Re: DnD Books
Most people dislike the eberron setting because it's written by three people, and a lot of times, they accidentally contradict each other.
Eberron was the "winner" in a contest that WotC/TSR ran several years back asking fans to create a new D&D setting. I remember when it was announced and followed the process a little bit. Now I'm more into Paizo's yearly one.
I guess I'm coming from a weird place in that 4th edition was the first time that I seriously played D&D. I played 3rd edition a few times with my brothers group back in high school when I was living at home and I thought that it was a really complicated set of rules that didn't really give you anything for the extra complexity.
(Possibly, like most complicated things, it allowed people who were willing to really dig into it and learn the ins and outs to do amazing things. But for a social game I would see that as almost a drawback; newbies who didn't know what they were doing would get to sit there thinking "Wow, Janna's character can do all this cool stuff but I can't. This game sucks.")
A friend and I were just discussing something like this, actually. We were
horrified when they announced 3E, mostly because of the "preview" and "conversion" guide that they put out for it. I remember us thumbing through the book and going "
Magic Circle against Evil? Are you serious?" Truth be told, I still don't like 3E or 3.5 for that matter. What I do like is Pathfinder, which could be, essentially, 3.75. They took the revised rules, revised them *further* and turned it into a setting I found I could enjoy. That's another big thing. I've read about some of the things that they've done in 4E to the campaign settings. I grew up on those books and the novels that they spawned. It's like watching your childhood home get leveled by a bulldozer.
Who knows? Maybe by the time 5th edition comes out, I'll have warmed up to 4th. Until then, I'm going to take my bard and have fun exploring!
