Then the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide lied then, because it literally said that there is no information about what is out there beyond the Trackless Sea.
Not going to say I know what exactly is past the Trackless sea...but...
I think Maztica was among those unknown lands mentioned in the SCAG, yeah. Which is funny too, because we are literally told that the tabaxi come from there in Tomb of Annihilation.
I think Maztica was among those unknown lands mentioned in the SCAG, yeah. Which is funny too, because we are literally told that the tabaxi come from there in Tomb of Annihilation.
In the old books Tabaxi came from there, I don't think they were intended as PC's not too sure never played those adventures. I was aware of them though.
I think Maztica was among those unknown lands mentioned in the SCAG, yeah. Which is funny too, because we are literally told that the tabaxi come from there in Tomb of Annihilation.
In the old books Tabaxi came from there, I don't think they were intended as PC's not too sure never played those adventures. I was aware of them though.
The tabaxi in Tomb of Annihilation were NPCs.
All that being said, I understand that the setting is not well-liked in many circles for various reasons, whether it be the size, the amount of content, the problematic aspects of it, or the constantly changing lore. As I said, I also didn't like it for those reasons, but it kinda grew on me recently.
Unless you've been following the game nonstop since Red Box?
You're not playing in "The Forgotten Realms".
You're playing in "The Misremembered Realms".
And anybody who's played in 'The Forgotten Realms' will never allow you to run a successful game in the Misremembered Realms. Every time you say anything, that person is gonna say "but you forgot about...", until you throw them off a roof in a seething fury.
I tried to run Saltmarsh, back when it was new. They sold me on a rollicking high seas ghost pirate adventure, pre-release. What I got was lizard politics in a crap-ass swamp, uppity fishmen, a bunch of assumptions that I knew Greyhawk world lore by heart and could supply the geopolitical backdrop of the area to fuel all their barely-coherent story hooks, and precisely zero involvement of ghosts, pirates, or ghost pirates.
F@#$ that book and everything in it.
This is exactly the reason I have opened Ghosts of Saltmarsh once and then put it on my shelf. Then WizKids had the audacity to try and sell me miniature sets for this thing...
Wizkids actually does have some pretty cool miniatures, even if you don't like the product they're based on.
Unless you've been following the game nonstop since Red Box?
You're not playing in "The Forgotten Realms".
You're playing in "The Misremembered Realms".
And anybody who's played in 'The Forgotten Realms' will never allow you to run a successful game in the Misremembered Realms. Every time you say anything, that person is gonna say "but you forgot about...", until you throw them off a roof in a seething fury.
Depends on the players, most people wouldn't do that, but there are a few people who would get angry over things like that. But overall, in all my numerous experiences of playing in FR, I've never ran into someone like that, so I don't think they're as common as you think.
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BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explainHERE.
I came across a Youtuber who had Saltmarsh, which "canonically" is in Greyhawk, be a location in the Forgotten Realms. And he explicitly stated that he doesn't care what anyone thinks of it. I also saw another who incorporated his own homebrew location into the setting, and even threw in the Ravnica guilds in addition to the standard Faerûn factions.
Unless you've been following the game nonstop since Red Box?
You're not playing in "The Forgotten Realms".
You're playing in "The Misremembered Realms".
And anybody who's played in 'The Forgotten Realms' will never allow you to run a successful game in the Misremembered Realms. Every time you say anything, that person is gonna say "but you forgot about...", until you throw them off a roof in a seething fury.
Depends on the players, most people wouldn't do that, but there are a few people who would get angry over things like that. But overall, in all my numerous experiences of playing in FR, I've never ran into someone like that, so I don't think they're as common as you think.
I have heard horror stories of that kind of player, so they certainly do exist. But they are not the only problematic player. But let me introduce you to their cousins: (a) I know everything about FR and am not a jerk about it, but just cannot help but metagame; (2) I’ve played Baldur’s Gate a LOT and I might not know anything about the rest of FR, but, dang it, I’ll force my video game knowledge into this!; (3) I played Baldur’s Gate once a decade ago and I’ll force my half remembered video game knowledge into this!; (4) we all know lots about FR and it would be fine, but we’re making the one other person feel bad with all our inside references; (5) “I am not going to argue with the DM and will defer to what the DM says, but that doesn’t mean I won’t ask ‘but what about X?’ at every opportunity; etc.
