Category Archives: Gaming Features

Fantasy Roundtable: Family Ties

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The holidays are a time when families come together. The presence of my relatives got me thinking about games, and how RPG characters often exist in isolation. After all, if my goal is to make the most efficient dungeon delver ever, what practical benefit is there to having a kid sister or an aging mother? Sheer mechanics aside, how will it make the game experience more fun for me?

In general, exploring family is a way to add depth to a character. Where have they come from? What are their roots? Is the fighter carrying on a proud tradition, or is he a black sheep whose adventuring career is an embarrassment to his noble family? Is there a town he calls home, or are his kinfolk spread across the land?

Here’s a few of my ideas on the subject. Some of these I’ve used in the past; others I might try in the future. I’d love to hear what you’ve done with families in your games!

THE ORPHAN

You want to be a lone wolf with no ties to the world? Nothing wrong with that. But if you don’t have any family, WHY don’t you have any family? A few scenarios:

  • Graven’s family were massacred by the Karrns in the Last War. This fuels his long-standing hatred of all things Karrnathi and general dislike of the undead. If he’s mainly a dungeon crawler, this might be as far as it goes. In a more intrigue-oriented campaign he might eventually learn that the attack was actually carried out by the Emerald Claw on behalf of Erandis Vol; his family held some secret that posed a threat to her. Can he uncover this and avenge the fallen? Alternately, some of his relatives could still be held in undead servitude. Can he lay them to rest?
  • Junius lost everyone and everything he knew in the Mourning (or Spellplague, or similar vast disaster). While it’s not a goal that drives him at the start, he might jump at the chance to uncover the mystery of the disaster that destroyed his loved ones. Another adventure might involve exploring the ruins of his family estate, salvaging family treasures still hidden there.
  • Sera has never known her family; she was raised in an orphanage/by wolves/by mercenaries. She’s never stayed in one place long enough to be friends. On the surface, this leaves the character with no story at all; however, it also means that there’s no facts in the way of making up a story, as when it is suddenly revealed that Sera is the long-lost last heir of the throne of Elf-dom, spirited away and hidden by a loyal retainer when her family was being hunted down by their rivals.

In popular fiction, Kvothe from The Name of the Wind is an orphan. Many of his adventures have nothing to do with this, but his desire to avenge his parents is an underlying theme that drives his long-term goals.

INHERITANCE

The Lord of the Rings and The Order of the Stick are both driven by quests handed down from previous generations. OotS’s Roy Greenhilt is bound to fulfill his father’s blood oath, while Frodo is given the task of carrying his uncle’s ring to Mordor. The heroes are also equipped by their elders; Roy wields his grandfather’s sword, while Frodo receives the sword Sting and a coat of mithral chainmail from Bilbo. By contrast, Thorin Oakenshield of The Hobbit has no special sword or armor, but he receives a map and a quest to reclaim his ancestral home. In all three cases, the inherited quest is the end goal of a campaign arc; all three have a host of adventures on the way to carrying out their heirloom quests.

This sort of story is easily adapted to a roleplaying game; it simply requires cooperation between the players and the GM when it comes to planning out the campaign arc. In terms of providing a character with an heirloom treasure, there are a number of ways to handle this. Each character could receive a treasure, so everyone is on even footing. It could be that only one character receives an heirloom, and this is balanced by increased responsibility or danger; the character is the subject of a vendetta and will invariably be the focus of enemy attacks. On the other hand, it may be that the heirloom drives the story but has no mechanical value. Thorin simply receives a map. And while Roy carries his grandfather’s sword, it only becomes a powerful magic item once he has it reforged. In this, there’s some similarity to Aragorn in Lord of the Rings; he has the pieces of a powerful sword from the very beginning of the “campaign”, but he is only able to reforge the sword after a series of trials and triumphs. In both cases, the sword has a personal meaning to the hero who carries it; it’s not just some random treasure plucked from a monster’s hoard. They effectively acquire the weapons through adventure – but the weapons have personal significance due to their family history.

THE FAMILY BUSINESS

Perhaps you are following a family tradition… in which case, other members of your family might be more advanced in your chosen field than you are. The wizard’s mother might be the Master Diviner at the Mage’s Guild. The father of the rogue could be a Boromar underboss who with a sizeable territory in Sharn. The fighter might be the son of a general in the army or the captain of the city watch.

This sort of connection raises a host of possibilities. The first is the question of the relationship between the player character and successful relative. Is the PC following in the footsteps of the parent? Does he expect to fill his forebear’s shoes, or is he following a different path? If the relationship is a good one, the relative could serve as a patron for the party… either directly supplying them with missions or simply cutting them a break on services they might not otherwise be able to obtain. Diviner Mom can help the party identify magic items, and she occasionally provides them with a free augury… but a time may come when they need to help mom overthrow the corrupt guildmaster, or exorcise the quori that has managed to weasel its way into her mind. If the family member does provide some sort of concrete benefit to the party—whether missions or services—it will make storylines that threaten her have that much more impact.

One question is whether or not you are aware of your family’s business at the start of your adventuring career. It could be that your ancestors are a secret order of demon-hunters, but your parents have kept the truth hidden from you because you weren’t ready to take on the responsibility/the stars weren’t right/your sister was the Chosen One. Now that the demons are rising/you found the sword of angels/your sister is dead/you’ve reached level ten, your ancient purpose is revealed… which might be just the thing to explain your new paragon path/prestige class.

A spin-off of this is the noble heir who starts off as a free-spirited adventurer, but who is eventually called upon to carry out the duties of his office. When King Bob is assassinated, it’s up to the fighter to take up his crown; he must deal with the problems facing the tiny kingdom. The party’s cleric must serve as his spiritual adviser, and the rogue is the spymaster. The little kingdom is caught between two greater powers; the PC King could escape much of this responsibility by swearing allegiance to the empire to the north, but will he surrender his kingdom’s independence so easily? Such a plotline is an interesting way to switch from a heroic arc to a higher level campaign. The PCs have honed their skills crawling through dungeons and fighting monsters; now they must deal with spies, assassins, and armies.

Another take on this is having the entire party be drawn from a single family. Looking to the Boromar crime family, you could easily have characters with different classes all pitching in to help the family business in different ways.

THE RIVAL

A family rival could be a friendly rivalry within your own family… the fighter’s sister is a sorceress, and has always been determined to prove magic superior to the sword. She has her own band of adventurers. Sometimes they help you; sometimes they beat you to something you were searching for; sometimes you only find out about an interesting dungeon because they got their first. This gives a possibility for cavalry to arrive when you bite off more than you can chew… but you might also end up having to bail your sibling out of trouble when they take on too much, and end up imprisoned/possessed/petrified/what-have-you.

Alternatively, you could be dealing with a rivalry between families. Capulets and Montagues, Hatfields and McCoys, Bagginses and Sackville-Bagginses. This could be primarily a political rivalry that has little direct affect on your adventures, and mainly comes out in the reactions of certain NPCs who either support or oppose your family. On the other hand, it could be simmering on the edge of violence, with a constant threat of assassins or attacks; between poking around in dungeons, you might raid the estate of an enemy family, or be sent as envoys to win the favor of a neutral family.

THE NEXT GENERATION

Epic level getting you down? Do you long for the simple days when a dire rat was a challenge? Perhaps it’s time to jump forward a few decades and start a new campaign based on the descendants of your current party. This works especially well if some sort of interparty romance has already formed over the course of the campaign; if the fighter and the wizard already hooked up, there’s a solid family that can be the backbone of the next generation. It’s possible for every player to play a descendant of their original character, but you shouldn’t feel tied to this; the core descendants will surely have friends and acquaintances from distant places. Likewise, use your imagination when asking where are they now for your original PCs. They could be happily married & running the local inn/wizard’s guild/kingdom. But perhaps the sorcerer vanished a decade ago, and no one knows what became of him. Maybe the rogue and fighter quarreled, and the rogue is now a legendary assassin whose name is spoken in whispers. The paladin has fallen and rules a dark kingdom with an iron fist. Perhaps the warlock’s child has inherited a problem from the original PC; it turns out that part of the warlock’s pact concerned the soul of his firstborn child, and it’s up to the next-gen PC to pay the price for her father’s lust for power.

These are just a handful of ideas; there’s many other ways that family could play a role in a campaign. An entire campaign could be based around dynastic conflict. Your kid sister is determined to be an adventurer and has followed you into danger… can you keep her alive? Your brother is getting married to the Inspired ambassador… do you trust her? What do you get as a wedding gift? Will you go to the destination wedding in Sarlona? Quests for vengeance, ancestral curses, the spell your great-grandfather never quite finished… delving into family can provide all sorts of interesting flavor and inspiration for good NPCs.

This is just a starting point. What have YOU done with family in your games? What would you like to do in games to come?

Dragonmarks 12/21: Is Boranel Evil?

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This will likely be the last Dragonmark of 2012. Come the new year, I will be focusing most of my creative energy on my new world, which I’ll talk more about next week. In months ahead, I will be discussing elements of the new world and asking for your opinions on different things. However, Eberron remains close to my heart and I will continue to do Dragonmark posts; they’re just more likely to be monthly than weekly. And while I have no new information on the subject, I hope that Eberron will be supported in D&D Next – if you want to see Eberron support in DDN, keep asking WotC and hope for the best!

As always, the answers to the questions below are my personal opinions and may conflict with canon sources.  

If Krozen’s evil, shouldn’t Boranel be evil too? He uses his dark lanterns to commit assassination, theft etc: evil acts.

Does he? Again, for my opinions on alignment in Eberron, take a look at this post. I’d pay particular attention to the discussion of Kaius and Aurala, and the note that Aurala’s generals and ministers may engage on actions on behalf of Aundair she wouldn’t personally condone.

Let’s compare Zilargo and Breland for a moment. Both have exceptional intelligence services. Both employ assassins. But just how do they employ those assassins? In Zilargo, the Trust routinely deploys assassins against its own citizens. Not only that, it regularly engages in pre-emptive assassination, killing people who haven’t yet committed any crime (but will if they aren’t stopped). They are content to, in short, rule through terror and the threat of execution.

In Breland, Lord Ruken ir’Clarn is the leader of a movement determined to end the Brelish monarchy when Boranel dies. He seeks to rob Boranel’s children of their birthright and change Brelish tradition. And yet, he’s still alive. Do you think Boranel doesn’t know what he’s up to? Do you think that Ruken is somehow so amazing that the Dark Lanterns couldn’t kill him? No on both counts. His shield is that he’s a Brelish noble and member of parliament whose actions are, by and large, purely democratic in nature. Boranel doesn’t want ir’Clarn to succeed, but if it the will of the people that he does, Boranel will accept it. I’ll also point to the fact that despite the Citadel being a key edge Breland had over the other nations during the Last War, Dark Lanterns were never deployed to assassinate other kings or queens. They were certainly employed in the war – look to Thorn’s Far Passage assignment – but there were places the king wouldn’t go.

