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Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009

Night10194 posted:

You get the picture. It's a bunch of 'that seems cool' thrown together without much real rhyme or reason, so it doesn't hang together that well as a whole.

This is completely not the case for Eberron. Warforged are integral to the Last War, and therefore to the setting - Eberron is 1920s Shadowrun, pretty much.

As for the "nightmare crabs" (the Quori) - they live in the Plane of Dreams, and whenever a new "age" comes along in the mortal plane the Plane of Dreams and its inhabitants are completely destroyed and remade in a new image. The Quori would very much like to not all die, so they are trying to enslave the material plane to stop progress.

While it does feel like the Quori are in for the sake of having an extraplanar existential threat for PCs to fight, that origin makes them worth having around. It's unfortunate that they're cartoonishly evil (rather than being very alien and motivated purely by survival), though, as that somewhat diminishes their impact.

Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 12:39 on Apr 26, 2013

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404GoonNotFound
Aug 6, 2006

The McRib is back!?!?
The one downside to Eberron, at least from a F&F writeup perspective, is that it's intentionally limited in material. Almost as a reaction to all the railroading of the mid to late 90s (and, let's face it, from Forgotten Realms itself) Keith Baker decided that Eberron should not only be 100% metaplot-free, but that what story did exist should be incomplete and full of obvious gaps, sized perfectly for the DM to insert whatever Cool poo poo he wants. It's great from a gameplay perspective, but for an idle observer? Not so much.

MadScientistWorking
Jun 23, 2010

"I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

404GoonNotFound posted:

The one downside to Eberron, at least from a F&F writeup perspective, is that it's intentionally limited in material. Almost as a reaction to all the railroading of the mid to late 90s (and, let's face it, from Forgotten Realms itself) Keith Baker decided that Eberron should not only be 100% metaplot-free, but that what story did exist should be incomplete and full of obvious gaps, sized perfectly for the DM to insert whatever Cool poo poo he wants. It's great from a gameplay perspective, but for an idle observer? Not so much.
Honestly, Eberron has enough interesting stuff going on that it really doesn't matter if it has a metaplot. Its just that in regards to complexity in what is going on it actually rivals Forgotten Realms.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

MadScientistWorking posted:

Honestly, Eberron has enough interesting stuff going on that it really doesn't matter if it has a metaplot. Its just that in regards to complexity in what is going on it actually rivals Forgotten Realms.

This exactly. 3.5 Eberron had entire books that were basically "Here's this continent with a bunch of neat stuff happening in it. This is how you get the PCs involved."

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Hmm. It seems like my impression of Eberron might've been more due to playing it relatively briefly and doing so when my GM and I were still in high school (And with his less, er, attentive group). If it gets written up, I'd be happy to turn out to be wrong about it.

Especially as those crabs were pretty goddamn scary. I wouldn't mind fighting those crabs.

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009
Move the gently caress over, Faerûn; here comes the real pro setting. :smuggo:
Sorry Kurieg, but I beat you to it. You can take over when I inevitably lose interest midway through



Eberron, introduction: it is the year 1923 – the height of the Cold War – and megacorporations rule the world…


eberron.jpg

What is it?

Eberron is a D&D setting that combines elements of pulp, noir and high fantasy in what ends up being a fairly unique mix (for D&D, at least).

Here is a short list of activities one can engage in in Eberron:

quote:

THINGS YOU CAN DO IN EBERRON
  • Indiana-Jones-style pulp adventuring with falling-rock-traps and angry tribes of cannibal drows;
  • Old-Western-style train robbery complete with Artificer dual-wielding wands and fighting guards on top of the Lightning Rail carriage;
  • noir-esque murder/disappearance mystery set in Sharn with rugged private eye and his warforged partner;
  • Cold-War-type "who is the mole feeding crucial information to the enemy organisation?!" shenanigans;
  • 1920s/80s dodgy corporate politics including murder, arson, industrial espionage and bribery;
  • swashbuckling duels atop elemental-powered airships.

If that doesn’t mean much to you, imagine this:

The first war of the Industrial Age has just ended, and it was a long one – in one form or another, it lasted a little over 100 years. This war – the Last War, as it came to be known – happened between five brothers and sisters, the sons and daughters of King Jarot of Galifar (named after its founder, King Galifar, from whom Jarot was descended), who squabbled over his empire after his death. With powerful magitech (like airships powered by bound elementals and legions of construct soldiers), these Five Nations nearly destroyed each other – until a terrible magical catastrophe wiped out one of the five. Whether an accident or a weapon (no one knows), this event ended up providing the catalyst for a weary peace between the belligerents.

Out of the wreckage, the Five Nations have emerged weakened and indebted to the Dragonmarked Houses: powerful merchant dynasties with legally-enforced monopolies whose members occasionally manifest magical birthmarks that give them power over a specific economic domain (e.g. banking, or travel). These Houses have essentially become governments unto their own, with private armies and with the lands they own being subject to no law but their own.

But just because the War has officially ended doesn’t mean Galifar’s descendants have given up on their ambitions; all the contrary. A century of war has left each kingdom with extensive networks of spies and saboteurs who fight a shadow war with one another in an attempt to destabilise opposing régimes. In effect, the Last War has only publicly ended – it is very much like the Cold War, and while the common people are weary of all the fighting, there’s no shortage of “patriots” willing to light the powderkeg anew.

In other words, Eberron is set in the aftermath of World War I, where sapient androidsgolems live alongside your more standard D&D races in four different kingdoms currently in the middle of a Cold War with each other, while shadowy transnational megacorporations do their best to further their plans.

Oh, and there’s halflings who ride motherfucking dinosaurs, too.

How did it come to be?

Back in 2002 (oh, hey, that was over a decade ago now :smith:), Wizards figured out that maybe relying on just Forgotten Realms as their flagship setting for D&D might be a bad idea. In an effort to resolve this problem, WotC started the Fantasy Setting Search contest (what an original name :what:).

The contest received about 11000 single-page setting pitches, from a mix of amateurs, industry folk and professionals from outside the tabletop industry. Out of all of those, Wizards ended up selecting a mere eleven pitches to be developed into 10-page outlines, then three finalists were asked to provided setting bibles.

After several months of judging, Keith Baker’s Eberron pitch won the contest. Since part of the submission guidelines involved agreeing not to disclose any info about the setting pitches, the othes have unfortunately been lost to the mists of time and WotC’s R&D vaults – although there are some reasons to believe a lot of the content ended up being reused in late-era 3.5 supplements and maybe even bits of 4E’s PoL setting.

You may notice that Eberron uses a lot of traditional D&D elements (elves, dwarves, beholders, alignments, dungeons) but tries to subvert a lot of them – one of the requirements for the contest was actually to produce a setting where all the traditional D&D elements had a place. As mentioned a few posts up, Eberron is also a setting where a lot of holes are left in the setting for the DM to fill.

Next time: less text, more pictures of maps

Also, as postscript, a note: my job on this is essentially cut out for me thanks to the absolutely terrific Grand History of Eberron, a 500-page document that collates all Eberron material in a single source. It's a loving fantastic resource.

As this is intended to be more of an overview of Eberron and why it's so great, I won't be looking at every setting element in detail - if something I mention is of particular interest to you, the Grand History will doubtless literally have 20+ pages of details on it, so check it out.

Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Apr 28, 2013

MadScientistWorking
Jun 23, 2010

"I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Night10194 posted:


Especially as those crabs were pretty goddamn scary. I wouldn't mind fighting those crabs.
Surprisingly you can be one of them. Effectively Khalaster are human/good quori hybrids. In fact if I had to guess the Quori were probably an homage to Stargate.

quote:

Back in 2002 (oh, hey, that was over a decade ago now ), Wizards figured out that maybe relying on just Forgotten Realms as their flagship setting for D&D might be a bad idea. In an effort to resolve this problem, WotC started the Fantasy Setting Search contest (what an original name ).

The contest received about 11000 single-page setting pitches, from a mix of amateurs, industry folk and professionals from outside the tabletop industry. Out of all of those, Wizards ended up selecting a mere eleven pitches to be developed into 10-page outlines.

After several months of judging, Keith Baker’s Eberron pitch won the contest. Since part of the submission guidelines involved agreeing not to disclose any info about the setting pitches, the other ten have unfortunately been lost to the mists of time and WotC’s R&D vaults – although there are some reasons to believe a lot of the content ended up being reused in late-era 3.5 documents and maybe even bits of 4E’s PoL setting.
One of the other well known potential contestants was Rich Burlew.

MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Apr 26, 2013

Serperoth
Feb 21, 2013




Lemon Curdistan posted:

<Eberron>
And also:

How did it come to be?

Back in 2002 (oh, hey, that was over a decade ago now :smith:), Wizards figured out that maybe relying on just Forgotten Realms as their flagship setting for D&D might be a bad idea. In an effort to resolve this problem, WotC started the Fantasy Setting Search contest (what an original name :what:).

The contest received about 11000 single-page setting pitches, from a mix of amateurs, industry folk and professionals from outside the tabletop industry. Out of all of those, Wizards ended up selecting a mere eleven pitches to be developed into 10-page outlines.

After several months of judging, Keith Baker’s Eberron pitch won the contest. Since part of the submission guidelines involved agreeing not to disclose any info about the setting pitches, the other ten have unfortunately been lost to the mists of time and WotC’s R&D vaults – although there are some reasons to believe a lot of the content ended up being reused in late-era 3.5 documents and maybe even bits of 4E’s PoL setting.


I think that Rich Burlew (the dude who does Order Of The Stick) had created a setting which got into the final 11, and that's why he's known to throw a few stabs at Eberron. I could be remembering wrong though, so if someone knows better, feel free to say so.


Also, Eberron sounds like a great setting. Magitek and megacorps, can't go wrong with that.

MadScientistWorking
Jun 23, 2010

"I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Serperoth posted:

Also, Eberron sounds like a great setting. Magitek and megacorps, can't go wrong with that.
Honestly, my only problem with the setting is that the houses are insanely onmipoetent to the point where it gets kind of nonsensical. Its the primary reason why there isn't gunpowder in that setting despite everything else in it. Honestly its a minor complaint.

MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Apr 26, 2013

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009

Serperoth posted:

I think that Rich Burlew (the dude who does Order Of The Stick) had created a setting which got into the final 11

As MadScientistWorking pointed out, that is correct - Rich Burlew was one of the finalists too. Allegedly, some of his stuff ended up in PoL and some of his stuff ended in 3.5 books like Dungeonscape. I believe Book of Nine Swords and the Tome of Magic also owe their existence to some of the contestants.

Unfortunately, since WotC is staying mum on this, we'll likely never know what the other ten pitches were like and what ended up being used where. :(

MadScientistWorking
Jun 23, 2010

"I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Lemon Curdistan posted:

As MadScientistWorking pointed out, that is correct - Rich Burlew was one of the finalists too. Allegedly, some of his stuff ended up in PoL and some of his stuff ended in 3.5 books like Dungeonscape.
Hey just out of curiosity are you including the 4E class material for Eberron because while the fluff is the same outside the Eladrin material there was some neat class mechanics like the Artificers Rocket Fist which was a retooling of a Prestige Class.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Lemon Curdistan posted:

Sorry Kurieg, but I beat you to it. You can take over when I inevitably lose interest midway through


:argh: I was researching my opening post and everything.
Don't worry I'll pick up the books you don't cover. (I have several) and I can help elaborate things.


Serperoth posted:

I think that Rich Burlew (the dude who does Order Of The Stick) had created a setting which got into the final 11, and that's why he's known to throw a few stabs at Eberron. I could be remembering wrong though, so if someone knows better, feel free to say so.
Case in point.

Rich actually got into the final 3, though due to a NDA he can't actually discuss the setting he created. His work on the contest actually inspired him to create GitP.com. It was originally just game design articles, and he made OOTS to keep interest up between his sporadic releases.

Rich and Keith seem to have a friendly rivalry though, and the contest got Rich's foot in the door with WotC to develop DnD Books. He's worked on a few Eberron projects and created the Acid Breathing Shark.

MadScientistWorking posted:

Hey just out of curiosity are you including the 4E class material for Eberron because while the fluff is the same outside the Eladrin material there was some neat class mechanics like the Artificers Rocket Fist which was a retooling of a Prestige Class.

If he doesn't I can.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

The storm has a name... - Let's Read TORG


...for a given value of "change".

Part 3: Gamemastery

On being a gamemaster posted:

If you're just planning on being a player, you don't need to read any more of this book. As long as you've read the Player Section, you know how to figure skill values, how to roll the die and generate a bonus number, how to generate action and effect totals, how to play drama cards into a pool, and what drama cards can do for you.
And that's all you need to know.
But, who sets the difficulty numbers for the players to beat? Who decides what the villains' abilities are, and how much damage is done when a blow lands or a bullet strikes home? The gamemaster does, and to do those things you will need to read the rest of the Rule Book. If you're planning on being a gamemaster, you might want to read a little of the World Book next, then come back here and start getting familiar with the rules.

There is a ton of poo poo you need to keep track of as a TORG gamemaster.

See, unlike other RPGs, a Torg GM is pretty much exclusivly does all the heavy lifting. The players just roll their skill, it's the GM who determines the difficulty numbers. The players don't figure out on their if they hit and how much damage they do, the GM does. The players don't have to worry about the worst of the crunch, that's what the GM is there for.

And drat, there is a lot of crunch. There's a lot of tables, too, and if you're GMing then you need pretty much all of them.

Starting out the Gamemastering section is some generic GMing advice I'm not going to bother reproducing here because it's stuff we've all heard before.

The first real chapter of the GMing section is about how to calculate totals and results. The *total* is the final value generated by a player, which is trying to beat a difficulty. If the total meets or beats the target number, then you succeed and the amount you succeed by is the result. So if I try to do something that has a difficulty of 14 and I get a total of 19, then I have a result of 4 points.

Now, that's all well and good, but what do you do with these result points?

That's where the results tables come into play.

There are three result tables, and which one you look at is determined by the type of action you're trying to do. There's a combat result chart, a social interaction result chart, and a general result chart.



We've already talked a bit about the combat results table, and the interaction table is used to determine what effect you had on the target of your intimidate/charm/whatever attempt. Let's look at the general results table. Ignore the last three columns for now, let's just look at the "success" column. For normal skill use, you look the result value up to see the degree of success. What do those values mean?

quote:

Minimal implies that the character just barely succeeded; you might want to describe how narrowly he avoided failure. Average is average; no extra description is warranted. Good success sometimes merits a more detailed description, particularly if the character faced long odds. A superior success deserves special emphasis. For a spectacular success, pull out all the stops in your description. Your players will love you for it.
They're just a guideline for how you should describe the success. There's no partial successes here.

The next section is about the attribute scale, and I have to let the first two paragraphs speak for themselves.

quote:

The attribute scale in Torg is an innovative use of attribute numbering, made necessary by the multiple genres in the game. Most game systems either use a consistent scale for their attributes—in other words, each point of an attribute represents a specific amount of real-world measure — or they have no scale at all. The problem with such systems is that while they work fine in a limited setting (fantasy, horror, etc.) they either fall apart when bigger things (like technological weapons) are introduced, or they require huge numbers to represent the top end of the scale. For example, if a dagger does "one die of damage," how many dice do you roll for the main cannon of the Death Star?

Torg solves this problem by the use of a logarithmic scale. A logarithmic scale is one like the Richter scale, or the Decibel scale, where each point represents a greater proportional amount than the point before. For example, a level four earthquake is far more than twice as powerful than a level two earthquake, because each point on the Richter scale is 10 times as large as the point before. This is because earthquakes can range so greatly in size.
You can tell that this was written before era where people would ask "why would you bother rolling to see how much damage the Death Star does?"

Anyway, the idea is that any real-wrorld measurement of weight, distance, or time can be converted into a difficulty number. Said difficulty number can then be used for skill checks. So if a player needs to jump between buildings that are 64 feet apart, the GM would check the Torg Value Chart to see what value was closest, and that would be the difficulty of the jump.



Except that the chart in in metric, and was designed and mainly distributed in a country that used imperial. So do we just convert 64 feet into meters? Of course not, because we didn't have Google back then. Instead, we have another chart!

To find the actual value of 64 feet, we look up 64 on the Value Chart. 64 doesn't appear on the table, so we go with the next row up (100), which has a Value of 10. Then we look at the Measure Conversion Chart to see what the modifier is for feet. The modifier is -3, which is applied to the value for a final difficulty of 7.

(And just for the record, that's not that hard. Most starting characters will have at least a 9 in their stats, which means they're going to have to roll above a 5 on a d20 to succeed if they don't have a relevant skill. If they are skilled, they'll probably have to critically fail to actually fail. Also for the record, the current world record for the long jump is just shy of 30 feet. Also, since we have to move up to the next highest value when the exact value we want isn't there, that means it's just as difficult to jump 61 feet as it is to jump 100 feet.)

