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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 7973380" data-attributes="member: 1465">The banality of Forgotten Realms continents mirroring real-world continents used to irk me a lot.Then, I realized that it makes a lot of sense, because Ed Greenwood's original idea back when he started writing notes for his fantasy setting as a young kid was probably to imagine a world where all the legends, myths and fairy tales existed in parallel with the real world, and the "way" to that fantasy world had been... forgotten.Therefore OF COURSE there is a Japan and a central america and an Africa in that fantasy world, and they are filled with the fantasies of real-world Japan, central America and Africa. Some things will look different, like the actual shapes of coasts, islands, mountains and countries, maybe just in the same way WE thought our shapes were different in the past (ever seen a geographic map from ancient times, how "wrong" it looks but not completely?), or maybe because the fantasy version of a region has to be somewhat different yet familiar even in geography just like the content i.e. the people, the beasts, the laws of nature etc. all are.This "distorted mirror image of the real world" idea is nothing bad. It's simply another valid choice, mid-way between a completely original fantasy world (usually a noble design choice, but often difficult to pull if completely detached from established fantasy tropes), and having the REAL WORLD itself be the setting before adding a single supernatural twist (which is what 99% of supernatural-themed (not sci-fi) movies choose to do by the way).</blockquote>

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