Looking to the Thorn of Breland novels, Thorn’s first assignment is to recover a prisoner from a nation that is NOT a signatory of the Treaty of Thronehold and thus not bound by the Code of Galifar. Thorn is told that she is authorized to kill that prisoner’s jailer if need be, but that isn’t the mission; she’s there to rescue a prisoner, not specifically to assassinate a foreign leader. In the second novel, she is sent to identify a terrorist threat to Breland, and if it exists, to eliminate its leader. This is a straight-up assassination, true, but again it is targeting a criminal who potentially poses a threat to every citizen of Sharn… and she’s instructed to confirm that he is a threat before carrying out the sentence (and she’s pretty cranky about acting as what she sees as a paid assassin for House Cannith). In the third novel, her initial assignment is to protect Prince Oargev from assassins, and she’s authorized to use lethal force in the process – but she’s there in a defensive capacity. Breland is willing to employ assassination as a tool against terrorists and monsters. But it doesn’t use it casually and it chooses targets carefully. More important is the fact that Boranel is King of Breland, not master of the Citadel. He allows the Dark Lanterns to exist. At times, he even requests specific actions from them. But he is NOT their direct commander and is in all likelihood not even aware of many of the assassinations that they carry out. Who is? People like Talleon Haliar Tonan, commander of the Sharn Dark Lanterns (Sharn: City of Towers page 139). Talleon is specifically noted as being “devoted to the preservation of Breland and to the King, but he is utterly ruthless, and authorizes torture, theft, and assassination if the mission requires it.” I highlight the but because it speaks to the fact that this isn’t the general tone of Breland or the general will of the king; Talleon is willing to take extreme action in defense of the kingdom that Boranel likely wouldn’t approve of. And what’s Talleon’s alignment? Lawful evil. He works within a hierarchy and system – but he is willing to engage in evil acts to preserve that system.

Earlier there was a long discussion about the Valenar invasion, and that the Humans were only too happy to throw off the yoke of Cyran rule, based on hatreds dating back to old Sarlona. But what of Lhesh Haruuc’s creation of Darguun — from lands that had also been part of Cyre? Were the Humans there from the same region of Sarlona as those in Valenar?

No, I don’t believe that the human inhabitants of Darguun were or are of Khunan descent. The Khunans were never a numerous people. They fled directly across ocean during the Sundering, settling on the east coast of Khorvaire. They were thus refugees, not a planned settlement; they didn’t come with supplies or plans for expansion; and the region that is now Valenar was quite sufficient for their needs. You see similar “refugee colonist” cultures in the Shadow Marches and the Demon Wastes; in both cases you have a similar situation where these people were happy to settle where they landed and never had need or resources to push deeper into the continent.

Meanwhile, the people of Cyre are largely descended from the blended folk of Rhiavaar, Nulakesh, and Pyrine—people who came in an organized wave of colonization and expansion. Nonetheless, the human population density of Khorvaire is relatively low, and the Five Nations always claimed territory that they didn’t really need. Breland claimed Droaam and the Shadow Marches as part of its domain; however, unlike Cyre, it never actually conquered those territories. Cyre DID conquer Khunan Valenar and set its nobles up as overlords.

Being far inland, Darguun never had refugee colonists. Cyre claimed the territory and had settlers there, but it never had a particularly dense human population. The main reason it was so easily stolen is that Cyre’s grip on it was always tenuous… and there was no way it could stretch itself to reclaim that largely unnecessary region when it was already hard pressed on all sides by the other nations.

As I recall from a flashback scene in the Heirs of Dhakaan trilogy, some Cyrans fought back…and died. Are the rest now slaves, or did Haruuc treat them with dignity in exchange for their acceptance of the new realilty?

Haruuc had no interest in being an occupying force. He didn’t want to conquer humans; he wanted them out of the land that rightfully belonged to his people. As such, Cyrans suffered one of three fates:

  • Exile. Those who were smart and fled towards the heart of Cyre were largely allowed to leave.
  • Death. Again, Haruuc didn’t want the hassle of managing a large captive population, and unlike the Valenar he had no intention of becoming a liege lord to human vassals; again, he was building a new homeland for his people, taking back the land originally stolen by humanity. There was no room for human dignity in this equation. If people resisted, most were killed.
  • Slavery. Some prisoners were kept as slaves. Again, the goblin view is that these are the people who stole Khorvaire from their ancestors; they deserve no better.

Having said that, there’s no reason that INDIVIDUAL humans couldn’t earn the respect of the goblins around them and find some sort of acceptance within a Darguul community. But that would very much be a case by case basis; it wasn’t Haruuc’s intention in the war of foundation.

I will also point out that the Valenar had a longer engrained relationship with the Khunans. The Valenar had defended the region for decades. The Khunans were used to their presence; there were adults with no living memory of a time when they didn’t have Valenar defenders. The Valenar simply killed the Cyran overlords and said “We’re in charge now” and the Khunans largely said “OK, doesn’t make much difference to us.” In Darguun, you didn’t have this sort of pre-existing relationship. Goblins were employed as mercenaries, but the percentage of mercenary goblins was quite low compared to the current population of Darguun; Haruuc brought together a host of goblins who had never had anything to do with humans, promising them a better land and better life.

Apart from Aundair, who is more likely to ignite the next war?

If I had to pick one force, I’d go with the Lords of Dust supporting Rak Tulkhesh. The question is who they would trick into starting it for them. This is discussed in more detail in a recent Eye on Eberron article (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/dragon/2012October).

What 3 historical events in Eberron timeline would make the best backdrops/focus for one-off adventures?

It’s very difficult for me to limit myself to three. So I’ll just say that these are three events I believe would make good one-offs – but by no means the only ones. If I had the time, I could come up with twenty, easy. And no, I don’t have time.

The Lycanthropic Purge: Part One. Some people have the idea that the Purge was a one-sided affair, with poor miserable lycanthropes being relentlessly pursued by evil templars. This wasn’t the case at all. When it began, it was a war. I like to call it “28 Days Later with werewolves instead of zombies.” I’d also consider Aliens to be an excellent inspiration for tone. A single lycanthrope was generally far more than a match for the typical templar (most likely a 1st level warrior) and all it takes is a single bite to pass the infection. I’ve often wanted to make a one-off about a group of lost/scattered templars and local shifters forced into an uneasy alliance as they try to escape suddenly hostile territory, or to deal with a fiend-possessed lycanthrope leader… dealing both with an extremely deadly foe and their own distrust of one another.

The Lycanthropic Purge: Part Two. Eventually the power of the curse was broken; the number of lycanthropes were cut down to more containable numbers; and it became closer to a witch-hunt. But that witch-hunt could make for a very interesting one shot. The PCs are a mix of Silver Flame inquisitors and local villagers. There are wererats in the village, and they are murderous, malevolent and very clever… and they will do their best to trick you into harming innocents. Can you find the true villains without harming or killing innocent people?

Against The Giants. The PCs take on the roles of elven resistance fighters from a variety of cultures in the last days of the war against the giants. You’ve got a drow assassin who’s turned on his former masters but is still distrusted by the others; a haughty Qabalrin necromancer and a Cul’sir wizard liberated from the giants… along with early Tairnadal. Take this group and turn it into Inglorious Basterds. I want my titan scalps!

Do you ever tire of creating content for the ‘kitchen sink’ of campaign settings?

This is related to another question…

Did you ever feel like the stipulation of “if it’s in 3.5, it’s in Eberron” hurt your creativity in any way?   Two examples of which that I can think of just to edify my point are this: I’m personally not a huge fan of psionics, but you not only have a custom race with them, but in fact an entire continent.  Arguably putting it on par of importance with Dragons (one part of the name of the game).   Second example is the creative take you took on the drow in Xen’drik.  I felt like they were something that had to be put in due to fan love for their race, and that you had to add, but that you really twisted on it’s head._

First, let’s tackle the phrase “kitchen sink.” This impression usually comes from that second phrase – the fact that one of the ten things you should know about Eberron is “if it’s in D&D, it has a place in Eberron.” The key to me is that when I hear “kitchen sink”, I think of it as a negative term that implies that things are jammed together with no rhyme or reason. We’re going to have a culture that is effectively identical to revolutionary France next to an Aztec nation next to Menzoberranzan. This isn’t the case in Eberron. Just look at the answers I’ve given in the last few posts. They are answers about the unique history and cultures of Eberron – the political and religious conflict between Thrane and Cyre; the fate of Cyran refugees; the difference between Boranel and Krozen. My recent Eye on Eberron articles deal with the Rage of War, the sacred assassins of the Silver Flame, and the Children of Winter. None of these are in any way defined by it being a “kitchen sink”; they are tied to the religions and mystical forces unique to the world.

It’s also vital to recognize that the statement isn’t “If it’s in D&D, it’s in Eberron.” It’s “If it’s in D&D, it has a place in Eberron.” If you love abeil (bee people), there are many places you COULD put them. They could have a lost hive-city deep in Xen’drik. They could be a product of the Mourning, in which a Cyran city was transformed into an Abeil hive. They could be a new creation of Mordain the Fleshweaver. But if I don’t like abeil, I don’t have to use them at all. They aren’t IN Eberron; it’s simply easy for you to add them in if YOU want to. There’s a place for them in Eberron. This is the key to the statement that Eberron is a “kitchen sink.” It’s as much of a kitchen sink as you want it to be. I don’t use goliaths, genasi, illumians, chaos gnomes, etc. But if I wanted to, I could find a place for them.

With that said, there are things I was forced to put in. We needed a clear role for the core races of D&D, including the drow… and with the advent of 4E, including dragonborn and eladrin. 4E added Baator to the cosmology. Now, if I had been told “The drow must be just like Forgotten Realms… in fact, we want you to put Menzoberranzan somewhere” I would be very frustrated. Instead, my challenge was “you’ve got to have drow… but what makes the drow of Eberron unique? What makes the eladrin of Eberron different from those of other settings?” I think the EoE article on Baator is the best example of this. I will admit that I HATED having Baator added to the cosmology when it wasn’t there before. The Eye on Eberron article gave me a chance to define Baator in a way that made sense for Eberron… to create a new story for it, one that used the same familiar cast of characters but gave them a new backstory, motivation and role in the world than how they’d been used before. Baator is a divine prison, and Asmodeus has only just broken his bonds and risen to power; the archdevils have an element of warring crimelords, struggling to build new empires from ashes.  It’s a completely different way of using the devils than you’d get in 4E core, and that’s what I like. If YOU like Menzoberranzan, you can add it to Eberron; no one’s stopping you. But I’m going to offer the Sulatar, Qaltiar, and Umbragen.

