Greetings!

Over in the Seatle thread, Happydaze mentioned that he hated the Ebberon Campaign setting. The "Cesspool of Ebberon."

Happydaze, that made me laugh!:)

For Happydaze, and all here, what are your thoughts on the Ebberon Campaign setting?

Personally, I don't own Ebberon, and have never played or ran Ebberon, so I'm curious. What are your thoughts--both good and bad--on the Ebberon Campaign setting?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I love the concept of the setting, what with it's pulpy post-war adventures in a fantasy setting. However the idea that no one is good or evil upsets me. Especially since the different monsters aren't actually evil just misunderstood. Also the fact that Keith Baker has been really pandering to the SJW crowd.

I was just introduced to it this past November, but as a newcomer to it, I had a great time with it. I haven't read all of the details of the setting yet, but I liked how it facilitated Western , pulp, and Victorian tropes within a fantasy environment.

Quote from: arcanuum;1070282I love the concept of the setting, what with it's pulpy post-war adventures in a fantasy setting. However the idea that no one is good or evil upsets me. Especially since the different monsters aren't actually evil just misunderstood. Also the fact that Keith Baker has been really pandering to the SJW crowd.

I don't see evil/good as an issue, but then that's been the norm for most of my games as I'm not usually a D&D player. People and monsters can still be evil, it's just not labelled "evil" in big capital letters.

Quote from: arcanuum;1070282I love the concept of the setting, what with it's pulpy post-war adventures in a fantasy setting. However the idea that no one is good or evil upsets me. Especially since the different monsters aren't actually evil just misunderstood. Also the fact that Keith Baker has been really pandering to the SJW crowd.

Greetings!

Hi Arcanuum! How has Keith Baker been pandering to the SJW's, Arcanuum? Pandering to SJW's is always a bad thing. I imagine that doing so will rapidly run the campaign setting into the ground.

On the whole "Noone is good or evil. The evil creatures are just misunderstood." Geesus. You see, Arcanuum? That right there is Moral Relativism. That's the product of our stupid fucking universities pumping this kind of philosophical post-modernism shit into us. Gee, have you fucking morons read the fucking newspaper? Like, *yesterday* maybe? Yeah, that's right...tell me that "Noone is evil..they are just misunderstood!" What fucking nonsense that is, you know, Arcanuum? Oh, how about the millions of people slaughtered in the genocides sponsored by the Communists Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot? And the genocide pursued by Hitler, and the mass slaughters, experiments, enslavement, tortures and rape pursued by the Japanese of Imperial Japan? Oh, haven't heard of THE RAPE OF NANKING? A whole population of Chinese were murdered--and something like 400,000 of the city's women and girls were brutally mass raped, over and over again, by the conquering Japanese Army. (The city had an enormous population when the Japanese Army conquered it.) Yeah, there's no *real* evil, Arcanuum. Geesus, that kind of post-modernism jello makes my teeth grind, Arcanuum!:) LOL

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: jhkim;1070284I was just introduced to it this past November, but as a newcomer to it, I had a great time with it. I haven't read all of the details of the setting yet, but I liked how it facilitated Western , pulp, and Victorian tropes within a fantasy environment.


I don't see evil/good as an issue, but then that's been the norm for most of my games as I'm not usually a D&D player. People and monsters can still be evil, it's just not labelled "evil" in big capital letters.

Greetings!

Facilitated Western, Pulp and Victorian elements, huh Jhkim? Interesting! Can you elaborate on what some of those elements look like being presented in the campaign setting?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

He has been making posts on Twitter saying that everyone in Eberron is gay, trans, asexual etc simply because Shapeshifting and magic can change someones gender.

Quote from: arcanuum;1070288He has been making posts on Twitter saying that everyone in Eberron is gay, trans, asexual etc simply because Shapeshifting and magic can change someones gender.

Greetings!

Ahh. Interesting, Arcanuum. You know, Arcanuum, in a fantasy RPG world of D&D, I have never understood the SJW's--especially the LGBT crowd--maniacal obsession with trying to feature their sexual desires at every game table, all seemingly with the goal of getting every game session to not revolve around fighting dragons and monsters, and looting dungeons--no, but instead to revolve around who they want to have sex with.

As an aside, all of this ideological posturing by the LGBT SJW's so reeks of our current cultural climate. No shit, I know. But my point is focused on the dissonance of that ideological and political consciousness being freight-trained into the game, and anyone's individual campaign. Who 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? Beyond that--in a hypothetical, magical medievalesque campaign world--what if the larger society is like ancient Greece or Rome, and doesn't find you being gay or trans or whatever the fuck even remotely meaningful in any way?

