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I'm going to talk briefly about D20 game mechanics in the review, with two exceptions. I'll get one off my chest right now so I can focus on my writing: hit points. Accumulating hit points are a pox, a plague on telling a good story and they clearly should have been punished at Nuremberg and I hate them. They suck; end of story. The other thing I'm not going to discuss is the question of Psionics, which has a presence in Eberron, because I'm simply not qualified to talk about them. I haven't read the psionics book and I've never played in a D20 game that used the psionics rules. Sorry.
Introduction OK, so on to the review. The "Eberron Campaign Setting", hereafter known as Eberron unless otherwise noted, is a book of setting information for the eponymous fantasy world, to be used with the stack of hardcover D&D books you undoubtedly own. It is not self-contained, but that is not the intent so I don't grade down for it. The book contains 12 chapters: "Character Races", "Character Classes", "Heroic Characteristics", "Prestige Classes", "Magic", "Adventuring Equipment", "Life in the World", "Organizations", "An Eberron Campaign", "Magic Items", "Monsters" and "The Forgotten Forge". I'll discuss each of these in turn, followed by my conclusions. First, though, I'll discuss The Point Of It All, and the book's appearance.
The Whole Point Regarding The Point Of It All, I'm first of all glad that there is one. Contrast this with, say, the Forgotten Realms, the point of which is that analogs of every culture from Earth history, except in a basically Mediaeval milieu, are standing around waiting to be undermined by two-dimensional villains so that remarkably busty, enlightened bourgeois liberals can show up and save the day (the day when the unkillable Ulta-Munchkins, even more hip and busty and liberal than our lesser heroes, apparently were taking a vacation)... i.e., no point. But Eberron is about something. It's about war.
I don't want to be misleading when I say that Eberron is about war - there aren't any wars going on in the setting during the year 998 YK, when the setting is set. Rather, Eberron is about the problems and complications that war creates. It takes as its model for this the Great War, the War To End All Wars (which, of course but sadly it did not), World War I. I'll explain a bit about that, but first I'd like to just point out that in Earth history, World War I preceded the 'pulp era' of the 20's and 30's.
Eberron uses the motif of war to raise certain questions or problems. The first and most obvious is the problem of loss or destruction. Various wars in the history of Eberron have destroyed the advanced civilizations of the goblins, the giants and others. The so-called Last War (which, like WWI, is thought to have been so catastrophic in scale that there will be no other wars; and also like WWI, it's almost certain *not* to be the last war) destroyed the human nation of Cyre, and has left problems of desolation, refugees and exiled nationalism. The consequence of each of these wars is that something is irretrievably lost. Of course, they also create new opportunities - even if many of those opportunities only amount to sifting through the detritus of lost places and graveyards.
Second and more importantly is the question of weapons. War creates weapons, but it does not teach people what to do with the weapons after the war is over. This can be seen in the "living spells" which roam the devastation of the former kingdom of Cyre. These weapons have taken on a life of their own, and they live only to destroy. Like the golem, or the broomsticks of the magician's apprentice, these creations of man's hubris have come alive and threaten to take over the dynamic of their interaction with their creators. In his desire to kill his fellows, man has unleashed something inimical to all life, even that of the creator. The analogy to Mustard Gas, or to the worse weapons of later wars, is clear. What wizard might look upon the likes of a Living Cloudkill (or Meteor Swarm) and wish he'd remained a watchmaker?
Which brings me to the best part of all, the Warforged. These are a character race (more about them below) who are living constructs created to be supersoldiers. And they are, essentially, soldiers - they have but one purpose, to make war. However, now the war is over. What becomes of the Warforged? This is the classic problem of the soldier, who is a man *crafted* for warmaking by his society: how does he go home? Sadly for the Warforged, they have no home; nor do they have a place in society ready made for them. These characters will offer some great opportunities for existential roleplaying, because the character of their lives relies *entirely* on the choices they make, unaided by friends, countrymen or loved ones. They are truly alone in the world. For some, the path lies with a brutal demagogue who has risen to the head of a personality cult in the devastated lands, preaching a doctrine of the triumph of metal and will (sound familiar?). This is truly choice material, and one of the great strengths of Eberron.