So is it creatively stifling? It IS limiting to be forced to work in some of these things, sure. There are some I wouldn’t add in if I was doing it entirely on my own, absolutely. But if anything, it’s an interesting creative challenge to say “How do I make gnomes that AREN’T the gnomes you find elsewhere?”

Looking to psionics, that was my choice from the start, not something forced upon the world. When I read my original AD&D Player’s Handbook, it came with an appendix on psionics. They’ve always been around in D&D, but they’ve generally been a weird stepchild that doesn’t really fit the tone of everything else… or forced on everyone, as in Dark Sun. With Eberron, I wanted a compromise. I wanted to give psionics a logical place in the world, and to consider the impact they would have on a culture much as Khorvaire explores the impact of magic. But I also wanted to make sure that someone who HATED psionics could essentially ignore them. Hence, Riedra. If you LIKE psionics, play up the role of the kalashtar and Dreaming Dark, and maybe even set your campaign in Riedra. If you hate psionics, drop the Dreaming Dark and the Kalashtar, and never go to Riedra. You don’t NEED to put kalashtar in your campaign; but if you like them, they have a place complete with history, conflict, and culture.

If you ever tire of it, what kind of theme/campaign setting would you prefer to work on?

Funny you should ask, as I AM working on a new campaign setting. Thanks to Jeff LaSala, I’m due to write about my “Next Big Thing”, and that is going to be my new campaign setting. The holidays have pushed me off schedule, so it won’t come out until next week, but expect more news then… to be followed by an ongoing discussion of the world as it moves towards completion.

Dragonmarks 12/5: Siberys, Flame and Hybrids!

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Soon I’ll start talking about the new setting I’m working on, but for now here’s another round of Eberron answers to chew on. As always, these are just my personal opinions & aren’t canon in any way.

What can you tell us about the status of Eberron in the next edition?

At this point in time, I have no new information. It’s my hope that it will be supported, but I haven’t heard anything positive or negative in this regard.

When will you write more novels? Are you writing one now? Write one now.

As regards Eberron novels, that’s up to Wizards of the Coast, not me. Eberron belongs to WotC, and they are the only ones empowered to authorize Eberron stories. There’s lots of stories I’d like to tell, and this is one reason I’m working on a new setting – so that I’ll have free rein to develop fiction in that world.

In the unlikely event that a Warforged gained a dragonmark, would it replace the ghulra, or be its own thing?

A warforged getting a dragonmark is going to be a one of a kind story, so it’s up to you, really. Is the dragonmark somehow manufactured? Is the Prophecy declaring this warforged to be a tool of destiny? This will likely manifest in different ways. However, I personally wouldn’t replace the ghulra. The ghulra is, essentially, the true name of the warforged: the symbol of its soul. It is unique. A dragonmark is not unique; it can be shared by many people. It touches the soul, but it is not the entirety of it.

Can you provide an in game explanation about how the only interracial breeding possibilities are between human with orcs and elves?

First off, changelings and kalashtar can both interbreed with other races, including humans, Khoravar, and elves. However, these crossings don’t produce hybrids; a human-kalashtar crossing produces a human or a kalashtar, not a half-kalashtar. So to reframe the question, why are half-elves and half-orcs the only hybrid races?

First off, I see no reason to assume that other hybrids aren’t possible; it’s simply that if they are possible, the offspring are a) not sufficiently different from one of the parent races so as to require new mechanics, and/or b) are sterile or otherwise not true breeding. Essentially, if you were in my campaign and said “I want to play a half-dwarf… mechanically he’s a dwarf, he’s just a little skinny and people make fun of his mother” I’d allow it. But I wouldn’t give you any special abilities for it – you don’t get to take human-only feats. So there exists the possibility that half-elves and half-orcs aren’t the only hybrids. But they are still the only true-breeding hybrid races that possess their own unique racial traits, so let’s keep moving forward.

We’ll start with the Khoravar… that’s the name the half-elves of Eberron have given their race, for those who don’t know it. First off, as noted in the Dragonshard on the subject the elves themselves were surprised and disturbed when they had viable hybrid offspring. Why is this possible? It could be that it has little to do with humanity and everything to do with the elves. Remember that the elves are the product of genetic engineering; when the giants enslaved the people of Shae Tirias Tolai, they altered them and stripped them of their ability to slip through the Feywild, transforming eladrin into the modern elves. They were bred to be slaves; as such, it’s not unreasonable to think that they intentionally made them genetically adaptable to help maintain their stock. We’ve never discussed the possibility of, say, elf-goblin hybrids… but if you want to make things interesting, you could say that elves can breed with anything. It would explain the fifty shades of elf you find in many settings.

As for half-orcs, personally, I think orcs work in the same way. I don’t personally consider half-orcs to be specifically half-human, half-orc. In my opinion, a half-orc might be part hobgoblin, elf, shifter, or dwarf. Basically, the orc genes are dominant enough to produce a uniform set of traits when bred with other creatures; though with that said, I’d think that you would see some differences between the hobgoblin and shifter half-orcs. But mechanically they are identical. Why is this possible? It could simply be a bizarre evolutionary trait that has allowed the orc to thrive in difficult environments. Or it could have been a gift from Vvaarak – a blessing of fertility upon the first race of druids.

What if Siberys was not killed by Khyber, despite false myths that say the contrary? Or could he resurrect?

Well, assuming you take the Progenitor myth at face value, it’s hard for Siberys to be alive because the pieces of his body are scattered across the sky. The dragons were born from his blood, and the radiance of the Ring is in my opinion the primary source of the energy mortals manipulate with magic. If he’s not killed, you have no Ring, no dragons, and no magic.

Could he be resurrected? Anything’s possible. But I don’t know what you’d do with him if he was. We’re talking about a dragon wrapped around the world… a dragon who, in his first life, created entire planes for fun. Which means if he was alive again, there’s no particular reason for him to hang around in this one; he’d probably go and see how things were working out in Syrania and Irian, then swim off into the Astral to think about what to do next. The gravitational impact of this celestial motion would likely wreak all sorts of havoc, and there’s then the question of if there would still be arcane magic in the world if he left.

A key point here is that Siberys has no particular reason to care about humans. We’re children of Eberron, and late to the game at that. Even the dragons were born of his blood, not personally shaped by his hand; if anything, he’d be more interested in the outer planes, because those he worked on deliberately.

And worst comes to the worst, he’d want a second round with Khyber and might try to get Eberron to let her go. And Eberron is the world we are standing on. If Eberron were to rise, it would literally destroy the world as we know it.

So personally, I’d let sleeping dragons lie.

What kind of creatures dwell, by your reckoning and imagination as the creator of Eberron, within the distant Ring of Siberys.

Siberys is, in my mind, the source of arcane magic. Dragons are the children of Siberys and Eberron; as such they are mortal creatures whose blood is suffused with mystic power. Per Dragons of Eberron, the couatl were formed from “the pure blood of Khyber before it touched the earth.” So couatl are one example of creatures you might find in the Ring. The key to me is that natives of the Ring would likely be highly magical creatures, as much spirit as flesh; flight would also be a common thing. But beyond “look to the couatl as an example,” it’s not a subject I’ve given much thought.

Does Eberron exist in a specifically imagined Solar System; if so what are the other celestial bodies or major planets therein.

Nope. We defined the moons, and there are a lot of them; you could choose to spread them out as planets if you prefer. But we’ve never described other planets in the system. I believe there are other worlds – the daelkyr are described as having produced mind flayers when they destroyed the homeworld of the Gith – but we’ve never stated if these are physical worlds that can be reached through space travel or alternate material planes. It’s something I’m thinking about as I’m developing my new setting, but it wasn’t something that was considered for Eberron.

Why did Thrane reject Cyran refugees?

I’ll throw out a few factors.

  • Like all of the Five Nations, Thrane’s resources were stretched thin by the war. Krozen’s top priority was to make sure he could tend to the needs of his own people.
  • No one won the war. Cyre never conceded its position or acknowledged Thrane as a righteous victor. Many of those refugees are thus unrepentant enemy combatants. Even the civilians have the potential to form a hostile fifth column within the native population. Why should we put the safety and wellbeing of our own people at risk to help those who were, months ago, trying to kill them?
  • The Mourning is utterly terrifying. An entire nation has been destroyed. No one knows why or how. Is it divine punishment of the Cyrans, and if so, will it follow them wherever they go? We need to regroup, consolidate our forces, and find out what it is and how to protect ourselves from it; this is not a time to take unnecessary risks.

There’s three reasons. Jaela would likely argue for compassion for those in need. Krozen would counter that the closed border protects the people of Thrane. And in the end, Jaela is the spiritual leader; it was Krozen and the cardinals who chose to refuse refugees.

On the other hand, while I understand the motives for Thrane’s rejection of the refugees, it seems odd since Breland welcomed them, and this puts the Flamers to shame given their beliefs in helping others.

The key here is to look at the event in context. The people of Thrane follow the faith of the Silver Flame. But they are also the people of Thrane, and have secular concerns that drive their daily lives. This isn’t a case of peaceful innocents hurt by a natural disaster. At the time of the Mourning, Thrane and Cyre had been at war for almost a century… and the last few decades of the war were fairly bitter between them. Consider the following, drawn from The Forge of War:

  • In 978 YK, Cyre and Thrane were briefly allies. However, Cyre refused to aid Thrane against Brelish aggression. This led to a collapse of the alliance. One of the first conflicts following this was Cyre’s siege of Arythawn Keep. This was a brutal massacre. The Cyrans took no prisoners, and their warforged troops pursued those who fled, hunting them down tirelessly and slaughtering them. That’s an image that is very close to the minds of Thranes on the Cyran border: their own innocents being mercilessly pursued by Cyran troops.
  • In 993 YK, Jaela Daran came to power and immediately sought peace with Cyre. Queen Dannel refused her entreaties, and Thrane soon learned that this was because Cyre had an ambitious plan to bring down Thrane with a direct assault on Flamekeep itself.  Per Forge of War, while this plan was never executed, “Keeper Daran had no counter to High Cardinal Krozen’s claim that Cyre was a clear and present danger.” So again, when Cyre was seemingly punished by divine force for its folly, most Thranes felt little desire to aid the people who just years earlier had plotted to ravage Flamekeep.

In many ways, the question isn’t why Thrane didn’t help Cyre, but rather why Breland did. Breland and Thrane were allied against Cyre on the Day of Mourning. However, Breland had fewer bitter conflicts in its past – no incidents matching either of those I called out above. And to be more cynical, the fact of the matter is that the Cyran claim to the throne was always the best one. By taking in Oargev – keeping his former enemy close – Boranel put himself in a very strong position to control whatever future the nation may have. Breland’s actions may have been pure politics as much as humanitarian kindness.

