Eberron DM Resources: Sourcebooks, Adventures & Supplements

Starting an Eberron Campaign: The First DM Decision

I haven't run a long Eberron campaign. I've run Storm King's Thunder for 31 sessions and I know what it's like to work a published WotC module past its structural failures. I'm writing from that position — someone who reads Eberron closely and finds it genuinely interesting, not someone who has lived through a two-year Sharn campaign.

The first thing you need to settle before picking resources is where your campaign starts. Sharn or wilderness? Those are different campaigns. A Sharn-based urban game is a noir detective setting: factions, guilds, vertical city geography, House politics, crime. You need Sharn: City of Towers (3.5e but the lore holds) and a clear answer to how the dragonmarked houses relate to each other. A Khorvaire wilderness/political campaign is a post-war faction puzzle: the Five Nations, the Mournland, competing governments, and faction clocks instead of random encounter tables. You need Five Nations for the regional flavor and Forge of War for the Last War history.

Two known prep problems regardless of where you start. First: the noir/pulp tone slips after a few sessions if the faction work isn't doing its job. The tone isn't atmosphere — it's mechanized by the dragonmark house tensions. If the houses feel like background lore rather than active factions with goals, the noir evaporates. Second: the warforged and changeling mechanics are philosophically interesting and mechanically thin. The identity questions hit hard, but the resolution is weak. Build NPCs who force those questions into scenes that don't require a rules answer, and your players will do the heavy lifting.

The page is organized by resource type, not by DM problem. If you want a reading order instead, start: Rising from the Last War → Keith Baker's blog Eberron Index → Exploring Eberron → Sharn: City of Towers or Five Nations depending on your starting location.