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All the adventure themes that Wizards designers promised - swashbuckling play, exotic settings, intrigue - have been part of our play sessions.
I've also been reasonably impressed by the campaign supplements detailing Sharn, the Five Kingdoms, etc. They pack a lot of information into a format that is readable and entertaining.
But Wizards has diminished the promise of the Eberron brand with each official adventure published so far. The first three had sparks of real inspiration (a great villain in Brother Garrow, a dramatic, swooping battle on the roof of a runaway lightning rail train, and so on...) but they were muddled and lacked any kind of narrative drive.
Unfortunately, Golden Dragon suffers the same muddle without any flashes of inspiration. At the center of the "tale" is a bigger than average skyship, an iconic vessel that should offer a sort of "wow!" moment to players who love Eberron.
But it turns out that The Golden Dragon is the D&D version of the Queen Mary (or maybe the Love Boat), a passenger liner crewed by quirky characters and threatened by a thinly motivated Lhazaarian bandit.
SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!
In the very first scene, this pirate's minions take control of the Golden Dragon. They have the ship entirely under their command. Rather than steal it, they attempt to blow it out of the sky.
In a campaign setting theoretically known for its high-flying drama, the culminating battle in this first "act" involves a lot of plumbing and steam. (Actually, the 3rd part of the story also has a weird amount of steam...)
ANOTHER SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!
The second act of Golden Dragon highlights one of the major problems with the Eberron adventures published to date: too many plots.
During the ship's maiden voyage, the adventurers are required to sort out 1) the Lhazaarian pirate's continued intrigues, 2) an international spy scheme involving possession and necromancy, and 3) a second international spy scheme involving the Brelish crown and House Orien.
John LeCarre has far greater narrative mastery than Nicolas Logue, author of Golden Dragon, and he would never attempt such a scrum of goings-on.
What's more, the adventure offers the Dungeon Master only the vaguest clues about how the Player Characters might be expected to sort this all out.
Here's a typical passage: "If the PCs encounter Zan, the disguised changeling appears unusually nervous (Sense Motive DC 19). Zan has caught sight of Azango among Malinko's guards, and recognizes him as a doppelganger connected to the guild from which he is fleeing. Zan assumes (incorrectly) that Azango is on the Dragon searching for him..."
So, in order for PCs to make sense of this "clue," they have to first encounter Zan, then realize that he's unusually nervous, then figure out why, which probably involves figuring out that he is in fact a changeling. They then have to discover that Zan's understanding of the stituation is incorrect, and finally sort out what's really going on.
Wahoo! Now, that's swashbuckling fun! Meanwhile, there are two other equally byzantine plots unfolding in real time.
At the risk of indulging in schadenfreude, let me make two more points before I offer one bit of tentative praise.
First, it's time to do someting fresh with Xen'drik, or maybe leave it alone for a while. Logue describes the third section of his adventure as an "exhilarating jaunt through Xen'drik's picturesque ruins." When your world's most mysterious landscape starts sounding like a tourist destination in Baedekers, you know it's time to rethink things. In fact, this particular Xen'drik adventure is so thinly written that there's no motivation, not a single dramatic event, and not a single memorable villain. In the future, Wizards editors should require authors to prove that their story is worthy of being set in those lost jungles.
My other big beef is with the Golden Dragon herself. In theory, the ship is supposed to play an ongoing role in the Eberron campaign. She may even provide the Player Characters with a mobile base of operations.
Unfortunately, the Dragon is thinly detailed, with no game mechanics to guide the Dungeon Master -- how fast can she go? how maneuverable is she? how many passengers can she carry? The maps are crude and uninteresting and leave out key information. (What's on the Main Deck underneath the Observation Deck?)
In an adventure like this, the character of the ship itself matters. Think the Enterprise or Serenity or the Millenium Falcon. The truth is, that "big" isn't interesting. Why not make the Golden Dragon sentient? Why not give her some identifying quirks (overzealous unseen servants, a flawed eberron shard that causes the ship to stall at inopportune moments, secret passages, dryads built into the livewood accoutrements...) that make her unique?
And why, oh why?, does the Golden Dragon's author spend so much ink on the ship's on-board masseuse and his parlor? This may be the first fantasy adventure story in which a key character is world famous for his scalp rubs.
In future, my suggestion to the Wizards crew is to follow their own advice: Think cinematically. Golden Dragon begins just fine, with a glimpse of a great skyship floating at bay above the towers of Sharn.
But where the second scene should have been a pell-mell flight through the towers (sheering off balconies, plummeting under skybridges) or a rousing duel high in the rigging, or a realization that the Dragon is really something special, this "movie" quickly bogs down in colorless slugfests and overcomplicated plot lines.
My conclusion? The great Eberron adventure has yet to be written...