I do believe that individual followers of the Flame quite likely provided aid to Cyran civilians in need, both before and after the Mourning; and remember, there are followers of the Flame in Breland as well as Thrane. But these incidents were the acts of compassionate individuals as opposed to the policy of a nation. Thrane’s refusal to aid Cyre was a secular act, not driven by faith; it was the act of a nation scarred by war, one that had offered the hand of peace in the past and been answered with betrayal and aggression.

Speaking of Cyre: was there ever anyone doubting what they were doing, when they were planning on attacking Flamekeep? That is, literally, the most important city for the Church of the Silver Flame… I can definitely imagine the shock people of Thrane felt, for those who found out about this (did it become public knowledge? because if so, yeah, Krozen is right in that you can’t expect Thranes to help the people from Cyre all that much)… Kind of insane, really, to consider destroying Flamekeep.

Who said anything about destroying it? We’re going to liberate it from the corrupt cardinals and false Keeper. And don’t forget, there are followers of the Flame who believe the theocracy is a mistake and source of corruption. Under Cyran rule, the church would be restored to its proper role.

Well, I mean, being seen to march against Flamekeep with the purpose of killing the Keeper, that would still cause some unrest, surely? Sure, the Church might have been too involved in secular matters, but going in there to try and kill Jaela Daran still wouldn’t go very well with most followers of the Church, even those outside of Thrane – Cyre isn’t exactly noted as a gathering point of the Silver Flame, so they can’t even do what Aundair might be able to pull off, and say they’re working towards protecting the true purpose of the Church, at least not while also being particularly convincing. Also, the Keeper was chosen by the Flame itself – then again, the queen could be trying to sell it as Jaela being false, so that could work, for those who would believe her.

Let me preface this by saying that the attacking Flamekeep scenario comes from The Forge of War, which I didn’t work on. As such, while I’m going to explain what I consider to be the logic behind it, it wasn’t my idea to begin with. But let me try.

The plan was not publicly known, nor did it involve fighting through Thrane. According to Forge of War , the idea was to defeat Thrane with a single massive naval assault on Flamekeep, with the idea that if Flamekeep could be seized Thrane would be forced to capitulate. With this in mind…

  • This plan was driven by the fact that there was a new, inexperienced Keeper… and surely enhanced by the fact that she was a child, something unprecedented in history.
  • I don’t think the plan was ever to “kill the Keeper.” Rather, it would be a matter of taking her as a hostage. Dannel would have a couple of angles she could work. First of all, she would be dissolving the flawed theocracy and restoring the church to its proper role as spiritual guardian. Second, she would be essentially serving as a regent. This child Keeper is too young to handle such responsibility; Dannel will protect her and guide her as she grows into her role. With the subtext being “she is our prisoner and we could kill her if we wanted.” Many followers of the Flame had doubts about the theocracy, and false Keepers aside, the idea of a child Keeper would seem strange to many. So Dannel presents herself as a protector restoring things to their proper place… not a destroyer or assassin. Rather, she kills Krozen, pinning all the blame on him for corruption and leading the church astray.
  • The plan wasn’t publically known. I would imagine that the force being chosen for the assault would be carefully vetted, either being loyal vassals of the Sovereign Host who would be happy to weaken the Flame, or followers of the Flame who strongly opposed the theocracy.
  • When Krozen exposed the plan, you can be sure that he painted it in the worst possible light. He likely accused them of wanting to kill Jaela, and if it was me, I’d say that Dannel planned to declare Oargev as a new puppet Keeper (doubly infuriating because the Keeper is chosen by the Flame, not by mortals). So yes, this infuriated both Thranes and other loyal followers of the Flame in other countries. The plan was thus never carried out; once warned the Thranes surely bolstered their defenses, and beyond that the public sentiment in all nations would make it an unwise move.

But yes, you can see why this would make Thranes unsympathetic to the Cyran refugees… if you go with the idea of Krozen presenting Oargev as Dannel’s would-be puppet Keeper, you can doubly see why there would be no hope of setting up a New Cyre in Thrane; I’d further play up a large segment of Thranes – and even Flame loyalists in Breland – bitterly hating Oargev in the present day.

Can the SF be a good deity and not just an impersonal force?

The Silver Flame isn’t an impersonal force. It’s a force of positive energy that holds mighty demons at bay. When Bel Shalor escaped his bonds and threatened Thrane, it reached out to Tira and gave her the power she needed to defend her people. Since then, it has continued to empower noble souls to defend the innocent. It calls paladins to service and grants its power to the most faithful of its servants. It’s not an impersonal force. It doesn’t grant its gifts to everyone. When Overlords ravage the land, it doesn’t ignore the people in need.

However, it’s not an anthropomorphic entity. It’s a gestalt of thousands of noble souls, many of which were never human. It doesn’t view the world as a human would, nor does it value humans more highly than other mortals; an orc and a human are equally worthy of its gifts, if they have noble aims. It exists to defend the mortals of Eberron from supernatural threats: demon lords who would collapse the world into chaos; undead forces that would drain the life from it; a plague of lycanthropy that could consume nations. It takes no stand on conflicts between mortals, whether that’s humans fighting humans or humans fighting orcs. It was kindled by couatls fighting demons before human civilization existed. It grants its agents the power to save humanity from demons; it is up to the humans to use that power wisely when no supernatural threat exists. In judging a mortal soul, it doesn’t view it the same way as we might. It responds to faith, selflessness, the desire to help others. Tira, Krozen, Jaela, and Dariznu all share faith and a fierce determination to help their fellow mortals, and it is this that binds them all to the Flame. It’s simply that they all have different ideas about the form this help should take. Dariznu believes that publicly burning dissidents alive is the only way to bring others to the righteous path; Jaela finds this to be horrifying, while Krozen considers it a necessary sacrifice to maintain order in Thaliost. All three believe that their actions and approaches help people… and that is what the Flame responds to. It’s also the case that the Flame can only act through its agents. When Bel Shalor threatened Thrane, the Flame couldn’t simply blast him; it could only empower Tira to do what needed to be done. The Flame isn’t an impersonal force. It was formed from a great sacrifice, and ever since then it has protected the world from evil. But it is only as strong as its mortal agents. It gives noble souls the power to do good; it’s up to them to live up to the promise of their own souls.

If you want the Silver Flame to be more active, I wouldn’t do this through the Flame itself; rather, I’d turn to the Voice of the Flame. Tira’s spirit is the bridge between Church and Flame. Per canon, her role is subtle and passive… it is the quiet voice that urges you to do good, set against the subtle influence of Bel Shalor pushing you towards darkness. If I want to give someone a divine vision from the Flame, I’d have it come from Tira. But personally, I don’t want the Flame itself to be actively intervening in the daily lives of most people, because it strips a depth from the stories. I want the PCs to be the ones who have to decide what to do about Dariznu – is he actually serving a greater good, as he believes? Do they have the right to bring him down, and have they thought about what happens after? If the Flame itself personally sanctions this action, it becomes clear-cut and to my mind, less interesting. As is, the Flame empowers your paladin because you have the conviction to do good, and the potential to do good. But it’s up to you to live up to that potential, and to make the right choices.

Cthulhu Gloom: Unpleasant Dreams

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“The Silver Key” and “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” are two of my favorite stories by H.P. Lovecraft. I love the bizarre fantasy of the Dreamlands, where an army of cats clashes with hungry zoogs and divine secrets are hidden on the distant face of Mount Ngranek. However, “The Dream-Quest” is a very different sort of story from “The Dunwich Horror” or “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” When I designed Cthulhu Gloom I decided to focus on stories set in the waking world, in part for the benefit of people with less familiarity with the Mythos. It’s hard enough getting a handle on doom-shrouded Innsmouth, mi-go, and shoggoths without having to figure out what Celephais is supposed to be. But I always knew that I wanted to created an expansion devoted to the Dreamlands… and the result is Unpleasant Dreams, which hits shelves this week!

WHAT’S NEW?

Unpleasant Dreams is a 55-card expansion. It includes a new family of Dreamland natives, which includes a few familiar faces – such as your ghoul Friday, Richard Pickman – a few new characters, like Zoobee the Zoog (pictured above). It adds three new stories, which I’ll discuss in more detail later this week. New transformation modifiers give you the opportunity to Saddle a Shantak, to be Grabbed by (Night)Gaunts, and more… can you control your shantak, or will it carry you off to another family? While many of the cards relate to the Dreamlands, “Dreams in the Witch-House” also has a strong showing, and Herbert West finally has a chance to Cut Down on Classwork and Collect Corpses.

While Unpleasant Dreams doesn’t add any entirely new mechanics, there are a few twists on old cards. Typically, an Untimely Death provides you with additional negative points if you have the story icon that fits the death. In Unpleasant Dreams, many deaths provide special ongoing benefits if you can make the stories line up. Dying in bed is normally a bad thing… but if you have the Dream icon you may go on to become a king in the Dreamlands, and as a result your draw limit is increased by one. Unpleasant Dreams also brings in one of my favorite expansion rules: Guests.

GUEST STARS

The Gloom expansion Unwelcome Guests introduced a new type of card: the Guest. When Guests are used, one or two are placed in the center of the table at the start of the game. While they are alive, they move between families whenever certain conditions are met. As long as a guest is in front of you, it is considered a member of your family and you gain any benefits it may provide. Unpleasant Dreams includes two Guests: Brown Jenkin and Ephraim Waite.

Brown Jenkin appears in the story “Dreams in the Witch-House.” The one-time familiar of the eponymous witch, he is a murderous little creature that can be encountered both in dreams and reality. In Unpleasant Dreams he follows the new Dream icon; whenever someone has a dream, Brown Jenkin shows up to haunt them. He carries an additional power: while he is part of your family, you may play an Untimely Death on a character with the Magic icon as the second play of your turn. It’s dangerous to dabble in the dark arts when Brown Jenkin is around!

Ephraim Waite appears in “The Thing on the Doorstep.” A sorcerer with a talent for transferring his mind into other peoples’ bodies, he is difficult to kill. In Unpleasant Dreams he follows Deaths; meanwhile, he himself cannot be killed unless he has a Magic icon showing. Just when you think you’ve gotten away with a clean kill, you find Ephraim is still hanging around… and finishing him off will take some work!

While I’m discussing guests, I’d like to clarify one thing. The special powers of a Guest – including following deaths or dreams – are persistent effects. If a Transformation is placed on a Guest, it will override its previous persistent effects. So if Ephraim Waite Triumphs In Tenure, he’ll stop following deaths and can be killed even if he lacks Magic.

Later in the week I’ll discuss the new stories in Unpleasant Dreams. If you have additional questions about Unpleasant Dreams or Gloom in general, ask away!

Dragonmarks 11/1: Sports, Holidays, and More!

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Time for more Eberron questions!

