How A Video Game Wasted The Best D&D Setting | Dragonshard
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- Опубліковано 24 вер 2024
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Dragonshard is a 2005 Dungeons & Dragons RTS based on the newly released Eberron setting. The setting of magical industry and the apocalyptic Last War are uniquely well suited out of all D&D to be turned into a strategy game.
The result was wildly experimental, blending together RTS and dungeon crawling gameplay in a fascinating way.
Unfortunately, those experiments mostly didn't work, and the game largely wastes Eberron as a setting.
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Fun fact!
The first Eberron setting book came with it's own soundtrack CD, which is still used to this day in D&D-produced media (such as their UA-cam and Twitch channels)
The Sharn: City of Towers soundtrack is full of certified bops.💃
The best in DND 2e Planescape the CD Accessory who mimique as a mimir "a metallic skull" who serve as tourist office of the plane ^^
I'm surprised WotC kept doing the CD thing, after all those boxed sets from 2nd ed contributed to TSR's insolvency (more expensive to produce, didn't make its money back).
Then again, this was the early 2000s, when the finer points of TSR's self-inflicted "Death By A Thousand Cuts" wasn't known by anyone outside Lorraine Williams and other TSR management of the time. (For more information, read Ben Riggs's "Slaying the Dragon").
Listing this soundtrack every day.
Blood and Magic shaking hands with Dragonshard.
DnD RTS games that has fuck all to do with DnD.
Memes are a wild form of communication.
I almost want to say that Blood & Magic's bizarre exponential golem economy feels more like Eberron than this does.
Damn, I always thought D&D was kind of an uninteresting setting, turns out they were just hiding all the cool stuff and lore in Eberron and nobody bothered to tell me!
Great video as always Will, and I super appreciate the shoutout!
I completely know the feeling. Before stumbling across this channel, I always thought there was the base setting where nothing happened, and the Forgotten Realms, something everyone remembers and where everything happens.
Forgotten Realms was so aggressively boring looking in from outside, and the only reason I believed a normal setting existed because the FG had to get its name somehow. Colour me surprised when there’s tons of neat games in so many cool and fascinating settings. I’m even making my own Dark Sun thing because I love its themes.
You’re going to loose your mind at dark sun and spacejammer then
To be honest, reRashemend&d has cool things too. The problem is that 99% of the time we only see the Sword Coast, the dullest part of the world because it's so overdone.
Rashemen is a really cool setting, for example, and it hasn't been used since a videogame in 2007
forgotten realms: witches guarding ancient evangelions that could destroy the worlds, space pirates riding dragons, time traveling squid faced brain eaters, renaissance capital city on the verge of an industrial and magical revolution, twin cities of intrigue in the desert run by assassin kings who are all just puppets for a pair of mad genies running their cities from the shadows like a video game, magical new york city under a glacier holding their socialist utopia against physical manifestations of chaos, but yeah pretty boring setting with nothing going on @@houraisheperd9721
The big issue is that none of the settings really have any meaningful impact on play outside of older editions of Ravenloft. There's tons of cool lore in Forgotten Realms but character creation and game play aren't really changed in any meaningful way in FR. Where other games built around their settings have some of the settings themes or specific workings of it into the mechanics as well. The Aliens rpg for example has robust stealth mechanics and a stress mechanic so your character can start yelling "Game over Man." When things look doomed
PLEASE LET THEM BE ITALIAN
Look, the lizardfolk have a craving for garlic and I don't blame them!
🤌😞🤌
This implies that Italy, or at least Italian food exists in Eberron. Interesting piece of lore.
I got a little to excited with the Hearts of Iron 4 theme, recapping the horrors of The Last War....
Who gets to be Ethiopia?
This is my favorite setting in D&D. It just has amazing lore in my mind. Halflings riding dinos, orcs are more spiritual, and elves are the crazed and bloodthirsty warriors, the warforged, the shifters, the cool khalashtar and their stando powah, the dragonmarks. Just insanely good.
