D&D General Forgotten Realms geographic changes.

[Voadam]

It was recently pointed out that the Forgotten Realms map has changed geographically in size in different editions with the size of nations growing and shrinking and the distance between cities and such changing somewhat dramatically.

I am a moderate fan of the realms but mostly for the god elements and factions like the Harpers and Red Wizards and such and having read maybe a dozen FR novels and played in a few games set in the Realms. My main two general big setting sourcebooks I owned in print at their time periods and that I am somewhat familiar with are the 2e Forgotten Realms Adventures and the 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. The FRA does not have big maps and I rarely check out the scale of RPG maps anyway so I was not really aware of any changes in size.

I mostly have not kept up with 4e and 5e Realms so I only loosely know about the 4e 100-year timeline advancement, realms shaking spellplague and god shakeup stuff, and pulling in another planet for rejiggering the land masses, and the 5e reset.

Can anyone point out the size changes and when they happened? Also how much these were explained in sources as in-game things as opposed to just map discrepancies in different sources?

 

[Stormonu]

I suspect that the 4E/5E size changes would be explained by the merger of Aber and Toril in 4E, and their split in the sundering (that led to 5E?). I'm willing to bet 4E had a fair bit of explanation, but I doubt 5E said a peep other than "things went back to normal (even if they didn't)".

 

[Alzrius]

I seem to recall that the positioning of the continent of Faerun shifted slightly between (I think) 2E and 3E. If you look at the Sword Coast in the 2E boxed set map, it runs almost perfectly north to south, whereas in the 3E map it's angled slightly, running from the northwest to the southeast.

Or at least, I've heard something to that effect; it's not something I've checked out myself, since I didn't want to detach the map from the back of my 3E FRCS.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I suspect that the 4E/5E size changes would be explained by the merger of Aber and Toril in 4E, and their split in the sundering (that led to 5E?). I'm willing to bet 4E had a fair bit of explanation, but I doubt 5E said a peep other than "things went back to normal (even if they didn't)".

5e does explicitly mention it, as I said in the other thread. It states in SCAG, page 18:

"Early in 1487, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions abounded for months, as if the whole world was convulsing. Rumors spread of the chasms caused by the Spellplague suddenly vanishing, and stories circulated of known destinations being further away, as if the world had quietly added miles of wilderness between them."

 

[Parmandur]

They changed the map size for 3E because they felt that the FR was too big for use, explained their logic in a preview for the FRCS in Dragon 283, apparently.

Here's a bit of a deep dive for the details, long story short is they cut millions of square miles from Faerun (just from the Sword Coast region, even!):

 

[R_J_K75]

Always took the Realms maps like Volo, might be right, might be crazy. They are a DM tool and not something the PCs should rely on or take as gospel.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

5e does explicitly mention it, as I said in the other thread. It states in SCAG, page 18:

"Early in 1487, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions abounded for months, as if the whole world was convulsing. Rumors spread of the chasms caused by the Spellplague suddenly vanishing, and stories circulated of known destinations being further away, as if the world had quietly added miles of wilderness between them."

God that sucks.

Just…so lazy and senseless.

 

[R_J_K75]

Worst Realms map, 2E Spellbound, it attached kitty-corner to itself IIRC.

 

[Parmandur]

God that sucks.

Just…so lazy and senseless.

Well, no, what they did in 3E was senseless by changing it without explanation, this was at least lampshades in the fiction when they fixed the geography.

 

[Tonguez]

Inaccurate distances (and contours) on historic maps is a real thing and even now maps need to be periodically updated for accuracy. faerun getting a bit more epic magical explanation fits the genre but isn't really necessary