Eberron is designed to accommodate traditional D&D elements and races within a differently toned setting; Eberron combines a fantasy tone with pulp and dark adventure elements, and some non-traditional fantasy technologies such as trains, skyships, and mechanical beings which are all powered by magic.

Once Thrilling Tales was chosen as the final setting, I went to Seattle and spent weeks working with an amazing team of people at Wizards of the Coast: Bill Slavicsek, Chris Perkins, James Wyatt, and many others.

[7] On the Fantasy Setting Search contest, Slavicsek highlighted that four subteams reduced the 11,000 submissions to 120 entries which were then reviewed by a panel who whittled it down to eleven proposals.

It was great meeting Keith Baker, Rich Burlew, and Nathan Toomey in person, getting to talk about their worlds with them, and getting to help them each make their vision come alive.

[9][failed verification][7] The Eberron Campaign Setting sourcebook lists the following films as inspirations for Eberron's tone and attitude: Brotherhood of the Wolf, Casablanca, From Hell, The Maltese Falcon, The Mummy, The Name of the Rose, Pirates of the Caribbean, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Sleepy Hollow.

[10] The 2004 campaign setting book for Dungeons & Dragons v3.5 was written by Keith Baker, Bill Slavicsek, and James Wyatt.

In June 2009, the Eberron Player's Guide and the free adventure Khyber's Harvest (2009) brought the setting to the new 4th Edition of D&D.

There wasn't even a timeline change; though rumors at one points suggested a two-year advancement was in the works, the world ended up remaining in 998YK.

Eberron's designers and developers said that players interested in metaplot should read the novels and decide themselves whether they wanted to include those events in their games.

[13]In February 2015, the very first instance of the online feature "Unearthed Arcana" provided Eberron content for public playtesting for the 5th Edition.

[17] The included races,[18] and dragonmarks,[19] magic items,[20] as well as the artificer class and subclasses,[21][22] also went through the "Unearthed Arcana" public playtest process over the next year.

To correspond with this release, the D&D Adventurers League added a new season of stories called The Oracle of War that take place in the Mournland.

[...] Core Storyline adventures are placed on the DMs Guild at the rate of one per month, giving the campaign an active play period of approximately 2 years".

The existence of divine magic is not evidence of the gods, as clerics who worship no deities but instead follow a path or belief system also receive spells.

[38] Eberron also introduced a new non-player character class known as the magewright, which is an arcane caster who has a limited selection of low-level spells.

Eberron utilized traditional Dungeons & Dragons races but gave them entirely localized lore, history and national ties.

In contrast to that house, the elves of the new nation of Valenar are seen as land thieves and a threat to the peace established by the Treaty of Thronehold".

[49] Gabrielle Lissauer, in The Tropes of Fantasy Fiction, highlighted that the Eberron campaign setting subverts the classical racial presentation of orcs as savages.

[54][56][49] The kalashtar are a race of psionic people; they are the descendants of a group of human monks from Adar, a nation on the continent of Sarlona, who allowed themselves to be possessed by the planar entities known as the Quori.

With the Inspired (voluntary or otherwise) the quori is an active presence that controls a single body at a time, and it fully dominates the host".

[58] Glenn Carreau, for GameRant, highlighted the roleplaying potential of kalashtar player characters: "While separate from most of Khorvaire's drama, Sarlona has plenty of its own: kalashtar are a hunted race, shuttered into their monastic country of Adar and constantly besieged by their Inspired enemies in the neighboring nation of Riedra.

She wrote that "Eberron changed several ideas that were considered fundamental to the concept of Dungeons and Dragons for the past thirty years, both mechanically and in the flavor of the worlds.

Lissauer highlighted that alignment was no longer clear cut and that the players were "unable to use their meta-knowledge of years of playing Dungeons and Dragons in other settings to judge who is friend and who is foe".

[50] Geek & Sundry wrote: "Winner of Wizards of the Coast's Fantasy Setting Search contest in 2002, Eberron marries magic with steampunk's technology, offering a world of elemental-powered airships, industrial nobility, and arcane tinkerers.

[...] I dig the playable Warforged race, which puts you in the mind of a soldier drone seeking purpose (although their explicit maleness serves a pedantic point).

[...] The best thing bout the setting, however, may be that it simply takes the classic D&D tropes like dragons and elves and mixes them up in a new and interesting way".

[61] On the release of the 5th Edition Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, Richard Jansen-Parkes, for the UK print magazine Tabletop Gaming, wrote: "Originally created by Gloom designer Keith Baker for a competition some 16 years ago, Eberron is a wonderful example of how to take the standard fantasy setting and twist it into something fresh.

While many of the standard fantasy tropes are still accounted for – there are still dragons to battle and dungeons to delve – there is a deliberate effort to shift away from Tolkien rip-offs and instead start ripping off everything from Jurassic Park to Casablanca.

[...] The entire setting is packed with magical gadgets and gizmos, but at the same time it manages to feel a little more down-to-earth and dirtier than the Forgotten Realms [...].

Where more traditional worlds have played host to battles between good and evil on a vast scale, Eberron is gripped in a cold war where there is very little black-and-white morality to spare".