23:50 It turns out the Lizardfolk were born out of the heat of Hell's Kitchen, with Gordon Ramsay calling their elders Idiot Sandwiches until their civilization started functioning
There is something special about these videos that you produce William. I speak only for myself but there's a certain "wholesomeness" to them. A blend of quality, humor and informative. 5 min into the video and I knew that I needed to know more about Eberron so I ordered some Eberron novels online for some reading! Your videos are really making me get into DnD and I thank you for it! Keep going! It always brings a smile to see that you uploaded a new video! :D
The very first DnD video game I ever played, after getting into DnD and knowing it was a DnD game. Also my introduction to Ederron.
Eberron is such a good setting, Keith Baker the settings creator consistently releases new details on it
It's an absolute travesty that it's wasted on WotC, though.
@@clanpsi And the deal being an upfront lump sum rather than residuals. But they do at least let Keith sell stuff on the DM's Guild which is cool.
@@clanpsi While true, the fact that Eberron Rising from the Last War is one of the best 5e books says something I think.
Eberron was so successful, they quickly had to release Faerun books to save 3rd edition.
Every video you release further radicalizes me against Forgotten Realms.
It's a shame that you don't plan to cover DDO. Despite being an MMO, it's one of the most true to D&D video games I've ever played and does almost 1 to 1 conversions of actual modules into a video game remarkably well. Really underrated game, wish more people would check it out.
It helps that Eberron is a fucking cool setting.
It really isn't the most true to DnD
@@richardhicks5031 Temple of Elemental Evil and DDO are the two closest games to the tabletops. Everything else takes massive liberties with how rules work.
Solasta doesnt count it's not official.
@@Y00bi DDO is far from close. Temple of Elemental Evil is the closest 3.5 game, Baldur's Gate 3 (and Solasta) for the 5e, bonus points for both being turn-based. Neverwinter Nights (1 and 2) are both closer to tabletop than DDO for 3e (and 3.5, respectively) and it's also turn-based under the hood, Baldur's Gate (and Icewind Dale) was pretty close for 2e (with the provisions for being RTwP), Icewind Dale 2 was in a weird position.
DDO is closer than the Neverwinter MMO, which isn't much of an achievement, and Demon Stone didn't even try to pretend to be D&D base beyond using the setting, so there's that. Can't speak for anything not mentioned.
@@JackPhoenixCz definitely closer than I think any other MMO would be comfortable getting, I think.
@@tallymanz6756 That's not saying much.
Always love the lore dumps in your videos! Fun to learn about the worlds of the games you cover. I think it helps give your channel it's "voice" as it were.
Dd&D Online is an excellent game. You can play it mostly as single player. Do not skip on this experience. It is well worth your time.
It's odd game because it's really good game but also it's micro transaction hell , so play at own discretion
I love Order of the Stick. Been reading that comic for over a decade.
Fun fact! Keith Baker cameos in Order of the Stick prequel book Start of Darkness!
Thanks for this.
Played it when I was a kid and couldn't remember its name.
If you ever branch out to covering non tabletop inspired games, I would love to see a video on Spellforce. Dragonshard looks really similar to it
I'm glad you used this chance to do an overview of Eberron, it remains one of my favorite DnD settings, and as talked about in the video the game doesn't really do a good job using said setting. I do remember having fun playing it back in the day, despite the admitted jank. I recall DnD Online uses Eberron a bit better for its story but then it also started having interdimensional adventures in other more popular settings like Forgotten Realms.
I love this channel so much. I've been on a massive Eberron craze lately, writing a bunch of stuff for an upcoming campaing I'll be DMing, so the timing of this upload was impeccable.
Mentioning Order of the Stick there unlocked a core memory from my teenage years. I loved OotS back in high school. I actually failed my Macromedia Publishing class because I spent the entire semester on the computer reading webcomics instead of doing my work. I had forgotten all about that until just now.
Whoa! I had no idea of the connection between Rich Burlew and Eberron!