Are there any Khorvairian analogs to real world holidays or festivals, say if we wanted a Christmas themed game?

It depends what you mean by “direct” analogs. There’s no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny in canon Eberron. With that said, there are some holidays that could be used to give a game a similar favor. A few examples:

  • Wildnight (18-19 Sypheros). The festival of the Fury, a time when passions run high and people cast aside inhibitions. Blend Mardi Gras with a divinely inspired bacchanal and you’re on the right track.
  • Long Shadows (26-28 Vult). Three nights when the Shadow reigns supreme. Most stay indoors by the fire, but it is a time for minions of darkness to take to the streets and celebrate. If you want a Halloweenish tradition, you could say that some people choose to dress as monsters to frighten their friends… though that’s a dangerous game on a night when true monsters are abroad.
  • Boldrei’s Feast (9 Rhaan). A time for a community to come together and strengthen its ties. Certainly a time in which people give thanks, if you take my meaning. Also a traditional day for elections and government appointments.
  • The Ascension (1 Sypheros). The most important celebration in the calendar of the Church of the Silver Flame, the Ascension commemorates Tira’s sacrifice and transformation into the Voice of the Flame.

All of these are described on pages 30-32 of Sharn: City of Towers, along with ten other holidays and festivals.

We rarely hear of “sports” in fantasy. Are bloodless sports a big Eberron thing? Breland Monarchs vs Karrnath Bats” style?  

Funny you should ask, as some sports are covered on pages 32-33 of Sharn. The sport that’s received the most coverage is The Race of Eight Winds, an annual aerial race that involves eight different species of flying creatures. Combat is allowed in the Race, so it’s not entirely bloodless. However, combat isn’t the focus, and many riders will do their best to avoid it; it’s simply the case that if you’re the Griffon, you’ve got a better chance of beating the Pegasus by literally beating the pegasus than you do outflying it. There are certainly bloodless races – pegasus versus pegasus, for example – as well; the Ro8W is simply the biggest sporting event of the year.

As for team events, the only one that’s been mentioned by name is hrazhak (Sharn, page 32), a team sport with its roots among the Eldeen shifters. Again, this is a full-contact sport, but the goal of the game isn’t the elimination of the opposition and only natural weapons are allowed; it’s a rough game, but I wouldn’t define it as a bloodsport. Because of the nature of the game, human players will be at a disadvantage; however, it could still be something that could gain popularity and become a national sport.

There could easily be other organized sports, but none have been mentioned in canon that I’m aware of.

I was wondering, can a half-elf born of elf and human in Eberron develop either half-elf dragonmark, if any at all?

Well, anyone can develop any Dragonmark, if the Prophecy turns that way. However, per canon and tradition, the only way to manifest a dragonmark is if the person with the mark is part of a bloodline that already carries the mark. So the question here is whether the union of a human and half-elf has the potential to produce a human child, or if all the children will be Khoravar. If a human-Khoravar union can produce a human child, then this simply means that the human parent of your half-elf character has a connection to the house in question somewhere down the line.

Note that if a half-elf/human union can produce a human child, this wouldn’t allow a human to develop the mark of Storm, any more than a Tharashk orc can develop the mark of Finding; it’s just latent in his bloodline.

Also, do half-drow have a place in Eberron?

Sure. In my novel The Shattered Land, the protagonists employ a half-drow guide named Gerrion in Stormreach. It’s simply the case that because there is so little interaction between drow and other species there aren’t very many half-drow, and thus they aren’t a cultural force the way the Khoravar are.

Keith, I’ve been enjoying your take on 4e Eberron (which I’m calling Eberron 4.K) but I’m trying to deal with the cost of rituals. Magewrights can learn one or two rituals but how do they handle component costs? I’ve been thinking of the lamplighters, walking around Sharn with Continual Light rituals and re-casting every 24 hours but the ritual is 20 gold or a healing surge. Adventurers can pay that but that’s something like the annual income of the average laborer to power one lamp.

That’s a case of the ritual being poorly designed for Eberron. You’re right; there’s no way people are paying 20 gp/day to keep a streetlight going. I think the answer lies in the streetlamp itself. The ritual allows you to place a continual light on ANYTHING. I can make my boot glow… but it only lasts for an hour. Now think of it as oil. I can pour oil on my boot and set it on fire, and it will provide light for a little while until it burns up the boot. However, if I use that same amount of oil in an oil lantern, it’s going to last far longer, because it’s a tool designed for that purpose.

So, in the case of Continual Light, what I’d say is that the streetlights are designed with dragonshard “wicks” that hold and channel the power of the ritual for an extended period of time. You pay the base cost to start it up the first time; from that point forward, you have a mini-version of the ritual that simply uses a pinch of residuum to keep it going. So the typical lamplighter is going around recharging, but only spending a small amount – which would come from municipal taxes. The “recharge” ritual isn’t a full ritual in its own right, it’s something anyone who knows Continual Light can perform.

As for the general costs of rituals (like arcane lock), the Magewright would simply have to charge enough for her services to cover the cost of the components and generate a profit.

What if dragonmarks started popping in the real world?

I don’t think there’d be a vast immediate impact. Bear in mind that much of what gives the dragonmarks their power is the tools that are designed to focus and channel that power. On its own, the Least Mark of Making lets you cast Mending once per day. That’s handy to be sure, but it’s the ability to use things like the creation forges that makes the mark a true force to be reckoned with. The marks have been around in Eberron for over a thousand years, but their influence has grown considerably over the last few centuries as the houses have developed superior tools and techniques; I’d expect the same if they appeared here.

Kickstarter Round-Up!

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I’ll write about some of these in more detail in the future, but I wanted to take a moment to let you know about a few Kickstarter projects that are worth a look!

BOSS MONSTER

BOSS MONSTER casts you as the beast at the end of an 8-bit side-scrolling dungeon. Your goal? To build a dungeon appealing enough to lure foolish adventurers and deadly enough to destroy them. Of course, all of the other players are monsters with dungeons of their own! As someone who played a lot of Ghosts & Goblins as a kid and who likes games about unhappy endings, I’ve been having a lot of fun with my review copy of Boss Monster, and I look forward to playing the final game. Check it out!

SENTINELS OF THE MULTIVERSE: SHATTERED TIMELINES

Sentinels of the Multiverse is an excellent cooperative game in which players take on the roles of superheroes teaming up to foil the plans of a nefarious villain. The game’s a lot of fun, and as a comic geek I love the degree to which the designers have developed the universe behind the game; cards include quotes from different issues of fictional comics, and if you lay them all out you can piece together the long-term arcs behind them. Shattered Timelines is the latest expansion for the game, but the Kickstarter also offers you an opportunity to pick up the basic game and various promo cards.

HILLFOLK: DRAMASYSTEM ROLEPLAYING

Hillfolk: DramaSystem Roleplaying is a must for anyone who enjoys compound words. Having said that, this is the latest project from RPG legend Robin D. Laws. You can hear a little more about the project from Robin himself in his Six Questions from last week. Thanks to the miracle of stretch goals, the main book will include a DramaSystem series pitch from me: Dreamspace, which I’ll describe as Stargate meets “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.” There’s only three days left in the Kickstarter, so if you’re interested get on board now!

CARNIVALE: THE MORGRAUR-RASHAAR

With only twelves hours left as of this writing, you may be too late to catch this one. However, if you enjoy miniatures wargaming, definitely check this out. Les Miserables meets Lovecraft in the canals of Venice! Mad scientists pit brain-transplanted rhinos against arrogant Patricians and the ancient Rashaar! For more information, check out the website here!  

 

 

Dragonmarks 10/18: Converting Eberron

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I’m currently developing a new fantasy setting. I’ll be talking about this more in the months ahead, but one of the key elements is that I’m designing it to be system neutral. I will be launching with RPG support for at least one system, but unlike Eberron the world itself isn’t integrally tied to the mechanics of a particular RPG – and I want to make it as easy as possible for people to adapt the setting to the system of their choice. As this is a topic I’m wrestling with on a daily basis, it’s a great time to address questions about adapting Eberron to other systems.

If you are adapting Eberron to other systems, what is important to have mechanically? (besides dragonmarks and races)

It’s a difficult topic to address without knowing anything about the system in question. You could use Eberron with 13th Age, Dungeon World, or Dread – but obviously in a rules-light system like Dread, you’re going to approach the conversion in a very different way. I’m going to use Dread as an example throughout this article simply because it is so different from any edition of D&D. For those who aren’t familiar with it, in Dread characters are defined by a basic concept and the answers to a list of questions the gamemaster asks the players; they have no numerical statistics. All challenges are resolved through Jenga; when a person tries to do something that involves risk, the gamemaster decides how many tiles they must move in order to succeed.

So, I think your basic guide is the Ten Things You Need To Know About Eberron, found on page 4 of the 4E Eberron Campaign Guide and page 8 of the 3.5 Eberron Campaign Setting. I’m not going to go through all ten points, nor am I going to reprint the full text of a point, so you’ll want to refer to one of the books for full benefit.

  • Tone and attitude. Eberron “combines traditional medieval D&D fantasy with swashbuckling action and dark adventure.” This section mentions that we added action points to support this flavor – that they allow “players to alter the course of dramatic situations and have their characters accomplish the seemingly impossible.” Some systems out there already have something similar built in. If not, one option is to simply lift the 3.5 or 4E action point systems and use them as is – spend an action point to take an extra action, add an extra die, or do something remarkable. For Eberron Dread, I would give each player a token and allow them to use that token once to knock five pulls off of a particular action… which means most things are automatic, but as GM I do still have the ability to say “That’s a 20-pull action, but hey, it’s only 15 with your action point.”
  • A world of magic. Read what it says in the book. The key here is that magic is a part of everyday life. Magewrights are specialists who can cast a handful of spells or rituals, and who have turned that mastery into a job – the locksmith who can perform arcane lock and knock, the oracle who can cast augury and divination. A critical point here is that fully-powered wizards, artificers, and clerics are rare and remarkable; Eberron is a world of widespread low-level magic, and a magewright locksmith can’t simply pick up your spellbook and learn to cast fireball. For the most part this is about the world around the players and the services that are available to them. If the players are in Sharn they should be able to find an arcane locksmith, whether it’s D&D or Eberron Dread.
  • Dragonmark Dynasties. I know you said “besides dragonmarks”, but my point is that there’s more to dragonmarks than the simple mechanics of the mark itself. The dragonmarked houses are influential forces in society because of the magical services they offer. Even if no player character has a dragonmark, they’ll go to House Jorasco for healing, rely on Orien and Lyrandar for transportation, send a message through House Sivis, and take advantage of House Cannith’s services any time they purchase magical goods. House Tharashk’s powers are reflected in their presence in remote places – the fact that their gift allows them to locate veins of precious resources that would otherwise go undiscovered. To cut to the chase: when translating the world to a new system, don’t simply think about the dragonmarks as they will be used by the players; think about how you will represent the primary services and gifts of each house, and how PCs will feel the influence of those houses.

