D&D General Piecing together the official maps of the Mortal World of Nerath

[Yaarel]

The authors intended that the planet was Earth-like, for the same purpose they gave it only one moon or 4 seasons: for easy-to-use for new DMs to homebrew. That was the original intention, at least. They revealed that in one of the preview books.

So, following the authors' intentions, the map of Conquest is just a very small part of the World, that doesn't even contains all the places they described in different books.

The map of Conquest isn't even that reliable source, anyway. The map was created with a different intention of that of the Nentir Vale's setting, adding places from Mystara and Greyhawk, and creating some contradictions (such as the location of the Vault of the Drow). As with everything Nentir Vale, we don't have to take everything as written on the stone.

Ok. But.

If the Nentir map itself is wrong.

Why try to stick something wrong into an other planet that was already doing fine without it?

 

[Zeromaru X]

The map of Nentir Vale is not wrong. The map of Conquest... Well, I won't use the word "wrong", but the people who made the map had a different ideabof what the World looked like than the original creators of the Nentir Vale setting. The original authors said that beyond the Nentir Vale, it was up to the DMs to map the World. Nothing was definite, besides some basic ideas: the planet was like Earth, but with magic, there were coastal cities south of the Nentir Vale, and Nentir Vale was in a cold climate but snow was a rare thing that happened only in winter.

The map of Conquest was created when they decided to expand the lore of setting (perhaps using the ideas of cancelled books, such as the Nentir Vale Gazetteer and the Player's Handbook Races: Humans), but raiding Mystara and Greyhawk as well. So, the maps is just one interpretation, not the only one.

But yes, I also think that Nentir Vale is its own thing, as the official products have linked Nentir Vale and Greyhawk in a different manner (Greyhawk is mentioned as an other world from another dimension, connecting to the World by interdimensional portals and time-space rifts).

 

[Haplo781]

Given an Earth-sized planet, assuming the icy bits we see are roughly analogous to the southern tip of Greenland gets the bottom of the map roughly in the same latitude as southern France. That's certainly subtropical but you could still have temperate rainforests, which in the real world exist as far north as the Alaska panhandle.

 

[RealAlHazred]

perhaps using the ideas of cancelled books, such as the Nentir Vale Gazetteer and the Player's Handbook Races: Humans

I've seen a fan-made Nentir Vale Gazetteer (incomplete, sadly), but I've never seen 4E fans put together a PHB Races Humans book. I wonder what would have gone into it...

Amusingly, Powells.com still has it coming out...

 

[Zeromaru X]

Given an Earth-sized planet, assuming the icy bits we see are roughly analogous to the southern tip of Greenland gets the bottom of the map roughly in the same latitude as southern France. That's certainly subtropical but you could still have temperate rainforests, which in the real world exist as far north as the Alaska panhandle.

Also, remember that most climate patterns in the PoL World are because magic shenanigans (the Desert of Desolation and the Kul Desert were created by tieflings using defiling magic, for instance, there are planar rifts that influence the surrounding terrain - such as the Trollhaunt Warrens, etc.), meaning that latitude isn't the only thing influencing the climate of the World.

I've seen a fan-made Nentir Vale Gazetteer (incomplete, sadly), but I've never seen 4E fans put together a PHB Races Humans book. I wonder what would have gone into it...

Amusingly, Powells.com still has it coming out...

Well, there is a Dragon article about different human ethnicities, and other about a human-only Epic Destiny, that I be were originally stuff made for this book.

 

[Haplo781]

According to Bill Slavicsek, there was very little work done in the NVG before it was cancelled, and most of it ended up in Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale and the Mark of Nerath novel.

 

[RealAlHazred]

According to Bill Slavicsek, there was very little work done in the NVG before it was cancelled, and most of it ended up in Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale and the Mark of Nerath novel.

As I recall, the fan-made NVG that I saw had those portions, along with materials extrapolated from Dragon magazine articles and other WotC fiction released at the time.

 

[Yaarel]

@Dungeonosophy

I estimated the distance a different way. Assuming equidistance, the Mortal map is closer to 1200 miles north-south, rather than 1300 miles.

(I cut and pasted the 80-mile distance bar from the composite map, and resized it for the large map. It stretches across the verticle distance about 15.1 times.)



Also, check out this comparison between Nerath and Iomandra, the watery world of Perkins.

 

[Zeromaru X]

IIRC, while Iomandra was created using the key points of Nerath's worldview, they were said to be different worlds. They talked about it in one of the Dragon or Dungeon magazines of the time. They used Iomandra and other two worlds as examples of using the Nentir Vale settings as starting points for homebrewed world-building.

 

[Yaarel]

IIRC, while Iomandra was created using the key points of Nerath's worldview, they were said to be different worlds. They talked about it in one of the Dragon or Dungeon magazines of the time. They used Iomandra and other two worlds as examples of using the Nentir Vale settings as starting points for homebrewed world-building.

Can you list the magazine number? I am not finding it.