Secondly, great. What if the campaign world is deeply entrenched in a Puritan mindset, and they believe that sexual freaks and other *nonconformists* are evil and wicked, and burn you at the fucking stake? Everytime in such a campaign world, whenever you make it known about your particular sexual identity, you get imprisoned, tortured, and burned at the stake? Rinse and repeat. It isn't really the mechanics of it that are what's important. Why is it so important that the game and the campaign setting revolve around people's sexual identity? From a historical or even fantastical mindset, such "Sexual Identities" could very well be absolutely irrelevant--or otherwise meaningless, because such a character is always quickly executed. What's the point, in either environment, of trying to get everyone around the table and *in the campaign world* to focus on some particular "Sexual Identity"?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I really like Eberron. The feel, the magic as industry, it's all good.

As 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.

Eberron was never good.

Ravenloft is where it's at!

Quote from: SHARK;1070280Greetings!

Over in the Seatle thread, Happydaze mentioned that he hated the Ebberon Campaign setting. The "Cesspool of Ebberon."

Happydaze, that made me laugh!:)

For Happydaze, and all here, what are your thoughts on the Ebberon Campaign setting?

Personally, I don't own Ebberon, and have never played or ran Ebberon, so I'm curious. What are your thoughts--both good and bad--on the Ebberon Campaign setting?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

That's HappyDaze with a big "D." This being the internet, my username is the one place I can lay claim to having a big "D," so I'm not letting it go!

My thoughts on Eberron were that they half-assed it. They had a massive war fought for generations over a huge land area that has a lower population density than Siberia. Speaking of the scale, how the fuck do these people stay in touch like it's modern times across thousands of miles? It's not through the 100gp/use messaging services or on the 1sp/mile lightning rail train unless the economy is fucking crazy. They tried to say that people commuted by rail from the Brelish countryside into Sharn to work from towns 200 miles away; so these workers are paying 20gp each way for jobs that only pay less than 2gp/day. They have "heavy industry" as the main export of Breland (one of the major nations) but nobody knows what the fuck that's supposed to mean, and who the fuck is actually buying it. Just way too many "let's magicpunk noir it up to 11" without the least thought on actually making it work.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1070297That's HappyDaze with a big "D." This being the internet, my username is the one place I can lay claim to having a big "D," so I'm not letting it go!

My thoughts on Eberron were that they half-assed it. They had a massive war fought for generations over a huge land area that has a lower population density than Siberia. Speaking of the scale, how the fuck do these people stay in touch like it's modern times across thousands of miles? It's not through the 100gp/use messaging services or on the 1sp/mile lightning rail train unless the economy is fucking crazy. They tried to say that people commuted by rail from the Brelish countryside into Sharn to work from towns 200 miles away; so these workers are paying 20gp each way for jobs that only pay less than 2gp/day. They have "heavy industry" as the main export of Breland (one of the major nations) but nobody knows what the fuck that's supposed to mean, and who the fuck is actually buying it. Just way too many "let's magicpunk noir it up to 11" without the least thought on actually making it work.

Baker straight out said they fucked up the scale of the map.

Quote from: Warboss Squee;1070300Baker straight out said they fucked up the scale of the map.

Did they ever officially fix it? I seem to remember all sorts of issues raised that they just hand waved off because they were only interested in making sure the game crunch worked (and it didn't always...). For everything else, the DM was just supposed to fix it themselves or ignore it. Fuck that. I bought the product that was supposed to have this information, and when it was wrong, they just walked away. In later editions (4e and 5e) they just didn't bother with such things in the books at all. I like details in my games that make sense. I enjoyed Greyhawk for that reason and dislike FR--especially later FR--for the same.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1070302Did they ever officially fix it? I seem to remember all sorts of issues raised that they just hand waved off because they were only interested in making sure the game crunch worked (and it didn't always...). For everything else, the DM was just supposed to fix it themselves or ignore it. Fuck that. I bought the product that was supposed to have this information, and when it was wrong, they just walked away. In later editions (4e and 5e) they just didn't bother with such things in the books at all. I like details in my games that make sense. I enjoyed Greyhawk for that reason and dislike FR--especially later FR--for the same.

He said what the scale was supposed to be on his site was back in the day. And yes the fluff was extremely stupid in places, but imo it was on books Baker wasn't involved in and were handled by other dnd writers that clearly didn't know the setting and didn't care.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1070294Eberron was never good.

Ravenloft is where it's at!

Underdark is the shiznit!!!

Quote from: Warboss Squee;1070312He said what the scale was supposed to be on his site was back in the day. And yes the fluff was extremely stupid in places, but imo it was on books Baker wasn't involved in and were handled by other dnd writers that clearly didn't know the setting and didn't care.

I don't place a divide in my mind between Eberron and Keith Baker's Eberron just as I don't give two shits that Greenwood has his personal take on the FR. The property is WotC's and they dumped out a turd, and regardless of what the original creator might have fed them, that turd is Eberron.