With both this and the previous point, I want to emphasize that if the RPG you’re using has its own magic system, feel free to dramatically change the services available or power of the mark. Don’t worry about directly mimicking the powers of the 3.5 Mark of Creation; consider how creation works within this system, and what magics exist that facilitate it. Then place those powers in the hands of House Cannith. Jorasco heals. Cannith creates. Sivis communicates. The precise powers they wield don’t have to be identical from system to system, as long as they are the masters of those fields.

  • The Last War has ended… sort of. The impact of the war is one of the most fundamental themes of Eberron. Mechanics aside, you should always consider the impact the war has had on your characters and plot. Mechanically, are their any aspects of the system that lend themselves to magical weapons of mass destruction or other things that would have been harnessed to the war effort?

There are many other points you could consider; for example, I will look at the influence of the planes, and the effect of manifest zones, coterminous and remote periods, and the like. However, this isn’t as important as those basic ten points; review that list, and if you feel like you’ve got them covered, you’re on solid ground.

Of course, one of those ten points is “new races.” So…

If creating homebrew Warforged, Kalashtar, Shifters, or Changelings in other systems, what about each race should I focus on?

It’s a difficult question to answer without addressing a particular system, but here’s my take on the core of each race.

  • Warforged. The warforged are constructs. They don’t eat, breathe, or sleep. A warforged soldier is a weapon; his armor is fused to his body. It’s up to you how far to take the construct element. 3.5 provided the warforged with a host of immunities, while 4E scaled them back. Regardless, durability is a core theme: the warforged are bad from leather and steel, and have fewer vital points than a human. A second thing to consider is that the warforged are magical beings; they are living constructs and can evolve beyond their original design. A warforged juggernaut literally grows heavier armor and spikes. While it may not come up in a game, another key fact is that the warforged cannot reproduce; there’s a finite number of them, and if they want to thrive as a race, this is something that will need to be addressed.
  • Kalashtar. A kalashtar shares its mind with an alien spirit. This allows it to resist psychic attacks and enhances its personal psychic abilities. If you’re not using a system that supports psionics, you can mimic this with other forms of magic, or simply emulate it by granting the kalashtar the ability to form simple mindlinks, bonuses to checks to influence people, and the like. At lest it go without saying, kalashtar don’t dream normally.
  • Shifters. I wouldn’t worry about the precise shifter abilities presented in either book as much as I’d try to capture the basic idea of the shifter: a being with a strong primal spirit, who can call its animalistic nature to the fore for a brief period of time. The primal characters fit shifter nature quite well; the druid’s ability to shapeshift is an extension of its inherent nature, while the barbarian calls on feral instinct to fuel his rage. When looking to civilized shifters, it’s a question of how they harness that animalistic spirit for their urban endeavors, and whether they feel trapped in the city or have adapted to it like a rat. But in short, animalistic characteristics that can be enhanced for a brief period of time.
  • Changelings. Obviously the first challenge is the shapeshifting ability, and making it work without unbalancing your game. Note that by default it doesn’t change clothes. Beyond this, changelings are related to doppelgangers (or are one and the same, if you’re using 4E) and as such has a latent gift for telepathy; in 3.5 this is reflected by their bonuses to Bluff and Insight, as they are capable of subconsciously picking up surface thoughts and using them to influence people.

All of this really just scratches the surface; the warforged Dragonshards, Kalashtar DDI article, and other resources delve more into what defines each race. But these are some key things I’d take into account when converting the race.

Are you using Eberron with a system other than Dungeons & Dragons? Tell me what you’re using and what you’ve done with it!

Meltdown Celebrity D&D 2013: Penance

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On Saturday, October 13th Satine Phoenix and Meltdown Comics are hosting a Celebrity Dungeons & Dragons event in Los Angeles to raise money for the children’s literacy charity Reach Out and Read. Three tables of players will go throughPenance; I wrote this adventure and will be running one of the tables tomorrow. And you can be a part of it!

There’s three ways for you to get involved:

Watch the Games! The adventure begins at 1 PM Pacific Standard Time on Saturday, October 13th. For a small donation to Reach Out and Read, you can watch live streams of the three tables & chat with your fellow viewers. To get in on the stream, go to Meltdown Comics between Noon and Six PM Pacific time on Saturday. The links will not be active until noon, so if you go to the site and don’t see anything about the game, check back!

Buy Games! During the event, a handful of games from Wizards of the Coast will be available on the Meltdown website. If you purchase one of these special games, the proceeds will go to Reach Out & Read, and you can have your game personalized by any or all of the participants!

Get the Adventure! Like what you see? With a donation to Reach Out And Read, you can download a copy of the Penance PDF so you can run it at home! The adventure will only be available on the Meltdown site from 12 PM to 6 PM, so if you want it, make sure to be online!

Participants include:

– Javier Grillo-Marxauch, creator of The Middleman – one of my favorite shows!

– Jason Charles Miller: actor and frontman for Godhead!

– David Nett, the mind behind the webseries Gold.

– Sandra “Sex Nerd” Dougherty

– Hot rod artist Coop

And many more! Adam Levermore! Matthew Mercer! Sax Carr! Check here for the full list!

This event is not administrated, sponsored, or endorsed by Wizards of the Coast.

 

Dragonmarks 10/3: Eberron and 13th Age

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I’m going to try out a new feature on Friday. But today, let’s get right to the question.

If you were to run an Eberron game using 13th Age, what would you use for Icons?

Some of you may be saying “What’s 13th Age, and why does it need Icons?” So let’s clear that up. 13th Age is a new roleplaying system developed by Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet, with a little bit of help from yours truly in the very beginning. The Icons are central part of the default setting of the game and of the system itself. The Icons are thirteen powerful NPCs who exert a tremendous amount of influence on the world, and who in many ways embody central themes. The High Druid is a force of nature, while the Archmage and the Emperor are forces of civilization and order. The Priestess speaks for all the deities of light, while the Diabolist traffics with all manner of dark forces.

OK: there’s some powerful people in the world. What makes this central to the game? Why would you need to have Icons if you wanted to use the 13th Age system to play Eberron? During character creation, you get three points to spend on connections to Icons, and these connections define your character’s background and affect ongoing gameplay. Consider the following example:

Lyssa Calton sets her connections as Emperor 2 (positive), Lich King 1 (negative). Discussing things with the GM, she works out the idea that she comes from a powerful noble family in the Dragon Empire, and that her ancestors were instrumental in one of the Lich King’s worst defeats. As a result, he has laid a curse on her family: whenever someone of her bloodline dies, they become undead servants of the Lich King. Right from the start, this gives the GM lots of hooks to work with. Lyssa obviously will want to find a way to break the curse. Family honor calls on her to oppose the Lich King. And in the meantime, due to the position of her family, she might be called on to serve the Empire in some way, or used as a pawn in a scheme to dethrone the Emperor.  However, these relationships can also have in-game effects on the fly. For example, when the adventurers are stopped by an Imperial patrol, Lyssa could see if her connection with the Emperor allowed her to influence the guards and command their assistance. And while the relationship with the Lich King is a negative one, she can still be creative with it; perhaps the curse can allow her to infiltrate a band of undead, as they already perceive her as one of them.

So: a relationship with an Icon helps define a character and drive a story, but it is also a concrete in-game tool in the character’s arsenal. If you’re using the system in Eberron, you’re going to what something to take its place. What will it be?

It’s not a simple question. In many ways, Eberron was intentionally designed NOT to have figures like the Icons. There’s no clear equivalent to the Archmage or the Emperor; all the human rulers are about equal in power (well, except Queen Diani of Thrane). Keeper Jaela is the most powerful priestess, and yet in many ways Krozen matches her in influence… and where the Priestess of 13th Age speaks for all the gods of light, Jaela is tied only to the Silver Flame. There is no one Elf Queen or Dwarf King.

Given this, I think the best choice is to try to address the underlying role of the Icons—defining the background of your character and giving you influence within the game. With that in mind, I think the list has to be based on your campaign. Who do you see as the major players? Consider the following.

Hands of the Twelve: From start to finish, this campaign is going to revolve around the Dragonmarked houses: their internal rivalries, the balance of power between the houses and broken Galifar’s nobility, the growing power of House Tarkanan and the aberrant dragonmarks. Each house has its personal agendas; as the PCs rise in power, they will need to decide whether to embrace that goal and bring it to pass, or whether to change the direction of their house. The Icons are each of the individual dragonmarked houses, the Twelve as an institution, and House Tarkanan. Each character is a member of one of the houses they are tied to and bears the dragonmark of that house; when they use the mark in a creative way, use Icon relationship dice to determine how effective it is. When a player takes a point of relationship with a house, she should also pick an individual who’s her personal patron/ally/enemy/rival in that house; this puts a human face on things in addition to reflecting a connection to the house as a whole.

Return of the Host: The Sovereigns and Six Don’t manifest in the world directly. But following the Mourning, they can no longer sit idly by – so they have chosen mortals to serve as their hands in the world. Here the Icons are the gods of the Sovereign Host and the Dark Six; you could choose to add in other divine or immortal forces, such as the Silver Flame or Undying Court. Relationships reflect alliances or feuds, and these don’t have to all be on the obvious sides; while a Player Character may serve Aureon, it’s possible that he has angered Dol Arrah and the Shadow. Alternately, an artificer could be chosen by both Onatar and the Traveler; over the course of his adventures, he will have to decide which path to follow, and bear the consequences of that choice.

Lords of Sharn: The DM has declared that the entire campaign is going to be set in Sharn. As a result, the Icons for the campaign are on a much smaller scale that you’d normally expect. Instead of the Prince of All Thieves, you can have the Boromar Clan and Dassk as Icons. Even here, the GM should decide who the major players are going to be: by the book, Daask, House Tarkanan, the Boromar Clan, and the Tyrants are all influential criminal forces; however, she may decide that the Boromar Clan is the only one that is going to get full recognition as an Icon, and that a relationship with the Boromar Clan reflects overall ties to the criminal underworld. Similarly, I’d pick one or two dragonmarked houses (probably Cannith and Tharashk, personally) as worthy of being Icons in the campaign; you don’t want to dilute the list by offering too many choices, and you can use this relationship to determine influence with allied houses. So following this, my personal Sharn list might be:

  • The City Council
  • The City Watch
  • The King’s Citadel
  • Morgrave University
  • The Boromar Clan
  • House Cannith
  • House Tharashk
  • House Tarkanan
  • The Church of the Silver Flame
  • The Sovereign Host
  • The Blood of Vol/Order of the Emerald Claw
  • The Aurum
  • A Nation (Choose one)

I’ve thrown on “A Nation” as a way of suggesting a character with a strong connection to a nation’s government – from a gnome who’s got friends in the Zil embassy to a Brelish nobleman. Tarkanan and Tharashk could be pulled if you didn’t plan on having a lot of dragonmarked hijinx, but I think that they each bring good story potential to the table.

