Ebberon and Planescape

I like the idea of keeping Eberron's Outer planes more or less intact (even if they're demoted to demi-planes), because they make up a good deal of the setting's feal and flavor. Sure some of them are basically old planes with some changes (Xoriat, for instance, is a dead ringer for the Far Realm), but I like the idea of belief shaping the planes, and if everyone on Eberron really does believe they'll go to Dollurh when they die, maybe they will.

I'll admit it's way easier to run a Planescape game when you mostly use watered-down, simplified versions of the Primes from other settings. I mean, the amount of reading it would take just to properly represent a day-trip to Waterdeep or Sharn is more than most DMs poorly aquinted with the setting want to deal with. That's fine for most Planescape DMs, but I figure if you really know the setting and you want to see if you can throw your players for a loop by sticking in oddball planes they've never even heard of, why let the boundaries (such as they are) of Planescape stop you?

Above all, Planescape is about exploration (in more ways than one), so why just limit yourself to the approximately 43 (not counting demiplanes) "official" planes? I know 43 seems like a lot, espcially when you realize that most of those planes are infinite and several of them contain countless worlds and demiplanes, but that just proves my point. If we already have more planes than we can shake a stick at, why does it matter whether we include the ones on Eberron. I think the greatest shock of Planescape for newbies is the massive increase in scale. The jump from standard Prime adventure D&D to Planescape is the jump from adventuruing in a small part of a small planet (seriously, if you look at scale of most Prime worlds and compare it to the actual Earth, Eberron is about the size of Mars, Aebir-Toril is comparable to the Moon, and Krynn will be lucky if it can beat out Pluto.) to exploring an absolutely miniscule part of an endless multiverse. I don't see why it should be any different with Eberron. Why can't the Quori or the Daelkyr or what have you be focused on just one sphere?

Here's an idea, maybe Eberron is cut off from the rest of the universe just so that the Daelkyr, Quori, and other dangerous creatures that live there can't escape? Maybe Eberron is a kind of Multiversal prison where those races or individuals that are deemed too dangerous to be allowed to spread acrross the planes are sequestered and quarantined. It would help to explain why nearly every race in the multiverse (including exemplars that by rights should be tied to their planes) can be found on one sphere and its planar environs. I for one can totally see the Sovereign Host as actually being glorified prisong guards. Something to think about.

Anyway, I think it's only a matter of time before someone integrates Eberron into planescape canon, and I guess what I'm saying is I'd personally prefer it if we left it open to interpretation whether their planes are "real" or not, but we should resist the temptation to write them off as clueless screed the way we seem to do a lot lately. Of course, ultimately, I think the decision as to what to do with Eberron should be left to the individual DM.

I agree with Duckluck, I think that it isn't Eberron anymore if you take away what makes it unique. It already is connected to the transitive planes, and I think it works just fine to have those planes orbiting in the Astral.

Why are some of them identical to an Outer Plane or nearly so? Good question! Whatever created them, or whatever force causes them to orbit like gravity, may have grabbed chunks of Outer Planar material or just of belief and pulled them inside-out through a portal, or something. Who knows! It could be interesting dark to ferret out.

Maybe those Exemplars are survivors who used to live in their respective Outer Planes, and are now stuck in Eberron's planes with no way home. Maybe the part about the exemplars is screed from Eberron primes who visited the Outer Planes and thought it was part of their familiar planes instead. But I think the orbiting planes themselves should be left alone.

I disagree about Faerun, though. In 2E it had the same cosmology as Planescape, IIRC. It was only in 3E that WotC decided to make it different just because they could. I think that's lame and I don't consider any 3E material canon if it disagrees with established Planescape canon. After all, we could also say that there are no para- or quasi-planes, and other various silliness that WotC came up with.

There may well be a good reason, but it doesn't change the fact that it leads to a boring, redundant result.

As for the question of whether Eberron's cosmology is integral to the campaign's flavor - no more so than Planescape's cosmology is integral to its flavor. In a crossover campaign, if you can alter one, you can alter the other. It all depends on what you want to emphasize.

