Eberron: Reinventing Dungeons and Dragons

Eberron: Reinventing Dungeons and Dragons

 

            In the early 2000’s, Wizards of the Coast decided that they needed to update their most popular and well-known game, Dungeons and Dragons. To that end, in 2002, they ran the Fantasy Setting Search, a competition to establish a new setting and world for Dungeons and Dragons to allow for new styles of play. Out of more than 11,000 entries, game designer Keith Baker’s Eberron campaign setting was chosen as the winner, and the setting was officially released in June 2004 with the publication of the Eberron Campaign Setting hardback book. Since then, the setting was updated for the fourth edition of the game, though only three books were released detailing the new rules and settings info for the new edition of the game, with an unofficial update for the fifth edition being provided in February of 2015 in the online feature “Unearthed Arcana”, but unfortunately, the setting has mostly fallen to the wayside as Wizards of the Coast has chosen to focus more on the main campaign setting and on campaign settings set in more traditional fantasy worlds.

            So what exactly is Eberron? Well, in the shortest possible explanation, Eberron is what happens when you combine pulp novels from the late 1800’s, detective stories, steampunk, traditional fantasy, adventure movies, classic film noirs like Casablanca, and Game of Thrones into Dungeons and Dragons. The story is that a hundred-year long war has just ended on the continent of Khorvaire, and a new age of exploration and adventure has started. However, various dark forces are present in the world, mysterious magic has awakened, political intrigue is happening, lasting tensions of the war are being inflamed, and ancient evils are stirring. It is your choices that decide the direction of the story and will decide the fate of Eberron.

            For the most part, Eberron plays the same as any other Dungeons and Dragons setting. It differs however in two main ways. The first is the focus. As I previously mentioned, the setting is more along the lines of a gritty fantasy story rather than the normal high fantasy setting of most Dungeons and Dragons settings like Greyhawk, Drangonslance, or Forgotten Realms. One of the main ways this is shown is in the way magic is used and treated. Magic in Eberron is both more and less common than in other settings, with a new player class, the Artificer, to take advantage of this. High level magic, such as resurrection spells and world changing and dimensional travel spells, are as uncommon and potentially rarer than in other settings, but generally speaking, low-level magic like cure minor wounds or arcane mark, are pretty common, thanks in large part to the Dragonmarked houses, a group of 13 different houses that form the backbone of the economy on Khorvaire. The marks have different powers related to certain things, such as tracking, warding, detection, handling animals, and weather control, and only members of certain races can have a Dragonmark of a certain type (e.g., elves are the only ones who can have the Mark of Shadow, humans are the only ones who have the Mark of Handling, half-elves are the only ones with the Mark of Storms, with the only exception being humans and half-orcs sharing the Mark of Finding). As a result of the Dragonmarked houses influence, magical healing, sky ships, a set of magical train lines known as the Lightning Rail, and various other magic’s exist in abundant supply in the world of Eberron. Cities are let by Everbright Lanterns, pretty much every city composed of at least 30 people has a spell caster of some skill in it, and wizards are generally seen more like electricians or plumbers rather than mystical people in touch with forces beyond our understanding. Another difference is the presence of psionics, or powers that are manifested by the mind. In other settings, psionics are more of a supplemental addition, something that a Dungeon master and the players can use if they want to, but is generally only an additional option rather than a required part of the game. In Eberron, while it possible to play without psionics, it is ill-advised, as one of the main playable races and their rival race, the Kalashtar and the Quori/Inspired respectively, are based almost entirely around psionics, and while playable without it, lose a lot of their uniqueness and flavor without the power of psionics, which are, again, more common in Eberron than in other campaign settings.

            The biggest and most relevant way that Eberron has more in common with gritty fantasy, and its biggest departure from traditional Dungeons and Dragons and fantasy in general, is in its treatment of alignment. Alignment in Eberron in treated with more nuance than in most other DnD settings. As an example, in most settings, a cleric (a holy warrior who wields divine magic in service to a deity) whose alignment moves two steps in either direction away from their deity (alignment is broken into good-neutral-evil and chaotic-neutral-lawful, with the first axis indicating how moral a character is and the second indicating how they approach a situation, i.e., a lawful good character has a code that they refer back to when dealing with something, while a neutral good character just cares about doing what is generally considered the moral thing without regard for a reward, the law, or chaos), loses their power. So, a cleric of a lawful good deity would find himself losing his powers if he were to become neutral-neutral (or true neutral), chaotic good, or lawful evil. In Eberron however, the normal restriction on alignment doesn’t apply. So, a cleric of the Church of the Silver Flame (a lawful-good deity that is very obviously based on the Catholic church, only they worship a divine force of good that has manifested in the form of a giant pillar of sentient silver fire that is inhabited by the spirits of three entities, a bound demon, a noble and good feathered serpent known as a couatl, and a female human paladin named Tira Morran who bound the demon with her life-force, that their equivalent of the pope talks to) can be lawful-evil or even chaotic-evil and still retain their power as if they were still lawful-good. Even more prominent is the way that alignment is applied to the various races of creatures that exist in the world. Unlike other DnD settings, race no longer contributes to alignment. Vampires for example can be noble and good, while gold dragons can be vile and reprehensible villains. Race has also been modified quite heavily. Orcs for example come in three main varieties. Swamp dwellers who just want to live their lives and can be of any alignment, worshipers of demons in the Demon Wastes, and warriors of a force connected to the Silver Flame that fight against the demon worshipers. Race generally has little bearing on alignment, allowing for more complex characters of all races.

            Eberron is one of the most unique fantasy settings I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. It is full of unique and creative ideas, from Halfling (Hobbit) barbarians that ride dinosaurs across the plains, dragons that have formed an organization dedicated to protecting the world from destruction, the most powerful organization dedicated to good among the common races being led by a twelve-year-old pope, and a race composed entirely of living constructs (known as Warforged), Eberron offers something a little different from traditional fantasy fare. It is pretty easy to find a copy of the books available at game shops and specialty bookstores, or even scanned online if you are into that sort of shady thing. While Wizards of the Coast seems to have abandoned the setting, it still has a number of fans, and Keith Baker is willing to talk about and discuss the setting and has mentioned that he would love to see it return someday. But you will never know until you play and experience it yourself.