Not everyone is a jerk - but one does not have to be a jerk for something to be problematic. Metagaming, making some folks feel left out because they are not aware of lore, just constantly interrupting gameplay… there are a whole bunch of reasons why a default realm with decades of novels, video games, and sourcebooks are a problem.
The default should be contained entirely within the four corners of the core books - enough to function and build a world around, but forgo things like novels (and certainly not dozens of novels cranked out for quantity, rather than quality) or outside elements. Leave those to FR, Dragonlance, and other specific planes, so people who care about those worlds get lore, and everyone else can choose whether to opt into those particular quagmires.
Unless you've been following the game nonstop since Red Box?
You're not playing in "The Forgotten Realms".
You're playing in "The Misremembered Realms".
And anybody who's played in 'The Forgotten Realms' will never allow you to run a successful game in the Misremembered Realms. Every time you say anything, that person is gonna say "but you forgot about...", until you throw them off a roof in a seething fury.
Grey Hawk was the setting for the OG Red Box, and was the main setting for 1st edition, wasn't until the time Gygax left that they switched to Forgotten Realms, and even then that was the area with the most settings, and the most rules. Most of the Forgotten Realms lore came not from a rule book but from one of many novels written by Ed Greenwood and others.
The lore, has also changed more than once. And if you find a lore nerd at the table, tell them the History and lore of the setting is as it was in the 14th century on Earth, different peoples and cultures said different things about history, the world was made by jealous gods, and no two people believed the same history. And all your lore is worth as much as a peasants understanding of the world in the 14th century.
Eberron as a setting deliberately leaves a lot of things vague for a reason.
We don't have a whole lot of info on the Draconic Prophecy, or all of the thirty overlords (and there might be even more overlords than just thirty), or all of the daelkyr, or what the dragons of Argonessen are up to half the time. We aren't told what caused the lands of Cyre to become the Mournland. We aren't told much about the Sovereign Host and the Dark Six, including whether or not it's certain they even exist, or where they even are if they do. We don't know for certain what happens to souls of the dead after the plane of Dolurrh drains them entirely.
We know that the overlords can be released when a certain path in the Draconic Prophecy is taken, but we aren't told what path that is. Sul Khatesh, for example, could be released if a certain lich is killed and their phylactery destroyed by the party, because Sul Khatesh's rakshasa speaker (while in disguise as someone the party trusts) told the party that they need to absolutely kill that lich.
Eberron as a setting deliberately leaves a lot of things vague for a reason.
We don't have a whole lot of info on the Draconic Prophecy, or all of the thirty overlords (and there might be even more overlords than just thirty), or all of the daelkyr, or what the dragons of Argonessen are up to half the time. We aren't told what caused the lands of Cyre to become the Mournland. We aren't told much about the Sovereign Host and the Dark Six, including whether or not it's certain they even exist, or where they even are if they do. We don't know for certain what happens to souls of the dead after the plane of Dolurrh drains them entirely.
We know that the overlords can be released when a certain path in the Draconic Prophecy is taken, but we aren't told what path that is. Sul Khatesh, for example, could be released if a certain lich is killed and their phylactery destroyed by the party, because Sul Khatesh's rakshasa speaker (while in disguise as someone the party trusts) told the party that they need to absolutely kill that lich.
And this is one of the many reasons why Eberron is so awesome. It doesn't try to simulate a whole, realistic world, because that's impossible and actively harmful to new DMs. Instead, it tells you the main parts of the world you need to run it and tells you the stuff they don't know the answers to in order to empower DM imagination. It's not like the FR where every secret is answered and any player can go online and look up the answers at any time. It is literally impossible to find the "correct" answer to where the gods are (or even if they exist), or where Erandis Vol's phylactery is, or how to bring back the Dragonmark of Death, or where Il-Yannah is, or where the Lord of Blades came from, or if the Mournland was caused by Ravenloft (which it probably was, but that's not an official answer to the mystery).
The DM is given options for the answers to all of these questions and many more, but the DM probably won't use the written possible solutions, because customizing the world and finding their own solutions to the mysteries is much more interesting and personal than just using what's written in the book.
