is a high powered campaign on steroids. But I give credit to the setting in the fact that even though there is a high magic presence in the world, not everyone walking around is lvl 20 wizard.
Matter of fact, most of the stat info I found on nobles throughout the book are usually mid level (around 8-10 or so). And most of the magic is done through low level NPC's known as Magewrights, who aren't full fledged spell tossers, but magicians by trade. The high magic is nothing like everyone has an air ship and a pet dragon, but more subtle in a way....it's merely magic providing service like technology did in the late 1800s. Streets are covered in lamps that constantly cast continual light. Airships are powered by harnessed fire and wind elementals. Telegraphs are sent magically using certain magical scrying elements.
Okay, I've ranted about the game mechanics introduced. But what about the setting itself? Simply put: Awesome. The book details historical events leading up to the present in the game world. It goes into plenty of detail over the diverse pantheons worshipped, usually explaining more on religions than I've seen in most D&D settings. Also they go into detailed information on the houses of the Dragonmarked, and provide a detailed time line dating from creation of the world. And coolest of all, a detailed look to the planar setup of the campaign!
As for the details on locations, each country on the continent of Khorvaire is explained with details on major cities and locations, advice on adventure ideas for every part of the reigion, and is provided with detailed maps of each country. They were also pretty cool and included a selection of monsters unique to Ebberon, and go into details about what "classic" D&D monsters are like in the setting.
CONCLUSION:
(On the scale of 1-5) Information: 5. Plenty of detail for both people looking for new stuff to add to the game, as well as people who want a detailed world with plenty of campaign opprotunities. They even included an introductory adventure, if nothing else to get some starting info off of.
Art: 3 1/2. The artwork is standard for Wizards of the Coast. My major gripe, however, is how they recycled a lot of the illustrations a few times in the book. You'll see a lot of the same holy symbol art reprinted, and even a couple other basic illustrations. I give the bonus 1/2, however, for how they detail each individual Dragonmark's appearance.
Layout: 4. Everything was easy to find, and they were pretty cool to keep the first half rules and mechanics and the second half setting. In the introduction they even stated that if you wanted to jump into plot first which page to skip to. Of course, the book was properly indexed.
Total: Four. Personally I love this setting a lot, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with this world. Matter of fact I'm getting excited just trying to decide what kind of adventures I want to run. I will warn, however, that this is pretty much a high powered gaming setting. People who prefer to keep magic low and the characters fairly realistic would probably not enjoy this setting. This is a game world designed for people who want to run high action heroes and thrust players into a very fast paced world. Anyone wanting to spice up D&D/d20 should really get this.
