I don’t currently run or play in an Eberron campaign, and I don’t foresee that happening anytime soon (as much as I would enjoy either). So why should I want a copy of the Eberron Campaign Guide, besides my own completist compulsions? A sidebar on p. 5 suggests a good reason:

[L]oot this book! Treat it as a treasure trove of inspiration and resources whose sole purpose is to make your campaign better. Whether you adopt the world of Eberron in every detail or just choose the elements that most appeal to you, it’s your game. Have fun with it!

That’s just what I intend to do. After my first pass through the Eberron Campaign Guide, I can definitely see some value in it for my non-Eberron campaign.

Even though the Stormhaven campaign takes place on a “parallel Earth” rather than on Eberron, I’ve already begun using several Eberron-inspired elements in the campaign. Regular listeners to the Icosahedrophilia actual play podcast will hear about these developments in-game at a later date, but I’ll preview some of that here. In the last couple of sessions before our July break, we introduced two new characters (one from a new player, one from an existing player) into the mix: Serv0, a warforged barbarian, and Zebith, a male drow sorcerer. For Zebith’s cultural heritage, I wrote into the campaign a population of Xend’rik-type drow living on the large continent of Karvahl (pseudo-Australia). In this regard, though, the Eberron Player’s Guide actually helps out more than the Eberron Campaign Guide, since the latter only includes about two and a half pages (pp. 196–198) on Xen’drik drow. The entire section on Xen’drik isn’t much longer (running pp. pp. 193–198), so for now I’ll be drawing more on the 3.5 Secrets of Xen’drik supplement. I’ve also transposed the halflings of the Talenta Plains and some of the Valenar elves into Karvahl, so pp. 158–167 may give me some additional ideas for using them, stat blocks for NPCs, and so on. Certain other aspects of the Eberron setting will show up in the Stormhaven campaign later, though I’m not ready yet to talk about those here (because I want them to come as a surprise to my players).

But there’s plenty more for me to use in the Eberron Campaign Guide. Several great monsters and NPCs in the book could be easily transposed into my campaign with slight fluff modifications. These include the silver dragon Yilosavax (pp. 26–27), many of the creatures/NPCs statted out in chapter 3, the Mournland perils and creatures from pp. 94–95, the goblinoids of Darguun (pp. 114–115), the Carrion Tribe barbarians (pp. 120–121), and the Children of Winter (pp. 136–137; their usefulness in my current campaign will depend somewhat on when the PCs go to—oh, never mind). I’m not likely to introduce dragonmarks or any of Eberron’s noble houses into my campaign, so that part of the book doesn’t help me right now. Similarly, Eberron’s pantheon has no place in my world, though some of the NPCs or creatures in that chapter (Lady Vol, for instance) might show up in modified form.

I could get a lot of the useful material—such as the seven new mounts described on pp. 42–43—in the D&D Compendium (I’ve been a D&D Insider subscriber since day one), but then I’d miss out on some of the fluffy bits that I mentioned above. And maybe someday I’ll have the chance to visit Eberron in a more sustained fashion.