Airberron Musings

Here I sit, cooped up by the COVID-19, or the CORVID-19 as I have seen on one misspelled sign, and instead of working on the Roll20-ification of my current campaign, I am busy hacking away at my keyboard getting my Airberron campaign ready. Which I will need roughly 2 years from now, at the rate we are going. Ah well, such is life, and running a D&D campaign is a bit of an art-form in the sense that when the Muse strokes your brain, you follow it and write down as much as you can.

In broad strokes, then, here is the setting. I had originally planned on doing a very detailed worldbuild on Airberron, but remembered - or was reminded by some more experienced GMs, to be honest - that much like writing fiction, your world just needs some highlights and you can fill in the details later as the game goes on. Unless you're preparing your world to share with others, which I am kind of doing, but as this is a modification of an extant campaign setting instead of a new creation, I realized that just hitting the highlights will suffice. 

Of course, you already know about the major change from Eberron - the Change that ended the Last War and brought about the Mournland, well, in Airberron it changed the entire face of the world. All continents (as far as everyone knows) lifted from the face of the planet and are now floating in the air. Some floated higher, some stayed lower, but all lifted off the face of the planet.

The next big change from the setting that, in response to the continents floating into the air, the Changelings all took on the form of Aarakocra. To me, this fit far better with the setting of Airberron and also because I always found the Changelings to be rather meh. Ooh, it's a secret race that no one knows about (except all the players and by meta-extension, their characters), which guarantees that every Changeling PC will come with more backstory than your average Wiki entry. That feels strange, using a comparison to Wikipedia instead of an actual, printed encyclopedia, but who knows what an encyclopedia is these days? Anyway, you know how I feel about PC backstory, and this fantastic article proves that, but is also why I'm paring down my wotldbuilding backstories as well. Managed to get rid of one class I definitely did not care for and added a class with flying, which will be most helpful on a world where the landmasses are all in the air.

Other race changes from the core book - I put on my big boy undies and once again outlawed Dragonborn. Come on, the dragons of Eberron are mysterious figures who rarely contact any of the "lesser" races openly, the world is steeped in dragon lore and mythology, so no, I am allowing none of their relatives to be played by the PCs. The original Eberron setting in 3.5 stated explicitly no dragon characters, partly because there were no Dragonborn until 4e, but they did have half-dragons (let us be honest, half-dragons are the same thing as Dragonborn, and made a lot more sense) in that original edition and what that version was referring to. Now in 5e, WotC is loathe to tell the players "no", so they waffled and said if you spun your backstory right, you could have Dragonborn. I am not a waffler, however, so no Dragonborn. Also no Tieflings, and no Drow, there is plenty to see and do in this campaign setting, you do not need to try and recreate Drizzt Do'urden or play another "race of the week" from 4th edition. Warforged, since the world has changed, can turn in their natural armor ability to get wings and a flying movement speed. That one just made sense to me, and would allow another PC race to come with the ability to fly. And we are discounting all the other spare races from Xanathar's Guide, because the main Eberron book does, which is also fine by me. 

