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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scrivener of Doom" data-source="post: 6318562" data-attributes="member: 87576">Right now, I'm primarily happy that WotC hasn't decide to screw the pooch again with FR maps as happened with FR4E. Check the maps in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide and Forgotten Realms Player's Guide: they look like someone took the contents of my son's nappy/diaper and slapped them on a blank background before trying to add a few place names from memory. The net result? Maps that are inaccurate, unusable, and not at all aesthetically pleasing.Thankfully, WotC seemed to learn a lesson and the subsequent maps for FR were all by Mike Schley (with the honourable exception of a tremendous map of the Moonsea North by Sean Macdonald). Mike's maps have all been outstanding and, by comparison with the original 4E maps, worthy of being printed in gold leaf and displayed in a major museum. I'm glad WotC decided, "We screwed the pooch before; let's not do it again."And I like this map of Phandalin.BTW, Phandalin has never been more than a place name before in FR lore as far as I can tell. It has always been previously described as a ruin. That might explain why, for example, the Shrine of Luck - ie, Tymora - is the only "temple" in town: Tymora is the patron of adventurers and I daresay that a band or two of adventures played a role in reclaiming it. As it grows, you will probably find a temple to Chauntea (agriculture, farming) also making an appearance but, clearly, Phandalin is a work in progress and the PCs are, no doubt, part of that progress.Of course, this also segues nicely into a reason for a PC cleric to be adventuring in Phandalin: if the place is beginning to grow, it's a good time for a new religion to make an appearance and, hopefully, win glory for its deity. And that's why  the PC cleric is there.I have lived in the Philippines for the past three years after living primary in Singapore for more than a decade before that. Singapore is well-organised to a point that few places are: even your postcode can identify an individual apartment block. And then I came to Mindanao where the purpose of government - at almost any level - is organised crime. Nationwide, about 100 families control all political positions which is why election time is a time when murder-for-hire makes headlines.Anyway, one of the legacies of government = crime is that things like organising street names, house/building numbers etc... simply have never happened. To get around the city I live in, for example, you're constantly referring to landmarks such as particular restaurants (a favourite) or other buildings. If you want to have furniture delivered, there is actually space on the back of the delivery order for you to draw a map to your house.It really is like living in a D&D world. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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