I could go on for hours about why Keith Baker is genius and how Eberron is probably the most well-designed D&D world in the history of the game, but that's neither here nor there. The point of this tangent is that Eberron does not answer its most interesting questions. It's like SCP, it gets you interested in the world and its many questions by refusing to answer them. The Forgotten Realms is objectively worse at having mysteries like this because it has an answer for basically every question you could have about the world (unless you want to know what Fantasy Australia is like). And this is also why it's harder to publish official adventures for Eberron, because you have to avoid giving canon answers to the most engaging parts of the world.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
One thing I have seen is edits are required to material if the underling system changes in a way so that written lore is no longer possible. In this case I think edits are good. Note I am not saying the system change has to be good but that to make things consistent they need to edit material.
Eberron as a setting deliberately leaves a lot of things vague for a reason.
We don't have a whole lot of info on the Draconic Prophecy, or all of the thirty overlords (and there might be even more overlords than just thirty), or all of the daelkyr, or what the dragons of Argonessen are up to half the time. We aren't told what caused the lands of Cyre to become the Mournland. We aren't told much about the Sovereign Host and the Dark Six, including whether or not it's certain they even exist, or where they even are if they do. We don't know for certain what happens to souls of the dead after the plane of Dolurrh drains them entirely.
We know that the overlords can be released when a certain path in the Draconic Prophecy is taken, but we aren't told what path that is. Sul Khatesh, for example, could be released if a certain lich is killed and their phylactery destroyed by the party, because Sul Khatesh's rakshasa speaker (while in disguise as someone the party trusts) told the party that they need to absolutely kill that lich.
And this is one of the many reasons why Eberron is so awesome. It doesn't try to simulate a whole, realistic world, because that's impossible and actively harmful to new DMs. Instead, it tells you the main parts of the world you need to run it and tells you the stuff they don't know the answers to in order to empower DM imagination. It's not like the FR where every secret is answered and any player can go online and look up the answers at any time. It is literally impossible to find the "correct" answer to where the gods are (or even if they exist), or where Erandis Vol's phylactery is, or how to bring back the Dragonmark of Death, or where Il-Yannah is, or where the Lord of Blades came from, or if the Mournland was caused by Ravenloft (which it probably was, but that's not an official answer to the mystery).
The DM is given options for the answers to all of these questions and many more, but the DM probably won't use the written possible solutions, because customizing the world and finding their own solutions to the mysteries is much more interesting and personal than just using what's written in the book.
I could go on for hours about why Keith Baker is genius and how Eberron is probably the most well-designed D&D world in the history of the game, but that's neither here nor there. The point of this tangent is that Eberron does not answer its most interesting questions. It's like SCP, it gets you interested in the world and its many questions by refusing to answer them. The Forgotten Realms is objectively worse at having mysteries like this because it has an answer for basically every question you could have about the world (unless you want to know what Fantasy Australia is like). And this is also why it's harder to publish official adventures for Eberron, because you have to avoid giving canon answers to the most engaging parts of the world.
This is pretty much what I was getting at, but with more detail.
I have stated on here in the past that I like Eberron as a setting and generally prefer it as a setting to FR.
Eberron as a setting deliberately leaves a lot of things vague for a reason.
While this is true, a lot of this is just a matter of scale: if you have a setting you've published 300 books about, you're going to have a bloated unmanageable mass, even if you started out with the best of intentions. I have other issues with the realms, such as the proliferation of ultra-powerful background characters (the fact that 5e pushed characters like Elminster and Khelben Blackstaff out of sight is a definite positive), but it's probably not possible to publish at the volume of D&D adventures, sourcebooks, and novels, without having a mess. The easiest fix would have been a more radical second sundering (on the scope of, say, Crisis on Infinite Earths) that completely reshaped the world (Those maps you have of the world? No longer valid).
The difference is that Eberron was designed from the start to have Big Mysteries that would never be given official answers so that GMs could make their own and you don't have situations like in Baldur's Gate 2 where the the player character can complain about why they're expected to save the world when there are powerhouse heroes like Elminster around.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Censoring the work of others is not a step toward Fascism,, it is a step toward authoritarianism which is why Communists censor much more than even the Fascists did.
The ironic part of all of this is Fascism, based on syndicalism, and communism all stem from the Utopian Socialist movements of the Jacobins in the French Revolution. Supposedly about Freedom for the people they end in genocide. The Jacobins ended with their own mass genocide with guillotines.
It's all a call to centralized authority where a select group of "Guardians" of "Plato's Republic" feel they have to censor and control everyone and put them in their places to have a better society. It is a good intention that lays down the asphalt for an eight-lane expressway to Hell!