Now, I appreciate good guidelines for the GM to set difficulty numbers, but come on...the GM is expected to do this every time he needs a difficulty number.

Anyway, there's also the Difficulty Scale for when you want a situational modifier. If the GM decides that a task should be a little harder than normal, you can look up how hard you want to make it on the Difficulty Scale table, and add the appropriate value to the difficulty. For an Easy task, for instance, you reduce the difficulty by 3, but for "2:1 Against" you increase it by 2.

Next up is...another chart! The Limit Chart is what's used to determine human (or non-human) limits. The way it works is that it lists the maximum value a character can generate on the Value Chart for a given task/stat. For instance, the Core Earth human limit for running is 10. To find out how fast someone can run in a round, you look up their Dex on the Value Chart. Someone with a 9 Dex can run 60 meters a round. But if someone has a Dex of 11, the highest Value they can generate is a 10, which is 100 meters a round.

A round is 10 seconds, by the way.

It's possible to push past these limits by making a difficulty 8 roll and applying the result to the Push Chart. You take the result of that chart and add it to your stat.

quote:

Example: The Yellow Crab is trying to sprint for his life from a horde of angry, heavily-armed gangsters. Chris declares that the Crab is pushing his speed this round. The Crab generates a Dexterity total of 12. This earns four result points on the push table (total of 12 minus difficulty of 8 = 4), for a value modifier of +1. The Crab's running value for that turn is 11 (Dexterity of 10, +1 value modifier). He sprints 150 meters that round, successfully outdistancing his pursuers.
Just so you know, you can use some skills to help you push, and pushing can generate fatigue points.

And now, it's time for the "optional" rules about multiple actions: many-on-one, and one-on-many.

These are not just combat actions; they're used when a bunch of people are trying to work together on a task (many-on-one), or when someone's trying to affect multiple targets at once (one-on-many).

How do they work? Well, they involve charts.

When a group is performing many-on-one, you only roll for one of the characters in the group, and the number of other people performing the action add a modifier to the roll. The result will determine how many of the people in the group succeeded.

quote:

Four shocktroopers are trying to leap a pit which has a difficulty number of 10. They have jumping at 9. The gamemaster rolls a 14 for a bonus of one, increased to four because of the multi-action bonus modifier. They generate a total of 13 (9 plus 1 plus 3). They have beaten the difficulty number by three, which is enough for two of them, but not quite enough for all four. Two shocktroopers make it across, while two fall screaming into the pit.

If you're performing one-on-many, you're trying to use one or more skills for multiple tasks at once, like shooting two foes in one round, or swinging across a chasm while firing a gun. You only roll once, and the result is applied to each skill/task in whatever order the player wants. However, each task you're trying to do gets an increasing difficulty modifier.

quote:

The gamemaster tells Paul to use Quin's Dexterity for the swing, and fire combat for shooting. Swinging across the ravine has a difficulty of 8. The shocktroopers' dodge scores are 9. Paul rolls a bonus of 0; he decides to check the swing first, as he'd prefer not to be hanging over the chasm (or falling in). The modified difficulty of the swing is DN+2, or 10; his Dexterity of 11 is enough to cross the ravine. The first shot difficulty is DN+4, or 13. Quin's fire combat total is 14 and he hits the first shocktrooper. The third action (shooting the second shocktrooper) is DN+6 or 15. Quin misses the third shot.
It should also be pointed out that attacking multiple targets increases said target's effective Toughness, meaning they're harder to hit and take less damage if you do.

There can be further complications if not everyone involved in a many-on-one doesn't have the same skill, or if getting everyone coordinated is an issue. This is because Torg is intended to be used for big-scale combats; there's an example in the book of 100 bad guys attacking, and some of the modules have combats with 200 or more people.

There are no mook rules. At all. Everyone gets full stats.

Oh, there's a shortcut...

quote:

What if 200 gamemaster characters are coordinating their efforts in a mystic ritual? Do you have to roll 200 Perception checks to come up with the correct answer? Well, yes; but if you are willing to live with an approximation, use the following
...if you can live with it.

And that finishes out the basic GMing chapter. We've been told how to use about a dozen or so tables, and we haven't gotten to skills or in-depth combat yet.

As I've said: crunchy as gently caress. There's no assumption of eyeballing values here! We are modeling a ficitonal reality here, people.

Serious. loving. Business.

Again, I love Torg, but goddamn this system...

I will leave you with the actual last paragraphs of the chapter, though.

quote:

The rules are a framework upon which you and your friends build stories set in the dynamic world of Torg. As with most frameworks, the rules work best when they show the least, and when they can bend under stress. If you need to bend the rules to keep a story flowing with a nice dramatic beat, do so. Keeping to the letter of the rules is almost certainly counterproductive.

We wrote the rules so you could play a game in a unique setting, not so we could dictate exactly how you should use that setting. So go have fun.

That's a rule.


NEXT TIME: Skills, cards and human interaction!

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009


Eberron, part 1: the Five Nations of Galifar


This is Khorvaire – not the only continent in Eberron, but the one that’s been most written about. Click here for HUGE (seriously, 5MB image). The red lines are major roads, and the glowy orange lines are the rail lines for the Lightning Rail - magical maglev trains.

Actually, I lied about there being less words.

Aundair

Absolutely not fantasy medieval France.

Okay, it’s basically fantasy medieval France.

Aundair is a nation of hard-working peasantfolk, nobles and powerful battle-mages. The bread-basket of Galifar, Aundair actually did okay in the War – its biggest losses weren’t to the other kingdoms but to secessionists in the Eldeen Reaches splitting off from the crown’s rule, which Aundair was powerless to stop in the middle of the War. Located on the borders of Karrnath and Thrane, the country still has a bone to pick with them today – especially with Thrane, since the Treaty of Thronehold (the one that ended the Last War) gave away one of the contested border regions to the latter.

Despite the “idyllic magical countryside” flavour, Aundair’s military is actually surprisingly mighty. Between its very-well-trained voluntary light infantry and dragoons and the phenomenal arcane power of its war-wizards, you don’t want to tangle with the Aundairans – especially because they are actually a centre of magical manufacturing and genetic engineering with a much higher distribution of magitech than the other kingdoms (think wands-are-guns, or flying castles and hypogriff-mounted troops).

Aundair is ruled by the beautiful and fair queen Aurala, granddaughter of Jarot’s fourth child, who is much beloved by her people. Unfortunately for everyone else, Aurala is actively trying to restart the Last War – she believes that Aundair has what it takes to subjugate all the other kingdoms so she can sit on the throne of a reunified Galifar.

Breland

Plucky little Breland.

Breland is by far the largest of the Five Nations – whereas the settlers who founded the other four regions of Galifar didn’t spread very far, Breland’s population had that frontier spirit that allowed them to push much further inland and spread out over a lot more land.

In fact, “frontier spirit” is what defines Breland. It was founded by what essentially amounted to adventurers, and its current king continues to encourage settlers, pioneers and murderhobos to set off into the wilderness. During the Last War, the fact that it’s huge and has so many natural resources means it probably did the best out of all of the Five Nations – in fact, where Aundair had its magical might, Thrane its religious fanaticism and Karrnath its famed military tradition, everyone sort of expected Breland to roll over and die, but it turned out that its free-minded militias were actually pretty good in a fight.

Other than that, Breland is sort of… bland. It doesn’t really have much going for it as an actual nation, with a couple of exceptions

First of all – and this is the big one – it’s where Sharn is located. Sharn is basically fantasy New York City, and is pretty much the default urban location for games of Eberron – it’s the most cosmopolitan place in the entire setting. I'll give its own section in the next post.

Secondly, Breland lost control of its western reaches to a budding nation of monsters who banded together to survive – Droaam. As a result, Breland has a massive hate-on for them and will quite happily send parties over to “reclaim” the lost territory. As you can imagine “here’s lots of gold to go here and kill orcs, goblins, medusas and worse” makes for a fairly popular adventuring hook.

Cyre The Mournland

Whoops.

Were it not for Cyre, there is every indication that the Last War would have continued for a good few more decades – probably until everyone starved and the Houses took over, given the stalemate that the latter years of the Last War proved to be.

Unfortunately, Cyre didn’t heroically stop the war by brokering a tenuous peace agreement; what actually caused the tenuous peace agreement was Cyre being nuked into the loving ground.

