Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1119027One 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.

Again except for the continent of pet NPCs powerful enough to destroy other uber civiizations trivialy.

Quote from: Shasarak;1119024The BECMI world of Mystara has Gnomes, Conan is not a DnD world and to me ODnD is more proto-DnD.

BECMI isnt BX, Conan is a D&D world, and OD&D is pretty much the same as BX with a bit of re-organization.

Try again please.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1119028Again except for the continent of pet NPCs powerful enough to destroy other uber civiizations trivially.

Well, the PCs have to have somewhere to think about going once they've become the most powerful adventurers in Khorvaire and Xen'drik.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1119030Well, the PCs have to have somewhere to think about going once they've become the most powerful adventurers in Khorvaire and Xen'drik.

Its probably the least fun place to go. Because they have no problems there to solve. That's what made them feel like a pet. It didn't expand the world options as much as shrink them.

I have the 5e book and since this is my first exposure to Eberron Im rather liking it so far.

Seems a good balance of easy access magic vs not so easy access magic. Low level stuff is fairly common and easy enough to assemble. But the bigger guns are still few and relatively far between. Its not as magitech heavy as was expecting really. There is a magic train and a magic airship and magic robot people...and that is about it? The overall feel of the setting is a wartorn high magic one akin to Warhammer, just less horrible. Maybee.

As for dragonmarks and dragon shards. Dont know what the originals were like but in 5e they are pretty simple. Most races have access to one or two different and usually unique to that race dragon marks and dragonshards just seem to be a magic spell or crafting component or spell storing gem now? What were they like prior?

As for alignment. There is no set standard aside from celestials and infernals it seems. Everyone else could be anything. Harkens back to BX really. I also like the different origins for some creatures such as mind flayers and beholders being creations of an invading force.

It also reminds me a little of Red Steel as in that setting too you had fragments of a god that had strange effects on people.

I picked it up because this is where they introduce the artificer class and I am very happy to see that they actually listened to our playtest feedback and toned the class down and got rid of the Archivist as it just did not feel right as is. It does not eclipse the other classes as the initial playtest version did.

Quote from: Omega;1119029BECMI isnt BX, Conan is a D&D world, and OD&D is pretty much the same as BX with a bit of re-organization.

Try again please.

Conan was published in 1932.  How can it possibly be a DnD world?  Whats next, are you going to try and claim Middle Earth is a DnD world?

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1119031Because they have no problems there to solve. That's what made them feel like a pet. It didn't expand the world options as much as shrink them.

That's the point: maybe the dragons are the problem the PCs have to solve, once they get powerful enough to do so. It's worth pointing out that just because Argonnessen has been presented as omnipotent and wholly isolationist doesn't mean it actually is so. It says on the Eberron wiki that the dragons were in fact fought to a stalemate by the Aerenal elves and the Undying Court, way back when, so they can be at least thwarted if not defeated.

Again, it seems like there's a contradictory demand going on here: we want a setting where powerful entities capable of shaping the world's fate unequivocally exist (or it's not much of an epic fantasy), and yet they can't be allowed to solve all the PCs' problems for them or to take away from the PCs' roles as the most dramatically important characters in the game, or there's no drama. In that context any such being is going to look like a "pet NPC".

I think my problem with Ebberon was that I was a 70's/80's kid and I grew up on fantasy from that era. The steampunk feel, warforged, etc sort of just doesn't work for me for a D&D setting. The one D&D player I know that loves Ebberon started in on D&D when that was the default setting. So I can imagine there are a lot of people from the 90's/2000's that had that as their first setting and really like it.

I've seen the same thing with people's tastes in D&D artwork. I love me some Elmore, other players that started D&D post Elmore prefer Pathfinder artists or other people.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1119052That's the point: maybe the dragons are the problem the PCs have to solve, once they get powerful enough to do so. It's worth pointing out that just because Argonnessen has been presented as omnipotent and wholly isolationist doesn't mean it actually is so. It says on the Eberron wiki that the dragons were in fact fought to a stalemate by the Aerenal elves and the Undying Court, way back when, so they can be at least thwarted if not defeated.

Again, it seems like there's a contradictory demand going on here: we want a setting where powerful entities capable of shaping the world's fate unequivocally exist (or it's not much of an epic fantasy), and yet they can't be allowed to solve all the PCs' problems for them or to take away from the PCs' roles as the most dramatically important characters in the game, or there's no drama. In that context any such being is going to look like a "pet NPC".

Again maybe they changed that in later editions. In the introductory book, they trivially defeated an offscreen Empire of Giants that was uber better then any civilization in the current da.

A continent of Dragons has potential I guess the execution was lacking which may have been fixed with retcons.

Quote from: SHARK;1070289Who gives a fuck? Why should anyone care who you want to have sex with? How is that relevant to the game about killing monsters and looting dungeons?

In a game of D&D but strongly influenced by Game of Thrones? No one, obviously.

No, really. Incest, Failed Marriages, Red Weddings, Would-be Kings that, by being gay, couldn't assure a heir to the kingdom, Eunuchs, Bastards... NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THESE EXAMPLES WOULD BE RELEVANT in a GoT flavoured D&D campaign.

Believe it. That's the way it is. You can take it to the bank.

