Introduction

The Introduction to the Eberron Campaign Setting book is still a very good one, and I think it's worth "fisking" the "ten things you need to know" section and seeing where the Remixed version will differ with regards to those ten things.

I do want to reaffirm, though, that the main tone and theme elements spelled out earlier in the introduction are still completely and totally intact. That is; Eberron is a world that more closely resembles the pulp fiction era here; there are some fantastic elements like lightning rails and whatnot that give this a kind of 1920s-1940s kind of vibe, except merged to traditional fantasy. That absolutely will not change. The prevailing themes are pulp adventure of the Brendan Frasier Mummy and Raiders of the Lost Ark style combined with seedy hardboiled stories of Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett... again, grafted into a traditional fantasy chassis. And the prevailing theme of being in an interbellum period with political tensions being high and espionage and skullduggery being common is important too. I guess in terms of cinematic influences, that means that maybe we're also grafting James Bond into our traditional fantasy chassis... except without all of his technological thingamajigs that he traditionally has (or maybe they're replaced by stuff that's fantastical, magical, or otherwise unexplained.)

This right here was what I always loved about Eberron. Part of what inspired me to remix it in the first place was that I felt in its being too closely wedded to D&D, it actually undercut that premise. Being too D&D meant that it couldn't be Eberron-ish enough, if that makes any sense. I know in a literal sense it does not, because Eberron was always meant to be a D&D setting, but it always seemed like what Baker was aiming for was D&D that is fundamentally significantly different from D&D as it's usually interpreted, even if he would himself possibly deny that. In any case, regardless of what Keith Baker thinks about it, I was more caught up in the wonder of how I interpreted that precis than how he did anyway, although I think much of what he did was quite interesting and worthy of appreciation. The entire remixing project was about meandering through what Eberron could have looked like if it wasn't necessarily meant to be D&D and could have been built from the ground up as a fantasy setting with its own chassis rather than a D&D one. Of course, that later wandered into me utilizing my own chassis from my own fantasy setting, which is possibly not quite as broad as that of D&D, but it is equally specific. D&D is not, as some people often claim, really generic. It is broad, so a lot of different things can fit into it, but it does have a lot of very specific assumptions about a lot of things that it brings with it to the table. Sticking Eberron into a totally different paradigm that has different assumptions about many of those same things is the whole point and what I am interested in doing. Think of it as a cover version; like when Disturbed covered Simon & Garfunkel's "Sound of Silence." It certainly sounded very different, but at the same time, it very clearly was the same song.

Anyway, the ten things are important to go through, I think, because it further refines and elaborates on how the guiding principles are meant to work if I discuss them in the remixed paradigm. So, let's begin.

1. If it exists in D&D, then it has a place in Eberron. This is obviously no longer true; in fact, I think that this was one of the main principles that held Eberron back from really reaching its potential. That said, if it exists in my Dark Fantasy X game which I'm using instead of 3.5 D&D, then it has a place in Eberron Remixed. That will create a number of changes with regards to some of the monsters, the character races, and the way magic works, etc.

2. Tone and attitude. This is in reference to two things, really—alignment and your expectations about good and evil, and the swashbuckling action. This only needs to be said because it's in D&D; in my game system, there's no such thing as alignment anyway (although that doesn't mean that there's not player expectations about who is good and bad based on their photogeneity, so to speak.) But having the hardboiled vibe and tone being one of the main pillars of Eberron anyway should make that unsurprising, even to players who are going to be shocked to find helpful and friendly dragons and antagonistic angels, or whatever. As to the system being more aligned towards swashbuckling action, I think that's more than adequately addressed. Honestly, the rather modest bonus of Action points was never sufficient to change 3.5 D&D into anything other than a very careful and static tactical grid-based action scene management system. Since my system is completely different anyway, plus I have the much more robust Heroism points mechanic as part of my system, it's already optimized for exactly the kind of swashbuckling, narrative type action scene scenario that Eberron is reaching for.

3. A World of Magic. This is both still correct and yet in some ways not. Magic isn't really ubiquitous, at least not in the sense of low-level journeyman local spellcasters running around providing magical conveniences. There is "thaumaturgical technology" however, as provided by the Dragonmarked Houses, although I'll probably focus on just a handful of these conveniences, like the lightning rail or the House Sivis' "magical telegraph." However, Dragonmarked wonders are seen as Dragonmarked wonders, not necessarily magic per se. This may seem like splitting hairs, but in reality it is not. The powers of the Dragonmarks are seen as very unusual yet natural occurrences, and the ways in which the Houses have turned that into conveniences for those who can afford them is seen as a wonder of the age, but it is not spellcasting, which is a fundamentally unnatural phenomenon. In spite of the academic knowledge between these two things, the reality is that most people don't really understand the difference very well either, and are often mistrustful of Dragonmarked wonders in spite of their obvious convenience, and downright hostile to spellcasters—as they should be; as I said, the magical system of the rules I'm using is better described as "Lovecraftian" rather than "Vancian". In some ways, the Dragonmarked Houses deal with the elites of the various kingdoms; they provide services to the rich and powerful, not the every day Joe Blow in the setting, and in turn, they depend on the rich and powerful keeping the mob in check from revolting against the Dragonmarked Houses and their suspiciously magic-like technology.