Prior to that happening, Cyre was actually the most technologically and culturally advanced part of Galifar, the very heart of the kingdom, and its ruler at the time of Jarot’s death was actually the first in line for the throne. Had Princess Mishann’s brothers and sisters actually acknowledged her right to rule rather than making power-plays to satisfy their personal ambitions, the Last War would never have happened.

Because of this, Cyre ended up being the battleground where most of the Last War was fought. From the most beautiful part of Galifar, Cyre ended up being one big, war-torn battlefield, right up until the point where the entire country was blown up by a magical nuclear explosion – on the Day of Mourning, as it became known.

Now, Cyre is known as the Mournland – a vast expanse of wasteland where roiling storms of arcane energy blow across the land, grey fog mutates everything it touches and the very laws of physics seem to have decided to take a holiday. If you’ve read China Miéville, yes, it’s basically the Cacotopic Stain from Iron Council.

No one knows why Cyre blew up – whether it was a freak accident, if the Cyrans were working on an arcane doomsday weapon to end the Last War or whether someone or something else blew them up – and I mean it is official setting policy that there’s no official answer to this, so that you can decide what the cause of the Mourning actually was. The tiny handful of remaining Cyrans (less than five thousand, out of the 1.5 million who lived in Cyre) now live in New Cyre, a region of Breland that the Brelish king has loaned to the refugees.

Other than the excitement of painful instant death, the main motives for going to Cyre are looting its ruins – since they were the most technologically advanced. That, and the Mournland is where a small but steadily growing army of warforged who believe all flesh is weak and must be eradicated is located, which makes for a pretty good hook.

Karrnath

It’s cold outside ♪ (but there's still some kind of atmosphere).

This charming military dictatorship is named for Karrn, a warlord of the far antiquity who was chiefly responsible for fighting the natives and allowing humanity a place to thrive on Khorvaire. If it hadn’t been for Karrnath, Khorvaire would still mostly be ruled by hobgoblins (this will make more sense in a bit).

Located to the North-East of Khorvaire, Karrnath is a frigid land of dour people – think Tsarist Russia and you’re not far off. During the opening years of the War, Karrnath’s forces took particularly severe losses – this lead to Karrnath using the necromantic arts to raise their dead as zombies and skeletons.

Past the initial distaste, this proved to be a surprisingly good strategy for Karrnath. Undead don’t tire or require sustenance, and if they’re knocked down you just raise them again, as long as the damage isn’t too extensive. Nowadays, the Karrnathi have no problems with necromancy, and Karrnath still maintains its borders with undead troops.

Karrnath is ruled by King Kaius III, the grandson of Kaius I, who was the third of Jarot’s brats.

Except not! In a surprise twist, Kaius I is actually a vampire, and keeps faking his death every 50 years or so and handing the throne down to his “son.” In another surprise twist, Kaius is the only one of the five rulers who actually wants peace. The other four are all power-hungry dickbags, but Kaius just wants the Last War to go away forever and never come back.

NB: one of the things Eberron does is that it attempts to subvert certain elements of D&D, like alignments and gods. The thing with Kaius being a vampire who wants peace and Aurala being a Good character who wants war is part of that.

Thrane

Come on baby, light my fire.

Thrane is a nation of religious fanatics.

You see, in Eberron, gods are actually distant – they never communicate with their followers directly, and any contact a priest or cleric has is with some kind of divine servant, even when praying for miracles/spells. There is one exception to that: the Silver Flame.

The Silver Flame is a literal silver flame that exists in Thrane. The Church of the Silver Flame worships it, and it actually speaks directly to a mortal – the Keeper of the Silver Flame, who is currently an 11 year old girl called Jaela Daran. The Flame and its Church have been around for about 700 years now – the cult originated when a paladin sacrificed herself to close a portal between the material plane and the Nine Hells that was literally disgorging devils into Thrane.

Thrane wasn’t always a theocracy, although its inhabitants were deeply religious from that point onwards. About 75 years before the end of the Last War, the Church of the Silver Flame actually assumed control of the country on the last king’s death, painting the king’s heir as weak and using the War as an excuse, and started simply ruling in their stead. During the War itself, Thrane’s big advantage was their access to powerful divine magic – as you would expect from a theocratic nation that worships a physical manifestation of a divine being that actually personally hands out miracles to its followers.

The Church of the Silver Flame itself is a bit of a stereotypical D&D Paladin religion – heavier on the “kill the evil guys” side of things than on peaceful worship and meditation. For this reason, they’ve been known to occasionally go overboard – they infamously declared a crusaded on were-creatures that was essentially outright genocide with a lot of collateral damage. More details on this in later posts, when I go over the races and faiths of Eberron.

As an aside, exactly what the Flame is (since Eberron's gods don't talk directly to their followers or make their wishes known) is one of those setting mysteries deliberately left for your DM to decide.

Next time: everywhere else.

Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Apr 27, 2013

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Lemon Curdistan posted:

Eberron, part 1: the Five Nations of Galifar
:allears:

Not to step on your toes, but do you mind if I go into more detail on a few points that you half mentioned?
Specifically The Moons and the reason for the Lycanthropic Purge, and the nature of the Silver Flame (It was sort of touched on in Faiths of Eberron)

Also are you going to touch on the relative power level of the setting and how it changed from 3.5e to 4e?

Edit: Nevermind, looks like you said you are going to go into more detail on those later :doh:.

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009
If you want to post about the Purge, you're more than welcome to - although it would probably be best to wait until I get to religions or races.

In fact, hit me up by PM and we can figure out how to split this if there's anything you want to cover in more depth. I am deliberately aiming for an overview rather than the kind of depth that e.g. Mors had in his 7th Sea review.

I am also going to not be bringing up 3.5/4E differences for the most part (one of the reasons why I didn't cover the Eberron creed at the start re: NPC power level and the setting revolving around PCs). I'll cover dragonborn in the races post, but I will be ignoring the attempt to slightly rebrand the planes in 4E, for example. This is more virtual tourism than anything else.

For now, I have seven more posts planned out: an overview of the rest of Khorvaire, a history of the setting from the creation myth to the start of the Last War, a post on the Houses, one on Aerenal/Sarlona/Argonnessen/Xen'drik, one on the planes, one on Eberron's new races and one on the various spy services. I may also do an eighth post on the technology of Eberron (depending on whether or not I cover that in the Houses post).

Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Apr 27, 2013

petrol blue
Feb 9, 2013

sugar and spice
and
ethanol slammers


Part 3 - So the pointy end goes where?

Hell yes, ladies and gents, we're finally here, we're gonna stick some foam right where they don't expect!

page 36 posted:

There are five basic attacks - the Dragon, the Tiger, the Snake, the Rat, and the Bull...

The Dragon is the fundamental form. The Dragon is therefore used to fully explain the range of basic attacks. The Tiger is, I hope, explained fully enough to show the difference from the Dragon yet also the similarity of principles of attack which can be applied across all forms. To avoid excessive repitition, the Snake, Rat and Bull are described only as they differ from the Dragon. The astute reader should not struggle to then apply to these principles of attack described in the Dragon form.
I have a feeling I'm not going to count as 'astute'.

I've checked that quote a few times. I swear I'm not mis-typing. Maybe if I just read it again...

The Dragon posted:

The Dragon is the most basic, most direct and most powerful form of attack. It is the basis of the Northern Fight School teaching.

Right! I'm finally here, learning the most badass ninja skills of the Northern Fight School! Dragon attacks "begin from Ready Position. In a Dragon attack, the shoulder, elbow and wrist all extend together to deliver a blow with the front edge of the blade. The initial arm and sword movement of each strike is straight towards the opponent's head." So, if I'm reading this right, the secret of the Dragon school is to 'twat them with the foam bat'?


Bet he wishes he'd learnt advanced parries.

But wait, grasshopper! There's more to learn!

Double Dragon posted:

A Double Dragon is an attack consisting of two dragon [tut, tut, no capitalisation in the book] strikes delivered from Forward Position or Low Position, The first strike is always a Sun Dragon [that's a headshot to you and me] which is then followed by any of the Seven Dragons. The second strike can also be a Sun Dragon,
The Big Secret is to hit them twice.

In this section is the Young Dragon (hit them), the Double Dragon (hit them twice), the Full Dragon (hit them twice, then wave the boffer at them while you stagger to your feet), the Broken Dragon (where we start with a feint, as learnt in chapter), and the Slipped Dragon (which is a Broken Dragon with a lisp).

But not one of those can compare to our author's lack of irony when he tells us about...