As with the Dragonmarked example, I’d have each character choose a specific ally/patron/rival/ally to be the face of each Icon they choose. They have ties to the Silver Flame – are they agents of the corrupt hierophant or of a more lowly but dedicated priest?

There may seem to be some significant gaps here. What about the Chamber? The Lords of Dust? The Dreaming Dark? The list of possible Icons goes on and on. In part, I dropped these because the longer the list, the less impact each Icon has. Another reason to drop these groups is because they are secretive. Part of the point of the Icons is that everyone knows who they are and that their names alone carry influence; with the Lords of Dust, a player character tied to their schemes probably won’t even know it for a long time, let alone have an opportunity to do name dropping.

In general I encourage you to decide which groups will be the most influential in your campaign. Yes, the Lords of Dust and the Chamber are both powerful forces capable of exerting global influence. But do you want them to do so in this campaign? An Icon chosen by a player character will potentially play a role in every session – are you prepared to use the potential Icon in that way? Just as a player’s choice of Icons defines their personal story, your choice of Icons defines the story of the campaign. If the Daelkyr are available as an Icon choice, people should expect them to have an impact; if you’re not interested in that, don’t put them on your list.

I’m not sure I 100% agree with choosing a specific patron, personally… while an Icon may be killed, the advice given was that that should probably be a very major event, maybe even a campaign conclusion. This would still apply to a house or organization falling. It doesn’t really apply if your patron is a lowly priest.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear. When I suggest choosing a patron, it’s not to have that patron serve as the Icon. A lowly priest doesn’t serve the same role as the Priestess. However, the same can be said of Ythana Morr – and the fact that she is technically the leader of the Silver Flame in Sharn doesn’t mean she’s the one who’s going to be the best story match for your character. The ICON in this case is the Church of the Silver Flame. That is the force you are connected to; you should establish the basis of that connection; and it’s your connection to that entire organization that should be taken into account when you use your relationship dice, not the patron. The patron is simply a bonus, in part to make up for the fact that these organizations DON’T have a single face; again, Ythana’s no more the true face of the Silver Flame in Sharn than Flamebearer Mazin Tana, and as you say, the death of either one of them won’t be the end of the Silver Flame in Sharn; if you lose your rival, I’d just sit down with you and pick a new ally/rival/patron tied to the force. For example, say you’ve got Mazin as an ally, and because of the work you do together he dies; you might now gain an enemy in Ythana Morr because your work has been exposed, or perhaps Mazin’s daughter will blame you for his death.

So again: the ENTITY is taking the role of the Icon, and you need to define your history and relationship with that entity. The idea of adding an individual – whether a patron, rival, friend, or enemy – is simply a further way to develop the history of your character. In particular, if you look to the Hands of the Twelve idea, the point is that three characters could all be from House Cannith and make that their most important relationship – but they may all have secondary relationships with different individuals in the house.

I noticed you didn’t address one (I think common) campaign type, though: The international intrigue game.
Correct, because it’s not a question with an easy answer; it’s what I was covering with the last paragraph of the first answer. I feel it is important to limit your list of icons to around 10-15, both for the sake of the players and the story. If I simply listed every possible force that COULD be considered an icon, it would be way over that; in the Thronehold nations alone you hit that number, and that’s not including churches, dragonmarked houses, groups like the Emerald Claw or Aurum, or potentially the more secretive manipulators. As such, I really feel that you need to decide which of these forces are the REAL movers and shakers in this campaign. A global game may involve every nation in some form. But are Q’barra and the Lhazaar Principalities actually as significant or influential in the story you envision as Thrane or Aundair? Will the faith of the Sovereign Host actually play an Iconic role? For that matter, will the Church of the Silver Flame play a role that isn’t covered by, say, Thrane or Aundair? Do you want the Twelve as a single Icon, or do you want to pick one or two houses that are going to be particularly important to the action of the campaign?

So let’s look at ONE EXAMPLE of a political intrigue game.  I’m going to use this list of Icons.

  • Aundair
  • Breland
  • Cyre
  • Karrnath
  • Thrane
  • Darguun
  • Droaam
  • The Eldeen Reaches
  • Valenar
  • House Cannith
  • House Thuranni
  • The Aurum
  • Blood of Vol/Emerald Claw
  • Church of the Silver Flame
  • The Lord of Blades

This campaign is going to focus on the cold war between the Five Nations and the threat of a new war, which will be assured if the mystery of the Mourning is solved. Droaam, Darguun, and Valenar will all have active roles, and the potential of open conflict with any of the three is possible; the relationship between Aundair and the Eldeen Reaches will also be an issue. The Church of the Silver Flame will have a role to play outside of Thrane; for example, a Brelish character could be a respected templar with a significant relationship with the Church yet who opposes the theocracy in Thrane. While all of the dragonmarked houses will be involved, only two will have major roles. Cannith may be critical in solving the Mourning, and with war on the horizon, every nation is trying to forge stronger ties with the House of Making. Meanwhile, Thuranni is going to be acting as a significant opposing force to the national intelligence agencies… but who are they working for? As noted before, the Chamber and Lords of Dust are both involved in this campaign, but both are deep enough behind the scenes that I’m not including them as Icons.

Players don’t actually have to have a relationship with a nation to be from that nation. A relationship implies a close tie to the powers and interests of that nations. A tie to Breland may make the player a noble, a ranking agent of the Citadel, a prominent member of the anti-monarchy movement… or of course, it could mean that he’s made powerful enemies in that nation or has some other form of negative relationship there.

But I could easily come up with an entirely different campaign model. One point I’ll make is that 13th Age only runs through character levels 1-10; In planning a campaign story, you’re not looking for a 30-level arc.

What do you think should happen with Icons that are secretive, like say the Scar that Abides?

Personally, I don’t consider them to be “Icons.” I was involved in the early concepting stages of 13th Age, when the list of Icons was being developed. One of the possibilities we considered was an evil force in the underworld that was the source of aberrations, not unlike the Daelkyr. Ultimately we decided that while such a thing might exist, it didn’t fit the role of “Icon.” While it might have a significant role within the world as a threat, people couldn’t interact with it directly; only a few of the other Icons interacted with it, and even then not directly (little possible beyond “hold it at bay”) and there was little possibility of friendly interaction. Could you have a story/background tie with it? Sure. You’re a half-blood aberration. Your family was killed fighting the aberrations. But overall, its impact on the world is one-sided and limited. By contrast, the Lich King’s impact on the world is obvious; he has history with the other Icons; and it is actually possible for other forces to negotiate with him or interact with him or his lieutenants. Someone could form a temporary alliance with him; the Dragon Empire could decide to go to war against him; the Archmage could reveal that the Lich King is his father; the Prince of Shadows might have the Lich King’s heart in a chest.

So in other words, secret forces can be part of backgrounds and they can be tied to unique things whether they are Icons or not. They could be just as powerful or even more powerful than the Icons. But for me, the purpose of an “Icon” is that it shapes the world both in its own right and through its constant interactions with other Icons. Looking to the Diplomacy game, having Aundair, Thrane, and the Church of the Silver Flame as separate Icons shows that you’re dealing with the way all three of these affect one another as separate forces. It may be that the Chamber and the Lords of Dust are pulling the strings of all three of them – but if none of them KNOW it, then the story as the world perceives it remains about the interaction between church and nations, and those are what I’d choose as my Icons.

But your mileage may vary! It’s just a question of what it means to be an Icon.

Dragonmark 9/26: What Makes A Monster?

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There’s lots of good questions in the queue, but this one demands a response, so let’s get to it!

How do you interpret the motivations/background of monsters or aberrations as predisposing them to evil, given that they’re free-willed, and therefore should be good as often as evil, civilized as often as barbarous, given an normal statistical spread?

Before I go farther, if you haven’t read this post on Alignment in Eberron, I suggest you start there. Because it’s good to get on the same page as to what I mean when I say “evil.”

Back? OK. The answer is easy: I don’t interpret the motivations or backgrounds of monsters as predisposing them to evil or savagery. One of the phrases I use to describe Eberron is that it’s a place where “the bad guys aren’t always monsters, and the monsters aren’t always bad guys.” I want my fantasy worlds to feel logical… and as such I believe that for the most part, any creature that possesses free will and human-par intelligence should have the same diversity you find in humans and should be affected by the same factors – culture, history, environment, and so on. I say “for the most part”, because in a magical world a non-human species could have any number of abilities that should have an effect on culture; a telepathic race in which each city has a gestalt personality might have diversity between its city-group-minds, while the individuals within a city are virtually identical.

But taking Eberron, let’s look at a few examples:

Humans. Just as a starting point, I’ll note that humans aren’t innately good or civilized. The majority of the barbarians of the Demon Wastes are human. The people of the Lhazaar Principalities come in a wide variety of flavors; many lack “modern amenities” people are used to in Sharn and Fairhaven; and thrive by preying on others. They are generally civilized because they share common cultural roots – so where you have tribal cultures among the orcs and halflings, all the humans of Khorvaire are descended from Sarlonan cultures advanced enough to seek to establish colonies in distant lands (the Demon Wastes being a special case).

Orcs. The orcs of Khorvaire began as a tribal/primal culture and had no interest in abandoning their traditions for a more industrial culture. The Daelkyr incursion and the arrival of Sarlonan refugees both changed things and created new cultural groups. Looking at the orcs today, you can see…

– The Gatekeepers: The first druids of Khorvaire. It was the orcs who awakened the greatpine we now know as Oalian, and orcs who trapped the daelkyr in the depths.

-The Ghaash’kala:The orcs of the Demon Wastes worshipped the Silver Flame long before Tira Miron was ever born. They hold the Labyrinth against the Carrion Tribes; they are unknown to the people of the Five Nations, but they have helped safeguard the lowlands for thousands of years.

– The Marcher Clans and House Tharashk: A blended culture formed from the bond between humans and orcs. House Tharashk is a thriving and ambitious house, with both humans and orcs among its leaders.

– The Marcher Tribes maintain a simpler way of life, because they see no need to change it. They are divided among those influenced by the Gatekeepers (more “good”) and the Daelkyr (more “evil”).

-The Jhorash’tar are descended from similar roots as the Marcher Tribes. I don’t consider their conflict with the dwarves as something that makes them “evil”; it’s the same sort of struggle over contested territory humans have had time and again in our world.

