In the world of Eberron, the continent of Khorvaire is a place defined by the interwar tensions and cutthroat espionage and diplomacy of Europe in the 1920s and 30s, mixed with the liberalization and nation-building of the early modern era, but then aesthetically and culturally it is almost, but not quite, a completely "standard" medieval fantasy setting. Yes, there are magical items that evoke 19th century technology, but you are stepping off that train into what is, essentially, a "fairytale kingdom."
That last part was a direct quote, by the way. It's how Five Nations (Bill Slavicsek, David Noonan, Christopher Perkins) described the Kingdom of Cyre, before it was swallowed up by a magical death cloud to become the Mournland.
Basically, what I'm saying is that despite all the robots and newspapers and antiquity-stealing universities, Eberron is the rpg equivalent of this:
And look, Neuschwanstein Castle is iconic, even if it took me three guesses to successfully google the name. So if it feels like I'm dragging on Eberron right now, well that's pretty perceptive of you. I did not mean this comparison entirely as a compliment. But also, like Neuschwanstein Castle, Eberron is, for all of its faults, pretty damned iconic.
Also like Neuschwanstein Castle (I'm going to keep name-checking the castle until I can spell it from memory), Eberron would be significantly better if the creators read more 19th century newspapers and less medieval fantasy.
Five Nations is a book that practically embodies this contradiction. In many ways, it's one of the best setting books I've ever read. Four of the five titular nations get a "style" section that discusses their art, architecture, cuisine, and fashion. All of the NPCs have associated agendas and challenges. The locations suggest potential adventures. It's very well made. But it's a well-made medieval fantasy setting.
Let's look at some hard figures here - Breland is a kingdom with a land area of 1.8 million square miles. And a population of 3.7 million. For reference, that's more than half the continental United States (Alaska really skews the figure, so I left it out) and approximately the same number of people counted by the 1790 US census (3.9 million). Or to put it another way, as of the Day of Mourning the five nations of Galifar had a combined land area 20% greater than Europe and a population (approximately 12 million) that is lower than Europe's has ever been. . . at least in the past two thousand years.
The low populations might be explained by the century-long war they just got done fighting, but the war itself is pretty inexplicable, given the distances involved. Logistics are probably much better than they were IRL, thanks to magic, but since the primary driver of the war seems to have been the egos of those involved in the beginning (who started fighting because they could not abide Galifar's absolutely ludicrous succession laws), it doesn't actually make much sense that their descendants would carry on for decades after their deaths.*
*Except, of course, for King Kais III of Karrnath, who was the cover identity of Kais I who became a vampire and then stole the identity of his great-grandson, and thus one of the bastards who started the war in the first place.
I mean, obviously, people do foolish and immoral things for thinner motives than "nuh-uh, it was my great-grandma who should have been queen," but, like, queen of what? Breland has half the population density of the Australian outback. These "nations" are not even exerting political control over their own territories, definitely not to the extent of a modern state, and probably not even to the extent of a classical empire. Banditry and rebellious local aristocrats should be endemic. Like, I kind of thought that King Oraev's plan to carve off a piece of Breland to turn the refugee land grant of New Cyre into the independent kingdom of New Cyre was ungrateful and treacherous, but honestly, would Breland even miss it?
You could argue that the sparse population, lower than even real medieval times, is actually an adaptation for D&D's particular style of fantasy. Not enough people for the land, sure, but if you add up the people and creatures, maybe it makes a bit more sense. Those Karrnath Bulettes, which can pop up through the floorboards to spread endemic illnesses they originally contracted through eating undead. . . they probably discourage a more uniform pattern of settlement. It might be wise to look at the book's description of the nation as occupying 1.3 million square miles and mentally discount that by 70-80%, to account for fantasy shenanigans.
It's just, if that was the intended interpretation of the material, they could simply have said as much. There's a world where the five nations are scattered Points of Light, strung together with a magical railroad and united by a shared cultural heritage of Not Being Eaten By Monsters, but that world is not Eberron. Eberron is a world that talks about the five nations as if they were modern states who are barely held back from repeating a generationally-traumatic war by a tenuous and unenforceable treaty. Breland has an "industrial heart of the nation," for crying out loud. How are they getting there? "Oh, Ma, Pa, I know the bank is threatening to foreclose on the dirt farm, but I saw in the chronicle that the factories down by the Dagger River are hiring. I'll cross the 500 miles of manticore-infested wasteland and send back money every week."
The better solution would be to assume that their figures are off by approximately an order of magnitude. A Khorvaire with a population of 120 million makes more sense even in a medieval setting, and could actually support the conflicts and themes the text keeps teasing. That's a level of population where you start needing railroads and factories, and which might even result in battles as wide-ranging and destructive as to deserve the sobriquet of "The Last War."
Anyway, as much as I want to like Five Nations for being the exact style of rpg setting book I prefer, I can't entirely get over the disconnect between my expectations and what the game delivers. Personally, I want a fantasy rpg that takes place in a magitech 19th century Europe. I am on board with that premise. Give me conflicts rooted in modern nationalism and Enlightenment political ideology, in the form of espionage, mercenary work, or scientific archaeology. Hell, give me a D&D detective story. You wanna be pulp? Then be pulp. But this thing where you also want to be able to plausibly deliver (at least on a surface level) "traditional medieval fantasy?" Honestly, it's making you worse at medieval fantasy too.
Now, give me a moment to savor my own audacity in roasting Neuschwanstein (got it in four!)
Ukss Contribution: Okay, this is a silly one. The king of Breland has a companion animal called a "magebred tiger." It's almost exactly like a tiger, but it's smarter, easier to train, and with higher physical attributes across the board ("hey, what if we increased this apex predator's land speed by 25% and its stealth rating by 33%") and it was given to the king as a gift from the dragonmarked house that specializes in creating abominations of nature.
But that's not what I'm adding to Ukss. What I'm adding to Ukss is the king's . . . strange reaction to receiving such a gift. "Boranel instantly fell in love with the animals and spent several years populating his rainforests with them. Boranel has decreed that killing magebred ghost tigers in the King's Forest is a crime punishable by incarceration or death."
Now, I'm sure someone will tell me if it's just me who thinks this - but that's a recipe for an out-of-control invasive species, right? They took a creature that was already a top-tier predator of humans, then genetically modified it to be even more deadly than that, and then they set it loose in a protected habitat where it would be safe from its only conceivable predator. . .
I don't know, maybe the King's Forest is full of manticores or something, and so nature will find a balance, but I kind of find that sort of ecological short-sightedness to be absolutely hilarious. Hey, Boranel - at any point of this plan, did you find even one other person who thought it was a good idea? It's actually fascinating. There's no level of analysis or way of breaking this down that makes it even accidentally persuasive. What was the end goal here? Getting mauled to death in your own forest?
Anyway, some monarch or other on Ukss will have a similarly reckless relationship with an artificial animal, but when I depict it, I'm not going to be at all subtle about how bad that's going to backfire.
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