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.

Stahp!, just Stahp! ...you r just makin stuff up now. Of course 0D&D had gnomes... LET ME SHOW YOU!!!

Spies of Lightelf, Judges Guild, Cover. Note the For Dungeons and Dragons logo






In the books itself, a whole village of Gnomes. They own Lightelf, and can be found everywhere in that town, bringing down property values and such with their new Chaos masters... all the goody-goody LG Elves left and built a posh new settlement of upscale T'lan homes replete with rope bridges high up in the tree canopy so they Elves don't have to soil their feet anymore in the nearby forest of Palewood.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1119093Stahp!, just Stahp! ...you r just makin stuff up now. Of course 0D&D had gnomes...

Yea, they are in the table of monsters on page 4 of Monsters & Treasures:

Gnomes No Appearing 40-400 AC 5 Move 6 Hit Dice 1 % in Lair 60% Treasure Type C

Quote from: GameDaddy;1119093Stahp!, just Stahp! ...you r just makin stuff up now. Of course 0D&D had gnomes... LET ME SHOW YOU!!!

Spies of Lightelf, Judges Guild, Cover. Note the For Dungeons and Dragons logo

And not only that, NPCs with Class levels!

The Humanities! :eek:

Quote from: ffilz;1119094Yea, they are in the table of monsters on page 4 of Monsters & Treasures:

Gnomes No Appearing 40-400 AC 5 Move 6 Hit Dice 1 % in Lair 60% Treasure Type C

As monsters yes.

But not as a PC race which was the point which you two brilliantly missed. Bravo.

Quote from: Omega;1119103As monsters yes.

But not as a PC race which was the point which you two brilliantly missed. Bravo.

One could play any race that they wanted in original D&D. Just because it wasn't in the little brown books, didn't mean squat. It was up to each GM to decide what he/she would include in his/her campaign.  If I said players could play Gnomes in my campaign, then we included Gnomes. I don't remember any players from the early days playing a Gnome, but we did include Winged Men, Winged Angels, and Winged Demons as players in my early 70's campaigns. They could fly 240' feet or 24" per turn, however the Flying Men were claustrophobic and wouldn't willingly enter subterranean places, but in all other respects were normal. They were based on the Hawkmen and Prince Vultan from Flash Gordon. I had players also playing Centaurs, Brownies, Pixies, Dragons, Nymphs, Satyrs, Beastmen (Horned Ram who were extra strong guys 4d6 best of three for STR, who could headbutt for 1d8 damage), Pseudo-Dragons (or miniature Dragons if you prefer), Minotaur, Werewolves, Wereboars, Weretigers, Wererats, Shapeshifters, Cat People   "...See these eyes so green... I can stare for a thousand years, Colder than the moon... It's been so long... It's been so long...  And I've been putting out the fire with gasoline..."  I do recall players in my later 0D&D games playing Gnomes. I even have player character minis in my collection for them.[/I]

Players in my games also played as Bloodguard, Cavewights, Waynhim,  Urviles, Half-Giants, Giants, Ghosts, Trees, Ferrets, Ravens, Eagles, Giant Swans, Dryads, Naiads, Satyrs, and Tritons. We expressly allowed humanoids to take up occupations using the player classs/level structure. HD, abilities, and progression of oversized creatures depended on their physical age, another words young Dragons had fewer HD, and their attacks did less damage than full grown dragons, and it could take a century or more of in-game time for a Dragon Player to gain all of the HD, attacks and abilities of a full grown Dragon. Likewise with the small creatures. Pixies and brownies would only do one or two hp of damage a round with weapons, but they were very difficult to hit, and almost always had a Dex of 15 or more. In our home games, Shapeshifters and Lycanthropes automatically healed when they changed form. I would let the player re-roll their Hp whenever they shapeshifted, so they could fight until they were low on hp, and then change, and the change in form would regenerate their hp, and sometimes they would have more hp in their changed form, then in their regular form.

"As with any other set of miniatures rules they are guidelines to follow in designing your own fantastic-medieval campaign. They provide the framework around which you will build a game of simplicity or tremendous complexity -- your time and imagination are about the only limiting factors, and the fact that you have purchased these rules tends to indicate that there is no lack of imagination -- the fascination of the game will tend to make participants find more and more time."

From the Introduction to Dungeons and Dragons, and from the Afterword on page 36 of Underworld & Wilderness Adventures...

"There are unquestionably areas which have been glossed over. While we deeply regret the necessity, space requires that we put in the essentials only, and the trimming will often have to be added by the referee and his players. We have attempted to furnish an ample framework, and building should be both easy and fun. In this light, we urge you to refrain from writing for rule interpretations or the like unless you are absolutely at a loss, for everything herein is fantastic, and the best way is to decide how you would like it to be, and then make it just that way!"

The rulings that we naturally added to our early games made them so much better than the later "Rules Lawyer" versions of D&D, which expressly prohibited anything not specifically included beginning with the "Official" AD&D1e rules.

So, Omega, when you are saying we are playing wrong, by including Player Character races other than already included in the little brown books, ...that is false, because the original rules specifically allow this form of play where groups could add their own races and/or character classes designed by GM's, and Players alike.