I've been playing the Eberron MMO for almost fifteen years now. It has some incredible story elements such as the Lord of Blades of Erandis Vol
Oh man, I'm not going to watch it now but save it for lunch break tomorrow. @WilliamSRD you make great videos!
Fun fact: Dragonshard was meant to have a fourth faction in form of Daelkyr, the aberration masters of the plane of Xoriat and antagonists to Umbragen. Some of those scrapped ideas have made it to tabletop D&D, like the runehound creature.
Also, an idea has been suggested for the lizardfolk guys that they are literally born out of huge lizards, which are magical creation of dragons.
Ddo is genuinely an amazing game. I haven’t played it in years but if you love 3rd edition it’s the best game based around it. Character building is insanely deep and you can do some really busted builds. I recommend trying it out around December when they give away all the dlc and sell all expansions other than the newest two for one dollar each.
I enjoyed it, and I don't play mmo''s.
I made a fighter for high solo viability and put maybe 50 hours into it before I moved on.
That says a LOT about its enjoyability
Random video idea that could be fun if you want to return to Warhammer could be Warhammer Fantasy: Mark of Chaos. It was a fun but janky as hell Warhammer RTS.
Imagine him covering the Grudgebringer duology.
@@nikoladedic6623 Those games are nostalgic as hell but bring a whole new meaning to the word jank.
I actually like the atmosphere and narrative aspect of mark of chaos a lot more than total war!
@@warp_machine9141 Oh yeah the games atmosphere suited Warhammer Fantasy perfectly. I just wish you could chose between all 4 gods in the chaos story mode. I like Khorne the best but come on.
7:45 - _Forgotten Realms_ is like a Black Hole. Imagine all settings to be planets in a star system just doing it's own thing, then suddenly the black hole FR floats too close and starts sucking up stuff from other settings to itself. I have... a bit of pure *HATE* for FR.. It's become a sentient evil diety that we must gather heroes to defeat.
Oof you had to stick that obsidian dagger inn with that dark sun comment
I do kind of dig the Topside: Squad / Dungeon: Party dynamic as a mechanic that can make different units valuable in different ways, as well as incentivize different play styles. And it really should be different between fielding whole units versus specialist teams into the dungeons.
I suppose my idea for a fix would be making the surface world function more in a stance/formation system. A set and forget toggle that is more about telling your troops what their power rotation should look like (as well as maybe some AI behavior). So if you set your Mages to Assault, they'll prioritize throwing fireballs and lightning bolts. But if you set them to Fortify, they'll pull out Wall and Buff effects, that sort of thing. So when you're doing your topside fights, you're more focused on strategy level combat, having your units where they'll do the most good, giving them orders, and then just standing back. You would only have to intervene when you plan some kind of change in the engagement. They bring in air troops, you shift your archers from entangling shots to sniper fire to take them out.
Hey William another great video. As this is about Ebberon I wanted to ask if you ever heard about the (originaly DnD setting) Iron Kingdoms? It even once heard its campaign world came in second at the contest that Ebberon won. The Iron Kingdoms is like a machine meets magic setting with lots of Victorian era steampunk, intrigue and gritt. It also has semi sentient robots called Steam jacks. Oh and after they finished their own DnD campaign setting they used it as a basis for a small tabletop wargame called "Warmachine" and later "Hordes"! 😅
As someone currently playing through Dungeons & Dragons Online, the first part of this video is a very useful primer for the setting of Eberron.
True fact. I got this game way back when gog ran a bundle deal. I like it. No more than like, though. Big fan of lizardmen.
Also the soundtrack was part of my snooze list for a long while.
I feel regarding the story is that the developers wanted the brand recognition for their game while also not wanting to set their game fully within the Eberron setting which hurts the game in two ways especially the Order campaign. Without context they are a very standard type of holy faction invading a different nation to fend off a nebulous evil without much room for worldbuilding and expansion for their lore because they are in a different continent from their base of operations and while they could act as the player character type faction due to banter between heroes the writing isn't there to pull it off. With context they seem really naive and arguably at odds with the tone one of the major factions of the setting should have which hurts the presentation for me.