So Eberron is about the problems of war, including the problem of how to live with its conclusion. This falls nicely in line with its aspiration to be a world of dark intrigue and pulpy adventure, since the Last War has created opportunities for numerous dark and self-serving secret societies to hatch all manner of schemes. Your heroes will doubtless have a chance to be the sabot in the gears to a number of these plots. Thankfully, the plots are fairly intelligible (become the financial rulers of the world, unleash the ancient bound horrors of yore, take vengeance upon whole nations for the death of my family, etc.) if grandiose. But then, the fact that they're grandiose will probably make them more fun to foil in the denouement.
Appearance As to the appearance of the book, it makes a good first impression. The cover is nice, showing a color inset of a Warforged adventurer grabbing some treasure while his colorless colleagues get the stuffing pounded out of them by monsters and traps. This is usually a winning strategy in D20, but I digress. The interior is full color and glossy, which is part of what makes the book so expensive. I'll grouse about this again later, but it does *not* include a political map of the main continent, so you might have trouble figuring out where the national borders and major cities are when you look at the provided map. This actually goes to my eventual point about the book having fuzzy details due to overcrowding, but that's for later too. The interior art is of varying quality. The chapters all start off with a page as if from a comic book, and they're really good and interesting. They properly convey some aspects of the world, but just as an enticing whiff. Some of the interior pieces, like the airship and the city of Sharn are really nice. Others, like the picture of the "daelkyr", a CR 20 villain, are uninspiring. For instance, with the daelkyr, I would have preferred *no* picture to a picture that makes me dislike the creature. So some of the pictures strike me as kinda lame. It would have been nice to have a little more unity in the style of the art (like mainly using whoever did the Sharn illustration), and keeping the comic intro pages as the one alternate look. Due to the mixed quality, I give the art a "4" out of "5". I'd give it a "4.5" if that were possible... but all I can do is call it a strong 4. I guess maybe I'd give it a 5 if I'd never seen Planescape.
Contents by Chapter Chapter One gives you stuff about character races. All the usual suspects are there (unfortunately - more on that in the Conclusion), plus Changelings, Kalashtar, Shifters and Warforged. Changelings are descended from humans and doppelgangers (I can only imagine how that one got started...) and have minor shapeshifting powers like those guys whose name I can't pronounce in Dune. They basically get to disguise themselves supernaturally and are good tricksters. Kalashtar are psionic dudes, so I can't really comment other than to say that I never saw the point of psionics in D&D. So maybe they're all that and a bag of chips - you'll have to tell me. Shifters are descended from humans and lycanthropes (who hopefully were not in animal form when that party got started) and get to "shift" into partial beast mode. This amounts to growing claws or fangs or whatever, plus a stat boost. Both Changelings and Shifters seem balanced and potentially interesting. They both support one of the themes of the book, which is that Things Are Not Always As They Seem (tm). Which is all fine and good, and raises its own questions about the nature of man, so I like these races and I'd play either. As to the Warforged, see my comments above. Good stuff. These guys are living constructs who get some construct immunities (like immune to energy drain, which everybody should be immune to because it's so stupid but that's another issue), but not others (like you can still take critical hits, at least until you reach a certain level in the Warforged Juggernaut prestige class). Healing isn't that effective on you, but you can be repaired with the Craft skill! It all seems balanced, as well as fun and quirky. You can even spend a precious feat at first level to have a spiffy inherent armor bonus (like +8 and DR 2/adamantite... cool, huh?).
Chapter Two gives us character class information. A new class is presented called the Artificer. This guy is a spellcaster of sorts, who gets to use Infusions and create magic items more easily. Infusions are like other magic spells (in fact many are the same as existing spells), but they only affect items or constructs. To use the illustrative example from the book, an Artificer could not cast Bull's Strength on an ally, but could use it to create a temporary Belt of Giant Strength, or cast it on an ally who happens to be a construct (like a Warforged). The Artificer also has a "Craft Reserve", which is a free pool of XP he can use to create magic items. It's a 'use 'em or lose 'em' situation, so he has that extra incentive to artifice his little heart out. The other classes aren't that different, except that clerics can now have a totally opposite alignment to their deity without penalty, and monks and paladins can multiclass with less restriction if they take the appropriate feats.
Chapter Three gives us a new game mechanic (Action Points; you may have seen them before), as well as new feats and religions. Action points let you gain a boost to a roll, instantly stabilize if downed, or activate some special abilities. There are some feats keyed in with these, too. As to the feats, there are a *bunch* of them. Some just help customize your character, and some are racial specific for Warforged and Shifters (generally boosting existing racial abilities). There's cool stuff for monks, like being able to use a two-bladed sword as a monk weapon. Yeah, I know - Darth Maul eat your heart out. And star in a better movie next time.