The next bits are less world setting related and more neat things that I have run across that I am incorporating in the campaign going forward. First up is backstory connections. In my current campaign, I am using what would be called a framing device in the literary world to help bring the party together and give them direction. In Eberron terms, the party has the option to have a patron, which in my own world is a government run agency much like the Musketeers were to France in our own history. Why not stick with that? Well, even after telling my players this is what is going to happen, some of them still insisted on making the most unlikable, narcissistic, team hating edgelords they could. (it is not all that bad, but sometimes it feels like they are being disagreeable on purpose, and I want to strangle them - this is a cooperative game and not your personal piece of fanfic!) This connections idea I got from a recent video I watched about character creation in the Traveller RPG, and when I realized what a neat bit of party creation it was, it also made me realize how well it puts the onus of getting the party together on the shoulders of the players. Basically the idea is this - every player decides with the other players what connections in the past each PC has. Each PC has a connection with two other PCs, and if you have more than 3 players, each set of connections is unique, and if a PC has a connection to another PC, they can not share their other PC connection. Each player (in conjunction with the other players) decides what the connection is and when it occurred in the past, and uses their background, not their character class, to help define the connection. For example - the acolyte hung out with the sage, the acolyte as they were taking their rites in the church and the sage while they were studying at whatever institute of higher learning they were at, and they partied like the world was ending. That was five years ago. The sage got into a bit of debt with the local crime syndicate, and the criminal was the one who had to come around and collect the weekly payment and any interest owed. This was two years ago. The criminal got waylaid along the highway (irony) and was helped out by the soldier when their troop of cavalry happened by. This was last year. And the soldier is cousin to the acolyte. Four PCs, each with two connections, all unique, but they quickly and simply describe how the party knows each other and gives just enough of a backstory for the players to build on. Hell, you could even just use Eberron's patronage section of the rules and skip all that, but my players will have to decide together how this is going to work.

The other thing I am adding into future campaigns is a few tables from Xanathar's Lost Notes to Everything Else, a little fan-made product over on the GM's Guild store. I say "fan-made", but it is written by some of the biggest names in the fan community, not so much professionals themselves as they are top seeded amateurs. Anyway, I like the Lingering Injuries table in the DMG, so I am definitely using the expanded table from Lost Notes. In addition, while I have been using Seth Skorkowsky's critical hits and fumble tables in my current campaign, they are just overpowered for most 5e campaigns. However, I still like having more options beyond just "you crit'ed, double your damage", so I will also be using the expanded crit and fumble tables, also from Lost Notes. The one thing I am surprised at with Lost Notes is how badly in need of an editorial pass it is. At least the copy I have has many small grammar issues, and maybe they have updated it - it is mainly a digital product with print on demand dead tree versions also available - so I may just have to redownload my copy to correct them. It does remind me that even the semi-professionals need to pay more attention to their grammar and editorial passes. I have been typing most of my recent blog posts, especially this one, on my phone and not on my computer, so I need to pay close attention to what autocorrect is doing to my words. 

Eberron Musings

The latest 5th Edition world setting book, Eberron: Rising from the Last War, has been released by Wizards of the Coast (or WotC), and I like many others am pretty excited by it. You should find this interesting, as you may know that I prefer creating my own worlds to run D&D in, but here I am interested in a published setting. Do not mistake me, I do find the published world settings as interesting, just not the entire settings, only the parts I like to steal for my own worlds. Eberron is different, though, and it is because of my shared history with the setting. As you may or may not know, Eberron is the youngest of the official D&D settings (excepting those brought over from other IPs, like Ravnica from Magic the Gathering), having been created in the early 2000s after WotC purchased D&D from TSR and put out 3rd Edition D&D. WotC had gotten all of the various world settings with their purchase of D&D, but decided they needed a campaign setting of their own and had a competition (the Fantasy Setting Search) to see what us the fans could come up with. Roughly 12,000 of us D&D nerds submitted to the competition, and yes, I was one of them.

Let us get this out of the way right now - my entry sucked, it was way too bland, boring, and generic. No, while I did find my submission, I am not sharing it. I do have a bit of the world my group was creating and using at that time, and it is not as bad as my Fantasy Search Setting, though much smaller than an entire world as it only covers one small continent/large island, may have to resurrect it and share it here. Or use it in my current world. I have no delusions on that original entry, seeing what did win the competition at the time, that I had even smidgen of a chance of winning, and was definitely not as good in my world building as Keith Baker was at the time. Or maybe even now, but I am good enough my players keep coming back for more. Anyway, as a result of competing in the Fantasy Setting Search, I still feel a connection to the eventual winner. As you have already guessed, Eberron won the competition, though it came into the final with two other settings, one of them by Rich Burlew of The Order of the Stick fame, so I think it was a hard fought final round and Keith Baker still came out on top with Eberron. That is part of what still interests me to this day about the setting - the addition of arcanepunk (which I have talked about recently) plus the fact that the main political entities had just come out of a major war and the next war simmers always in the background, ready to flare up again.

