[The Great Hairy]

Eberron is a huge new setting with a great deal of change from the more "core" DnD style worlds of Faerun and Greyhawk.

The major changes can be summarised as such:

1) Magic, specifically low level magic, is very common. A new core class (Artificer) makes potions, wands, etc., for a very low cost. As such, the "technology" level is higher than other settings (think of people having a fridge in their house - magical rather than tech, of course).

2) Not everything/creature depicted as evil in the core books actually is in Eberron. It is possible to have evil priests of good gods and visa versa. This also means that goblinic races are accepted and have their own empire. Undead can be found working alongside ordinary people in a city (and aren't necessarily evil either).

3) The setting is much more political. Think Europe in the 1500s for a good comparison. Whilst there are large areas of the globe yet to be explored, the core realms are very well estabilshed, completely explored and heading into a period similar to our Renaissance (rapiers and powdered wigs are all the rage).

4) The Planes are completely new, along with new gods, new churches and so on. The gods are much further removed from the people - no one gets spells directly from their god, but rather from the ideals espoused by that belief system.

5) It's a very low level setting. The highest level NPC *in the entire setting* is a 16th level cleric. Anyone higher than that is seen as at demi-god status and power.

Those are the core changes I took from reading through the Eberron Campaign Setting book.

Cheers,
TGHO