Chasing the Dragon
Disappointingly, this is just a paragraph about how to use the various arcade games types of dragon in our training. They're good because... I've read this paragraph three times, and as far as I can tell, they're good because hitting the other person with a foam bat is the whole point.

Vanishing Dragon
You many have noticed how I didn't include any juicy pictures of how to perform the dragon strikes or their variants. There's a good reason for that. (Well, there is on my end, I can't speak for the author.) There are three pictures in this whole chapter. One I posted above. The second is exactly the same, but minus the victim. The third shows us the proper angles of attack:

yep, them's some arrows.

So, after, 36 pages of being told how not to accidentally jam a foam bat up your urethra, the entire chapter on basic strikes is 8 pages long, with 3 pictures. That's A5 paper, size 12 print. I want to write more on this, but this review is already a quarter as long as the chapter. So I guess you're just gonna have to wait until next time, when I'll describe...

I'm sorry for the crappy scans, but I'm trying not to fold the book, and my scanner isn't the greatest.

Tigers, Snakes, Rats and Bulls! Oh my!

It might involve hitting them with a foam bat

Maxwell Lord
Dec 12, 2008

I am drowning.
There is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand.

And I hope you die.

I hope we both die.


:smith:

Grimey Drawer

petrol blue posted:

But not one of those can compare to our author's lack of irony when he tells us about...

Chasing the Dragon

I'm almost inclined to believe the author knew what it was and stuck it in anyway because, hey, it's a pun.

petrol blue
Feb 9, 2013

sugar and spice
and
ethanol slammers
I'm not sure either, but given our author's general lack of awareness, I'm guessing he heard the phrase somewhere, didn't know the meaning, and decided to use it.

Angrymog
Jan 30, 2012

Really Madcats

So, The Dragon is a basic lunge, except aimed at the head (which I thought was a no-no in LRP combat*) and trying to strike with the edge rather than point of your foam bat?

* Perfectly fine in fencing of course because you have proper protection, even if it only counts for points in epee and sabre.

petrol blue
Feb 9, 2013

sugar and spice
and
ethanol slammers
My reading of the basic Dragon was that it doesn't involve footwork, so not quite a lunge. Just a basic 'swing it'.

I think headshots are a 'regional difference' thing. No LARP I've been in allows headshots, I think it's more common in the US. Having said that, the author is UK-based, so I'm not sure why he's included them.

Of course, as I said before, he's not mentioned why thrusts aren't included, so it could be one of those 'verisimiltudddde!' things.

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

REIGNING YOSPOS COSTCO KING

Lemon Curdistan posted:

The contest received about 11000 single-page setting pitches, from a mix of amateurs, industry folk and professionals from outside the tabletop industry. Out of all of those, Wizards ended up selecting a mere eleven pitches to be developed into 10-page outlines.

After several months of judging, Keith Baker’s Eberron pitch won the contest. Since part of the submission guidelines involved agreeing not to disclose any info about the setting pitches, the other ten have unfortunately been lost to the mists of time and WotC’s R&D vaults – although there are some reasons to believe a lot of the content ended up being reused in late-era 3.5 supplements and maybe even bits of 4E’s PoL setting.
Some of the semi-finalists eventually saw print with other D20 publishers. I'm pretty sure that DawnForge was a contest near-miss, and so was Morningstar.

The contest had four tiers
11,000 people submitted one-page outlines
11 semi-finalists were chosen to submit ten-page expanded outlines
3 finalists (Baker, Burlew, and Nathan Toomey) were paid $10,000 and asked to submit a hundred-page setting bible
one (Baker's Eberron) was chosen and then developed into a full line by WotC

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx20021209x

And yeah, everything from the Core Three D&D books had to be in the setting somewhere, which is why Eberron has rakshasas and ixitxachitls and dinosaurs and every other weird thing from the MM tucked into the corners.

404GoonNotFound
Aug 6, 2006

The McRib is back!?!?
The best part* of Eberron is that Baker has admitted that the only reason he included the Lightning Rail is because let's face it, having a fight on top of a speeding train is Cool As Hell and D&D needed to get in on that poo poo.
*Every part of Eberron is the best part.

FMguru posted:

And yeah, everything from the Core Three D&D books had to be in the setting somewhere, which is why Eberron has rakshasas and ixitxachitls and dinosaurs and every other weird thing from the MM tucked into the corners.

If by "in the corners" you mean Native American Halfling Dinosaur Riders.

Asimo
Sep 23, 2007


404GoonNotFound posted:

If by "in the corners" you mean Native American Halfling Dinosaur Riders.
In fairness I think Dark Sun covered this angle first. Though those were cannibals and space aliens... :ughh:

hectorgrey
Oct 14, 2011

petrol blue posted:

So, if I'm reading this right, the secret of the Dragon school is to 'twat them with the foam bat'?

I laughed out loud. Also, yeah, that's basically the key to LARP combat ;)

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Well, I think I know what my next review will be (assuming it funds).

unseenlibrarian
Jun 4, 2012

There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Lemon Curdistan posted:


This charming military dictatorship is named for Karrn, a warlord of the far antiquity who was chiefly responsible for fighting the natives and allowing humanity a place to thrive on Khorvaire. If it hadn’t been for Karrnath, Khorvaire would still mostly be ruled by hobgoblins (this will make more sense in a bit).

Located to the North-East of Khorvaire, Karrnath is a frigid land of dour people – think Tsarist Russia and you’re not far off. During the opening years of the War, Karrnath’s forces took particularly severe losses – this lead to Karrnath using the necromantic arts to raise their dead as zombies and skeletons.

Past the initial distaste, this proved to be a surprisingly good strategy for Karrnath. Undead don’t tire or require sustenance, and if they’re knocked down you just raise them again, as long as the damage isn’t too extensive. Nowadays, the Karrnathi have no problems with necromancy, and Karrnath still maintains its borders with undead troops.

Karrnath is ruled by King Kaius III, the grandson of Kaius I, who was the third of Jarot’s brats.

Except not! In a surprise twist, Kaius I is actually a vampire, and keeps faking his death every 50 years or so and handing the throne down to his “son.” In another surprise twist, Kaius is the only one of the five rulers who actually wants peace. The other four are all power-hungry dickbags, but Kaius just wants the Last War to go away forever and never come back.

NB: one of the things Eberron does is that it attempts to subvert certain elements of D&D, like alignments and gods. The thing with Kaius being a vampire who wants peace and Aurala being a Good character who wants war is part of that.


The best part of this whole bit is that Kaius III -was- actually in charge for a bit. But his grandfather saw things were going badly and they looked enough alike that he could replace him. And so Kaius III is now bunged up in a tower somewhere, under guard, and forced to wear a mask at all times to hide the fact that he looks just like the king.

So yeah. The whole thing is a set up so you can go all Man in the Iron Mask and pull a swashbuckling rescue.

Green Intern
Dec 29, 2008

Loon, Crazy and Laughable

I love the Karrnathi Zombies and Skeletons, because RAW they're smarter, tougher, and generally just better than your bog-standard monster. Of course, they were specifically created that way by the Karrnathi, because the only thing more efficient than fielding an army of unsleeping, unyielding soldiers is fielding an army of those that knows tactics.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

So, basically, you can play a completely state sanctioned Tzarist Russian imperial Necromancer and just be a military officer who creates his own troops wherever he goes, at the behest of a benevolent but iron-fisted secret vampire emperor who genuinely seeks peace? Well. If I ever get another shot at the setting I know what I'm playing.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Night10194 posted:

So, basically, you can play a completely state sanctioned Tzarist Russian imperial Necromancer and just be a military officer who creates his own troops wherever he goes, at the behest of a benevolent but iron-fisted secret vampire emperor who genuinely seeks peace? Well. If I ever get another shot at the setting I know what I'm playing.

For reference

This is a Karranthi Paladin.

MalcolmSheppard
Jun 24, 2012
MATTHEW 7:20

Lemon Curdistan posted:


How did it come to be?

Back in 2002 (oh, hey, that was over a decade ago now :smith:), Wizards figured out that maybe relying on just Forgotten Realms as their flagship setting for D&D might be a bad idea. In an effort to resolve this problem, WotC started the Fantasy Setting Search contest (what an original name :what:).

The contest received about 11000 single-page setting pitches, from a mix of amateurs, industry folk and professionals from outside the tabletop industry. Out of all of those, Wizards ended up selecting a mere eleven pitches to be developed into 10-page outlines.

