Quote from: rawma;1070604(Hmm, don't have a good movie/television example for demons or devils.)

There's the TV show Lucifer.  In it, he's the Lord of Hell by God's Will and punishes the evildoers.  He might tempt people, but he doesn't make anyone do anything evil or do anything evil himself.  His only real sin is the act of rebellion against God, who he rails against in the show.  I only saw a couple of episodes, but he was portrayed in a sympathetic light.

Of course a single Fallen Angel isn’t the same thing as saying all demons or devils are really misunderstood.  But the demons in the show were created to torment souls in Hell, so you could argue even as destructive and violent as they are, they are serving God’s Will as well by serving their purpose.

There's things I like about Eberron.  Unicorn crimelords and an Ettin running an orphanage isn't it.

Quote from: Warboss Squee;1071670I'm not sure the Daelkyr count as inherently evil so much as so completely batshit to the point that good and evil are fun party hats.

They're inimical to Eberron and want to eat all the faces and babies. That's pretty evil!

Bumped for SHARK.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1118986Bumped for SHARK.

Greetings!

Ahh, yes. Awesome, my friend! Ebberon definitely is a mixed bag. I never got into Eberron, despite agreeing with some of it's main points.

There do seem to be some people that really love Eberron though. I thought Sebego's observation was really funny, and ironic. As he says, when you add everything that is D&D into the game, it ironically doesn't feel like D&D anymore.

I love how assbackwards that statement seems, but I think there's a powerful dynamic there that is true.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

...I still love Eberron. It is one of my favorite settings from WOTC, the other being Forgotten Realms. I should write a new adventure for Eberron.

Played in Eberron back in the day. The fact that you could throw out traditional expectations of alignment was one of the big appeals. And Sharn was just dang fun to run around in.

Quote from: Warboss Squee;1070292I really like Eberron. The feel, the magic as industry, it's all good.

I really like the ideas in Eberron, the over arching meta-plots and magic-punk feeling.

I love Warforged and Alchemists and Dinosaur Riding Halflings.

I guess the real problems with Eberron for me are when you drill down on the underlying assumptions like the Last War for example.  

QuoteAs far as no one being good or evil? It throws out the default racial alignments. Meaning that a Gold Dragon might be a complete fuckwit, while a Red Dragon might be a noble philosopher.

You have always had creatures that do not follow the default racial alignment.

Take Drizzt for a famous example.

Quote from: SHARK;1118993There do seem to be some people that really love Eberron though. I thought Sebego's observation was really funny, and ironic. As he says, when you add everything that is D&D into the game, it ironically doesn't feel like D&D anymore.

I love how assbackwards that statement seems, but I think there's a powerful dynamic there that is true.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Hi, SHARK.

Ironically for me it is the people that throw out DnD rules that make the game feel not like DnD.  Like for example the fact that in DnD High Level Fighters can fall from the top of a Mountain and still be able to survive to be able to get up and dust themselves off.  Or having 101 different types of Elves feels like DnD but having no Elves does not feel like DnD.

Quote from: TNMalt;1119007Played in Eberron back in the day. The fact that you could throw out traditional expectations of alignment was one of the big appeals. And Sharn was just dang fun to run around in.

I remember a 4e game where my friend was making a Paladin character.

"Hey look, you can play a Paladin of any alignment" he says.

"OK" says I "so what are you going to play"

"A LG Paladin"

Quote from: Shasarak;1119014Hi, SHARK.

Ironically for me it is the people that throw out DnD rules that make the game feel not like DnD.  Like for example the fact that in DnD High Level Fighters can fall from the top of a Mountain and still be able to survive to be able to get up and dust themselves off.  Or having 101 different types of Elves feels like DnD but having no Elves does not feel like DnD.

What about no Gnomes? OD&D and BX didnt have gnomes. BX doesnt have half orcs or half elves. (not sure about O) Settings have been clipping out this and that for a long long time now. AD&D Conan is human only, no clerics, nearly no wizards, and so on. Various others have gone different routes.

I like a lot of the ideas and concepts in Eberron, though the build-monkey details of the various dragonmarks and how the different types of dragonshards enhanced different powers unfortunately surpassed my personal threshold of "complex enough to be interesting but simple enough to be playable".

Which is a specific example of a larger problem with most 3E and later versions of D&D, which is that in creating as many options as possible for the players in developing a complex, powerful PC over time, the designers made it a serious headache for the GM to do the same thing quickly for multiple NPCs. (But then, for all the frequent lip service to the concept, I've believed for a long time that most 3E+ d20 products aren't interested in making it quick or easy for GMs to do their own design work; if they did, they might not need to buy the published products any more, know what I mean?)

That said, I think there's definitely room for a pulp-action style fantasy setting with both magic and technology well beyond the mediaeval paradigm. It just needs to remember not to forget about its forest for all the cool trees it introduces.

Quote from: Omega;1119020What about no Gnomes? OD&D and BX didnt have gnomes. BX doesnt have half orcs or half elves. (not sure about O) Settings have been clipping out this and that for a long long time now. AD&D Conan is human only, no clerics, nearly no wizards, and so on. Various others have gone different routes.

The BECMI world of Mystara has Gnomes, Conan is not a DnD world and to me ODnD is more proto-DnD.

I really disliked how dragons were implemented. It's one thing to stress that dragons are awesome...Its another to make a entire continent of the bastards and say that they can fix every problem ever but can't cause if they do they become evil because they have a demon that causes them.
"What were the Level 20 heroes doing when my level 5 hero was trying to stop the rise of the demon king" is one of the most annoying plot elements ever and Eberron makes that a codified part of the setting and dedicates an entire continent to it.

Outside of that, I could potentially like it. Even if its goofy industrialism and scale its pretty fun.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1119025"What were the Level 20 heroes doing when my level 5 hero was trying to stop the rise of the demon king" is one of the most annoying plot elements ever....

That's a justified complaint, but to some extent I think it's inherent to any RPG-inspired/-intended fantasy setting: if adventurer/hero characters can in theory achieve amazing levels of power, then in a world where that's possible, by definition some NPCs will already have done it. Therefore anything your PCs do that's more important to the world at large than the PCs' own ambitions, whatever that may be, has to explain why more powerful NPCs aren't getting involved, ranging from them simply not being available (even Elminster could only be in one place at a time) to having limits on their power or knowledge that just happen to put this particular issue outside their capacity.

(At its deepest level this comes down to the Problem of Pain: if sufficiently powerful, knowledgeable and benevolent entities can act to save or improve the world with a reliable chance of reasonable success, why don't they? The strong implication is that they're neither as powerful, knowledgeable or benevolent as they claim.)

One thing I actually quite admired about Eberron was using the Last War as a way to deliberately "clear out the playing field" of anybody like Elminster, so that the PCs don't have to feel like they're playing a futile game of catchup to creator's-pet NPCs.