#Murder on the Eberron Express

[erlie]

My character for Murder on the Eberron Express.

Aymon is the Loyal Retainer archetype and I'll probably build him as a half-elf paladin, even if the build does not matter much in this murder mystery.

[homestuckfanmusic]

my favorite npc i've run in a dnd oneshot was in a clue-style locked room murder mystery with all the classical archetypes of characters. she was the seductress having an affair with the murder victim, one of the ones last seen with the victim, disliked by nearly everyone in part because the victim's wife was a beloved cleric war hero who saved untold lives in a recent war. In addition, she was also sleeping with ANOTHER man on the train who hated the murder victim. She was also a tiefling in an area with deep-running anti-devilish sentiments.

however, my players ADORED her because where everyone else was stuffed to the gills with secrets and hidden intel and hurt feelings, I ran her as deeply frank with the information she had and candid about her ambitions. she basically told them "yeah lmao I don't care about either of these men, the world fucking sucks for tieflings and I am here to get paid. sucks he died but he kinda sucked anyway. anyway everyone here no doubt thinks I did it so I am just going to be straight up with you about what I know"

At the end after the murderer was caught, she was seen offering comfort to the murder victim's wife with the implication she was gonna tap that next, and my players lost their minds

[mierolainen]

I played Murder on the Eberron Express recently, and my brilliant DM customised it into one hell of a murder mystery drama! so naturally I had to do fake screenshots like some sorta movie guy

[bibliosims]

vesta d'ghallanda · half-drow · enchantment wizard

for @hauntedtrait’s murder on the eberron express one-shot

[tubbsen]

I'm going to be running the Murder on the Eberron Express D&D oneshot for the third time soon and getting the old man in the red vest murdered again, instead of getting him into a polyamorous relationship with his wife and valet

Pretty messed up tbh smh

[clockworkdragonffxiv]

I started my D&D campaign back in April of 2020 shortly after the COVID Lockdown hit. I was bored out of my skull and stressed, and a friend had expressed his frustration with his own D&D group and I just went "Fuck it."

I hadn't played DnD since college. I had never GM'd a tabletop game. But I had nothing better to do. So I went on to Discord into, like, the three channels I'm active in and rounded up a gaggle of friends from FFXIV and from my old City of Heroes group. For my starter campaign I used the very first Eberron campaign ever published for I think 3e or 3.5e, converted to 5e, "The Forgotten Forge."

And three and a half years, multiple cases of COVID, two rounds of cancer and chemotherapy, four or five moves, three kidney stones, multiple bouts of depression, and a half dozen job changes, we finally finished the campaign at level 16, having convinced the Lord of Blades to devote his talents to building the new Warforged nation and healing the Mournlands using the unique techno-organic warforged plants and animals we'd discovered, instead of his original plan which was to absorb the power of a Creation Engine and a Demon Overlord into himself, achieve apotheosis, and drown the world in a tide of blood.

My original plan for the final battle has in large underlined letters the phrase "Biblically Accurate Chainsaw Angel" and included a speech with lines like "LET THE SEAS BOIL AND THE SKIES FALL! LET THE WORLD BURN!"

Also probably ending up with the players picking the Red, Blue or Green endings from the End-o-Matic 9000.

But that didn't happen.

So instead, the campaign that started with our little group of heroes stumbling onto the murder of a professor with the clues to a hidden workshop, ended with the wedding of Seeker the Warforged Artificer, the man who'd talked the Lord of Blades down (despite having a Charisma of 8) and now holds the title of Maestro Seeker, is an advisor to the national leadership, and is the teacher of a whole new batch of warforged, and the warforged medic Solace, an NPC whose existence began as a joke about Seeker having a whirlwind romance with a medic in the space of about 23 minutes while the rest of the party were running errands.