After several months of judging, Keith Baker’s Eberron pitch won the contest. Since part of the submission guidelines involved agreeing not to disclose any info about the setting pitches, the other ten have unfortunately been lost to the mists of time and WotC’s R&D vaults – although there are some reasons to believe a lot of the content ended up being reused in late-era 3.5 supplements and maybe even bits of 4E’s PoL setting.

You may notice that Eberron uses a lot of traditional D&D elements (elves, dwarves, beholders, alignments, dungeons) but tries to subvert a lot of them – one of the requirements for the contest was actually to produce a setting where all the traditional D&D elements had a place. As mentioned a few posts up, Eberron is also a setting where a lot of holes are left in the setting for the DM to fill.


Some time ago I had a chat with a WotC staffer who was probably breaking their contract by telling me that Eberron is a dumping ground for a bunch of world ideas that there wasn't room for during the TSR era, and was chosen in part because these things could be stapled on. For example, Xen'drik has a lost world feel because there was a Professor Challenger homage rattling around there. Incidentally, this was repeating the formula used to expand the Forgotten Realms.

Tasoth
Dec 13, 2011
The idea behind Cyre goes further back than China Melville. The Vlad Taltos novels have the Sea of Chaos on the heart of the old Dragaeran Empire which was brought about when one of them was dicking around and punched a hole in space-time. And the Vlad Taltos novels are pulpy as all get out, too.

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



Tasoth posted:

The idea behind Cyre goes further back than China Melville. The Vlad Taltos novels have the Sea of Chaos on the heart of the old Dragaeran Empire which was brought about when one of them was dicking around and punched a hole in space-time. And the Vlad Taltos novels are pulpy as all get out, too.
I've heard they originated from an RPG campaign Steven Brust played in, too.

Geburan
Nov 4, 2010
Personally, it reminds me of a region in the Black Company books, which is another D20 RPG I wouldn't mind someone going over. (Along with Lone Wolf and Red Star).

oriongates
Mar 14, 2013

Validate Me!




Part 7: The Abandoned Halls, B1-49

Okay, so remember how Region B was supposedly a celestial laboratory where they performed behavioral experiments on their demonic and undead prisoners. The place is full of so-called "puzzles" and traps (oddly enough, many of them mechanical and not nearly as overpowered as the traps in Region A). So after Region A this will probably be a chance for your party's rogue to actually do something for once. On the other hand they'll probably get really tired really fast.

There are plenty of problems with the this part of the Region, first and foremost the "tests" here only actually work if it's assumed that the demons are actually wandering freely through the halls which seems a tad...unsecure. Second, none of them actually "test" anything, except maybe pattern recognition, because almost every test has the same form: you enter the room, the door closes behind you, there's something in the room and if you dare to interact with it then you trigger a trap.

Let's do a quick summary of the notable rooms in the region

B5



Many of the room descriptions basically dictate what actions PCs will take upon entering the room (or even just opening the door). This one compounds that sin by attempting to make use of the word "circumambulate". The oddly high-flown vocabulary is at odds with the clumsy grammar in many of the room descriptions.

Now, within the room is a gem-studded idol and it is supposedly meant as a test of intelligence. The door is trapped (dropping a stone block), The floor is made of black tile with 2-foot wide strip of white marble down the center leading to the idol. If you walk along the white tile or step completely outside into the black tile a trap is triggered. The only safe path is walking along the border of black and white with one foot in both. There's no indication of this at all, but if you make your find traps roll you can determine how it is triggered. Third, the idol is trapped (indiana jones style pressure plate). Of course if you take the idol outside the room it turns to dust and all the traps magically reset and a new one appears.

That's it. That's the test. There are no clues or puzzles, just DCs for finding the traps. It's even more ridiculous in context: why would a demonic prisoner (whether one wandering the halls or deliberately placed in the room) care at all about some jeweled idol? Even if they had some reason to try and get it the final trap on the idol itself is a poison dart trap...one thing that every single entity the dungeon was designed to imprison (demon, devil and undead) would be immune to.

B6


despite the fact that this room claims to have 4 doors it actually features 7. It's also huge (80x50) and after all the doors seal themselves the PCs are trapped inside...until they find the hairline crack in one mirror in the NW corner. That's it. There's literally nothing else that happens or could happen in this room. Beyond intense boredom there's no danger in the room and there's literally nothing but time to search the massive room over and over again until the trigger is found. Unless of course the only PCs with a high enough Search modifier happen to be trapped outside the room in which case it will remain sealed for eternity because there is no method to open the chamber from the outside, no any timer that will eventually reset the trap. Again, the way this is meant to be a "test" is questionable at best.

B7
This room features a "path" of wobbly stone discs from one door to another. Navigating them is a DC 20 balance check (meaning most non-agile PCs will likely fail). Touching the floor other than the discs causes the doors to seal and the room to flood. This takes 2 minutes and in the meantime the PCs can try and find the release mechanism (surprisingly low at DC 17). Apparently the celestials felt the nature of evil could best be examined by testing the acrobatic abilities of demonic entities.

B8

Room has veins of gold in the walls (fake of course), which if touched will seal the room and release poison gas. The trap is disarmed by pressing a series of hidden buttons in sequence (ie a Search and then Disable Device check). Again, notice that the trap uses poison (something the prisoners of the dungeon are pretty much universally immune to) and seems to be based on the idea that evil outsiders and undead are irrationally attracted to shiny objects.

Thinking about it, these chambers would be much funnier if you assume that the angelic forces are simply baffled by Evil and designed the tests and traps out of some bizarre confusion.

:angel: The new testing chamber is almost built my lord...but how shall we design the test?
:sun: Well, Evil and chaos disrupt the natural equilibrium of the world, so surely it will show in these monster's attempts to balance themselves.
:angel: on wobbly stones m'lord?
:sun: Indeed! And is greed not also evil? surely upon seeing a hint of gold these abominations will snatch up picks and commence mining!

But really, the idea that these were somehow designed as tests or traps for the prisoners of the dungeon is ridiculous. They work fine for adventurers desperately trying to fine some clue as to the nature of the place, or scrabbling for treasure but that's not the purpose of the area.

B11
This room will seal itself if you enter it and inside is a set of iron chains which must be solved in order for the door to be opened. That's right, the celestial's amazing test is basically a big sliding ring puzzle



Again, this puzzle just wastes your time until it's solved (DC 20 disable device or 21 Int check), the one danger is extreme cold (something that again doesn't harm any of the intended prisoners).

B13
This room doesn't feature any celestial traps, but again shows there's nothing to be gained by interacting with anything in this section. It contains a well, which is trapped with an alarm causing goblins from B70 to possibly hear and come running, arriving in 4d4 rounds. Of course, B70 is faaar out of range of an alarm's alert (not even considering the many solid walls in the way). The path from B13 to B70 is about 1600+ feet, meaning the goblins will be moving at 20-40 mph.

B14
Come into this room and the door shuts behind you. Oh, with all of these automatic doors you may be wondering how long it takes for the door to shut (will it shut immediately after the first person steps in?) or what happens if a door is held or jammed open. These are excellent questions that the dungeon in no way attempts to answer. Considering that by now most PCs should have realized that over half the doors are going to seal them in they'll start trying to block or hold them open, it's a pretty drat important question.

Anyway, this is yet another "door closes, make a DC X check to get it open" and again, there is absolutely nothing beyond that: PCs go in and they keep rolling until they get out (or if their appropriate stat isn't high enough) they're trapped forever with no hope of escape. Makes you wonder why more of these chambers aren't permanently sealed with dead goblins inside.


B18
This room is also designed as nothing but a waste of time, just in a slightly different way. It has an illusion of an illusion. Anyone casting detect magic will find a faint aura of illusion magic...but anyone who succeeds at a DC 40 spellcraft roll realizes that there is no illusion! The text of the room makes it clear that the DM is simply intended to keep the PCs guessing about what this actually means (which is nothing).

Oh, and there's a pedestal with a fire trap scroll which will trigger a fireball trap.

B20

This room is really only worth mentioning because it features this amazing crime against descriptive language:


B29
This room is covered in wands hanging from the walls, dozens of them. Each has a fake magic aura and does nothing except for a single wand of burning hands with one charge. Any chaotic or evil creature touching a wand is cursed in an unspecified manner (screw you chaotic good PCs!).

Why do this? Because Celestials are dicks apparently.

B35
This room has a pedestal (pedestals are a very common feature of this region), which is empty. However, detect magic will reveal invisible arcane marks which are a puzzle. examining the puzzle for an hour and making a couple of intelligence checks will reveal how to open the secret door to B55. Which is great except there's no trick to opening B55, it's just extremely difficult to find...and there's no way the puzzle could reveal how to find it unless it also came with a map of the region (which would be much more valuable).

