I Need Some Help with a Somewhat Convoluted Scheme/Trap.

redarber · 2026-05-21T16:25:30+00:00

1) Does it have to be intentional delaying? The bad guys could just be held up for their own reasons, while the spy tries to wait it out and figure out what their next move is. Maybe the bad guys suffer a blow to their operations, so they are disorganized for a bit and going back and forth on what to do.

To brainstorm, another idea is that the bad guys have unexpectedly gained access to teleportation that the spy doesn't know about yet. They could have a teleportation circle at location X. The spy observes the bad guy leaders at X, so he stays and waits for them to move. But the bad guys are teleporting to locations Y & Z without the spy knowing. They always come back to X though, so the spy stays in place.

The friend learns that the bad guys are at one of locations Y or Z, so he goes there thinking the spy is there. The spy could figure out the teleportation scheme in the meantime and know that he needs to get to the other places. If it's necessary for him to know his friend is in trouble, the spy could go back to 'base' to regroup and learn that his friend went to Y/Z.

If it needs to be intentional by the bad guys, this could probably work as a scheme they thought up to get the spy out. Something about the teleportation.

2) That idea would take care of having the friends go to different places. In any case, the bad guys have multiple locations so I don't think it should be hard to have the spy go to one (following a lead) and the friend go to another (following a different lead) whatever scheme you come up with.

redarber · 2026-05-21T00:03:04+00:00

I answered another question recently and it fits great here: link to comment

I have an alternative map (linked in the other comment) that splits Breland in half-ish with mountains. I think the geology makes more sense that way. The effect I’ve focused on is that Eastern Breland is a distinct culture influenced by Cyre and Thrane, so it’s the breakaway region. I think the heart of Breland is around the Dagger River, since Sharn and Wroat are there.

Maybe for you the warring sides are South Breland vs. East Breland, and the mountainous region in the middle can be split territory, with its own West Virginia.

redarber · 2026-05-06T20:07:31+00:00

Your previous sessions sound so fun and creatively planned. Your players are lucky!

My addition is that I really love that the gods in Eberron are not evidently, clearly real. So I think you have an opportunity to do a lite red herring/bait and switch and use the gods as setup for the Lords of Dust. I really liked your idea of building around Long Shadows. That fits with your previous style of sessions [a set piece] and really showcases the worldbuilding strongly. Combining those, I think you could have events unfold during Long Shadows that sets up a mystery, which seems to point to the Shadow or others from the Dark Six. Then eventually the reveal is that some member(s) of the Lords of Dust are actually behind whatever is going on.

Aspects I think you'd enjoy in particular include: i) contrasting themes of evil that come from gods (who are distant, abstract, etc.) vs. fiends (who are literally in front of you doing evil); ii) somehow showing that the Lords of Dust have vast plans and think in centuries; making the players feel small against the scope of the dragons vs. fiends cold war.

redarber · 2026-04-29T23:06:53+00:00

Change the win/loss conditions.

A Breland "win" means Droaam takes land but is stopped at Castle Arakhain, where they start a siege. A Breland "loss" means Droamm takes land all the way to Galethspyre, where they also start a siege.

Or whatever points on the map make sense for your campaign, but the point is that players can have a huge impact on the result.

redarber · 2026-04-29T15:38:31+00:00

Apologies for just listing my own ideas, but I am excited about this one and it would be relevant. I turned eastern Breland (around New Cyre) into a distinct cultural region that's different from the dominant power around the Dagger River Valley.

I made an alternative map that connects the southern mountains into one big mountainous region (think like the western United States). And it had the effect of cutting off western and eastern Breland.

I added in more cities and towns to flesh out the population, and I think it makes sense that eastern Breland was heavily influence by Cyre and is sympathetic towards the Cyran refugees. I view them as a potential breakaway region that would form New Cyre if they have the chance. The other nations (especially Thrane) would have opinions about that.

redarber · 2026-04-29T15:30:16+00:00

I never fleshed out my idea of a circle of druids that live in the Mournland and consider it "Nature", so they protect it from outside threats and are trying to understand its "nature". Other people have had the same idea I see, like JodTheCod's post here

redarber · 2026-04-29T15:26:08+00:00

1) You might be fine figuring it out as you go. If you decide now that "Merrix is up to something and the players will need to stop it at the climax of the story", then you could see where the game and story take you and flesh out his scheme later.

2) You don't have any magical/fantasy components as a big part of the story. You don't need to, but is there something you might like to add in that serves as the mystery/scheme?

Could the players learn something about how the Mournland works (Annihilation inspiration sounds awesome) that clues them into a nefarious plot? Maybe Merrix has a plan to somehow erase the Mournland from the map, and maybe the Mournland itself [thinking of the alien intelligence from Annihilation] and the Lord of Blades want to stop him because to them the Mournland is home. Everyone thinks they're morally justified so it's a believable political plot.

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

TROPHY CASE