This is the true danger of Plato's Republic. It is well reasoned and has very convincing arguments, but it has one major flaw which btw is scientifically disproven today. it is the idea that you can train people to be more moral and make ethical decisions. Studies have found that no amount of training in ethics of any form has ever seen a statistical drop in fraud, lying and other unethical behavior. The factory worker who never learned to read past the 3rd grade in school has as much possibility to be ethical as a lawyer with a PHD in ethics. Since, the very premise of Plato's Republic is that we should carefully train an elite group of people controlling how they learn from the age they first learn to speak to be the ethical rulers that we all need is wrong then this explains why Utopian Socialism movements which all start with Plato are also wrong!
Censoring the work of others is not a step toward Fascism,, it is a step toward authoritarianism which is why Communists censor much more than even the Fascists did.
The ironic part of all of this is Fascism, based on syndicalism, and communism all stem from the Utopian Socialist movements of the Jacobins in the French Revolution. Supposedly about Freedom for the people they end in genocide. The Jacobins ended with their own mass genocide with guillotines.
It's all a call to centralized authority where a select group of "Guardians" of "Plato's Republic" feel they have to censor and control everyone and put them in their places to have a better society. It is a good intention that lays down the asphalt for an eight-lane expressway to Hell!
This is the true danger of Plato's Republic. It is well reasoned and has very convincing arguments, but it has one major flaw which btw is scientifically disproven today. it is the idea that you can train people to be more moral and make ethical decisions. Studies have found that no amount of training in ethics of any form has ever seen a statistical drop in fraud, lying and other unethical behavior. The factory worker who never learned to read past the 3rd grade in school has as much possibility to be ethical as a lawyer with a PHD in ethics. Since, the very premise of Plato's Republic is that we should carefully train an elite group of people controlling how they learn from the age they first learn to speak to be the ethical rulers that we all need is wrong then this explains why Utopian Socialism movements which all start with Plato are also wrong!
I am genuinely curious - have you read Plato? Either you have not, or you read without understanding if you think Plato was convincing or trying to make any of the points you ascribe to him.
Plato’s arguments are intentionally bad - he uses language which mocks itself, makes arguments that contradict other arguments he makes, and constantly appeals to hyperbole for the sake of openly mocking the other individuals speaking with the Socrates of the Dialogues. By understanding who the Plato’s Socrates is speaking toward, you can easily discern Plato’s true intent - he is never trying to advocate for a specific philosophy, but rather is trying to disprove other philosophies common of his era.
The ”true danger of Plato’s Republic” is not something contained within its pages - it is the foolish weight given to words which are the 375 BC equivalent of internet trolling. Plato who was less concerned about saying their own opinions, but for joy out of showing that true human wisdom was accepting we are not as smart as we think we are, and that even heavily held beliefs could be easily shaken with a twist of words.
Let’s look specifically at the “guardians” you speak of, for example - Plato openly mocked them. Most translations describe these guardians as “noble dogs” who serve the ruler with absolute dedication, but that is not an accurate translation - it would be more accurate to translate as the far more insulting “noble puppies”. Plato writes off the idea of a dedicated “guardian” class as foolish and childish, showing a sense of contempt for the very philosophy folks nowadays ascribe to him.
The rest of your post shows similarly problematic understandings of historical philosophy, as well as makes assertions of “scientific finding” which are not accurate (there are studies showing that ethical training can produce tangible results).
And, to tie back into this thread, your questionable philosophy diatribe is rather irrelevant to the present situation—this is not a situation involving censorship of others, but a situation where someone censored themselves. As I said in my initial response to that post, that is self-expression, not fascism or authoritarianism (which, by the way, fascism is a subsection of authoritarianism, just as squares are a subsection of quadrilaterals).
Censoring the work of others is not a step toward Fascism,, it is a step toward authoritarianism which is why Communists censor much more than even the Fascists did.
The ironic part of all of this is Fascism, based on syndicalism, and communism all stem from the Utopian Socialist movements of the Jacobins in the French Revolution. Supposedly about Freedom for the people they end in genocide. The Jacobins ended with their own mass genocide with guillotines.
It's all a call to centralized authority where a select group of "Guardians" of "Plato's Republic" feel they have to censor and control everyone and put them in their places to have a better society. It is a good intention that lays down the asphalt for an eight-lane expressway to Hell!
