D&D: ‘Chronicles of Eberron’ is the Eberron Book You’ve Been Waiting For
Eberron enjoyers rejoice, the book of your dreams is here at last. From Keith Baker, Chronicles of Eberron opens the door to your Eberron.
Eberron is hands down my favorite D&D setting of all time. It has everything. Industrial revolutions, a mixture of gaslamp fantasy and intrigue, along with pulpy fantasy. Eberron encompasses exploration and discovery alongside spy stories and knights. It’s everything you’d want out of a D&D campaign setting. It meaningfully changes the way your game plays.
And at a time when campaign settings are on the rise but also drawing backlash for being too same-y or not having enough meat on the bones, Chronicles of Eberron injects some much-needed spice and flavor into your D&D world.
A part of it is that Keith Baker has the freedom that WotC doesn’t with this book. It doesn’t have to introduce whole new swaths of players to D&D. Chronicles of Eberron needn’t serve as an on-ramp to a “recurrent spending environment.” It just has to tell you how to run games in Eberron and to really live up to the promise of the fantasy of the world.
And that’s exactly what this book does. It takes D&D and instead of shrugging its shoulders and saying “you figure it out”, it tells you how to make the rules and the roleplaying fit into your world. I did not expect to enjoy reading about the different kinds of nobility that exist in Eberron nearly as much as I did. But that had me so excited to get out there and play with the new toys included in the book.
Which is what I want out of a D&D book these days. I want to feel like I’ve got something that I can feast on for days.
Chronicles of Eberron
First of all, what exactly is this book? According to Eberron creator, Keith Baker, it’s a companion to Exploring Eberron. Which is also great. Chronicles has a ton of new lore, and new options for players and DMs. From the book’s blurb:
“Play a Tairnadal champion with the Oath of Veneration, explore the mysteries of the Dark Six with the Aspiration Domain, or—if you dare—wield the forbidden magic of the Shadow. Learn more about the nobility of Khorvaire, the people of Riedra, and the stormsingers of Lorghalan. Face deadly new foes, from the daelkyr Avassh and Mordain the Fleshweaver to the infamous Grim Lords of Farlnen!”
In this 207-page sourcebook, available on DMs Guild as both a pdf and print-on-demand title, has five new subclasses, and three new variants for Gnomes, Goliaths, and Warforged. As well as new backgrounds, new spells, psionics, and the surprise punch I didn’t see coming, a catalog of crossbows. Including silencers! Check out this utter bullshit:
This is laser targeted at me and me alone. And it comes right before a section on crossbow advancements—attachments you can add to your crossbow. Like bayonets, ammo clips, silencers, and spellbolts, which fire off a single spell of 3rd level or lower when you shoot them. Which is what so many archer characters actually want. And it feels so perfectly Eberron.
This is all just a small taste. For the DM, there are plenty of new monsters and information about running a campaign in Eberron that pairs expertly with both Rising from the Last War and Exploring Eberron.
This is the capstone in a trilogy of books that can take you to another place. It’s extremely niche, which is perhaps why it feels so refreshing. But if you want to play in a game of D&D that has newspapers and trains and gnomish spies, this book helps you do exactly that better than ever.
Find it on the DM’s Guild
Happy Adventuring
