DMs Guild [Design Notes] Forgotten Realms Travel Guide: Faerûn, Kara-Tur, and Zakhara

Epic Meepo · Nov 11, 2024

Trails and Tribulations

The Forgotten Realms trail guide I’m writing includes overviews of hundreds of locations in Faerun, Kara-Tur, and Zakhara. Prior to the release of the 2024 edition of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, I wasn’t sure how much detail I wanted to include when describing these locations. I want my trail guide to be a useful, big-picture reference guide to the many cultures and regions of the Realms without becoming redundant with any current or anticipated Forgotten Realms products.

Having seen and studied the Greyhawk Gazetteer section in the new DMG, I believe I’ve found the answer I need. As it so happens, the format used in that gazetteer dovetails almost perfectly with the system I’ve used to organized my notes for this project. By rewriting a few sections of the trail guide to match the gazetteer format, I’ve been able to create the type of concise summary I’ve been aiming for during the latest editing pass on my manuscript.

Before reformatting the relevant parts of the trail guide, I had focused a fair amount of word count on on detailed setting guides describing the Great Sea (between Faerun and Zakhara) and the Silk Road (between Faerun and Kara-Tur). After adopting the gazetteer format, those sections are less detailed, but I now have room to expand my coverage of the world. Instead of setting guides exploring two major trade routes, I now have a gazetteer exploring seven major trade routes.

Following the example provided by the new Greyhawk Gazetteer, I’ve divided the Realms into seven large-scale regions. Since my product is a trail guide, each of my large-scale regions is a collection of lands that lie on the same trade road or the same navigable sea. I still provide overviews of the Great Sea and the Silk Road, but I now also describe five other major trade routes: the Eastern Sea, the Golden Way, the Sea of Fallen Stars, the Southern Ocean, and the Trackless Sea.

I believe this approach will keep my trail guide from covering the same ground as the official Forgotten Realms campaign guide scheduled for release at the end of next year. I expect that guide will include a gazetteer which divides Faerun into regions based on thematic and geographical proximity. By focusing on long-distance trade routes which span the entire breadth of Faerun, Kara-Tur, and Zakhara, I believe I’m examining the setting from an entirely different perspective.

Despite the number of delays and rewrites it’s taken to get to this point, I think the process was worth it. I’ve cut and replaced nearly a hundred pages of content now. That was quite painful, but my manuscript is better for it. I now have the opening chapter I needed for this project. Instead of dwelling on city-level setting details, I now have a concise trade route gazetteer that better frames the top-level information I wanted to convey. I’m getting excited about this project again.

Epic Meepo · Nov 28, 2024

Just another progress report for now. I've spent much of the past week doing page layout work. I developed a rough plan for the placement of illustrations, maps, and tables before starting any other tasks on this project, but until recently, I didn’t know the final sizes of those page elements. I now have that information, so I can start placing everything and editing the text to fit around it.

I have placed 108 illustrations throughout the book so far, not counting maps. (Each illustration actually makes use of two different stock art images, so I guess I’m technically placing 216 images.) I also have several dozen illustrations held in reserve in case I need spot art to fill white space or break up large blocks of text once the last few editing passes are done.

Placing the illustrations and maps is the easy part. Placing the tables is trickier, but the most onerous page layout task ahead of me is an editing pass to make sure the text around the other page elements fits into the allotted space. I’ve already started that work, but there will be a fair amount of rewriting and moving stuff about before it's finished.

Epic Meepo · Dec 12, 2024

Quick progress update: If I organize everything into two- and four-page spreads, depending on how I size things, I'm sitting on between 550 and 600 pages of content. On the one hand, this isn't a physical book, so there's no inherent limitation on the number of pages I include. On the other hand, I want to be absolutely sure every page is warranted, so I'll probably be spending a few more weeks doing page-layout Tetris and editing content for length.

All I want for Christmas is twenty-four additional hours every day until I get this done.

Epic Meepo · Jan 20, 2025

Between the recent holidays and some ongoing distractions at my day job, I haven’t had a chance to update this thread for a few weeks now. Thankfully, I’ve found time since my last post to make some progress on the book. Here’s a brief status report:

I’ve changed the working title to the Forgotten Realms Travel Guide: Faerun, Kara-Tur, and Zakhara. I had been calling it a trail guide, but the book discusses both trails and water routes, so I felt this title was more accurate. I’ve edited the title of this thread to reflect the change.

The travel guide’s page count stands at 656 pages, with most of the page layout complete. About 30 of those pages are stubbornly resisting all efforts to fit within their allotted space. The page count may shift slightly as I grapple with those tricky sections in the weeks ahead.

I’ve added some illustrations from DMsGuild art packs to supplement my stock art, and I’ve used images of details pulled from full illustrations as spot art where needed. Between full illustrations, spot art, and 117 maps, roughly half of the 656 pages include full-color artwork.

I believe most of my largest tasks on this project are now complete. I’m now polishing things up and fixing problem areas. Given that I have 656 pages and hundreds of pieces of artwork to finalize, I suspect I still have months of work ahead of me. I’ll check back in as I make more progress.

