Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="squibbles" data-source="post: 8833741" data-attributes="member: 6937590">Hey I looked this thread back up after getting invested in your <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/handling-the-orc-horde-as-a-key-setting-element.693288/" target="_blank">orcs thread</a>. I wondered after reading the following comments what parts of the Forgotten Realms actually got proper attention in the original boxed set.So I decided to check. Here's a map with all the settlements that get an entry in the Grey Box campaign set circled in red, all the adventure locations that get an entry circled in orange, the settlements that get only a tiny 2-3 sentence entry in yellow (which is all of Sembia, interestingly), and all the places that get a map circled in green or with green boxes:[ATTACH=full]267471[/ATTACH]Here's another one that zooms in on the area with the most attention:[ATTACH=full]267470[/ATTACH]It's nuts how much more attention the heartlands and western heartlands(?) get compared to everywhere else. Also, it feels like most adventure to be had is in the western heartlands, where the greatest density of wilderness adventure sites is. Skimming their entries, Cormyr and the Dalelands already seem kinda ren-faire, though there's usually an adventure hook somewhere in each entry.Funny, I very much hate that sort of extreme size in fantasy settings, in the same way that I hate setting timelines that go for tens of thousands of years. It's too much; overwhelming but also lacking vital detail. I appreciate the way you've contextualized it, though. I've gotten some of this huge unpopulated feel, seeing the western half of the US and the inland west of China, where there are vast open spaces in which almost no one lives. There's definitely a kind of romance in that.There's a cool organizing device called the <a href="https://hws3.wordpress.com/2018/12/01/conspyramids-and-vampyramids/" target="_blank">conspyramid</a>, which might help with this, where a secret society has cells/subfactions at a bunch of different levels--street level, city level, regional level--with a network of connections between them. The PCs can discover the network by recovering letters or interrogating NPCs, when they deal with street level cells that are getting up to no good, i.e. the bandits harassing this area are part of a larger operation. The larger network then has a pattern of responses to PC antagonism--and they can drive the game in a more interesting way than "mayor tells PCs to go solve escalating BBEG threat in order A, B, and C" (It's kinda how Baldur's Gate 1's main plot works, except that it's not a railroad).Dunno if that helps, and I've never used this device, but it looks sweet.[ATTACH=full]267477[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

Verification