Having said all of the above, and while being perfectly willing to run Eberron games (should I italicize "Eberron" when I'm not talking about the book, but talking about the world itself? I'm going to not italicize it for now and see how I like it) as laid out in the campaign setting (no, as I am typing this, I have not read completely through Rising from the Last War, but I am working on it and do remember quite a bit from previous books) with my usual minor modifications - look, there are some classes and races that just do not make sense to me, narratively, and I do not allow them in my games, at least not unaltered - I have been thinking, since they announced Rising from the Last War, how I would adjust Eberron to better suit me. I know, I know, why cannot I just leave well enough alone and run the world as they have it set out in the setting book? As you know or may have guessed, I am a difficult, old, gaming bastard and like to modify things to suit my tastes. Plus, I saw some pictures online, specifically a couple of maps, that I found rather intriguing and I have been plain itching to use them somehow for a campaign setting. Specifically about two years ago, I saw these maps:

And:

Neat, right? Those two have been rattling around in my brain, just begging me to set up a campaign setting based on them. Obviously, something with flying mounts or airships is going to be needed just to get around, and it hit me earlier this year when WotC announced Rising from the Last War - what if the Mourning not only turned Cyre into the Mournland, what if the world split into the different layers? That setting already has airships and halflings riding flying dinosaurs, Eberron is most of the way to a good fit for a map that looks like the above.

As a responsible gaming blogger who does not simply jump online and type out whatever rant strikes my fancy without at least some forethought (I'll just pause here for the laughter to die down), I did my due diligence and searched to see if I could find the originator of the pics. I had first seen them in a Google Plus group dedicated to fantasy maps, back when G+ was still a thing, and I immediately saved them as being "interesting". No links to the originator, just some random fellow fantasy enthusiast sharing an interesting find, so I had little to go on. However, my Google Fu is strong, and I found not only the originator, but also the comic he wrote and drew set in this very world in the pictures. The comic, by the way, is known as Skyheart by Jake Parker, and while I unfortunately missed the Kickstarter for the deadtree edition and he is completely sold out of the extras, he is selling the first chapter in pieces via .PDF from his website. It is what I would consider cute, more young adult than adult, definite inspirations from anime (the anime Last Exile sprang immediately to mind), with an anthropomorphic bent. Does this change my plans for turning Eberron into something that looks more like Airth, as it is called in Skyheart? No, not at all. I am not copying that setting, I am plagiarizing (plagiarism is the highest form of flattery) the map idea, but the rest of the setting - the steampunk airships alongside the arcanepunk weapons of the bad guys, the anthropomorphic races - I am leaving alone. They do not fit my idea of Eberron with floating continents, and besides, Mr Parker is doing them justice without my help. I think though that I will borrow the winged whales, but that interest started, at least for me, from an old comic book entitled The Chronicles of Corum #6:

Michael Moorcock's Elric Saga makes for great D&D fodder.

Yep, that is a winged shark you see on the cover, and ever since reading that comic back in the '90s (the comic came out in '87 but I didn't run into it until the mid '90s) I have wanted to put in one of my D&D settings an ocean or sea that had disappeared through magical means and the remaining animals - fish and aquatic mammals - have been altered to have wings and be able to breath air, though they seem to want to remain in the air where the salt water used to be. I would definitely add those into my version of Eberron, which I am calling Airberron, because I am just chock full of originality.

Now that I have Eberron: Rising from the Last War in my hot, little hands, I will be writing more on Airberron in the near future. I am excited because I think the base setting, Eberron, is unlike anything else out there, at least when it comes to D&D settings, and setting it to a map full of floating continents for myself sets it even further apart. Stay tuned, loyal Truncheons & Flagons readers, I will be breaking out the Campaign Cartographer I got from the Bundle of Holding oh so many months ago to use in my current campaign setting (and never have), rewrite some history, and change up some of the other settings.