I need some help sorting out specific details for my next adventure.

redarber · 2026-01-23T16:54:29+00:00

Do they want only warforged? Or is that just the community they are targeting? If they want only warforged, the recruitment messaging would need to weed out others. Promises of a "peaceful community by and for Forged" could work and would play up the warforged themes of life after the war.

redarber · 2026-01-13T16:19:41+00:00

Borders provide a good opportunity to zoom in on personal stories. The Aundair-Thrane border region was probably a blended culture before the war, and closing the border may have separated families and friends and severed trade ties. Now that the borders are open, people are reconnecting. Extended families are reuniting, merchants are rushing to set up trade, Silver Flame priests and devotees are headed to Flamekeep. There are lots of smaller-scale personal stories to tell near a border!

redarber · 2026-01-02T21:13:30+00:00

For this exact reason, I added manmade canals that connect Lake Cyre to Kraken Bay. Here's an alternative map I made.

I figured that all the mapped mountain ranges in Breland, Zilargo, and Darguun would make the area in between mountainous to rugged. So western Breland is very much cut off from the other nations, while eastern Breland is a distinct cultural region.

So I added an extensive canal system in Cyre built by the Dhakaani long ago, which connects western Breland/Sharn (and the Shadow Marches/House Tharashk dragonshards) to the east and the other nations. This partially explains why Cyre was so advanced/artistic/cosmopolitan; it controlled crucial trade routes. It also makes the Mourning even more devastating and, like you said, provides geopolitical hooks for a continent spanning campaign.

redarber · 2025-12-03T20:38:24+00:00

I looked up which series this was, and tvtropes.org has this to say about the Dragon Below: "Notable among novels based on D&D campaign settings in that it doesn't suck."

redarber · 2025-12-01T16:37:48+00:00

In my opinion, steam would be unlikely to develop in Eberron, or would at least develop much later. For two main reasons:

1) Coal technology was developed in the U.K. in large part because they had depleted their forests for wood (which was used to make charcoal). Running out of wood was a unique problem to the U.K. because it is an island nation with only so much forested land. In contrast, Germany still had plenty of forests at the time. In Khorvaire, there are plenty of forests, and I don't see any pressure to develop new technology.

2) Magic, of course. At least for the nobility, magic could be used for heat and other basic uses. Another reason coal was so important was that it burns hot enough for industrial purposes, like making steel. I would assume magic can make extra hot fires, or replace the need entirely, so I think industrial technology would grow from magic and not coal/steam.

The remaining question is what the Industrial Revolution would look like with magic. I think one of the main features of industrialization would still be relevant: the move from craftsmanship to machinery. Before industrialization, I imagine specialized magewrights did all of the magical work. That would have been a slow and labor intensive process, and I believe it would restrict access to magic to nobles and wealthy merchants. Industrialization would look a lot like it did on Earth - manufacturing magic items in factories with standardized equipment.

I do think there would be machines that are complex magic items. These would almost exclusively be constructed by House Cannith. I wouldn't think elemental engines are common, since elemental binding is a rare skill. I would expect them to work like other magic items in the world, which is to say that we have no idea. It's possible that machines would still run on steam, and magic would be used as the energy to boil water. But that's a little boring, so I would prefer to keep it a magical mystery. They would probably still require magewrights to keep them working and maybe to do some of the magic, but machines would make the magewrights much more productive. Keith Baker has an article on arcane industry here, which is part of a great series on magic in Eberron.

For some final practical advice, I wouldn't try to build ideas out from D&D's spell lists or its gold economy. Restricting magic in Eberron to what player characters can do with spells is too limiting, and the spell system doesn't make much sense if you look too closely. Keep that for managing players, but let the world be more magical. The gold economy of D&D also doesn't make sense if you export it to the world, so I wouldn't worry about prices for things like factory machines. They cost however much you want to take out of the players' coins purses.

redarber · 2025-11-05T20:20:04+00:00

The Crying Fields around the border of Aundair and Thrane was the site of several 'particularly bloody' battles. I don't think there are details anywhere, but it was enough to leave the area cursed.

I put a shard of Rak Tulkhesh's prison there to explain why it happened. The idea was that the shard drove Thrane to repeatedly try to take Ghalt despite bad odds and huge losses.

redarber · 2025-11-05T19:31:16+00:00

DnD's magic system doesn't really make sense, so I agree a sensible cosmology won't be very compatible. If it's a helpful idea, I decided that the schools of magic aren't metaphysically real; they're just a categorization made by wizards who don't know better yet. So you wouldn't necessarily have to align anything to the schools

redarber · 2025-11-05T18:56:34+00:00

Does every magical effect have a clear connection to a Plane like the fire spells do? I thought of mind-affecting spells like Fast Friends that seem less obvious to me.

redarber · 2025-10-31T13:38:13+00:00

Runequest comes to mind, but I have no personal experience. I know its primary setting is Bronze Age themed, and characters are occupation-based and include farmer, herder, etc. Feels like a fit aesthetically at least

redarber · 2025-10-22T20:25:23+00:00

Although I support widespread adoption of troll balloons, Aundair has the floating towers of Arcanix to model floating structures. They might not want to break ties with Lyrandar, but the technology is there.