Among the feats are things called Dragonmarks, which I'll explain more about below. These are limited magical abilities which manifest like tattoos and around which much of the Eberron economy is based. None of them are very powerful, though they get better as you invest feats in them. They do allow non-spellcasters to do a piece of magic, though. The religions offer the concept of pantheons - a group of related deities your character can serve. There is also a religion called the Church of the Silver Flame, which is supposed to be like Roman Catholicism. This is of particular interest to me as a Catholic gamer. Now, there is little to no doctrinal similarity between the Church and the Silver Flame guys, as the Silver Flamers (avoid inserting joke here) aren't Trinitarians or Incarnationists or Transubstantiationists or any of the other cool things you get to be if you're a Christian. However, the Silver Flame church is cosmetically similiar to the Catholic Church, in that it has a pope (a young girl in this case) and a college of Cardinals (including some corrupt ones) and a righteous 'tude and inquisitors and so on. Unlike most analogs to our holy mother The Church in gaming books, this one is not just a sad attempt to take a bunch of ahistorical cheap shots at my religion, so I like it.
Chapter Four gives us prestige classes. There's the Dragonmark Heir, which is a class based around maximizing your Dragonmark feats (and providing several key feats for free) and representing the fact that your character is part of Eberron's magical bourgeois elite. The Eldeen Ranger is just a ranger who gets a bonus for affiliation with one of the several druid sects which I'm not including in the review because it's too long already (but they're fine). The Exorcist of the Silver Flame is very cool - he's a cleric or paladin who gets to censure evil outsiders and buff his weapons so he can really smite the hell out of them (as we used to say at the monastery... j/k). The Extreme Explorer (no relation to the MXP or Most Extreme Primate... I hope) is basically Indiana Jones gettin' Mediaeval. So maybe Jones of Brabant or something. Anyway, he gets to outrun big boulders and do other dashing, action-oriented things. The Heir of Siberys just gets a really boss mega-Dragonmark and some related bennies. The Master Inquisitive is a Mediaeval investigator who gets things like Zone of Truth and True Seeing at limited uses (though for some reason they're supernatural abilities, which means they're magical... but the guy isn't a spellcaster or necessarily Dragonmarked or anything). The Warforged Juggernaut is a class that lets a Warforged become more like a construct (more immunities and some combat abilities) and less like a normal person (like, eventually you can't benefit from healing magic at all). The Weretouched Master is just a mega-Shifter, making the best of its racial abilities. All the prestige classes seem interesting... I'm not sure if they're balanced because I haven't done any playtesting.
Chapter Five deals with magic, including the planes. There are special magical reagents that have a chance of increasing spell power. There are new spells, particularly geared toward Artificers. The planes are interesting. They're not the standard D&D planes. For instance, there's one plane all the dead go to after they die. It's a dreary, mopey plane of boredom and forgetfulness, not unlike the Greek underworld. If a character visits there and stays too long, he may (with a failed Save) become a shade and forget his past life. This also *implies* that souls eventually lose their memory there. The book doesn't come out and say it though - this is a problem. Like this review, the book is so chock full of information you wish that they cut something out and talked about some of the other stuff in more detail. As for myself, I plan on using the rules for the plane of the dead on all departed souls, to solve the problem of Raise Dead. You know, the spell that pretty much ruins any good fantasy tale where Good King Rambunctious gets cut down in battle... because a cleric just runs up and Raises him. Here, at least there's a chance that his memory already got wiped and he's history. Since of course, given the option, his soul would likely be very sanguine about returning from Eberron's bleak afterlife as soon as possible. Another interesting thing about the planes is that they sometimes become Coterminous or Remote with Eberron in their 'orbits', which causes differing magical effects. Like so many tidbits in the book, this has Plot Device written all over it.
Chapter Six gives us equipment, which includes a helpful list of magical services. Nothing special here, but good enough.
Chapter Seven details all the regions of the main continent, Khorvaire, plus the outlying lands which await future supplements. Thankfully, they give a calendar. Unthankfully, they don't give us a political map. This is too bad, since politics are *so* important in this setting. I thought they were going to remedy this in Dungeon #113, but instead they just gave us a bigger version of the same relatively useless map.