This is the true danger of Plato's Republic. It is well reasoned and has very convincing arguments, but it has one major flaw which btw is scientifically disproven today. it is the idea that you can train people to be more moral and make ethical decisions. Studies have found that no amount of training in ethics of any form has ever seen a statistical drop in fraud, lying and other unethical behavior. The factory worker who never learned to read past the 3rd grade in school has as much possibility to be ethical as a lawyer with a PHD in ethics. Since, the very premise of Plato's Republic is that we should carefully train an elite group of people controlling how they learn from the age they first learn to speak to be the ethical rulers that we all need is wrong then this explains why Utopian Socialism movements which all start with Plato are also wrong!
I am genuinely curious - have you read Plato? Either you have not, or you read without understanding if you think Plato was convincing or trying to make any of the points you ascribe to him.
Plato’s arguments are intentionally bad - he uses language which mocks itself, makes arguments that contradict other arguments he makes, and constantly appeals to hyperbole for the sake of openly mocking the other individuals speaking with the Socrates of the Dialogues. By understanding who the Plato’s Socrates is speaking toward, you can easily discern Plato’s true intent - he is never trying to advocate for a specific philosophy, but rather is trying to disprove other philosophies common of his era.
The ”true danger of Plato’s Republic” is not something contained within its pages - it is the foolish weight given to words which are the 375 BC equivalent of internet trolling. Plato who was less concerned about saying their own opinions, but for joy out of showing that true human wisdom was accepting we are not as smart as we think we are, and that even heavily held beliefs could be easily shaken with a twist of words.
Let’s look specifically at the “guardians” you speak of, for example - Plato openly mocked them. Most translations describe these guardians as “noble dogs” who serve the ruler with absolute dedication, but that is not an accurate translation - it would be more accurate to translate as the far more insulting “noble puppies”. Plato writes off the idea of a dedicated “guardian” class as foolish and childish, showing a sense of contempt for the very philosophy folks nowadays ascribe to him.
The rest of your post shows similarly problematic understandings of historical philosophy, as well as makes assertions of “scientific finding” which are not accurate (there are studies showing that ethical training can produce tangible results).
And, to tie back into this thread, your questionable philosophy diatribe is rather irrelevant to the present situation—this is not a situation involving censorship of others, but a situation where someone censored themselves. As I said in my initial response to that post, that is self-expression, not fascism or authoritarianism (which, by the way, fascism is a subsection of authoritarianism, just as squares are a subsection of quadrilaterals).
Wow this thread just keeps going in weird directions. As someone who teaches philosophy, I'm curious on some citations on your interpretation and translations. For example, "he is never trying to advocate for a specific philosophy, but rather is trying to disprove other philosophies common of his era" is very true of Plato's Early Period, which is generally considered by most experts to be conveying the views of his teacher, Socrates. (Who's whole schtick was that no one really knows anything yet.) But by his Middle and Late Periods when he starts getting into the Theory of Forms, The Republic, and such, he is definitely moving past publishing Socrates' lecture notes and presenting his own specific theory as ideal and correct.
Also, anyone who thinks Plato's arguments are still "well reasoned and very convincing" has either not actually read Plato or has some extremely frightening views because quite a lot of that stuff is messed up by modern standards! ;) And somehow blurring it all together with communism and socialism shows a massive lack of understanding of those theories as well. Either way, you are right that the biggest problem is taking what Plato wrote millennia ago as serious and applicable to us now, especially concerning the topic of editing a single paragraph in a game book about flying boats through space! LOL!!
I think Maztica was among those unknown lands mentioned in the SCAG, yeah. Which is funny too, because we are literally told that the tabaxi come from there in Tomb of Annihilation.
In the old books Tabaxi came from there, I don't think they were intended as PC's not too sure never played those adventures. I was aware of them though.
The tabaxi in Tomb of Annihilation were NPCs.
All that being said, I understand that the setting is not well-liked in many circles for various reasons, whether it be the size, the amount of content, the problematic aspects of it, or the constantly changing lore. As I said, I also didn't like it for those reasons, but it kinda grew on me recently.
Put it this way.
Unless you've been following the game nonstop since Red Box?
You're not playing in "The Forgotten Realms".
You're playing in "The Misremembered Realms".
And anybody who's played in 'The Forgotten Realms' will never allow you to run a successful game in the Misremembered Realms. Every time you say anything, that person is gonna say "but you forgot about...", until you throw them off a roof in a seething fury.
Please do not contact or message me.