Lizardmen fair much better just because they are allowed to have world building regarding their culture and their relation with each other and just have stronger writing in general in my opinion. The fact that they are being invaded also makes the Order come of as more morally grey than I feel like the writing wants them to.
The Drow don't have much cutscene presence or a campaign so they kinda feel like generic evil army for the most part. All in all I don't feel like this is a good introduction to the setting because it feels like the developers are doing what they can do divorce their game from it.
morally grey..? I'd say the order comes across as more morally evil than anything, both the Drow and Lizardfolk have way more justifiable reasons for being there.
@@lenkagamine4145 iirc the game does mention they need the heart to fight some vague evil from their homeland which makes them come off more grey morally. I get your point though.
Czepeku is amazing. I've been all in on Alchemy RPG for my VTT of choice, and Cze and Peku have forged a beautiful partnership with that program.
I remember playing the demo of this from an old PC Gamer CD or something, the bit where you go into the mines - interesting to see the whole thing. Thanks for another great vid!
I was so hype for Eberron when it came out and never got a chance to run a campaign in it during its heyday 😢. Thanks for giving some context on background of this game. Sadly, both Eberron games are set in Xen’drik. I always wanted to see a video game depiction of Sharn. I watched the Josh Strife Hayes video where he played the MMO which is still supported and he had a surprisingly good time. Thanks for making this video!
One of the things about Drow in Eberron is that they didn't typically live underground, often just living in the jungles, or in isolated valleys which were harder for the giants to attack them in.
Eberron is such a wonderful setting, it's probably my favorite after Ravenloft and Dark Sun is probably tied with it, lol.
Babe wake up, New William SRD just dropped!
Soooo.... the other big example of Eberron in digital format would be Dungeons and Dragons Online, which is wildly enough an MMO from 2006 that is STILL RUNNING.
Just curious if we might be seeing some of that in the future?
Whenever I play/watch this game I just can't get over how the voice for the Rogue hero is the voice actor for Travis Touchdown and he's literally just doing the Travis Touchdown voice the whole time.
I love the fact that the history WotC’s search for a campaign setting is included in 2004 Eberron book. Glad to see it here with the shout out to Rich Burlew!
11:48 Keith himself said he'd never settle on a canon version for the Mourning and several other things.
Ok.... Now you need to cover Rock Raiders and Manic Miners
I already have :laser eyes:
@@WilliamSRD but have you reviewed manic miners since it released version 1.0?
Eberron screams potential early 2000s animated kids movie ala treasure planet & atlantis.
Which is why I do so many goofy accents as a DM for Eberron games.
That sounds WAY too sanitized for Eberron
Thanks for video, Will! Always glad when someone goes through the trouble of playing a bad game and telling me about. I honestly appreciate it! Much respect, and Please Come to Brazil.
The Hearts of Iron music during the Last War documentary cracked me up.
Wow, how has magical World War One not been turned into a sick ass game?
I was not expecting Eberron to have a videogame and much less an RTS. It's a shame we cannot have a more complete game, knowing there are so many interesting factions to see in action.
It actually has similarity to Armies of Exigo that came out a year earlier and featured the same double map approach to the battlefield with attempts to change terrain a little to open more passages as well as create artificial ones. While the city part resembles Kohan II.
Additionaly, soldiers aren't entirely gone in the Dungeon - they buff their captain's hp by 10% per soldier alive, so each time your party of captains enter the dungeon they start wounded and have to rest.
I believe that Dungeon Exploration might have been done better if there was a separate from army party limit to it rather than plain special units as heroes.
There is also a Long Rest mechanic that allows the entirety of your army to chill in a dungeon rather than their city to boost regeneration of hp/energy and that feels odd. Especially so when the town has a building that is literally called "tavern" and does nothing in that department.
This rest option saves time on the missions when your army is stranded, but those aren't many.
