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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Parmandur" data-source="post: 9370270" data-attributes="member: 6780330">Oh my goodness, I could think of like 2 dozen explanations off the top of my head, that aren't even mutually exclusive. Most of the PHB standard Species don't have some sort of ethnostate hanging around and are still present in the huge continent, and the continent is open from multiple directions for outsiders to visit.I agree the Darlene map is the best, though I do like that early FR cartography too. But actually I mean less the big regional maps, and more the zoomed in maps of settlements and cities. Waterdeep is not covered ao exhaustively in FR1 so as to make it not still pretty open as a microsettijg (it is only a thin book, and a gigantic city), but the mapping of the city is a wonderful tool to give a DM.Forgotten Realms Adventures, the companion piece to Greyhawk Adventures and Dragonlance Adventures in that 1E/2E hardcover grey zone, is a good example of this before the FR becomes too freighted with novelistic detail and history. It briefly describes a couple dozen cities across the Heartlands, with nice maps of each settlement and some key NPCs and hooks. It is very easy to see how a Moonsea or Vilhon Reaches campaign could be built out of those pieces, without overwhelming amounts of Canon with a Capital C.Yeah, and IMO WotC was kind of trying to get back to that vibe with SCAG, and I reckon with the DMG Greyhawk example.</blockquote>