Wizkids actually does have some pretty cool miniatures, even if you don't like the product they're based on.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.Depends on the players, most people wouldn't do that, but there are a few people who would get angry over things like that. But overall, in all my numerous experiences of playing in FR, I've never ran into someone like that, so I don't think they're as common as you think.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.I came across a Youtuber who had Saltmarsh, which "canonically" is in Greyhawk, be a location in the Forgotten Realms. And he explicitly stated that he doesn't care what anyone thinks of it. I also saw another who incorporated his own homebrew location into the setting, and even threw in the Ravnica guilds in addition to the standard Faerûn factions.
I have heard horror stories of that kind of player, so they certainly do exist. But they are not the only problematic player. But let me introduce you to their cousins: (a) I know everything about FR and am not a jerk about it, but just cannot help but metagame; (2) I’ve played Baldur’s Gate a LOT and I might not know anything about the rest of FR, but, dang it, I’ll force my video game knowledge into this!; (3) I played Baldur’s Gate once a decade ago and I’ll force my half remembered video game knowledge into this!; (4) we all know lots about FR and it would be fine, but we’re making the one other person feel bad with all our inside references; (5) “I am not going to argue with the DM and will defer to what the DM says, but that doesn’t mean I won’t ask ‘but what about X?’ at every opportunity; etc.
Not everyone is a jerk - but one does not have to be a jerk for something to be problematic. Metagaming, making some folks feel left out because they are not aware of lore, just constantly interrupting gameplay… there are a whole bunch of reasons why a default realm with decades of novels, video games, and sourcebooks are a problem.
The default should be contained entirely within the four corners of the core books - enough to function and build a world around, but forgo things like novels (and certainly not dozens of novels cranked out for quantity, rather than quality) or outside elements. Leave those to FR, Dragonlance, and other specific planes, so people who care about those worlds get lore, and everyone else can choose whether to opt into those particular quagmires.
Grey Hawk was the setting for the OG Red Box, and was the main setting for 1st edition, wasn't until the time Gygax left that they switched to Forgotten Realms, and even then that was the area with the most settings, and the most rules. Most of the Forgotten Realms lore came not from a rule book but from one of many novels written by Ed Greenwood and others.
The lore, has also changed more than once. And if you find a lore nerd at the table, tell them the History and lore of the setting is as it was in the 14th century on Earth, different peoples and cultures said different things about history, the world was made by jealous gods, and no two people believed the same history. And all your lore is worth as much as a peasants understanding of the world in the 14th century.
Eberron as a setting deliberately leaves a lot of things vague for a reason.
We don't have a whole lot of info on the Draconic Prophecy, or all of the thirty overlords (and there might be even more overlords than just thirty), or all of the daelkyr, or what the dragons of Argonessen are up to half the time. We aren't told what caused the lands of Cyre to become the Mournland. We aren't told much about the Sovereign Host and the Dark Six, including whether or not it's certain they even exist, or where they even are if they do. We don't know for certain what happens to souls of the dead after the plane of Dolurrh drains them entirely.
We know that the overlords can be released when a certain path in the Draconic Prophecy is taken, but we aren't told what path that is. Sul Khatesh, for example, could be released if a certain lich is killed and their phylactery destroyed by the party, because Sul Khatesh's rakshasa speaker (while in disguise as someone the party trusts) told the party that they need to absolutely kill that lich.
And this is one of the many reasons why Eberron is so awesome. It doesn't try to simulate a whole, realistic world, because that's impossible and actively harmful to new DMs. Instead, it tells you the main parts of the world you need to run it and tells you the stuff they don't know the answers to in order to empower DM imagination. It's not like the FR where every secret is answered and any player can go online and look up the answers at any time. It is literally impossible to find the "correct" answer to where the gods are (or even if they exist), or where Erandis Vol's phylactery is, or how to bring back the Dragonmark of Death, or where Il-Yannah is, or where the Lord of Blades came from, or if the Mournland was caused by Ravenloft (which it probably was, but that's not an official answer to the mystery).
The DM is given options for the answers to all of these questions and many more, but the DM probably won't use the written possible solutions, because customizing the world and finding their own solutions to the mysteries is much more interesting and personal than just using what's written in the book.