B36


Don't you love it when room descriptions take away control from your PC? Especially when it involves inescapable traps. This is another time-wasting trap. Just find the hidden panel to open the door.

By the way, apparently the sack actually contains holy water, it's never mentioned if the coins are fake, illusionary, or whatever.

B42
This room is full of rubble and claims that PCs will realize it's a great place to store supplies. It's actually the worst place to store supplies in the entire dungeon because it's the only place that includes an official chance for those supplies won't be here when they return.

B43

This room features two doors. When the inner door is opened the door you came in from originally shuts and locks itself and a giant spiked wall begins closing in. Amusingly this trap is absolutely no threat at all because only the door you came in from closes: you can simply step into the room you just opened and wait until the spikes close and retract (at which point the first door opens). Of course, even if you just sit there there's not that much risk apparently giant crushing walls inflict only 1d8+4 damage.

B48


This is probably the worst room in this section. The diagram on the wall claims to show the proper way to move on the floor (alternating tiles). It's a lie and requires a DC 30 check to figure that out (although this does not tell you what the correct order is). The correct order is to stay on the same color you start on. There are absolutely no clues or indications of this. Stepping on the wrong tile inflicts Dex damage, fire damage or reduces your movement speed depending on the color.

Success on this incredibly lame puzzle gives possibly the worst reward ever: if you pull down the tapestry and wrap it around your body it melds to you and becomes a permanent +2 ghost touch breastplate. You can sleep in it and it is half the weight of a normal breastplate. That might be good for a fighter...until they find better armor. For say...a bard, druid, monk, rogue, ranger, sorcerer, or wizard. Or even just a dex-focused barbarian or fighter.

The only way to remove it is a break enchantment spell. Remember this is a level 4-6 area, break enchantment is available at level 9 at the earliest. That means if say a wizard or sorcerer solves the puzzle they're "rewarded" with a 25% spell failure chance, -4 to attacks, strength and dex rolls and reduced movement for at least 3-5 levels!


The terrible decisions here truly boggle the mind and quite frankly I can't imagine anyone wanting to continue with the dungeon after completing this section. Next time I'll continue with the gobliniod camps.

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009

Tasoth posted:

The idea behind Cyre goes further back than China Melville. The Vlad Taltos novels have the Sea of Chaos on the heart of the old Dragaeran Empire which was brought about when one of them was dicking around and punched a hole in space-time. And the Vlad Taltos novels are pulpy as all get out, too.

Miéville is the most recent big example I can think of, which is why I used him specifically.

If you want the original source, I am pretty sure the Elric stories talk about something similar about a decade before the Vlad Taltos novels.

Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 11:10 on Apr 27, 2013

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009


Splitting part 2 into separate posts, since it's quite long.

Eberron, part 2A: everywhere else (on Khorvaire)!

Sharn

That’s the official map. Really, as described it looks more like this:

Fantasy noir 1920s New York! With some more oppressive gothic architecture than pictures.

Okay, so this one is actually in one of the Five Nations – Breland, to be precise. For a few reasons I’m about to go over, though, it belongs in this section rather than the previous one.

Sharn is a shining metropolis – the biggest city in Khorvaire, certainly, although it’s rumoured that it might not be the biggest in Eberron. When I call it “fantasy noir 1920s NYC,” I am basically being accurate. Its nicknames include “the City of Towers” (self-evident) but also “the City of Knives” (because you’re going to get shivved) or “the City of Lost Souls.”

It’s a hub of commerce and decadence located in the South-West of Breland, and during the War continued to be used as neutral grounds for trading and diplomacy. It was originally founded by a pirate as his retirement home, far ahead of the Brelish colonisation wave, until Breland eventually caught up with them and ended up joining Sharn to their kingdom (this was far before Galifar I united the five kingdoms).

Geographically, the city is sharply subdivided into districts, mostly based on wealth - the ultra-rich literally live above the city on a floating island of skyscraper-castles, whereas the poor live on the ground level, in the shadows of both the "regular" skyscrapers and the floating ones. The very poorest live below-ground, in shantytowns and ghettos not far from the industrial heart of the city (the Cog, which uses the thermal energies of the volcano the city is build on to power its factories).

Other than the fact that it’s fantasy noir 1920s NYC, Sharn has a few things going for it:

First, it is the biggest and most cosmopolitan city in all of Khorvaire, and where the who’s-who of pretty much everything lives. Its higher education faculties are internationally renowned, it’s a place where you can find pretty much anything you could want (for a price) and it’s practically an independent city-state (it just pays tribute to the Brelish crown).

As a by-product of this, other than the highest rate of muggings per minute per square mile in the known world, Sharn is also pretty much an espionage battlefield – with every secret service under the sun trying to further their own goals. Think of Berlin in the Cold War and you’d be right.

As the most important city in Khorvaire, it is also one of the few places where you’ll find every Dragonmarked House has offices – in case international spies weren’t enough and you wanted to content with corporate spies too.

Its position also makes it the perfect launching point for expeditions to Xen’drik – a ruin-filled jungle continent that has recently been discovered to the South of Khorvaire and is a major plot-hook if your PCs are into dungeoneering.

Finally, partly because it has so much crime, Sharn basically has a modern-day police service with beat cops and forensics (the Sharn Watch), an anti-magical crimes department (the Blackened Book) and a counter-espionage unit (the Guardians of the Gate). All of them are underfunded and overworked, and any of these are willing to recruit “freelancers” to help with tough cases. Yes, you can specifically be a private eye adventurer in fantasy 1920s noir NYC; that’s the point. It even has a muckracking/tabloid rag called “the Inquisitive” that you can work as a journalist for.

Darguun

The country to the North is Breland, not Thrane – WotC’s mapmakers made a mistake.

Okay, so remember that subverting thing I mentioned in the last post? This is another one of those.

In Eberron, before the humans and other races came to Khorvaire, the continent was ruined by the mighty goblinoid Dhakanii Empire. For a time, the Empire was the most advanced nation in the world and it seemed like nothing could stop its ascendance, until a terrible catastrophe happened – the Far Realms became coterminous with the material plane, and the daelkyr of Xoriat (the Plane of Madness) attempted to invade Eberron with their armies of aberrations, and convert it into an extension of their home plane.

The goblins fought valiantly, and it’s through their sacrifice – and the sacrifice of the orcs – that the prime material was never annexed into the Far Realms and that live is even possible. This is part of why Eberron goblins and orcs aren’t viewed as outright monsters.

Darguun was a part of Cyre before the Last War. Due to Cyre being the least militarily powerful of the Five Nations, the Cyrans relied very much on mercenaries to fight for them in most cases. There are goblinoid tribes living all over the place in Khorvaire, and so they hired the Rhukaan Tash (Razorcrown) clan to fight for them in the War. About 30 years before the end of the War, these goblin mercenaries revolted against their employers, seized a part of Cyre and declared it to be the new homeland of the goblinoid nation.

Although Darguun practices slavery (like the Empire before it) and is mostly made up of belligerent goblin mercenary clans, it is ruled by the Lawful Neutral warlord Haruuc Shaarat'kor, who desires only peace with his neighbours and wishes a return to civilisation for his people. Eventually, he hopes the goblins can once again reach the heights they were at during the Dhakanii Empire.

The Demon Wastes

Don’t go here.

A desolate wasteland populated only by barbarian tribes who worship the last remains of the primordial demon-lords who attempted to destroy all creation, the Demon Wastes pretty much exist only so someone can go crusade against evil-worshipping barbarians.

Droaam

Wonder Boy in Monster Land.

Droaam is the kingdom of free monsters – although don’t let them hear you call them that.

Once part of Breland, the region was seized by the Daughters of Sora Kell – a group of very powerful hags – and a small army of ogres about ten years ago. With the brute strength of the ogres and the magical might of the hags, the Daughters have managed to turn Droaam into a cohesive nation – mostly.

Things out here are even more frontier spirit, and it’s very much like a bad parody of anarchism (as in, it isn’t anarchism at all – it’s classic feudalism). There’s no centralised law and the rule of the strong prevails. Pretty much the only thing you can’t do (if you value your life) is piss off the Daughters, as they will quite happily sic their ogre army and their own spells on any trouble-makers. Fortunately for everyone, the Daughters aren’t fond of creatures that go around murdering their subjects for no reason; and beyond that, some of the more intelligent monsters are trying their best to create a system of laws from scratch, in a country essentially ruled by warlords with complete power of life and death over their subjects.

