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4 years ago ::
Nov 07, 2009 - 4:59PM
#1
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Date Joined:
Jun 24, 2009
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I'm going to be DMing an Eberron campaign pretty soon and I have no time to sit down and hammer out the details of an adventure on my own. As I am just as new to 4th Edition D&D as I am to Eberron, I also have little inclination to even try to pretend I have the slightest understanding as to how to convert a bunch of 3/3.5/whatever-number-it-is adventures to 4th Edition. Or time. What I want is to buy or download adventures for 4th Edition D&D set in the Eberron world so my friends and I can just start playing, the way we used to when we played D&D as kids. I don't lack imagination, I just want a range of fully finished modules - which don't require conversion - to choose from. That way I can jump right in and cut my DM/4E/Eberron teeth while having fun with my friends. I really need to leave the world-building for later when I feel like I've gleaned through osmosis enough intuitive knowledge about encounter balance (and all that other crunchy stuff that is utterly meaningless until I've actually experienced it in play) to be confident I know what I'm doing when I do finally get down to building a world. You know - run the module until I know what I'm doing and feel like I've gotten a more personal idea of how to proceed, then branch off into my own fevered imaginings. I hate to be mundane here, but I'm kind of shocked that WotC doesn't have a normal product page that's filled with adventures for sale - like a big page with a banner on top that says 4th Edition Eberron Adventures. One you can scroll through that has listings of the individual adventures with a cover shot and a little summary for each next to it, party level information and maybe even a price and a button that says Put In Cart, all out in the open, next to each other, so you can see them all at once and have it be relatively easy - possible, even - to make a choice. I've been doing a bunch of forum-scouring and the thing that's really blowing my mind is how hard it is to even find any kind of list of existing 4th Edition Eberron Adventures at all. Does such a thing exist anywhere? Am I crazy? Am I missing something obvious? I hope I'm not coming off like a jerk here and I'm genuinely sorry if I am, but I've put some time into this and I'm getting more than a little frustrated with the dribs and drabs of stubbornly hard-to-get information I've been barely able to find about this apparently super-top-secret resource. So, that said, let it be known that I think the Eberron world is flat-out scrumtillescent and I'm exceedingly jumpy to get started on this thing. I wouldn't be half as frustrated if I didn't start out with (and still retain) a huge pile of enthusiasm. So can anybody help me with some simple, direct information in this regard? PS - It seems like there are a ton of past-edition Eberron adventures out there. Is there a reason WotC isn't just putting out official conversions? Or are they and I haven't found them?
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4 years ago ::
Nov 07, 2009 - 10:03PM
#2
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Date Joined:
Jun 14, 2006
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There is a short adventure in the back of the Eberron Campaign Guide, and there has been one Eberron adventure printed, called Seekers of the Ashen Crown. There have not been more printed because WOTC is trying to focus on printing adventures that can fit in any setting. Ive found that a cheap option is to buy a 1 month subsciption for DDI, then immediately cancel the recurring subscriptions. For the one month that you are subscribed, download everything that WOTC has put out for DDI in the last year. It will cost you $10 and you get about three books worth of material. Thats a savings of about $95.
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4 years ago ::
Nov 07, 2009 - 10:23PM
#3
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Date Joined:
Jun 24, 2009
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Seekers of the Ashen Crown! Excellent! I will definitely check that out. That's one more Eberron adventure than I was able to find before you posted your response - thank you!
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4 years ago ::
Nov 08, 2009 - 7:07AM
#4
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Date Joined:
Sep 17, 2009
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4 years ago ::
Nov 08, 2009 - 11:31AM
#5
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Date Joined:
Jun 24, 2009
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Sweet. I read a review of Khyber's Harvest and it sounds like a winner. Salty1: That's pretty shrewd, but so far I've been OK with the cost of a DDI subscription just because of the large amount of extremely high quality material I've been getting from it. What you're saying about concentrating on universally useful adventures is definitely understandable and a smart way to go from a business standpoint. It seems like it translates into Eberron kind of getting the short end of the stick in 4e, though, at least in terms of new players. I suppose if Eberron already has a giant user base of experienced players who just want to make their own stuff it makes sense to concentrate primarily on those tools, especially if you're choosing them as your target audience. But it definitely makes introduction to new players rough. That brings up another question for me. Does that mean that the standard means of running Eberron stuff becomes a roll-your-own or redecorate endeavor or is Eberron-ness sort of bleeding out into the other worlds and affecting the published adventures in general? Besides Seekers of the Ashen Crown (which is officially full-on Eberron) are there other adventures/adventure paths that, though more universal, are considered to lean more in an Eberron direction in terms of feel, or even contain actual Eberron stuff? I read a little bit about Seekers of the Ashen Crown on Amazon and in a review elsewhere and it sounds like it's right up my alley - I read the first Thorn of Breland book as a means to get my head around Eberron's feel before DMing and I like the level of intrigue involved, as well as Breland in general as a nation of origin.
