D&D Eberron Campaign Creator Interview

Stratics has published an interview with Keith Baker, creator of the Dungeons & Dragons Eberron Campaign setting, after Turbine’s announcement that he will be a speaker at the upcoming Turbine Nation. Check it out:

Q: Where did the germination seed or idea for Eberron come from?

Keith Baker: To try and make this relatively brief, because I could talk about this for hours and hours, in some ways it was actually inspired by a game I was working on at VR-1. Very very basically. I was working on a game called “Lost Continents” that was a pulp adventure game. The thing about it was its setting was literally 1920’s Earth – “Indiana Jones”. When I started working on the proposals for Eberron, I still had that tone in my mine – the energy that goes along with pulp and film noir. So.what would happen if you made that into a fantasy world instead of a film noir world and that again was what ended becoming Eberron – taking a fantasy setting and putting in the same energy you get from the pulp tales and movies.

Jason at Turbine Games: I think the big thing from Turbine’s perspective – as you know, a lot of people into MMORPGs are also pen and paper gamers. If you look at the people actually developing DDO, they too are hardcore pen and paper gamers and have been playing since back in the day. Because of that, we’re excited about the opportunity of having Keith come -knowing that it will speak to D&D as a whole. And the pen and paper gamers may take interest in what we’re doing with DDO as the first persistent world D&D game.

Keith Baker: To follow and clarify, what Jason mentioned is another core element of Eberron. One of the things that makes it different is this pulp energy and such, but one of the main ideas behind it is to really stick with the core elements of D&D; and, to actually find a way to take everything that’s in the D&D books and have them make sense together.

One of the problems with the current campaign settings is that the game has evolved over the past 10-15 years, and so people are trying to squeeze all these ideas into worlds that weren’t designed for them. The point of Eberron is to pick up things and bring them together as a cohesive whole. The idea is to have a world that appeals to both new players and the people who have been playing for 30 years.