Epic Meepo · Feb 21, 2025

Humanoids vs. Monsters

Slowly but surely, I'm editing the 600+ pages of my Forgotten Realms travel guide. I'm gradually conducting line edits, filling in gaps in the text, and tracking down an occasional illustration to add.

At the same time, I'm also digesting the content of the 2025 Monster Manual. In particular, I'm debating how to address some of the creature type changes made in that book. (Some creatures formerly classified as Humanoids are now classified as non-Humanoid monsters in that book.)

The existence of Fey goblins, in particular, gives me a bit of grief. Specifically, it wrecks havoc with the population numbers I calculated for several goblinoid-majority regions of the Realms. My original intent was to count only the Humanoids in each region's population, leaving the monster population unspecified. That becomes difficult when its unclear what percentage of the goblinoid population counts as Humanoid.

On the plus side, the new Monster Manual classifies oni as Fiends. Before that change, I wasn't able to identify any tiefling population native to Kara-Tur. Now that at least some oni are Fiends, half-oni (from Dragon magazine) essentially fit the Player's Handbook description of tieflings. As a result, I'm adding them to the book (possibly under the name oni-kin) as a tiefling population native to parts of Kara-Tur.

Overall, the latest changes to creature types appear to be a net positive for the travel guide. Goblinoid demographics become a bit trickier to handle, but I get to include an entry describing a population of Kara-Turan tieflings that would otherwise have gone unwritten. I'll take that trade!

Epic Meepo · Mar 20, 2025

Always Read the Fine Print...

...or, in this case, the paragraph about ecology at the end of an obscure monster entry. As far as I can tell, none of the campaign setting guides describing Zakhara list aasimar as a species found in that part of the Realms. Despite that, a paragraph buried in the Asura entry in an AD&D Monstrous Compendium appendix notes the existence of Zakharan aasimar. (Technically, it mentions humanoids of unspecified species with Celestial ancestry. In other words, aasimar.)

Upon discovering that piece of trivia, I was able to add a description of Zakharan aasimar culture to the Forgotten Realms Travel Guide. The opportunity to write some brand new content was a welcome break from the other work I've been doing in my spare time for the past few weeks, mostly line editing and a bit of page layout work. As much as I enjoy polishing things up, the chance to write something from scratch was a welcome change of pace.

Having finished that, I'm off to do another round of polishing...

Epic Meepo · Mar 31, 2025

Quick progress report:

I've acquired enough illustrations to fill in the last large areas of white space in my manuscript. As a result, page layout work on the Forgotten Realms Travel Guide is nearly finished. I just need to place a credits sections, a table of contents, and a bibliography, none of which will affect the layouts of surrounding pages.

Here's a breakdown of the page counts for the main sections of the book:

A brief introduction to Faerun, Kara-Tur, and Zakhara (6 pages)
A gazetteer describing seven major trade routes (22 pages)
A cyclopedia of cultures and regions found in the Realms (572 pages)
An appendix presenting new and variant species rules (14 pages)
An appendix presenting a glossary of deities (54 pages)

I'm continuing to make small edits and to otherwise polish things up, but that shouldn't greatly affect the page counts. Every piece that's going to fit in the final product has its place more or less locked in.

Epic Meepo · Apr 28, 2025

Another quick progress report:

I've acquired a few new illustrations over the past couple weeks, so I'm playing around with some new looks on a few pages. I can use any left-over illustrations to fill white space on the Credits page and the spill-over page for the Table of Contents. (The book will be a pdf with a hyperlinked table of contents auto-generated from its section headers, but I'm also including an old-fashioned, hand-typed table of contents at the front as a nod to printed books.)

The most consequential task still ahead of me is designing a cover. Everything else is monotonous but straightforward stuff like editing passes and—if the pdf gets too large with all my art at full resolution—some image compression work.

Thankfully, the official Forgotten Realms campaign setting books I'm looking to supplement with my Forgotten Realms Travel Guide don't drop until November, so I don't feel rushed at the moment. Hopefully, I didn't just jinx myself.

Epic Meepo · May 19, 2025

Third progress report in a row:

(I need to make more progress posting things other than progress reports!)

I've added a ten-page list of sources to the end of the Forgotten Realms Travel Guide. For the most part, the list is sorted by topic. A few sources appear under a "general information" heading. The last two pages of the list are "additional sources" that aren't broken down by topic because they provided only minor details (like names of yugoloths active in the Realms or types of building materials used to construct hovels in rural Faerûn).

For the image on the cover of the book, I'm leaning towards a globe of Toril, although that decision isn't final. I worry a globe might create the impression that the travel guide is an atlas. In truth, it's more of a gazetteer, with narrative elements and setting details front and center, supplemented with maps when necessary.

Speaking of cartography, I've decided to revise some maps I felt were too cluttered. The revision will affect roughly forty maps, each of which should be cleaner and more informative when all is said and done. Needless to say, getting there will occupy a fair amount of my free time in the foreseeable future. (It seems I did jinx myself in my previous post.)

rmattbill1 · Thursday at 7:40 PM

Epic Meepo said:
A few years ago, I started prep work on a long-term project in my spare time: I wanted to gather information from across my library of Forgotten Realms products and compile my notes into a single DMs Guild product. (Update: This was before Wizards of the Coast announced it would be releasing an official player’s guide to the Forgotten Realms in 2025. I’ll be editing my posts in this thread to reflect the fact that I’m writing my sourcebook as a supplement to that official player’s guide.)