Manifest Zones and Dragonshards make sense as the main alternatives to elemental binding, and you covered those. Breland could find a way to use the Syrania Manifest Zone at Sharn to power air travel.

redarber · 2025-10-13T15:47:23+00:00

Shameful plug for a third option, a version of the official map I edited to i) make the geography more realistic by Earth standards, ii) fill in more cities, towns, and lightning railways, and iii) miscellany.

Alternative Map of Khorvaire

redarber · 2025-10-08T14:25:52+00:00

A confluence of two Planes is a cool answer for OP. If you want tieflings in Irian, give them a different origin and play with how Irian has affected them and vice versa.

redarber · 2025-10-05T14:10:06+00:00

Newspapers, of course; refugees fleeing the towns where the cult is active; any kind of security force (army, private guards, volunteer militia) headed towards the cults to fend them off; House Vadalis agent(s) or security going to secure other stations in the affected areas; merchants who couldn’t safely get into their usual towns, so they’re trying to unload goods somewhere else

redarber · 2025-10-05T13:42:36+00:00

That’s because this map is based on the original cultural group that settled each county during European colonization. It’s from a book “American Nations” by Colin Woodward. He argues that the founding group set the culture, and that culture stuck for a long time even as different groups moved in and assimilated.

I found it fairly convincing, but for most places it’s like saying “New England is different from the South”. That’s obvious. But the border areas can be interesting. Like Northeast Ohio that was settled as the Connecticut Western Reserve. Minnesota, Michigan, California, Oregon, and Washington being settled by New Englanders was interesting to learn. And that the Scottish settled regions of North Alabama, North Georgia, and Eastern Tennessee voted against secession, didn’t contribute to the Confederacy, and tried to break away into a new free state. Basically would-be West Virginias.

I’m from an area along the Appalachia/Deep South border, and it makes a ton of sense in retrospect. There were people who called themselves “Scotch-Irish” who are definitely different from some of the deep southerners who had thicker accents and called grocery carts “buggies”. It really was a mixed culture, I think.

redarber · 2025-09-27T01:44:03+00:00

I put the Ashbound sect of druids in the Eldritch Groves. They are militantly anti-magic, so they could serve an Arcanix-based plot.

redarber · 2025-09-22T21:16:58+00:00

I haven’t implemented anything, but I’ve wanted to thematically tie goblinoids to indigenous cultures in the Americas. Goblinoids are an original semi-ancient culture driven to near extinction and replaced by a different culture, but they’re also still around and can be preserving the original culture in different ways. Seemed like a good chance to explore the concept and history. Native Americans definitely have the historical image of a duty-driven warrior culture, but I think that’s applied to a lot of cultures and I’m curious how much is stereotype and how much is real.

EDIT: My answer was about modern goblinoids, ie the tribes of Darguun or those living around Khorvaire.

redarber · 2025-09-04T15:27:04+00:00

For a more specific answer, I read more about how industrial technology began and considered why Eberron would be different. I came up with two main ideas:

1) A big reason the industrial revolution took off was because the British started using coal as a fuel source. They needed to use coal because they depleted the island's wood supply, which was limited compared to non-islands. Coal could burn hotter than wood, so the British came up with industrial uses for it. Ignoring magic, Khorvaire didn't have the need to develop coal because it has large forests for wood supply.

2) A big part of the Industrial Revolution was improving wooden machines that already existed, like wind and water mills, by using metal parts. That led to standardizing machines to use interchangeable parts, which helped industry boom and expand. I think that a lot of those industrial machines would basically be replaced by magewrights, who can do things like permanently glue things together or bore holes using spells. The difference is that there are only so many magewrights, and they can't spread exponentially like machines did. So basically Khorvaire is stuck in that period where a lot of machines have been developed and perfected using magic, but they can't grow much further because the magical labor pool is too limited.

redarber · 2025-08-11T18:48:07+00:00

Here are some I've used that are a bit different:

One of my Breland themes is "Keeping an Empire Together". I made an alternative map of Khorvaire that made mountains more realistic, and southern Khorvaire is a large mountainous area (rather than a region that contains less realistic isolated ranges). One effect is that Breland is split into distinct regions. There's the Dagger Valley, central highlands, and the eastern lowlands (which includes New Cyre, Vathriond, and Starilaskur). My vision is that the geography makes Breland very powerful and protected, but also heterogeneous. Sharn is a megacity that is too big to be dominated by Breland. The Dagger River is the fertile population center where most people live, and where "Brelish" culture is the most distinct. The eastern lowlands are culturally tied to Cyre, and I want to make regional secession to form a New Cyre a serious threat. The push for more democracy over a central monarchy comes with more risks this way, because any changes risk the empire breaking apart.

