Toril and Earth - Coincidence?

[Shadowdancer]

In the original Oriental Adventures book, it talked of Kara-Tur being reached by sailing over a large ocean, east to west (basically California to Japan/China). There was even an introductory adventure to that effect, taking "traditional" D&D characters from their western European-centric world and putting them in a very foreign, eastern Asian-centric world.

 

[DragonLancer]

As Ambrus stated, our ancient Earth and Toril were once connected through a series of gates and portals. Of course, if Ed Greenwood himself would publicly refute that, then I understand.

I still have my 1st ed grey FR box set and it says the same thing in the introduction. That Toril and Earth once had portals that linked them and thats why we have legends of magic, dragons, vampires and the like.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

And I see nothing wrong with this. Using parallels to real-world history and geography can make it much easier for players and DMs alike to "get into" the setting. The Forgotten Realms do it, Eberron does it (with this whole pulp/post WWI atmosphere), Warhammer does it (and how!) Dark Sun did it (at least in the first boxed set, many city-states have rather blatant similarities to real-world cultures)... hell, even I am doing it with Urbis...

Sure, it is entirely possible to build very alien campaign settings that have less relationship to the culture and history we (I'm assuming that most of us come from North America and Western Europe) are familiar with. Witness Tekumel, for example, which derives from Mesoamerican and South East Asian cultures. But the problem is that this requires a lot of preparation work by both players and DM - everyone needs to familiarize themselves with the general culture and society of the setting, and not everyone has the time to read dozens of pages of world description (says someone with a full-time job).

It is much easier to just say: "This is sort of like medieval Europe with generic fantasy elements thrown in". Sure, things are more complicated than that - but it serves well as a starting point, and the other details can be explained in the course of the campaign...

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I think you're being silly. There's no such place called "Earth."

He just spelled it wrong. He meant Oerth.

 

[Captain NeMo]

Link to a map of faerun?

 

[diaglo]

Aber Toril and Earth...

not the original plan i'm sure Ed had for the campaign when he came up with the material pre-D&D days.

but during the 2edADnD days a lot of stuff happened that many people didn't/don't agree with...

 

[Staffan]

The definition I've always used is that the Europe/Asia line goes through Bosporen (Istanbul) - Black Sea - Kaukasus - Caspian Sea - Ural Mountains. Given that Ukraine borders the Black Sea, I feel confident in calling it Eastern Europe.

 

[Ranger REG]

but during the 2edADnD days a lot of stuff happened that many people didn't/don't agree with...

For example...?

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Aber Toril and Earth

It is actually spelled Abeir-Toril

 

[Klaus]

Link to a map of faerun?

Yeah, I'd like to see one too.