Fast forward a few years. Though I have no audience and limited resources, I’ve managed to make a fair amount of progress. I’ve curated information from dozens of primary sources and compiled it into a 350-page rough draft. I’ve sifted through tens of thousands of stock art images to find the best human-generated images available on my shoestring budget. I’ve created dozens of all-new regional maps of the Realms, from Faerûn and Kara-Tur to the burning land of Zakhara.

I don’t have a blog or a social media presence, so I’m starting this thread as a clearing house for random design notes. I’m in the process of editing and refining my sourcebook for publication on the DMs Guild (in late 2024 or early 2025, with any luck). I’ll try to post occasional notes here regarding my process and my progress. Questions and comments from other posters are also welcome.

What, exactly, am I working on?

The project I’m working on is a sourcebook which I’m writing as a supplement to the official Forgotten Realms player’s guide scheduled for release in late 2025. It will also serve as a supplement to all existing Forgotten Realms campaign setting products and adventures without rendering any one of them obsolete. As noted above, I aim to release this player’s guide through the DMs Guild once it’s finished. I may release it as early as late 2024. (In any case, if I release it before the official player’s guide in late 2025, I will also release a free update after the official guide is released, if necessary).

My primary sources of inspiration are the Character Regions section in the 3e Player’s Guide to Faeûrn and the Backgrounds chapter in the 4e Forgotten Realms Player’s Guide. I’m not attempting to recreate those sources, but to create a new, similar work which compiles information about the lands and cultures of Faerûn, Kara-Tur, and Zakhara together in a single volume.

Plenty of existing products explore specific parts of the Forgotten Realms in great depth. I’m not attempting to compete with those products in that regard. Instead, my goal is to highlight a wide range of Backgrounds and other character options from across all of Faerûn, Kara-Tur, and Zakhara, providing readers many different ways to engage with the setting when creating a character.

To distinguish itself from online wikis which present encyclopedic information about the Forgotten Realms setting, my sourcebook provides a curated, player-facing experience. The book focuses on character options, cultural details, and widely-known geographical information. It avoids delving too deeply into historical, political, or plot details which are more the purview of the DM.

The longest chapter in this guide describes over one-hundred cultures native to Faerûn, Kara-Tur, and Zakhara. That same chapter provides a brief overview of over two-hundred regions where those cultures are found. Some of those regions are described in more detail in recent Forgotten Realms products, and are included in my sourcebook for the sake of completeness. Others are regions unlikely to see updates in official Forgotten Realms products for the current edition of the game.

The book also includes an appendix of new rules, mostly options for new and existing Species. Outside that appendix—and some discussions of Backgrounds features—content is largely rules-neutral, so it can be used with Forgotten Realms products of all editions.

Why am I working on this project?

From a business standpoint, this project is a terrible idea. I’m just one worker on a shoestring budget with no upcoming crowdfunding campaigns to support my efforts. I’d be better off writing a dozen highly-focused, thirty-page products detailing specific parts of the Forgotten Realms. I could release them every few months in an effort to build both an audience and a catalog of past releases.

Instead, I’m putting my efforts into a three-hundred-plus-page sourcebook with no established audience. Why am I doing this? Because the sourcebook I’m writing is the document I’d want to provide to my players—alongside any official player’s guide—if I were running a Forgotten Realms campaign. No one else is designing anything quite like it for me to use, so I’m designing it myself.

Hopefully, when I release this sourcebook, other folks will find it useful. Speaking for myself, I will definitely benefit from having a Monster-Manual-style chapter of over one-hundred Forgotten Realms cultures, which I can pick and choose from when designing Realms-inspired characters or campaigns. As an added bonus, I also know (for example) what a typical building in Cormyr looks like.

What’s next?

I’m currently working on the second draft of my sourcebook. Everything will require a copy-editing pass, and I’ve identified a few sections that will need complete rewrites for various reasons. There are also a few sections where my design decisions are just placeholders. In those sections, I will need to make final decisions about the direction I want to take with certain content.

I also need to finalize my regional maps. I’ve mapped out the boundaries of all relevant terrain to my satisfaction, but the maps will need labels and probably a few added textures. My goal is to make the maps clean and functional. I don’t expect to produce high-end artwork worthy of a poster map, but I do hope to at least match the quality of some less-detailed, inline maps from older Realms products.

That’s all for now. I will return with more design notes and updates as time permits.

This would be an amazing resource. From what little we've been told by WOTC, the upcoming FR books will talk about a few regions in detail, and largely ignore the rest. I've bought most of the old editions, and trying to synthesize my notes and highlights has been an incredible pain.

DMs Guild [Design Notes] Forgotten Realms Travel Guide: Faerûn, Kara-Tur, and Zakhara

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rmattbill1

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