In Khorvaire, Droaam is often portrayed as a nefarious danger lurking on the borders of civilisation, especially in Breland (who, as previously mentioned, are upset about the whole loss of land thing). In truth, the Daughters of Sora Kell only want to create a place where the more “monstrous” races can be free to live in peace and without fear of being hunted by others. They’ve tried to make diplomatic overtures to the other nations, but the country is young, detested by the Five Nations out of prejudice and doesn’t have any financial or political muscle.

That makes Droaam a perfect basis for a campaign where the PCs travel to the other minor kingdoms in Khorvaire to make allies, if you’re into Cold War Non-Aligned politics.

Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Apr 27, 2013

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009


Eberron, part 2B: everywhere else (on Khorvaire)!

The Eldeen Reaches

A nation of tree-worshipping orc druids. What, did you think the orcs would be barbarians?

Once a part of Aundair (representing a little over 50% of the territory it laid claim to, actually), the Eldeen Reaches seceded during the Last War (roughly 40 years ago).

The Reaches are one of two places in Khorvaire where the druidic orcs still survive after most of their race died out during the same invasion of Far Realm creatures that ended the Dhakanii Empire. Sparsely populated by non-orcs due to their wooded nature, the Reaches were abandoned by Aundair’s troops during the Last War and left to fend for themselves against bandits and Brelish raiders.

With no help coming from the Crown, the inhabitants of the Reaches turned to the Wardens of the Wood – orcs, druids and aberration-hunters who lived in the Towering Wood – and their leader, the Great Druid Oalian (a sapient tree, yep), for protection.

Contrary to the other secessionist "monster" nations (Droaam and Darguun), the Reaches were recognised as an independent nation in the Treaty of Thronehold and so are actually a legitimate sovereign entity. This doesn’t stop Aundair from plotting to “take them back,” though.

The Lhazaar Principalities

Totally not fantasy pre-unification Italy.

It’s fantasy pre-unification Italy. With pirates.

The Lhazaar principalities are a mess of tiny fiefdoms and city-states that constantly vie against each other for influence and power. They’re not too fond of the land and are very heavy on the seafaring. They’ve never been subjugated by anyone as a result, although they did agree to being part of Galifar for a while – which turned them from outright piracy to trade and commerce for a little while (of course, they never gave up on the piracy entirely).

Interestingly, the Lhazaar principalities are named after Lhazaar, the woman who led human refugees and settlers to Khorvaire from the continent of Sarlona about three thousand years ago, and it is where the humans set out from to settle Khorvaire – going West over the Mror holds into Karrnath, then the rest of the Five Nations from there.

Go here if you want pre-unification Italian politics.

The Mror Holds

The name isn't actually a typo for “mirror,” honest.

The homeland of the dwarves, the Mror Holds are where the majority of them live in Khorvaire, split into twelve great clans. Really, it’s one of the more boring parts of the setting – the dwarves love gold (the House responsible for banking and safekeeping is dwarven, and its oldest holdings and most secure vaults are here), dug too deep and let some aberrations in from below, lost their mountain kingdoms for a while, then reclaimed them with the help of Galifar. They’ve always been an independent nation and they still are.

Basically, you go here if you want traditional dwarves.

Q’barra

Discount Xen’drik.

Q’barra was a Cyran colony founded at the time the Last War broke out – it’s some ways to the East of the Five Nations, across the steppe-like Talenta plains, and it was founded by people who had lost faith in Galifar after it shattered at the beginning of the Last War. It’s entirely covered by heaving jungle and inhabited by lizardfolk who’ve been living there undisturbed for thousands of years.

The lizardfolk don’t actually mind the settlers too much – except for a few clashes, mostly triggered by the settlers, co-existence is essentially peaceful. The lizardfolk live deep in the jungle where the settlers don’t go, and bar a few aggressively isolationist tribes seem to relish the opportunity to trade.

The Shadow Marches

The other bit with orcs.

And that’s pretty much all the characterisation they get. The Shadow Marches are the swampy rear end-end of Khorvaire, and the other part of the continent where the orcs still live. Both these regions were orcish nations that compete with goblinoid neighbours thousands of years ago.

Pretty much the only thing worth taking note of here is that it’s where the majority of the Gatekeepers – the orcish druidic sect responsible for ultimately saving the world from the daelkyr invaders from the Plane of Madness – still live.

The Talenta Plains

Far more exciting than you would believe based on this image.

Okay, so the Talenta plains are a gimmick region. It’s a very good gimmick, though:


Halflings on motherfucking dinosaurs.

The plains are home to two things: first, a bunch of nomadic halfling tribes. We’re not talking knock-off hobbits, here; the reference is more to Native Americans. Secondly, the plains have roaming herds of buffalo-sized dinosaurs, which the halflings herd around and use for food, clothing, etc.

Under Galifar, both the neighbouring Cyre and Karrnath laid claims to the plains as territory for them to expand into, with treaties negotiated with the halflings allowing them to roam over their “ancestral lands.” Fortunately, the Last War caused both Cyre and Karrnath to attempt to forcefully conquer the plains, in turn prompting the halfling tribes to unite and push them back. As a result, the plains are now an autonomous region, per the Treaty of Thronehold.

Plains halflings ride velociraptors (“clawfoots”), oversized dilophosauruses (“fastieths”) and pterodactyls (“glidewings”). Dinosaurs are actually common everywhere in Eberron, but they’ve been mostly eradicated from Khorvaire save for the Talenta Plains and Q’barra.

The halflings aren’t just plains nomads, though – two of the twelve Houses are run by halflings, which gives them a very important presence in the Five Nations.

Valenar

Land of the immigrant Tuareg elves.

Another breakaway nation, Valenar was formed by the mercenary Valaes Tairn elves who revolted against their Cyran employers (at this point, it should be clear that employing mercenaries in Eberron is generally a bad idea).

Valenar is a fairly dry place save for its very South, even going so far as to have the only desert on Khorvaire. The Valaes Tairn are actually not from the continent – even though Valenar was originally an elven colony, the elves abandoned it several millennia back after they got in a war with the Dhakanii Empire. Instead the Valaes Tairn are from the continent of Aerenal to the South, came over as mercenaries looking for employ, and used the Last War as an opportunity to reclaim the once-colony.

More on Aerenal in a later post.

Zilargo

The one really uncomfortable part of the setting.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before:

Zilargo is a nation of secretive power-brokers who use their influence to ensure they nearly always get what they want, whose spies are rumoured to be everywhere and possibly even nefariously guiding events in other countries, and who control the media. They are physically weak, but their mastery of other people’s secrets have allowed them to thrive. Oh, also, Zilargo is a utopia because their secret police “disappears” and “reforms” any dissidents.

Apart from that last part, that is pretty eerily redolent of the kind of stuff you’d find in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Admittedly, the banks and financial institutions have been handed over to the dwarves, but I still find Zilargo a really uncomfortable part of Eberron. Don't get me wrong: Baker isn't in any way racist, but this is still creepy and weird.

That first paragraph is essentially the extent of their characterisation – they’re a nation of gnomes ruled by a Triumvirate, whose secret police are called “the Trust;” they thrive as information brokers and their primary instruments for influencing foreign policy are blackmail and intrigue; and they run the biggest newspaper in the Five Nations, the Korranberg Chronicle, which is edited and printed in the city of Korranberg, which contains what is possible Khorvaire’s biggest library. Whereas the Sharn Inquisitive is little more than a sensationalist gossip rag, the Chronicle is a respected news publication whose reporters write about current affairs, politics and economics.

Next time: “an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.”

Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Apr 27, 2013

Mitama
Feb 28, 2011

Man, I want to run a DW game in Sharn now.

Thanks for your posts man, I really should look into Eberron more because it sounds more and more like the fantasy setting I want to see.

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CommissarMega
Nov 18, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER

Lemon Curdistan posted:

Zilargo is a nation of secretive power-brokers who use their influence to ensure they nearly always get what they want, whose spies are rumoured to be everywhere and possibly even nefariously guiding events in other countries, and who control the media. They are physically weak, but their mastery of other people’s secrets have allowed them to thrive. Oh, also, Zilargo is a utopia because their secret police “disappears” and “reforms” any dissidents.

I don't know; it sounds like your typical antagonist nation. If you hadn't pointed it out, I wouldn't have seen any connection to the Protocols at all. If anything, I'd rag on them for being too stereotypically evil.

Also, we need a video game in this setting right the gently caress NOW.

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