It's also fair to say that the wonders of the Dragonmarked Houses are largely confined to the fairly urban areas in the setting anyway. It's one thing that the Lightning Rail connects, say, Sharn and Fairhaven, but most people in the countryside will never see one or ride one or care about one, even, for that matter. This is even more true for the airships and whatnot. PCs are, of course, exceptional, and are exposed to things that most people in the setting never are, but this is a bit more explicit in the Remixed version of Eberron than the In Print version of it.

4. A World of Adventure. While this title of course applies to any D&D setting, or most RPG settings of any type, what they really mean if you read the text blurb is the idea of zipping across the world from one exotic location to another. I don't necessarily see this as a positive or a negative thing, but just "a thing" but I also recognize that I have a tendency as GM to always want to move on to the next thing rather than savor the opportunities in the locations that I have the players already. Because of that, I'm deliberately going to minimize this somewhat; sure, you may travel to an exotic location (to the extent that everywhere in the setting isn't already exotic to begin with) but mostly the adventure will then take place there rather than zipping all over the place all of the time. Besides, I think journeys are fascinating and adventurous in their own right and shouldn't be dismissed or handwaved over unless its necessary to do so for reasons of pacing, or worrying that it will be a distraction from focus, or whatever. But mostly, I'm not going to adhere too strictly to this for personal reasons; it kind of enables a bad habit I have as a GM anyway that I'd rather work to minimize rather than emphasize.

5. The Last War has ended—sort of. I did mention this already, so it doesn't need much elaboration, but there is a kind of politically tense almost Cold War vibe to the setting, and it doesn't feel like postbellum, it feels like interbellum. Yep. I'm all over this.

6. The Five Nations. I'm not 100% sure why this is one of the ten things that you need to know, but yeah—the nations all exist in Eberron Remixed as they do in Eberron As Printed; although as I've said, I've pumped up the humanocentrism of the setting to at least twice its In Print level.

7. A World of Intrigue. I think this was something that needed to be spelled out for players who aren't used to playing this way and who just have save the world dungeonquests that are very straightforward, or something, but this is my bread and butter as a gamer, and everything I ever run is heavy on the intrigue. In any case, I'd certainly echo that this point is meant to be retained in Eberron Remixed. Although I'm not necessarily attempting to tell anyone what kinds of adventures to run by remixing the setting, certainly I'm doing so with the assumption that intrigue heavily features in any campaign run in Eberron Remixed. Although the same is certainly true of Eberron In Print. In any game I'd run, it's amped up to the point that it could almost be considered a game of fantasy X-files combined with fantasy James Bond combined with fantasy The Godfather.

8. Dragonmark dynasties. In tandem with the political intrigue, one of the big sources of intrigue are the Dragonmarked Houses, which are power centers that in some aspects rival the nations themselves in terms of their power and influence. That won't really change too much in the Remixed version of the setting other than to point out that outside of the House's specific titled lands and the urban centers where they are powerful, their influence wanes precipitously, and in most rural areas they tend to often even not advertise their allegiance too loudly.

9. Dragonshards. I haven't really given much thought to dragonshards, other than they could be a somewhat plot-devicey method to further separate Dragonmarked magic from spellcasting magic. I'm not sure that dragonshards were ever anything more than occasional plot devices in Eberron as written either, though. Certainly I see that as their role; you mostly ignore them except when you need some kind of MacGuffin or deus ex machina, at which point you can refer to them. Because MacGuffins and deus ex machina devices should be used very sparingly anyway, that means that their importance is not going to be significant in Eberron Remixed.

10. New races. It was a big deal at the time that Eberron introduced four signature races that were unique to the setting. For this reason, I think it was important to bring them into my game, even though my game as originally written only had used one race that was basically the same concept and therefore directly analogous (albeit under a different name.) Of course, in the remixing, there will be all kinds of changes to the default races presented in the setting. Although this impact will be less to the new signature races and rather more to the default D&D races, many of which I felt like they tried too hard to be different in Eberron. If you're going to make halflings, for instance, that different, then why bother making them halflings at all? The next section will go through the races and I'll discuss more in depth how they will be changed from Eberron As Printed to Eberron Remixed.