D&D General Forgotten Realms geographic changes.

[Parmandur]

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

I think the sheer epic scale of the change isn't clear to a lot of people. We aren't talking about a city being 100 miles or 112 miles from another place, we are talking about continent size changes.

For juat 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.

That is an absurd change. Even and eapecially compared to ancient and Medieval knowledge of geography.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

That makes it worse, not better.

It’s not a farcical setting. Don’t do farcical things to it.

Whatever, at my table FR will always have earthmotes and lots of genasi and new Netheril, and the few things they changed with the sundering that made sense.

“Lol forget that happened” is not good writing.

 

[Parmandur]

That makes it worse, not better.

It’s not a farcical setting. Don’t do farcical things to it.

Whatever, at my table FR will always have earthmotes and lots of genasi and new Netheril, and the few things they changed with the sundering that made sense.

“Lol forget that happened” is not good writing.

Well, sure, those things are also in SCAG.

It's less about being "good writing" and more about creating a workable base Setting thst worked for a large cross section of their user's, many of whom had stuck with the 1E or 2E FR. And now with most people having started with 5E...I thinkntheyvare smart to be moving towards leaning on the traditional the parallel universe model here.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well, sure, those things are also in SCAG.

It's less about being "good writing" and more about creating a workable base Setting thst worked for a large cross section of their user's, many of whom had stuck with the 1E or 2E FR. And now with most people having started with 5E...I thinkntheyvare smart to be moving towards leaning on the traditional the parallel universe model here.

All of which they could have done without retcons that “technically aren’t retcons”.

 

[Demetrios1453]

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.

I was active on the WotC forums and various other sites (I think I was still even using usenet at that point) when they announced they were changing the map for 3e. The reason given was that it was due to in-universe inaccuracies, which is a reasonable excuse. However, they posted pictures of them literally cutting out strips of the 2e map (yes, with scissors!) and then pushing the remaining sections back together. Let's just say those pictures didn't go over so well lol...

 

[Parmandur]

I was active on the WotC forums and various other sites (I think I was still even using usenet at that point) when they announced they were changing the map for 3e. The reason given was that it was due to in-universe inaccuracies, which is a reasonable excuse. However, they posted pictures of them literally cutting out strips of the 2e map (yes, with scissors!) and then pushing the remaining sections back together. Let's just say those pictures didn't go over so well lol...

The changes are astronomical, however, beggering any actual inaccuracies of Ancient and Medieval cartography. Kind of a painfully terrible explanation, to be honest. Even the "cataclysm changed things" is better.

 

[Parmandur]

All of which they could have done without retcons that “technically aren’t retcons”.

They probsvly should have hard reset the timeline to pre-Time of Troubles, in retrospect. Just made it a clean and clear-cut thing.

For me, SCAG is the primary FR text: I didn't get into the FR until reading it in my 30's and working backwards from that.

 

[Demetrios1453]

The changes are astronomical, however, beggering any actual inaccuracies of Ancient and Medieval cartography. Kind of a painfully terrible explanation, to be honest. Even the "cataclysm changed things" is better.

Which was sort of my point. They said, "We're going to change the map a bit, with the in-universe explanation that there are inevitable cartography errors." Fans were like, ok, that sounds reasonable for some small adjustments. Then they posted pictures of them cutting out huge swathes of the map, which made it obvious that these were going to be wholesale changes that really couldn't be explained as "minor corrections", and people got (reasonably) upset. Basically, large empty areas got downsized, which kind of defeated the point of a setting where not everything is civilized or tamed (or close to areas that are). Sometimes you're hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement, with all that entails. And those areas were the first on the chopping block.

 

[Voadam]

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.

Thank you, one I own in PDF. I got it long after the fact though and had not read that article.

Is "The Sundering" the term used in 4e for the two worlds thing?

 

[TwoSix]

I think the sheer epic scale of the change isn't clear to a lot of people. We aren't talking about a city being 100 miles or 112 miles from another place, we are talking about continent size changes.

For juat 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.

That is an absurd change. Even and eapecially compared to ancient and Medieval knowledge of geography.

For comparison, Eberron changed its map scale for Khorvaire by about 40% from 3e to 4e; that means it lost over 60% of its land area.

Keith Baker has said his intention was for Khorvaire to be roughly Europe-sized, the initial scale of Eberron as presented in 3.5 made Khorvaire larger than Asia. (IIRC)