Hot damn was that a lot of work. Three and a half years, and despite it starting in modules by the second I'd decided I didn't like the story as it was written, threw it out, and told my own story. Featuring friendly little fire elementals named Phil, packs of extremely patriotic and laddish mimics named Jimmy, an eight foot robotic sweetheart named Friend whose primary weapon was an equally massive tower shield and her totally-not-boyfriend warforged druid/allosaurus/swearasaurus Din, a wrestling match with a hobgoblin that nearly turned lethal when an 18 foot tall warforged titan came in with the steel chair, an alligator with a gun, and banishing the elemental dragon powering a flying battleship while A) the team was still on the battleship and B) it was still several hundred feet in the air and C) it was the only thing keeping it there... it's done.

And it was all worth it. God I love these guys. So here's to you, Katie, Jacquie, Mike, Stan, and Will. I'll see you all next week for our next adventure.

[jbpeony-draws]

character for a Murder at Eberron Express Oneshot.

[jellygay]

Doing murder mystery dnd and was drawing while we played. Nim was supposed to be a lady but I gave up so they’re a dude I guess.

[swarmkeepers]

“it’s a small explosion. who cares if a bunch of rich folks die”

[staggeringsmite]

murder on the eberron express: eight suspects, one killer, five hours to fairhaven - gearing up to run this one shot tomorrow and getting a little too invested, love the setup of the module and can’t wait to see how it runs.

image id’s: a grid of nine images representing abstract character portraits for a dungeons and dragons one shot. they all have a high contrast and saturated red-orange filter over them. in order they are:

1) a set of bronze chess pieces on a board, text reads “The Ice Queen aka Nyssa”

2) an extravagant train car, text reads “The Conductor aka Roenna Comstock”

3) two whisky glasses on a table, text reads “The Loyal Retainer aka Quentin Devir”

4)  a stairwell with various portraits and paintings hung along the walls, text reads “The Lost Heir aka Marvel Thorn”

5) an ornate black box with a skull on it, text reads “The Victim aka Egan Bakker”

6) a glove and small pocket watch on a luggage trunk, text reads “The Former Business Partner aka Indigo Sweetwater”

7) a stack of newspapers tied with twine, text reads “The Scholar aka Antimony Lin”

8) a gold sconce with two candles burning in it, text reads “The Spouse aka Javi Bakker”

9) an ornate gold mirror hung upon the wall, text reads “The Lover aka Jeanette Alyea”

/end id

[utilitycaster]

I’m so glad you got Eberron! It’s the first sourcebook I got and I love the range of genre styles it gives you. I’ve run a Murder in the Orient Express Type thing, a cyberpunk type thing, a standard sword and sandals, a noir detective type thing, a western type thing, an Indiana Jones Styles thing, a pirate adventure, all in the same setting. I’m currently running a game for my children (aged 5, 7, and 10) and they’ve turned it into a post apocalyptic thing with my son’s war forged artificer searching the wastelands for a creation forge to give his son (steel defender) a soul.

It definitely seems to be really good for that! I’m actually kind of not interested in the dragonmarks even though I suspect that’s kind a big deal in Eberron because whereas the guilds were the defining feature of Ravnica, this feels like such a minor add-on to a much larger world and like, why would I get caught up in house politics when I could have a locked-train-car mystery or explore the cursed mist?

[somebogwitch]

D&D fans!

Looking for a fun way to get to know the newly re-released dnd setting Eberron? Looking to get your murder mystery party friends into TTRPGs? Have I got the game for you!

Murder on the Eberron Express is a character driven murder mystery, confined on a moving lightning rail, where the murderer changes each time you run it.

This 3-5 hour one-shot for level 6 characters aims to give you all the fun of a game of Clue with all the variety of Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition. It is set in Eberron, an unusual D&D setting, that is darker and with more pulp noir aesthetics. Check it out on DMsGuild!

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/296256/Murder-on-the-Eberron-Express?src=hottest_filtered&filters=45469

[mierolainen]

Hi! I was considering running Eberron Express for some friends, and I was curious how your DM homebrewed things and/or what was improved - would you be willing to share?

I asked my DM to pitch in with her thoughts, since it was her campaign, so I'll put her response (and mine) under a cut!

