D&D General What are the boundaries of what counts as part ot Forgotten Realms?

What does "counts as" even mean? Is there a formalized recognition process, or some place that actually tracks this? Is there a recognized arbiter? Or is this purely about determining some kind of colloquial meaning?
Some people need to know this so they have a "legitimate" excuse to get angry at Wizards of the Coast for one more thing they do that does not agree with their beliefs exactly. ;)
 

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I understand why they did it, but I wish WotC would remove Kara-Tur, Zakhara, Maztica, and even the Horde lands from the FR...go back to the Greenwood version then either leave the rest unknown/implied, or build out a bit from there. You could even take it as an opportunity to fully re-design "Asia" and "America." Or move away a bit from Earth analogues.

Actually, it would be kind of fun to past something like Nentir Vale on the western continent - perhaps a forgotten/lost colony that someone from Faerun set up hundreds of years ago.
 

I understand why they did it, but I wish WotC would remove Kara-Tur, Zakhara, Maztica, and even the Horde lands from the FR...go back to the Greenwood version then either leave the rest unknown/implied, or build out a bit from there. You could even take it as an opportunity to fully re-design "Asia" and "America." Or move away a bit from Earth analogues.

Actually, it would be kind of fun to past something like Nentir Vale on the western continent - perhaps a forgotten/lost colony that someone from Faerun set up hundreds of years ago.
FR should absolutely have areas inspired by the Americas, the Eurasian Steppe, Arabia and East Asia, but they should be as inspired by those cultures as Faerun is inspired by western society. If FR was full of "Fantasy Italy, Fantasy Spain, Fantasy Netherlands, Fantasy Germany, etc" like how Warhammer or Dragon Age is, those other sub-settings would be a little easier to swallow.

But, also, that naughty word's just lazy writing.
 

A lot of putting Al-Qadim, Kara Tur, Maztica, Horde and such subsettings in/on FR was likely a marketing thing. I run Al-Qadim and Kara Tur divested of connection to FR, setting them on their own worlds. I'd do the same for Maztica, but would have to change the Helmites and references to Amn to something else (if I was going to run Maztica at all, that is). Horde is the odd one out, I can't imagine attempting to run it divested of FR and it is the bridge between FR & Kara Tur (and one of the reasons I tend to ignore the setting completely).

I'm surprised Council of Wyrms doesn't have a link to FR in some way, but glad it doesn't. In the end, I wish they'd stop trying to shoehorn in connections to FR on just about everything they publish*. Not everything needs to connect to it or even mention FR, and it's annoying when they force such connections on something that'd be fine if it stood on its own.

I'm not up on my MtG, but I think the Lorwyn Scandal is talking about making Lorwyn a Domain of Delight accessible from FR (i.e., "you got your chocolate in my peanut butter")

* About the only exception I can think of is Dragonlance and Greyhawk - if you discount the "Wizards Three" articles Greenwood's done.
 


I think the only DnD settings that aren't explicitly directly connected to other settings in some fashion are Eberron and Dark Sun. And even those are more of a "it just extremely hard to get there" thing.
 




Faerun is the Forgotten Realms. Everything added to it since was clearly added with the expectation to be used as a separate "sub" setting at best, or even just a separate setting altogether, or it was a poorly advised weird thing that was developed long after Forgotten Realms launched (Abeir).
 

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