Not setting the Eberron RTS during the Last War is a massive missed opportunity.
The ebbaron mmo is actually notable and interesting, but like many mmos it’s not spoken about that much.
A comment for the algo
Thanks for the video on this, ive been always interested in the game but i never quite got around to trying it out, same for Learning about the Eberron setting especially since ive had quite a few charachters so far that were artificers.
I really like the idea of the soldier squads turning into individual units in the dungeons, and i kind of get why they didnt limit it, you have a force and it would feel irrational not to use it and given the story setup here the idea of a army marching to loot the land of its treasure , yea i can definetly see more then a few reasons why the troops would be allowed down there. Could have maybe excused it with just allowing 1 troop per hero as a sort of escort potentially also so your never the most overwhelming force with a total of up to 4 with upgrades.
Also if you want a idea of how you could have potentially intergrated Ebberon a little bit more mechanically into the game, look at something like AoE III where you can get care packages and upgrades or troops from the homelands as you go from Era to Era.
I honestly thought Eberron had been largely abandoned by now since they haven't released a hundred campaign books for it.
They won't because FR is their lovechild setting.
Hell yes, you brightened my day
I have nothing but good memories of this game
To be fair to the developers, all this lore is from Keith Baker's blog and didn't exist at the time, but Eberron Lizardfolk are WAY more interesting than they are in Dragonshard. Basically, they were created to protect the prison of an ancient demon lord, and they all have a shared dream which gives them instructions on how to do that. They also assume that this shared dream is something everyone experiences - so when some softskin comes wandering into the woods and starts disrupting ancient ley lines and shit by picking the valuable gems from the walls, they assume this means that he's been corrupted by said ancient demon lord and needs to be killed fucking yesterday
the critiques are fair, but at the same time, the devs and this game did a fantastic job with what they had. They tried to tell their own story (while still operating under the shadow of warcraft 3 like nearly every other rts dev at the time), and i still remember it to this day, i havnt played this game in over 19 years, and i can STILL remember my starts for dungeon carving and unit compositions, every single unit was so memorable
this game was and is fantastic imho, they hit it out of the park, and they may not have been wearing the "ebberon t-shirt" when they did it, but they still hit it out of the park none the less imho
My friend's uncle was one of the people who entered the contest and didn't read the rules. It was a 10-page document that more or less amounted to generic european fantasy that definitely wouldn't have made it past a few minutes of reading anyway, but he still held a grudge against Eberron and refused to play it cause he felt "cheated" by it.
Love your content so much! Keep doing what you do! Id watch way longer content from you too
This looks highkey sick as hell, maybe they'll do a remake or something some day.
I remember wasting whole weekends playing the demo, never could find the actual game on store shelves.
Good Video Wiliam a good Start for a New Year.
Huh, I wasn't expecting to see an Order or the Stick reference. Neat!
You have to wonder why the non-captain units were selectable, it feels like that would help them bridge better between adventure dungeon and skirmishes if you still only needed to control captains.
Can we please get a Paradox style grand strategy in Eberron?
I went on a desperate search to see if anyone had modded Eberron into any of the PDX games... no dice, sadly
Closest thing is the Anbennar mod for EU4
Which I play RELIGIOUSLY.
Will end up making a video about it someday
@@andrewnewell1142
I really liked Dragonshard, the dungeon mechanic was pretty fun. Also love OOTS, knew that name when you said it !
If you liked Basil Poledouris soundtrack for Conan, you would love soundtrack of this game.
I thought I was going crazy when I started hearing Hearts of Iron menu music, had to minimize to make sure it wasn't running in the background.
Bottom of the screen being cut off when using Dragonshard menu as backdrop bothers me more than I expected. It feels so terrible
Why do I get the feeling Lady Marrin was originally wearing heavy armor, and a lonely programmer forgot to change her model back after a lonely night?
Desperate Housewives as an RTS would be an interesting game.
I thought that Order Of The Stick had been going for a few years before Burlew's entry into the setting contest.