I could go on for hours about why Keith Baker is genius and how Eberron is probably the most well-designed D&D world in the history of the game, but that's neither here nor there. The point of this tangent is that Eberron does not answer its most interesting questions. It's like SCP, it gets you interested in the world and its many questions by refusing to answer them. The Forgotten Realms is objectively worse at having mysteries like this because it has an answer for basically every question you could have about the world (unless you want to know what Fantasy Australia is like). And this is also why it's harder to publish official adventures for Eberron, because you have to avoid giving canon answers to the most engaging parts of the world.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
One thing I have seen is edits are required to material if the underling system changes in a way so that written lore is no longer possible. In this case I think edits are good. Note I am not saying the system change has to be good but that to make things consistent they need to edit material.
This is pretty much what I was getting at, but with more detail.
I have stated on here in the past that I like Eberron as a setting and generally prefer it as a setting to FR.
While this is true, a lot of this is just a matter of scale: if you have a setting you've published 300 books about, you're going to have a bloated unmanageable mass, even if you started out with the best of intentions. I have other issues with the realms, such as the proliferation of ultra-powerful background characters (the fact that 5e pushed characters like Elminster and Khelben Blackstaff out of sight is a definite positive), but it's probably not possible to publish at the volume of D&D adventures, sourcebooks, and novels, without having a mess. The easiest fix would have been a more radical second sundering (on the scope of, say, Crisis on Infinite Earths) that completely reshaped the world (Those maps you have of the world? No longer valid).
The difference is that Eberron was designed from the start to have Big Mysteries that would never be given official answers so that GMs could make their own and you don't have situations like in Baldur's Gate 2 where the the player character can complain about why they're expected to save the world when there are powerhouse heroes like Elminster around.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I am genuinely curious - have you read Plato? Either you have not, or you read without understanding if you think Plato was convincing or trying to make any of the points you ascribe to him.
Plato’s arguments are intentionally bad - he uses language which mocks itself, makes arguments that contradict other arguments he makes, and constantly appeals to hyperbole for the sake of openly mocking the other individuals speaking with the Socrates of the Dialogues. By understanding who the Plato’s Socrates is speaking toward, you can easily discern Plato’s true intent - he is never trying to advocate for a specific philosophy, but rather is trying to disprove other philosophies common of his era.
The ”true danger of Plato’s Republic” is not something contained within its pages - it is the foolish weight given to words which are the 375 BC equivalent of internet trolling. Plato who was less concerned about saying their own opinions, but for joy out of showing that true human wisdom was accepting we are not as smart as we think we are, and that even heavily held beliefs could be easily shaken with a twist of words.
Let’s look specifically at the “guardians” you speak of, for example - Plato openly mocked them. Most translations describe these guardians as “noble dogs” who serve the ruler with absolute dedication, but that is not an accurate translation - it would be more accurate to translate as the far more insulting “noble puppies”. Plato writes off the idea of a dedicated “guardian” class as foolish and childish, showing a sense of contempt for the very philosophy folks nowadays ascribe to him.
The rest of your post shows similarly problematic understandings of historical philosophy, as well as makes assertions of “scientific finding” which are not accurate (there are studies showing that ethical training can produce tangible results).
And, to tie back into this thread, your questionable philosophy diatribe is rather irrelevant to the present situation—this is not a situation involving censorship of others, but a situation where someone censored themselves. As I said in my initial response to that post, that is self-expression, not fascism or authoritarianism (which, by the way, fascism is a subsection of authoritarianism, just as squares are a subsection of quadrilaterals).
Wow this thread just keeps going in weird directions. As someone who teaches philosophy, I'm curious on some citations on your interpretation and translations. For example, "he is never trying to advocate for a specific philosophy, but rather is trying to disprove other philosophies common of his era" is very true of Plato's Early Period, which is generally considered by most experts to be conveying the views of his teacher, Socrates. (Who's whole schtick was that no one really knows anything yet.) But by his Middle and Late Periods when he starts getting into the Theory of Forms, The Republic, and such, he is definitely moving past publishing Socrates' lecture notes and presenting his own specific theory as ideal and correct.
Also, anyone who thinks Plato's arguments are still "well reasoned and very convincing" has either not actually read Plato or has some extremely frightening views because quite a lot of that stuff is messed up by modern standards! ;) And somehow blurring it all together with communism and socialism shows a massive lack of understanding of those theories as well. Either way, you are right that the biggest problem is taking what Plato wrote millennia ago as serious and applicable to us now, especially concerning the topic of editing a single paragraph in a game book about flying boats through space! LOL!!