(I might just start calling the book Eberron.)
Well, in just a little over two months we're going to be getting the official Eberron book for 5th Edition.
I've never played a game set in Eberron, but the setting seems really cool, and frankly I think it's more up my alley than the Forgotten Realms in terms of tone and originality.
The premise of Eberron is this:
The continent of Korvaire, one of the major continents on the world of Eberron, had been at war for a very long time, with different kingdoms clashing against one another in the Last War. And then, one day, the kingdom of Cyre just... was destroyed. An event called the Day of Mourning left the entire kingdom destroyed, with everyone dead.
The other kingdoms ceased their hostilities in the face of this devastating event, ending the war out of fear that further conflict could lead to another such event. But this has resulted in a very uneasy peace - the war's conflicts weren't really resolved, with no real winners or losers.
Beyond the kingdoms, however, there are also powerful houses - the Dragonmarked Houses - which are something like massive megacorporations that hold monopolies on certain industries. Members of these houses carry dragonmarks - a sort of mystical birthmark - which give them magical powers that help them in their given industries.
Among the Houses is House Cannith, who manufactured weapons of war and sold them to all sides. Their greatest creation are the Warforged - artificial humanoids bearing a resemblance to golems, but with humanoids intelligence and free will. The Warforged were built as living weapons to fight in the war, but with the end of the conflict, they've been forced to find new meaning for their lives.
One of the major elements of the setting is the way in which the Houses, and the general study of magic, has led to a ubiquity of magic. Ordinary people might know cantrips or ritual spells and use them in their jobs. Magic has allowed for the creation of airships and a system of trains known as the lightning rail. There are newspapers and many other "modern" conveniences that Eberron has arrived at through magic rather than pure science.
This probably manifests in the most exciting way in terms of gameplay with the Artificer class. Artificers are the first fully new class to be introduced in 5E since the player's handbook, and the Eberron book will have three subclass options for them (those of us who got the Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron will get an updated version that includes the Artificer with one subclass.) Artificers use magical inventions to provide utility and fight monsters.
Tonally, Eberron borrows a great deal from pulp novels from the middle of the 20th century. With all the intrigue and cloak-and-dagger shenanigans the Dragonmarked Houses get up to, there's plenty of opportunity for noir-ish mysteries in places like the city of Sharn, a metropolis with skyscrapers and plenty of air traffic.
There's tons of cool twists on classic D&D ideas, like wild Halflings who tame dinosaurs, or a society that uses Positive energy to live on forever as good-aligned undead. If you, like I do, tend to like to see the fantasy genre grow past the standard medievalism that so often defines it, this setting should be very appealing. (Of course, this is also coming from the guy who's super excited for Throne of Eldraine, the new Magic the Gathering set, which is based on Arthurian knights and Grimm's fairy tales, so I can enjoy the classics as well.)
But let's get to the details:
The book will have four new playable races: the Changelings, Shifters, Kalashtar, and Warforged. There will also be new sub-races for existing races that establish people as Dragonmarked - this includes "subraces" for races like Human or Half Elf that don't typically have subraces.
There will be adventure location maps, similar to the ones found in Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, such as airships and lightning rail trains.
There will be a level-1 adventure to introduce the setting.
There will, of course, be tons of information about the setting and its various locations and ongoing plots.
And there will be 38 new monsters!
Oh, and there's a new cover for the book! Apparently they just swapped an image from within the book with the old cover, but I think it's a better look. The new one depicts a warforged wizard and a halfling ranger with a dinosaur beast companion exploring a canyon while some ominous winged creature (I couldn't tell if it was a dragon or a demon) watches them from above.
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