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4 years ago ::
Nov 08, 2009 - 12:44PM
#6
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I am currently encorporating Seekers of the Ashen Crown into my Eberron game and am finding it excellently designed. It is very combat heavy, but all of the 4E adventures I have seen are heavy on the combat encounters. I began my 4E game with home converted 3E Eberron adventures and am having trouble using SotAC as written because many of the NPCs were clearly inspired by NPCs from 3E adventures, but I doubt that's a common problem. If I understand you correctly UNAP, you are asking two questions. To answer the first, I have found very little "play out of the box" Eberron material for 4E (just what has been mentioned earlier in this thread: Khyber's Harvest from Free RPG Day '09, The Mark of Prophecy from the Eberron Campaign Guide, and Seekers of the Ashen Crown), but 3E material is relatively easy to update. I have updated The Forgotten Forge from the Eberron Campaign Setting, Shadows of the Last War, and Grasp of the Emerald Claw quite successfully. To answer your second question, things like warforged and artificers are now readily accepted in settings other than Eberron, or at least it seems WotC expects them to be accepted. There is a wonderful article in Dragon Magazine describing a backstory for warforged for the Points of Light worldview. The "core" adventures (the H, P, and E series starting with Keep on the Shadowfell) can be adapted for use in an Eberron game but I think they lack the right flavor. That could just be me, though. One Night in Weeping Briar, The Village of Hommlet, and Revenge of the Giants can definitely be adapted to Eberron with a bit of work. I understand that you are specifically looking for "play out of the box" material rather than material you can convert to 4E, so I definitely suggest getting the Eberron Campaign Guide, Seekers of the Ashen Crown, and Khyber's Harvest. Khyber's Harvest is a great break from the bustle of Sharn in The Mark of Prophecy before leading into Seekers of the Ashen Crown. Having the ECG on hand is great, too, if you every decide to let the party roam and play on the fly or come up with your own material. Any of the 4E adventures can be plopped into Eberron, however, if both you and your players are new to Eberron and you don't care about strict adherence to the setting as written.
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4 years ago ::
Nov 09, 2009 - 12:59PM
#7
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Date Joined:
Aug 27, 2006
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Keep on the Shadowfell has an eberron conversion. Khyber's Harvest is a download in case you haven't found it.
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4 years ago ::
Nov 09, 2009 - 1:48PM
#8
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Date Joined:
Jun 24, 2009
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Thanks for the tips. I've been playing Keep on the Shadowfell as a player with the same group I'll be DMing for Eberron, so I had to rule that one out. I think I'm set though - I'll just run Mark of Prophecy and go straight into Seekers of the Ashen Crown. That ought to give me plenty of material to keep running sessions until homebuilt stuff starts to come naturally and I spin off in my own direction.
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4 years ago ::
Nov 09, 2009 - 2:05PM
#9
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Date Joined:
Jun 24, 2009
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...3E material is relatively easy to update. I have updated The Forgotten Forge from the Eberron Campaign Setting, Shadows of the Last War, and Grasp of the Emerald Claw quite successfully.
I definitely had no interest in jumping in with conversions because I'm sure I'll miss something important, but down the road... if it's really that easy and it means more options and material, I'll almost definitely get into doing conversions. I like 4e just fine, especially the combat, but I have to admit I feel like I can understand the 3.5 holdouts even though I never played 3 or 3.5 - when I thumb through those older books (or maybe "middle" books - the last I played was AD&D in the 80's) they have a really nice, subtle and mature feel compared to the wallop and flash of 4e and that won't hurt my campaigns one bit. Is there a good tutorial in the forums for conversions that's considered The Reference? I'm going to dig around myself, but if there's one that everyone seems to agree is great, that's the one I'll read first.
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4 years ago ::
Nov 09, 2009 - 3:34PM
#10
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I like 4e just fine, especially the combat, but I have to admit I feel like I can understand the 3.5 holdouts even though I never played 3 or 3.5 - when I thumb through those older books (or maybe "middle" books - the last I played was AD&D in the 80's) they have a really nice, subtle and mature feel compared to the wallop and flash of 4e and that won't hurt my campaigns one bit.
4E seems to me to be built for Eberron's pulp style, but even though I have no problem using the Eberron Campaign Guide and Eberron Player's Guide, but the 3.0/3.5 books are excellent and I prefer them for anything non-mechanical (lore, fluff, whatever you call it). Even if you don't directly convert them, if you can get your hands on the 3.0 adventures I highly suggest reading them over and picking them clean of ideas. Conversations and attitudes with NPCs from The Forgotten Forge (from the Eberron Campaign Setting, it's not a standalone publication) make great ad hoc skill challenges for the NPCs in Seekers of the Ashen Crown.
Is there a good tutorial in the forums for conversions that's considered The Reference?
If there is one thing I have learned in converting material from 3.0 to 4E it is that nothing is truly analogous. Whenever I've tried to use a formula to convert 3.0 material to 4E I have found something grossly inappropriate about the final product. When I revamped The Forgotten Forge I ended up doing it all "by hand." I took the 3.0 stat blocks into consideration but in the end I used them as inspiration for new 4E stat blocks. The 4E Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manuals are really all you need, though, to create new monsters, traps, skill challenges, et cetera. It does take time, but not as much as I thought. More importantly (at least for me), it was really fun. I'd offer you my own conversions but they weren't meant to see the light of day and are therefore disorganized beyond outside recognition. I really should change that and post the stat blocks and skills challenges, at least.
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