Eberron: Explorer's Handbook

Eberron (D&D 3.5 manuals) #4

by David Noonan, Frank Brunner, Rich Burlew

The ultimate sourcebook for players wishing to explore the world of Eberron.

The Explorer’s Handbook showcases the multi-continental aspect of the Eberron setting. The chapter on travel discusses instantaneous and played out travel and provides deck plans for airships, the lightning rail, and galleons, plus other methods of conveyance. A chapter on Explorer’s Essentials offers information on travel papers, preassembled equipment kits, how to join the Wayfarers’ Foundation, and more. This handbook encourages players to explore the entire world rather than
remain fixed in one region.

DAVID NOONAN is an RPG designer/developer at Wizards of the Coast, Inc. Recent credits include authoring Complete Divine ™ and co-authoring
Races of Stone ™ and Unearthed Arcana ™.

RICH BURLEW is a freelance writer whose previous design credits include
Monster Manual ™ III . He was also one of the three finalists in Wizards of the
Coast, Inc.’s new campaign setting search in 2002.

FRANK BRUNNER has been working in the game industry for four years and
has written several articles for Dragon ® Magazine and Dungeon ® magazine.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Gaming, Dungeons and Dragons, Fantasy

160 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2005

About the author

David Noonan is an Australian artist known for his distinctive collage-based practice that merges found imagery with screen-printing, painting, and textile work to explore themes of performance, ritual, and the theatrical. Born in Ballarat, Victoria in 1969, Noonan studied fine art at Ballarat University College and later earned his MFA from the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne. He relocated to London, where he currently lives and works.
Noonan's work has been widely exhibited internationally, with solo shows at leading institutions including the Tate Modern in London, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Chisenhale Gallery, and the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis. His haunting, monochromatic pieces often draw from archival sources such as stage productions, avant-garde film, and folk traditions, lending his art an enigmatic and timeless quality.
In 2020, he was featured in the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, and his exhibition Stagecraft at the Art Gallery of Ballarat reflected his long-standing interest in performance and transformation. His work is held in major public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate, the Guggenheim, the National Gallery of Australia, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Reviews

[Daniel A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the time I first discovered it as a setting for Dungeons & Dragons, Eberron has been a favorite universe in which to run games. In part, particularly in recent months, this is because Eberron very specifically plays fast and loose with the traditional tropes of fantasy roleplaying games in general and D&D in particular, but there's also the quasi-steampunky aspect of Eberron. Trains and airships, in the forms of the lightning rail and elemental galleons, figure prominently, and low-level magic substitutes for everyday technology throughout the world of Eberron, right down to the literary tropes that Eberron draws from. As such, Eberron: Explorer's Handbook is probably one of the best Eberron supplements Wizards of the Coast published for edition 3.5, the edition of D&D for which Eberron was originally created, and it shows; there's something throughout this book, whether discussing basic features of transportation or locations to which to travel, for every Dungeon Master to adapt for their campaign, and I don't say that lightly. Yes, there's always the potential barrier, now that Eberron: Rising from the Last War has "imported" the setting into the superior 5th edition, of figuring out the exact mechanics of porting the game features in Explorer's Handbook, but I honestly believe that what's presented in Explorer's Handbook largely transcends the particular translation of mechanics, if only because location-based adventures are a bit easier to adapt for 5th edition, as Tales from the Yawning Portal amply demonstrates.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stuff I Read D&D Edition – Explorer’s Handbook

Yes, another Eberron supplement, this one dealing with the fine art of exploring. Which means that a large portion of the book is taken up by transportation, which I find interesting, at least. Especially because with Eberron there are airships, and airships are just plain awesome. I mean, really. And the book goes more into depth on how they work, and how one interacts with the bound elementals on board, and complicates the original ideas introduced into the Eberron Campaign Setting. It also goes through the lightning rails, sailing ships, and other various modes of transport and help to give Eberron its unique tone and feel. These are magicks that are powerful and much more steampunk than other, more traditional settings, but it does offer many of the traditional motifs and with this book I can see how Eberron can be used as just another setting for high adventure, with exploration and more clichéd campaigns and adventures. The book, after all, revolves around adventurers and explorers, and as such it can be easily applied to the more traditional thinking of D&D.

That said, it also offers a great deal that can enhance the Eberron setting, and fleshing out airships and lightning rails is a nice touch especially when taking an Eberron campaign on the road. This book offers a great deal of information on how traveling throughout Khorvaire and also travel to the other continents works. And in doing so it also provides groups and organizations that are most involved in these activities. Which again, gives a great amount of depth on top of the information in the Eberron Campaign Setting, and gives DMs more of a basis of how things work and distance and scale and the more acute mechanics of the setting. Knowing the tensions between different exploring organizations as well as having the magic involved with airships explains means that DMs can use that information to create their own ideas and make them fit seamlessly into the existing system.

Beyond transportation, the main bulk of the book deals with various locations. Unlike the Secrets of Xen’drik supplement, these are not simply locations that might exist but locations that do exist, actual exploring destinations and places that exist in the fabric of Eberron, populated by monsters and NPCs and covering a wide range of places. The starting points are located within the confines of civilization, while the midpoints and destinations take the DM and by extension, any campaign utilizing them, farther away from familiar places and into the wild, untamed areas of the world. These represent a good assortment of locations, running from Xen’drik to Argonessen to Sarlona and beyond, and gives a good taste of what might be found there. For a sampling, this book is great at giving the DM lots of information about all of the different locations of Eberron.

Of course, the problem becomes that as a single book it is forced to cover a lot of ground and does not get to go into a great deal of detail. It contains that range, but the other Eberron supplements provide more in depth ideas and resources. For a general guide to exploring and reaching the lesser known areas, the Handbook is good, especially with more of the front matter in the mechanics of travel. The back material of ideas and locations is also very useful, but does not provide the depth that other supplements can. As such, I give this supplement a 7.5/10.