Personally, I've lost interest in attempts to explain or rationalize Eberron's unique position within the multiverse. They may be very clever ideas, but in the end I think they get in the way of the action. Eberron's cosmology isn't unique or interesting enough to be worthwhile; it's a fairly bland remix of planes we've already seen, and I don't even think it adds much to a pure-Eberron campaign, let alone a crossover one.

When it comes to variant or anomalous planes, I'm much more interested in the ones from, for example, Beyond Countless Doorways, or some of the more interesting Spelljammer worlds, or exotic demiplanes, or some of the weird things in Doors to the Unknown, or the wild ideas from the Mimir's Mapping the Infinite. I love attempts to create innovative and unexpected planes we've never seen before. I kind of hate attempts to pass off clones or near-clones of Limbo, Arcadia, the Paraelemental Plane of Ice, the Region of Dreams, the Elemental Plane of Fire, the Far Realm and so on as something worth the time I spent reading about them. They're just not. If they're somehow integral to Eberron's identity, Eberron doesn't have much of an identity.

The truth is that all known parts of prime material planes say Oerth (Greyhawk), Eberron, Krynn(Dragonlance), Athas (Dark Sun), Abel Toril (Forgotten Realms) and even Ravenloft (the demiplane of Dread) with his oceans can be tightly joined in a planet similar in dimension as Earth.
As you can see in this thread of the wizards of the coast forums
http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=683655

Even if its more easy to forcibly link Planescape and Eberron, Its possible to mantain the flavor of Eberron and then somewhere link the setting with Planescape.

The Eberron-themed planes can be somewhat isolated parts of bigger planes
(say a part of the elemental plane of fire is Fernia not all the plane of fire)
or a better option
the portals to the planescape themed planes are inside the Eberron-themed elemental planes and so on.
(example: the portal to the elemental plane of fire are inside Fernia, not in the prime material Eberron. Something that make sense)
Even then when warforgeds get to Sigil, I imagine fiends trying to found how to create his own wicked versions of the living constructs and chasing them.

Look at a crystal sphere with similar traveling problems like Athas (Dark Sun)
Even when athasians are not unheard in Sigil, travel between Sigil and Athas is difficult because no connection between outer or transitive planes and Athas exists.
The athasians must travel first to the elemental planes, then find a portal to somewhat reach Sigil (who is not near).

The main diference between warforged and other living constructs is that warforged are primes and inevitables and clockwork people are outsiders.

This explain the interest the fiends will have on warforged i think.

In Eberron, warforged have been around a lot longer than the Last War. The Giants of Xen'drik built warforged back in the struggle against Quori of Dal Quor. Except somehow the Quori knew about the warforged from the giant's dreams and also created their primitive versions.

But it's possible that the knowledge on creating the warforged came from the planes first, or that it spread to other planes during the Age of Giants on Eberron.

Well i think that inevitables are stated outsider in the monstruos manual. maybe if i take a look.

Even then the warforged are the only prime native living constructs. Inevitables and clockwork people, even modrons who look similar to constructs also are natives from the outer planes.

Secondly I don't see warforged a being more wide spread and beyond the lawful planes. They're construction may involve knowing certain laws, but warforged can be of any alignment.

There may in fact be a forge that creates warforged in the Abyss from the same place that creates Retrievers. Or one that's located in the sands of Pelion, Arborea.

Eberron certainly doesn't have to be different from Dark Sun, but I think it would be helpful if it was.

Eberron, as I see the setting, is about exploration, about traveling to new and exotic places. Making it a prison world like Ravenloft hurts that. In a campaign where Eberron's planes are the only ones in existence, Eberron isn't a prison at all, of course, but in a campaign where Planescape's planes also exist, but there's some barrier that prevents planar travelers from easily moving from one to the other, it is.

Why should Eberron's crystal sphere be impenetrable? Why not put in the same portals to the Phlogiston that every other crystal sphere has? Eberron as urbane and sophisticated as the Forgotten Realms, and doesn't need to be hidden away like a fragile egg. Let those few Eberron characters with the power to explore the planes do so without restriction.

Keep in mind that creatures from planes other than the Prime Material aren't necessarily outsiders. A warforged from another plane is still a living construct, and still has a soul. They might become extraplanar (depending on how you interpret that subtype), but they don't become outsiders.