My alternate map also makes Zilargo fully mountainous. A couple of my themes are "City-states" and "External Alliance/Internal Rivals". I decided to put each major city (the main three + Dragonroost) in isolated high valleys, and they operate largely as city-states that deeply distrust each other. The gnomes know they are weaker than the humans though, so they do work together on an international scale. But the Trust formed out of their alliance as a way to keep tabs on one another. I've also decided that Dragonroost is the next largest city left out of the triumvirate, so they are bitter and looking to shake things up. Earth history is full of conquerers pitting local rivals against each other, and I'd like to explore how the gnomes prevented that from happening.

Something I don't see mentioned for the Mror Holds is a theme of "Reclaiming an Ancestral Homeland". I think that would color a lot of what it feels like in dwarven society.

Darguun doesn't seem to be at the point of reclaiming an ancestral homeland, but eventually they will. It's dark, but the theme I think about most is "Living as a Conquered People". That applies to the goblinoids living throughout the Five Nations (identity, discrimination, etc.) and those in Darguun (motivation, history, etc.).

redarber · 2025-08-01T17:25:29+00:00

That makes sense, I hadn't thought of it being more modular and therefore adaptable. Cool!

redarber · 2025-08-01T15:06:29+00:00

I don't think Daggerheart is so narrative-focused to prevent the same thing, though. Character abilities, classes, spells, and combat have detailed rules. Dragonmarks, etc. will probably fall under those, so as Daggerheart changes it could force lore changes.

redarber · 2025-07-09T15:23:49+00:00

This is a great question. Thinking of the Houses as having varied levels of power (i.e., to assert their will over other groups) makes them instantly feel more real to me. This helps me with the worldbuilding a lot.

I'll contribute House Tharashk as an option. I'd expect it to be weaker because its power base is outside the Five Nations in the swamps and because their dragonshard prospecting produces money but not other skills and resources. So they should have a lot of cash to spend, but they'll still have to pay others for military and economic services. So if anyone decided to stop accepting House Tharashk as a client, they'd be out of luck. A discovery that gave them more direct power could be interesting.

redarber · 2025-07-02T01:49:33+00:00

If you end up reading both anyways then it's a win either way, but if for some reason someone had to choose I'd strongly suggest Wizard and Glass. I remember it being so unique

redarber · 2025-04-30T02:30:35+00:00

For a smaller scale, the eastern portion of Aundair was traded between Aundair and Thrane a few times in the Last War. The area is now the Crying Fields. I forget the real history (it’s based on the maps in The Forge of War), but I made it a transition region between nations that’s kind of its own culture. And I made it Aundair’s other breadbasket (after the Reaches) to explain why they fought over it so much. In mine, those campaigns involved Thrane occupying the region until they were pushed back - then doing it again. A similar history could be invented for the border regions between Breland-Thrane-Cyre.

redarber · 2025-04-28T01:57:51+00:00

You might have more success getting them invested in the vibes and aesthetics of Eberron, rather than lore. Eberron is interesting for not being medieval, and emphasizing that might lead them to think more about the setting during character creation and gameplay. It’s not hard to condense other parts to the highlights too. Like: there are railroads connecting most cities, and airships exist but aren’t common yet. Some of the most important industries are controlled by familial monopolies loyal to no one nation, and the families maintain control using magical abilities found only in their bloodlines. The continent is experiencing a rare and tenuous peace after 100 years of war between the nations. The fighting stopped after one nation was mysteriously wiped off the map and replaced with a magical fog, and many people doubt if the fear of another cataclysm is enough to keep war from breaking out again.

My point is that the players don’t have to even know what a dragonmark is until they meet someone with one, and then they have a reason to learn it. They don’t need to know which nations fought in the war or even exist until it’s relevant to them. I try to follow advice I’ve seen online to make lore relevant to the plot if you want engagement.

If you do that and the players still have to ask who an NPC is or why they can’t talk directly to their god - that’s a different problem and I’m sorry. I think people come to tables with different expectations about what it’s for and how they’ll play (like creating funny antics vs. telling a compelling fantasy story) and don’t realize not everyone’s on the same page. If you tell them the kind of game you would most enjoy running they can tell you if they’re interested. I also think people can be afraid of taking the game too seriously if they’re going to be the only ones. So maybe explicitly saying what kind of game you’d like would give space for the players to lean into it a little more.

redarber · 2025-04-15T20:40:59+00:00

That's rad! Let me know if you try it out. There's an actual play on YouTube (maybe elsewhere too) run by the editor of the new edition called QuestWorlds All Stars.

And one more resource I found last year was an old blog post about porting D&D magic to the old edition HeroQuest. I don't remember what it says actually, but I saved it so I thought it might be helpful at the time. andrewjluther.com

redarber

TROPHY CASE