--

" I didn't do much technical fiddling really, I dropped the characters from level 6 to 3 the second time I ran the game to keep things simpler for the players and myself. There's a lot to keep track of even without having wizard NPCs running around with 6274 different spells :D Otherwise I just went through the setting and the characters with a fine-tooth comb, adding and removing things to make something I found interesting and easy to understand even without prior knowledge of the Eberron setting.

Some practical things you may want to prepare: Mark on the train map who sleeps in which cabin, that hasn't been done in the original material. It's also a good idea to prepare an exact timeline of who did what and when on the night of the murder, this can be something your players start asking about during the investigation. Also think about who inherits the victim's wealth, maybe his will could be found on the train if you'd like?

My personal favorite part of preparing the game was feeding the players misleading information about the NPCs connected to their characters and then giving them personal revelations during the game. Someone they trusted betrayed them or someone they thought of as an enemy was operating under whole different motivations than they thought, that sort of thing. Make the game your own and have fun!!

(Oh, and ban the Prestidigitation cantrip! You don't want your players magically cleaning up evidence!) "

--

My only addition to this would be to communicate with your players and find out what kind of a story they're most interested in experiencing! What worked for me (interpersonal drama, rampant queerness, giving player characters space to express their emotions) might not work for you. At the end of the day, the only people you need to impress and/or entertain at the table are you and your players! :>

[probablyfunrpgideas]

Image ID: an overhead view of many train tracks at night. Several engines are arriving or departing and their smoke clouds and lights cast the scene in a haze. At the bottom right is the station building. End ID.

There’s something to be said for the romance of trains in fiction. The lonely whistle far away, the sense of escaping from somewhere to go nowhere. However, in rpgs you’re likely to find them in Call of Cthulhu - a murder on the Occult Express, perhaps, or a mysterious freight train that must not reach its destination. The lightning rails of Eberron are intriguing, but I can’t picture stowing away on one in the early morning. They’re a bit too clean, too modern.

Try to include some trains in your setting! Maybe there’s a wondrous underground track being built between Menzoberranzan and Gauntlgrym. Or maybe the only way to safely kidnap a galactic senator is by using the elevated hyperlocomotive that circles Coruscant in a single hour!

Hans Baluschek (German, 1870-1935) - Big City Train Station, 1904

[tubbsen]

So there's this murder mystery D&D one-shot module called Murder on the Eberron Express by Orla ní Dhúill, right? I customized it to my liking and have now ran it twice, had an absolute blast both times!

Here are most of the characters from the latest session. I largely used art I sourced from Google to stand as character portraits in the game. Then I used those as a springboard for these designs so they're perhaps not 100% Original Character Designs Donut Steal :'D

The valet is @mierolainen's and The Long Lost Heir and The Scholar are players' characters as well C:

[zookmurnig]

Brainstorming ideas for one of the PCs in my Eberron campaign. He’s a former Silver Flame Exorcist (warlock class with a celestial pact), who got excommunicated after he was infected with lycanthropy and accidentally murdered an entire town. In story, he’s an elf, but mechanically we’re using shifter stats and saying that his ties to the Silver Flame are limiting the power that his curse has over him.

The player has expressed interest in having more of his capabilities defined or informed by his curse, and I’ve been working on ideas for expanding the capabilities of all my PCs. What I’ve decided on, for now, is to allow him to take a second “pact” with his curse, conferring some features reminiscent of the Weretouched Master PrC from 3.5 ECG.

I’m uncertain about how to interestingly implement some of the features, though, aside from simply cribbing mechanics from other classes (which are not present in the group), like allowing him to use a bite attack as a bonus action that lets him perform the Battlemaster’s Tripping Attack. Also, giving him resistance to non-magic non-silver damage seems thematically appropriate, but overpowered. DR isn’t a thing in 5e, and even if it was, I’d hesitate to give him that, too.

However, it’s a party full of casters, and the closest thing they have to a tank is the cleric of Olladra, and this warlock is the only other semi-melee character, so it might help define a role for him.