Here's the rundown: you have the Five Kingdoms, which used to be united under an emperor. This blew up some years ago, and the Last War was fought to see which nation's imperial scion got the crown. Everybody lost. Cyre came out the worst, in that it was erased from the map by a magical cataclysm of a hitherto undiscovered nature. Several areas reverted to a form of independence, including a goblinoid nation. It turns out that the hobgoblins used to run the place, and had an advanced civilization capable of producing powerful magical artifacts. I like this as it reverses a trend of racism I've never been comfortable with in D&D. You see, in Eberron goblinoids are not necessarily evil, and not necessarily stupid (though some are one or both of these things). Similarly, good red dragons are as common as evil gold dragons, and so on. Thus, there's no racial alignment and no race is 'inferior', as they are in some D&D worlds. In fact, in Eberron, orcs tend to be very religious and morally fibrous. Anyway, apart from the civilized lands and the newly independent upstart-states, there are some wastelands to round things out and provide adventure opportunities.
Fortunately, none of the four remaining of the Five Kingdoms is lily-white. One is erudite and ruled by a basically good queen whose ambition is probably going to start the next Last War, one is ruled by a good old king but rife with schemers, one is a theocracy (of the Silver Flame no less) with all the advantages and disadvantages thereof, and one is ruled by an iron-fisted vampire nationalist hoping for peace. Oh, and at some point you'll run into halflings who ride dromaeosaurs and live in Petra.
The weakest point of this chapter was Droaam, the nation of monsters. Yeah, right. It's basically where all the guys from the Monster Manual hang out, fail to have a coherent society, and wait to be killed by adventurers. I just didn't buy it. In fact, there's a bit of a problem with the use of the term "monster" in this game - how can you have a race of "monsters"? At that point, they're not monsters. The Minotaur from the Theseus myth is a monster because there's only one of it and it's a real jackass. If it was a whole race of beings, I don't think the term monster any longer applies. Droaam flies in the face of this unassailable logic. It is, however, ruled by a trio of hags, and that in itself has some promise. But the desire to shoehorn *every dang critter* from the official D&D bestiaries seems to have culminated in Droaam, The Land Where All Them Other Dudes Live.
The areas beyond the main continent of Khorvaire are given sketches as well. The main homeland of the Elves, Aerenal, is a jungle archipelago. The Elves worship their ancestors in a Mesoamerican-themed necropolis at the center of their land. These ancestors are the Undying, or anti-undead. They are animated by positive rather than negative energy, and are similar to the good liches of Forgotten Realms (though cooler). For an already long-lived species, the Undying are the ultimate expression of the Elves' yes-and-no relationship with death. There is also Xen'drik, a dark continent where giants once had (appropriately enough) cyclopean cities which now lie in ruins. It is the source of much plot-driving magic. Sarlona, the original homeland of humans, is now run by psionic invaders from the dream realm, and I didn't pay much attention to it. There is also Argonnessen, which is where dragons live who kill you if you start snooping around. Doubtless, adventurers will be drawn to it like moths to a red dragon's esophagus.
Chapter Eight details the organizations of Eberron. The Dragonmarked houses are mercantile houses which control guild monopolies on industries related to the magical aspects of their Dragonmarks (like, the house with the Mark of Sending has a magical telegraph service and thus a monopoly on the transmission of information). This is where a lot of the "magitech" flavor comes in - you've got the aforementioned magical telegrams, magical airships, a magical lightning train and other such fun items. This is also where the book's kitchen sink approach shows itself the most. Instead of hearing about the 'nation of monsters' or finding out how *chokers* (a particularly lame monster from the MM) fit into Eberron, how's about a *deck plan* for an airship or the description of the interior of a lightning rail coach. Because you know that your players don't give a rat's behind about the social habits of chokers, but they darn sure want to have swashbuckling pirate battles on colliding airships and dare dark intrigues aboard a speeding lightning rail in the depths of night. The books should have focused more on facilitating these signature aspects of the game world (and giving us clearer details on how certain things work, like the afterlife vis a vis Raise Dead) and less time on filler text about ogre bodyguards for caravans in the land of Droaam.
