D&D General Forgotten Realms - why do you still like running games here? +

[Voadam]

Ed Greenwood has put a weird amount of thought into trade routes, they go back to his home game and were in 1E products, much more detailed than Greyhawk was on that front.

Do you have any examples? I didn't notice any in my 1e Campaign Setting PDF or the FR1 Waterdeep PDF.

The Sword Coast is pretty big (the Packfic coast of North America big), and the isolated city states that pepper it are pretty ideal D&F home bases, so they do get a lot of the attention.

I was particularly struck by this size comparison map in the 1e grey box:

 

[Parmandur]

Do you have any examples? I didn't notice any in my 1e Campaign Setting PDF or the FR1 Waterdeep PDF.

FR5 has the material cut from FR1 for space:

I was particularly struck by this size comparison map in the 1e grey box:

It's big.

 

[haakon1]

I heard they shrunk FR later? Or maybe that was only the part they allocated to Kara-Tur?

 

[Demetrios1453]

I heard they shrunk FR later? Or maybe that was only the part they allocated to Kara-Tur?

They did. 5e un-shrunk it.

 

[Parmandur]

I heard they shrunk FR later? Or maybe that was only the part they allocated to Kara-Tur?

For 3E, they shrank the size of the continent significantly. It's a really weird decision in retrospect.

For just the Sword Coast region, leaving off the rest of Faerun:

In the 3E/4E material the Sword Coast region as defined in SCAG is 2.2 million square miles (approximately twice as large as India)

In the 1E/2E/5E material, the Sword Coast region is over 5 million square miles (just shy of Antarctica, the only country on Earth bigger than the Sword Coast region is Russia).

That means the land that disappears and comes back is about the size of Australia. Just for the Sword Coast.

 

[earthsea_wizard]

It was to be able to fit everything on the poster map size they had. Definitely weird. In a post from last year Richard Baker says he still stands behind the decision: 50 Years of D&D: Forgotten Realms 3rd Edition

Rather controversially, I’m the guy behind the 3E Forgotten Realms poster map, which involved some deliberate reworking of the existing Realms maps. We needed to compress some north-south distance in order to make the most efficient use of our 20” by 30” poster—otherwise, to show all of Faerun we would have had to leave about a third of the map as empty ocean. Some fans take issue with that call, but I think it was the right one. We were able to mark hundreds of locations by using all the space we had, which made the map a lot more useful for the average DM.

I wonder what issues one would run into using the 3e sourcebooks with the 2e map? Probably nothing major other than maybe some locations wouldn't be on the map?

 

[Parmandur]

It was to be able to fit everything on the poster map size they had. Definitely weird. In a post from last year Richard Baker says he still stands behind the decision: 50 Years of D&D: Forgotten Realms 3rd Edition



I wonder what issues one would run into using the 3e sourcebooks with the 2e map? Probably nothing major other than maybe some locations wouldn't be on the map?

Travel times would be different, which would impact vibe. Part of their goal with the smaller 3E map was to make everything closer together...but the wide open spaces served a function for the Setting as a gameable D&D resource.

 

[Epic Meepo]

It was to be able to fit everything on the poster map size they had. Definitely weird. In a post from last year Richard Baker says he still stands behind the decision: 50 Years of D&D: Forgotten Realms 3rd Edition



I wonder what issues one would run into using the 3e sourcebooks with the 2e map? Probably nothing major other than maybe some locations wouldn't be on the map?

There's some gaslighting in that Richard Baker article. He (correctly) observes that the 2e map of Faerun would have been about one-third ocean if placed on a 20" by 30" poster map. What he neglects to mention is that the 3e poster map of Faerun is still about 31% ocean.

And to get that 2% reduction in ocean, what has to be removed from the map? Semphar, Ulgarth, the Utter East, most of Raurin, half of Durpar, half of the Hordelands, and an inset map of Evermeet. All of which could have appeared in full on a 2e map of Faerun, had it been placed on a 20" by 30" poster map.

 

[Demetrios1453]

It was to be able to fit everything on the poster map size they had. Definitely weird. In a post from last year Richard Baker says he still stands behind the decision: 50 Years of D&D: Forgotten Realms 3rd Edition



I wonder what issues one would run into using the 3e sourcebooks with the 2e map? Probably nothing major other than maybe some locations wouldn't be on the map?

Nothing went missing as such - everything just got squeezed closer together, and some directions for areas might be different depending on the empty areas that got cut (literally - they have pictures of them taking scissors to the map). As an example, Erlkazar, an area in eastern Tethyr, got moved a few hundred miles to the north and was now to the east of Amn, not Tethyr. It made a hash of some local geographies around the seams of what was taken out.

 

[Libertad]

A positive post about this setting which is simultaneously legendary and divisive. Over the decades we've read endless posts about the high level PCs (overblown, imo), the world shattering events, the neverending pages of canon that weigh the setting down etc. etc.

Yet many people still game here. Some never left.

So for those of you who still choose to run their games here:

1. Why
2. How do you approach the setting (everything is in, stick to one edition, gray box only etc.)?
3. How long has it been your campaign setting of choice?
4. What are your favorite game supplements?
5. Do you like any of the novels? Which ones? And do you use the novels for game material?

1. It has a lot of memorable people, places, and events which a fair amount of my gaming circle is familiar with, so we have common reference points. It's also easier to insert "classic fantasy" homebrew and setting-neutral adventures without much modification or feeling incongruent, unlike some more specialized settings like Eberron, Planescape, etc.
2. I primarily run it in the 1370s, post-Time of Troubles but pre-Spellplague. I used to play 3.5/Pathfinder for it, but nowadays I use 5e.
3. It's not, but it is an old standby, much like vanilla ice cream. It's nothing revolutionary, but I know that I'm guaranteed to like it.
4. For official sourcebooks, the 3rd Edition Campaign Setting is the gold standard, and Elminster's Forgotten Realms is a nice look at day-to-day life. Silver Marches for 3rd Edition was one of the first products for the setting I bought, and it still remains one of my top regional sourcebooks for the Realms.
5. Sadly, I haven't yet read any of the novels. I do plan on starting out with the original Drizz't trilogy, and Spellfire I've heard is a great starting point. Afterwards, I might check out some of the Elmnister books and novels written by Elaine Cunningham, as she's very well-regarded.