Most fantasy tropes in the modern day draw heavily upon the standards set by Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series. Dungeons and Dragons was no different. As a result, many of its settings share similarities. Elves are generally good, use magic, and live in the woods. Dwarves are burly, industrious, and enjoy underground homes. Goblins are cruel, opportunistic, and enjoy living in homes they’ve taken. Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, Krynn, all holds true for classic settings like these. Not quite, however, for Eberron. Eberron is different, but is simply being different good enough to warrant a sample? Does it have the flavor, crunch, and portions to put zing into your games?

To start, Eberron is packed to the brim with magic. Not in the same way other settings are either. Throughout Eberron’s history, its various peoples have embraced magic in one form or another. It is widespread and offers its people a variety of modern amenities. A group might take a lightning rail to different cities, hire magebred carriages or even horseless carriages to quickly get around said cities, and hire any number of lesser spellcasters to mend clothes, send messages, or simply heal them. It’s a shame then that Eberron is caught in a cold war. Unease is at the heart of most common folks and for good reason. The cold war between the nations of Khorvaire, the primary continent of Eberron, abruptly capped off the end a 100 year war, called The Last War, with no victor. This is because nobody knows who annihilated the country of Cyre and not even the breadth of magic from all of Eberron has shed any light on it. So a ceasefire has been called until the culprit or culprits are found, IF they’re found. Overall, Eberron boasts as many flavors as most settings, but its predominantly a world of growing hopelessness among expansive magical inventions. Eberron is most like a bowl of slightly soggy cereal on a rainy day: the cereal is still fine, but it doesn’t live up to the happy box art and it doesn’t help get through the rain (in a good way).

Flavorful as it is, can the crunch live up to the taste? When introducing an entirely new class, yes! The artificer is the 13th character class. It is a spellcasting class revolving around the concept of magical engineering and invention. They are skilled tinkerers, chemists, and smiths who are able to concoct a number of different tools with a little preparation. The warforged are evidence of their prowess. Warforged is the standout of the four new races from Eberron. They are constructs built to fight in a war that is now over (The Last War), but have free will and human levels of intelligence. When making one as a character, they reflect being built for a purpose with a flexible ability score bonus and any one skill of your choice. One could say they’re built as a warrior and pick Strength and Athletics, another could say they’re built as a tutor and pick Intelligence and History, etc. Subraces, however, take the biggest portion, as most of the races from the Player’s Handbook got new subraces or variants in the form of the Dragonmarked races. Dragonmarks are magical birthmarks and each one is specific to a race. Most are uniform in that they grant a character the ability to learn spells they might not learn otherwise and a 1d4 bonus to relevant skills. Their abilities as a whole cover most anything one could imagine be it healing, tracking, trickery, guarding, and on and on. They offer a fresh take on these old races, even if they’re so specific to Eberron that they’re unlikely to be allowed anywhere else.

The dreary flavor has some chewy crunch, but is this enough to make a meal out of? Yes and no. Eberron: Rising From The Last War goes into the greatest amount of detail over its most popular city, Sharn. Sharn is a city that built straight up endlessly rather than expand outward. In the book are excellent descriptions, details, and numerous tables to make adventuring in Sharn a distinctive romp through noir fantasy. As for the rest of the world? It’s sparser than one would prefer. Most of the information is given in a few pages at most. It speaks broadly about the rest of the continent of Khorvaire, giving about as much for the rest of the world too. What mitigates this relatively well is the swath of monsters added to the roster. A few, namely demon lords, are specific to Eberron, and don’t make much sense to use broadly. Most of the rest, however, are fair game. Living Spells for example, were included in a recent adventure set outside of Eberron. They are a monster that forms when a spellcaster tries to cast a spell, but it backfires and the spell itself comes to a form of life. It includes stat blocks for only three different ones, but it also includes guidelines for easily adjusting them to reflect different spells. Their capabilities are as broad as the spells one has access to (as a Dungeon Master and not as a character, which is in effect all of them). All in all, the portions are slightly dissatisfying, but certainly won’t leave you hungry.

As a whole, Eberron: Rising From The Last War is an excellent taste of what Eberron has to offer a D&D group. Its glum themes have all the support they need for Dungeon Masters and players alike. Still, it is a shame that it only just barely covers that need. To its credit, however, Eberron’s default assumption is that a new campaign takes place 2 years after the end of the Last War. This means that most existing lore on the setting is still valid. Little to nothing has changed from one edition to the next and there are a multitude of books specialized on different regions of the setting, if one’s wallet can afford it. B-.

-The_Clark_Side