Review: Eberron: Rising from the Last War

I've recently finished reading through the 'real' setting book for Eberron in 5e, "Rising from the Last War". I'm now finding it extremely hard to review!

Physically, the book is really good value: 320 pages, full-colour and hardback, and crammed with good stuff (written in a nice, small font - there's loads here). Given that it's priced at the same $50 as the rest of the 5e books, that marks it as especially good value in that product line.

But what matters with a book of this sort is the content, and on that front this book is... fine, I guess.

The book has six chapters: character creation, a gazeteer of the world, a description of Sharn, a guide to creating adventures in Eberron, some material on treasure, and the inevitable bestiary.

The character creation section is probably the most important in the book, updating the various game elements to 5e. These are all fine, but an awful lot of it is repeated material. The new stuff includes things like orc and goblinoid races, another take on the warforged, and a few other bits and bobs. Unfortunately, I remain underwhelmed by 5e's warforged - they've now done three distinct versions, and none have managed to appeal to me. This one is probably the best of the bunch, but that's not really saying much. (Similarly, I'm really not a fan of 'monster' races, so while the orcs and goblinoids are mechanically fine, I think I'd have been happier had the book omitted them.)

The chapters on the world and on Sharn are likewise fine, but there's just too much repeated material here - basically, this is now the fourth time they've gone over this ground, and nothing much has changed. The descriptions here are fine, but they're not spectacular.

And, likewise, the bestiary is fine, but not much new, as is the section on treasures.

Where there is perhaps some significant value is in the chapter on Eberron adventures. This is good stuff, I think. Unfortunately, by the time I got here I was generally just wanting to be done with the book, and everything I read seemed to make me less enthusiastic to play a game in Eberron, not moreso. That's a real shame, and probably not fair on either the book or the setting.

And yet...

If you're a 5e DM who wants to run a game in Eberron, you probably need some sort of support for it. And given the choice between this book and the "Wayfarer's Guide", this is the one to go for. My problem, I think, is not with this book at all, which is all fine, but purely to do with the amount of repeated material - as I said, I'm now on my fourth repeat of most of this stuff, and that's not ideal. But if you've skipped the "Wayfarer's Guide", and especially if you've skipped the 4e books, I expect this one would be much more favourably received.

(Of course, the other option is to get this book but to not bother actually reading it. Instead, use it for reference as appropriate - use it only for the updates on the mechanical elements. That should work fine.)