A video on Birthright: the Gorgon's Alliance would be pretty interesting!
You can stream on both Twitch & UA-cam at the same rime now. Worth it.
The Forgotten Realms actually came out with a prestige class, called the Techsmith, that was basically an Artificer 2 years before the Artificer was first published.
Thank you for the insight. Do they pervade the setting in a way that defines trade and, by proxy, permeates the rest of the politics of the setting?
@@TorchesUponStars Yes and no. Their inventions have revolutionized the Realms, but this spurred a massive and organized repression of access to their technology for powers who don't subscribe to the ideals of the port cities who initially import their inventions. Said ports heavily regulate these technologies in an attempt to prevent them from falling into the hands of evil/nefarious groups - this hasn't been 100% effective, but it has limited supplies of that tech to those who would abuse it, and also made it harder to reverse-engineer.
The semi-secret society known as the Harpers also works to prevent the inventions of the Techsmiths from becoming widespread, separate from the governments of those port settlements.
32:44 - Sin is boring? Some sins are actually pretty fun, mate.
Oh man, I should try to see if I can find information on the other setting contest finalists some time
They are sadly lost to time, even Rich Burlew's. WOTC owns the rights to them and never released the contents. It's possible that the good bits were scavenged in other works of D&D over the years though!
I certainly believe that this is the first ever real time strategy game to be based on dungeons and dragons.
since we are prolly never gonna get another game video for ebberon, do you think you can do a video just talking about the setting? if it werent for your videos on the dark sun games i dont think i ever would have been interested in that setting, and i was hoping you could do the same for ebberon. (partially so i can get my friends into the setting ;) )
I know it’s not video games, but if you just did videos on RPG lore I’d watch them!
I need contemporary maps for my next RPGs...someone know where I can find/buy some ?
And yes i watch the video ^^
Most Fantasy RTS games looked that way. Since I haven't played Warcraft in ages, it mostly reminded me of Spellforce.
I'll be watching the boltgun episode on your friends' channel next!
The pain you put yourself through playing these games... 😇
Hey now I Recognize the Hoi4 music, you are totally right. And I knew this looked like Battle Realms now it makes sense. That game was so good.
I've never enjoyed Eberron as a setting, but I've greatly enjoyed both Eberron video games. I have very fond memories of Dragonshard!
What is the patreon goal for William to learn Swedish so he can make video on Drakar och Demoner Själarnas Brunn?
(The Swedish voice of Batman plays a duck-man, how can you say no?"
rereading my copy of order of the stick: start of darkness, and am at the part where Xykon gets third in a contest (where one of the other contestants is Keith Baker.) so it's a pretty meta moment.
Kingdom Under Fire had a bit of dungeon crawl thing.
You had above ground RTS between 2 factions. Each with their own story and heroes. (And side characters that could live or unalive, affecting the story)
And then some levels swaps to a diablo style dungeon crawl where you can find equipment and stuff.
Eberron is arguably the best fantasy setting ever created. It's an absolute tragedy what Wizards has done with it; a complete and utter waste.
Honestly it should become the default setting since it is very kitchen sink in design. That way Greyhawlk, FR, Dragonlance ect can be left alone & have their lore & races as is. It's not like you can't insert the races from those into Eberron - It's the entire point of having an open setting!
The idea of Kenneth Copeland having a private military is terrifying. Why would you put that thought into my head?
IKR!
Man product support is one thing but I could not make it past the seemingly unending battle maps promo at the beginning
I have that on steam. Unfortunately my computer died before I was able to finish it. I would love to play it again it’s been six years but it is on my steam account and I did play this gem
Fuck yes, this was one of my first games. Never met anyone who has played it tho
Dragonshard? More like Dragonshart!
That was quite funny, now, wasn't it?
Oh, damn, I remember playing this. it was a really weird game, but I have good memories of it.
Game is very aeesome, units details, music, idea with dungeon that don't have in another's rts.
We need to bring Dark Sun back!