D&D 5E What's unique about the Sword Coast North?

[I'm A Banana]

I appreciate that one of FR's "virtues" as a setting is that you can port whatever you want there.

For me, that's kind of a weakness.

I can do orcs and ruins and swamps and volcanoes almost anywhere. What I want to know, as I disembowel HotDQ for my party, is what I can do in the Sword Coast North that is unique to that place. If there was only one thing I could do there, what should I do to get the vibe of the place? If you were a visiting tourist, what thing would you point out as unique? What sells this region of FR over anywhere else? What's special about it?

I imagine the SCAG will help out, here, but I'm peppering PrC opportunities and plot hooks in the area, and I wanted to know what this place has that nowhere else in D&D has, what makes it different from any one of a million similar regions in similar campaign settings.

Any ideas on things that the Sword Coast North can do uniquely, or better than anywhere else, are entirely welcome, even if they're not exactly canon. What would you do, if you had to convey the vibe of the Sword Coast North in a single adventure?

 

[Prism]

For me its Waterdeep. That's got to be the most detailed D&D metropolis that has ever been done, but you'll need the early source to make the most of it. You can get a map the size of a small room, details about nearly every road, ally, tavern and shop. And then there is Undermountain right beneath it.

 

[CM]

If you can get a hold of copies of Volo's Guides to the Sword Coast and Volo's Guide to the North, do so. They are full of scads of roleplaying hooks. They're technically 2e, but they're nearly edition-neutral. They detail the sort of small-time players and places that can be put in any time frame and still work, so they're also pretty friendly to using in any of FR's eras.

 

[Zardnaar]

Not alot but its a popular region. Drizzt novels, Baldurs Gate, Waterdeep, Menzoberranzan.

 

[CaptainGemini]

It showcases one of the less common government styles on Faerun.

And while you can put anything you want in the Forgotten Realms, the Sword Coast in its entirety is just a tiny portion of FR. It just gets the most focus.

 

[Pauper]

Honestly, I think the big thing about the Sword Coast North is simply that it's the place that keeps getting published. While 3E had a lot of different setting books to cover different geographical parts of the Realms, I'm betting the early books which largely covered the Sword Coast and the North (Silver Marches, Waterdeep) outsold later books which covered other areas. And in 4E? Pretty much every book that wasn't the generic 'FR Campaign Setting' book was set in that region: Neverwinter (a city in the region), Halls of Undermountain (a mega-dungeon under the city of Waterdeep), and Menzoberranzan (a major drow city located beneath the Sword Coast North in the Underdark).

Frankly, I find the Dragon Coast and Cormyr to be more interesting than the Sword Coast, with the exception of Waterdeep.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Yeah, those Volo's Guides were wonderful back in the day.

If I had to define the Sword Coast North, I'd use the old 4e "Points of Light" motif. There are great beacons of civilization, like Waterdeep, Neverwinter, and Luskan. But there are also areas of savage wilderness, like the Mere of Dead Men and the Spine of the World. You can easily go from intriguing with a Thieves Guild to ambushed by Yeti in a blizzard in the same adventure.

 

[TwoSix]

Well, it's certainly a lot colder than the Sword Coast South.

 

[Mavrik6666]

Detail - pretty much anywhere the party goes .. small town, river ford, forest, city, game trail, inn, store, has been detailed even a little, it makes a DM's job easier so he has the basics, plus he can then embellish if its a worthy place to visit / revisit... plus I like the history, - think of the area you live, you know small quirky details about it.
Sometime places in DnD are very anonymous unless the part spend a lot of time there. I find it fun when we visit a town, and my players are on google, or FR wiki and find out some piece of lore, or map or picture of an inn, it like the characters have knowledge that they may have know without roll or history check .

after a quick google... ' Isn't this the inn that Feldar the Barbarian tried to burn down in 1372 just after the Rage of Dragons ' .. is better than .. roll a history check .. fail.. you know nothing