Setting for D&D Online: Eberron

This is a post by Moleculor from the official DDO boards. Outlines some good points about Eberron and how its different from Forgotten Realms and the other D&D campaigns.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There's an itty bitty spoiler or two in here. I've reduced such spoilers to have as little information as possible in them though, so it shouldn't be too earth shattering. I've also put a * in front of the paragraph with them, so you can skip over it if you really REALLY want to, but honestly, they're excrutiatingly small spoilers.

I've read in several of these threads comments from people who've either haven't played D&D in a while, or haven't played Eberron. Rather than forcing these people to find their own information out there on the web about the general 'theme' of Eberron, I thought I'd share my own personal (emphasis on personal) view of what Eberron is. Liberally splattered with plagiarized bits of text from the designer, Keith Baker.

First, the setting is very actiony-dramatic. Combine any Indiana Jones movie, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Casablanca, and you have Eberron. Each character even has a limited number of points he can spend towards any action that allows him to improve that action in some way, either by adding a random number to a die roll, or increasing the duration of something, or some other helpful "saved by the skin of your teeth" style events.

Second, it's high-magic. I'm sure some of you have heard that Eberron is a world of 'techno-magic' with the railway and airships, but it's not. Vehicles are about as close to 'technology' as anything comes in Eberron. Eberron is, instead, a world where magic - core D&D magic - has been researched like science is in our world. Streetlights are mass-produced continual flame spells cast on minute (read: tiny) fragments of dragonshards. Wands have been perfected to where it's possible to create one with uses per day rather than charges (again, using dragonshards). Vehicles of any sort require larger, harder to obtain types of crystals, and a bound elemental. It's still magic at it's core. No steam engines, no gunpowder, just pure, simple magic.

Religion is based on faith alone. No gods walk the earth. No proof of any eternal reward, or the existence of deities exists beyond the fact that those with strong enough faith can work divine magic. However, even that 'proof' is arguable by those who don't believe in a god, simply because of the fact that even those who can work such divine magics don't actually have to follow the precepts of their god. They can be a corrupt cleric out for power, influence, and riches, worshiping a god that believes in sacrifice and helping those in need, and still work divine magic granted to them by their religious faith.

* Alignment means little, both in actual alignment, and that which is declared as 'usually or always' in monster manuals and such. For those of you who would attack a chromatic dragon on sight, be prepared for a new experience with Eberron. For example the dragon that was instrumental in repelling the first planar invasion of Eberron was a black dragon. That's right. Chromatic. Chromatic dragons aren't guaranteed to be evil, and metallic ones aren't guaranteed to be good. Same with every other monster out there. On top of that, people with opposing alignments aren't necessarily opposed to each other. For example, there are two major characters in the Eberron world (I won't spoil which ones) who are married to each other. One is lawful evil, the other chaotic good. They're married, and rather happily so. Undead aren't always evil. There are positively charged undead as well as the typical negatively charged type.

I'm sure I've missed some things, and maybe even gotten one or two things wrong, and if I have, maybe others could fill in what I've missed (I haven't even TOUCHED dragonmarks and the draconic prophecy, for example), but this is a bit of a taste of the world of Eberron for you folks that haven't played D&D in a while.

To end with, I'd like to point you towards the official Eberron site. Especially the Dragonshard articles (That's the first one, and the one that best describes Eberron as a whole. Links to more can be found at the bottom of the page). More information comes out every week or two, and all the previous information that was released is still there.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------