Also in organizations are the bad guys, such as the cult of a lich who (after 2,600 years and only made 16th level! sleepin' on the job, I tell you!) wants to punish the elves and dragons for wiping out her family (half-elf, half-dragon peaceniks), or the Illuminati if run by dwarves, or the psionic guys I don't care about, or the evil rakshasas who want to unleash their terrible masters, imprisoned in the pits of the Underdark. Plus, there are a few potential patrons to employ and then misuse the player characters. A strong chapter. Also, most of the baddies aren't mega-high level. Thus, by 10th level or so, the PCs will start seeming pretty darn impressive. By 16th, they'll be pretty unstoppable.
Chapter Nine is campaign advice. It seems solid, but underdeveloped. I don't really fault them for generalities in this case, though, since the book is already trying to wear so many hats. There's a new NPC class called the Magewright, another guy who makes a lot of minor magic items.
Speaking of which, Chapter Ten is on magic items. The signature items here are Dragonshards, pieces of the three original dragons who make up the firmament, the underworld and the earth. These power magic gizmos, enhance your Dragonmarks and make magitech wonders possible. Binding elementals is a big deal for a lot of these things. There are also a number of magical components for your Warforged character. They're basically upgrades or snap-on devices. This chapter has some cool ideas, but again I haven't playtested.
Chapter Eleven is on monsters, and I found it pretty weak. I like the Undying, the Elven anti-undead. The Daelkyr are the masters of the Plane of Madness, where Cthulhu's buddies live, but the illustration is so bad I copped an attitude about them. The idea is that they're supposed to look angelic, but with bioarmor. The bioarmor (a new class of item/monsters called symbionts) seems over the top to me. I'd either have these guys be angelic but 'weird' and 'off' somehow (like how Arioch sometimes appears in Stormbringer) or else make them really unintelligible in their appearance (like a gibbering mouther meets Daoloth or somesuch). There are also several monsters of the formula "X with Y attached" like: monstrous crab with corpses attached; hobgoblin with tentacles attached; goblin with goblin attached. Anyway, less lame monsters, more deck plans for airships please. Stuff I would actually need to run this game.
Chapter Twelve is an adventure. It is short and straightforward: find dead body, get attacked, get mission from shady character, get attacked, find forgotten place of mystery, get attacked, retrieve dingus, get attacked some more, return dingus to patron you probably shouldn't have worked for in the first place. As an introductory adventure, it's not too bad. It showcases some of the mood and themes which distinguish the setting, and it uses the city of Sharn as a backdrop. Sharn is a vertical city, a city of impossibly high towers joined by catwalks, and people dwell within this warren of fantastical coolness. It's really like a fantasy arcology. And of course, from the very first adventure, the PCs are stuck slogging around in the sewers getting munched on by monsters and assassins. Such is life.
Conclusions Thought we'd never get here, did you? Me neither. Anyway, Eberron is a strong product that is worthy of a purchase if you're looking for something different. It is not dogmatic D&D (you know, where halflings are scamps and orcs are jerks and elves are prissy know-it-alls and so forth) and it takes some risks. It has only a dreary afterlife to await your heroes, and the planet is teeming with conspirators only too happy to stab said heroes in the back and send them there. The book makes a strong and consistent point and I regard that very highly indeed. The only problem here is with the "Peace in Our Time" strategy vis a vis the supposed silent majority of D&Ders. Like the Eberron books says, if it's in D&D, it's in Eberron. That will surely placate folks who would otherwise rise up in protest if chokers or medusas got left out of the game world. But, though such brings peace, in my opinion it is too costly a compromise.
The book seems to contain a little too much filler and shoehorning of various standard D&D tropes into a world which would be complete and coherent without them. Did we need halflings? Did we need a nation of monsters? Granted, perhaps only 5 or so pages could be harvested from such a culling. But those 5 pages would be enough to contain everything that seems to me to be missing, like more detail about the specific game mechanics which D20 often emphasizes, or more detail on the things that make Eberron unique and cool like lightning rail and airships. And a political map.
Don't get me wrong - Eberron is good. However, the above-mentioned flaws make me stop short of giving it a "5" for substance. Instead, it gets a solid "4".
If you've got 40 bucks to spend and want a new campaign setting that takes D&D and does something different with it, or if you're really interested in magitech or pulp heroics or D20 intrigue, Eberron strikes me as a worthy purchase. Of the WOTC D&D worlds in print (Greyhawk, FRealms, Dragonlance and Eberron), I find it the strongest. Now if only they'd reprint Planescape and Dark Sun.
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