Goblins. I don’t have time to go into paragraph overviews, but the spectrum is clear enough. The Dhakaani are a sophisticated civilization that once dominated Khorvaire, and which is more advanced in certain areas than humanity (though weaker in others, in part due to the lack of dragonmarked houses). The Ghaal’dar are a developing nation, on par with many of the Lhazaar Principalities. There are isolated savage tribes – just as with humans. And then you have the city goblins you can find in Sharn, who aren’t that different from humans. Their behavior is partially dictated by poverty, partially dictated by prejudice (which in turn helps create the poverty). Their biology affects certain things: races with darkvision have an easier time living underground. Both the Ghaal’dar and Dhakaani are very militant cultures, which can create a more ruthless environment in which lawful evil individuals have an easier time than, say, chaotic good; but that’s a cultural thing, and a chaotic evil goblin is going to have just as difficult a time in a Dhakaani clan.

Medusas. Read this article. A key quote: “Despite their worship of the Shadow, medusas are no more inherently evil than humans or elves. Some are arrogant and proud, believing that their deadly gaze places them above mundane creatures. Others respond to the fear they encounter every day by despising those who fear them, a path that often leads to evil alignments. But many enjoy the same pleasures that humans do, and seek out song, good company, and the satisfaction of hard work.” Cazhaak Draal is a small kingdom, due to the low fertility of the medusa race, but it is as sophisticated as any nation in the Five Nations; Councilor Kilk of Sharn has petitioned the city council to employ medusa architects and stonemasons.

Droaam Overall. So if monsters aren’t all savages, why was Droaam a savage land before the hags came to power? First, it wasn’t entirely a savage land. Cazhaak Draal has been around for centuries. The gnolls of the Znir Pact have a history stretching back to Dhakaan; they’ve just held to their ancestral lands and traditions. The tielflings of the Venomous Demesne trace their roots to Ohr Kaluun. It’s simply the case that these cultures were small, isolated, and surrounded by savagery. That savagery comes in the form of creatures like ogres and trolls, who are a) carnivorous and b) not as intelligent as humans (or orcs, or goblins). They aren’t genetically disposed towards EVIL as such… but lower intelligence means they are less likely to develop tools of civilization, and when you have incredibly strength you might as well use it. An ogre’s gotta eat, and if he can intimidate a bunch of kobolds into making sure he gets his food, great. Meanwhile, it’s difficult for a carnivorous species to support the large population base of a city – which leads to small tribes and villages. The Daughters solved this problem by introducing grist. Otherwise, you simply couldn’t maintain the troll/worg/etc population you currently see in the Great Crag or Graywall.

So: if monsters aren’t monsters, why are they monsters? If you haven’t already read it, you might want to check out The Queen of Stone, which is set in Droaam and features a number of monstrous characters. Sheshka – the queen of stone herself – addresses this very point. Consider: Humans do a great job of fearing and hating humans for relatively minor things – differences in skin color, religion, language, political views, or simply because you’re on the land I want to have. And fundamentally, as two humans, we have a lot in common. Now, let’s expand those difference. You’re a mammal and I’m a reptile. I have living hair which serves both as a sensory organ, a natural weapon, and a form of body language – when I talk to you, it’s really disturbing and alien to me, because your hair just sits there; it’s not expressing emotion or anything. And where you say “Wouldn’t someone with a petrifying gaze be a great ally?” I’ll counter with “If you’re sitting in a room with this creature who has different religious views, a completely different form of body language, unknown customs, and who can kill you by looking at you, are you going to feel completely at ease?” Fear is a major wedge; the difficulty in common cultural ground is another. We have first contact sometime. We don’t speak the same language. You look like a scary thing, someone panics and gets petrified, we all panic and now you’re a monster of legend. Even looking just to humans and goblins: you look alien; you smell alien; you have sharp teeth; you can see in the dark and I can’t. All that is creepy on a gut level even we aren’t divided by class struggle, religion, or geopolitical differences.

So TODAY there are people trying to bridge that gap. The Queen of Stone is about exactly that. And in The Shadow Marches you’ve had humans and orcs living side by side for ages. But why do humans and monsters not get along? The same reasons humans and humans don’t get along, magnified by vast biological differences.

Of course, that’s “monsters.” You also mentioned aberrations. These are a specific and very different case. A good first step here is to look at this Eberron Expanded article. The short form is that with a medusa you can say “What would it be like if I could petrify people and had living hair?” With a troll, you can get the basics – tremendous strength, low intellect, regenerates, carnivorous – and try to put yourself in its big shoes. Aberrations, on the other hand, are entirely alien in both biology and outlook. Mind and body are twisted, either by Khyber or Xoriat. They aren’t incarnate ideas as immortals are, and they DO have free will; Xorchyllic is a mind flayer pursuing his own agenda, while the 3.5 ECS notes “A few (beholders) have abandoned the path of aggression for philosophy and reflection.” Nonetheless, whenever I deal with aberrations – from dolgaunts to gibbering mouthers – I try to emphasize that they don’t think like us. Their logic appears to be madness. It may be a structured, ordered madness that can produce amazing things; mind flayers and beholders are far more intelligent than most humans. But nothing about them is human, physically or mentally. Add to this the fact that a great many aberrations were specifically designed either to be living weapons or as bizarre works of art. Why is a dolgaunt innately aggressive? Because it was genetically engineered to be a soldier. A medusa’s gaze is an amazing thing, but it is ultimately a product of natural evolution in Eberron – a biological means of harnessing the ambient magical energy of the world. While the powers of a mind flayer were engineered by the daelkyr; it was designed to dominate and destroy minds.

That’s my rant. I’d love to hear your thoughts and stories. What have you done with monsters in Eberron (or anywhere else)?

ADDENDUM: New questions!
If sharp teeth and dark vision are enough to disturb humans, what about half-elves, elves, gnomes and dwarves? There is hardly any canon prejudice against them and they are treated as full citizens of the nations they are part of… Granted, they have Dragonmarked houses backing them, but still…

If you look through the setting, there are a number of places where humans do discriminate against “demihumans”. Riedrans consider most demihumans to be inferior creatures. The Valenar are widely distrusted and disliked since they betrayed Cyre, while changelings face ongoing prejudice in most nations. Shifters suffered during the Purge because of their race and still have issues with Aundairians and the Church of the Silver Flame. Warforged face many challenges. One of the points of the Shadow Marches is that it’s a place where orcs and half-orcs mingle with humans without prejudice. House Lyrandar is called out as providing the Khoravar with a bastion in world where they are often outsiders.

With that said, let’s compare some elves from the dragonmarked houses to a city goblin and a hobgoblin from Darguun.

• The elves are, for all intents and purposes, humans with pointed ears. Their eyes are slightly larger than ours, their features slightly more angular. But their teeth are the same as ours. Their skin comes in the same tones as ours. They have noses. Overall, they generally behave in a manner similar to humans when it comes to dress and hairstyles.
• By contrast, the goblinoids have skin tones that are never found on humans. They have sharp, protruding teeth, virtually no noses, and entirely different body posture and proportions. Put that goblin next to a halfling or gnome; which of the three could you possibly mistake for a human child? And note that the snouty noses and protruding teeth are also going to mean that their facial expressions will be very different from those of humans. Elves, gnomes, dwarves, and halflings should all have similar expressions and thus be easy for you to subliminally pick up on moods; goblins will be innately alien. And the same will be true in reverse for the goblin.
• Working off 3.5, elves have low-light vision while goblins have darkvision. My point isn’t that you look at a goblin and you’re afraid because he can see in the dark; he’s not wearing a sign that says “I have darkvision.” But his darkvision is going to affect the way in which he interacts with his environment – notably where he lives. A goblin can live in a pitch-black cave; even an elf needs light down there. So the environment of the goblin feels alien. Though over the course of time, it also plays to the bogeyman element and a child’s fears: goblins could come in the night and you’d never see them. Which ties to…
• With the exception of the Valenar’s recent and swift annexing of Cyre, humans have never fought a war with elves. On the other hand, Khorvaire was the land of the goblins until humans drove them into the dark places and enslaved them. It’s been quite some time since goblins were slaves, thanks to Galifar; but their original relationship with humanity was an antagonistic one. Combine this with the fact that most city goblins still live in poverty, and you have fuel for people to fear that goblins hate them or want their things. Now again, layer on top of this their fundamentally inhuman appearance (big teeth!) and their ability to creep around in the dark. In recent years, add in the whole Darguun-seized-from-Cyre thing and you’re sure to get fallout there, even on city goblins whose families have been part of Galifar for centuries.

These same principles hold true for most of the demihuman races; they are closer to humanity than the “monstrous humanoids.” With that said, my point is that humans manage to fear and hate humans for things far more trivial than the differences between human and goblin… and I think this holds true both for demihumans and humans themselves in Eberron. A ritually scarred barbarian from the Demon Wastes, an artificially decomposed Aereni, a masked halfling dinosaur rider, a Valenar warrior… all of these will get a different reception from most citizens of the Five Nations than a member of their race who is dressed in national clothing and whose accents and mannerisms conform to cultural norms. Inhuman physicality simply magnifies these things. A wealthy goblin dressed in Davandi fashions who speaks with an impeccable Brelish accent will have an easier time in Sharn than that D-Waste barbarian.

ONE MORE THOUGHT… one of the comments raises the point that existing monsters are good villains in part because they are “mysterious.” For me, there is certainly a place in the a game for evil that is truly alien and unknowable, and for me this is the point of the daelkyr and their closest allies. Their very presence leads to madness and twists us into strange reflections of ourselves. They aren’t trying to kill us because they hate us. They don’t seem to want or need anything that we have. They are simply here to destroy us because, apparently, it’s their nature – or because there is something we don’t understand.

Likewise, there is a place for creatures that are simply and irredeemably malevolent by nature. Take evil lycanthropes as an example. Their aggression is not something they choose. They are driven by a curse that forces them to prey on the weak and innocent, to become the embodiment of all that we fear about wolves lingering in the woods. It’s not a choice. They don’t have the option of showing mercy. The curse drives them to kill, and there is little room for any sort of quarter in such a conflict… hence the attempted purge of lycanthropy.

But while there is a place in stories for both these forces, in general I prefer villains whose motives AREN’T mysterious. I think it’s more interesting when you can understand what’s driving the villain, especially if it’s a reasonable thing. Down below I talk about the Dhakaani warlord who is infuriated by humans robbing the tombs of his ancestors and by the fact that humanity has driven the goblins from their ancestral homelands. YOU may not have done these things (well, unless you robbed a tomb), but can you blame him for being angry about them? He simply wants justice for his people. That places him in opposition to you, and there may not be any way to find a peaceful resolution to the problem. But he’s not fighting you because he’s “evil”; he’s fighting you because of politics, history, and the needs of both your cultures. For me, that makes a more interesting story than fighting the unreasoning creature-made-for-war.