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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 9774094" data-attributes="member: 58172">This is to give a sense of exactly where the Egg of Coot is.Here is a closeup of the far-north region of Arn, from the official 2024 Greyhawk map from the Dungeon Masters Guide, namely the map of the subcontinent Flannaess.[ATTACH=full]419246[/ATTACH]D&D 2024 renames the Region of Blackmoor as the region of "Arn", named after Arneson, one of the inventors of D&D. It is a place to put the setting that Arneson created. (Etymologically, the term arn- means "eagle", an appropriate name for a far north region.) The rename might be for copyright reasons, but honoring Arneson by name is cool.In the original setting, the village of Blackmoor and the city of Greyhawk are local settings that exist in the same shared Flanaess subcontinent setting. The fact that Blackmoor is the first setting ever, is awesome, and is important to keep alive today. Eventually, both Blackmoor and Greyhawk were plugged into the same shared setting of Arneson and Gygax for the Castle & Crusade Society.Here is a careful overlay of the original local setting from Arneson, onto the 2024 Flannaess map. Notice the different coastlines, but all the locations of the towns and villages are clear. See the location of the "Egg" of Coot between the labels of Blackmoor and Arn.[ATTACH=full]419269[/ATTACH]I went thru much effort to edit the 2024 map to make its coastlines match the Arneson map exactly. But I ended up deciding there is no need. The official 2024 map from the Dungeon Masters Guide works excellently as-is. In fact, even in the original Arneson canon, most of this is shallow marshland whose coastlines are ambiguous and changing anyway. There are even canonical regions of "Sinking Lands" sinking into the waters. The coastlines are in flux, and some of this geological upheaval can be explained by the subtle Farrealm reality-warping influences of the Egg of Coot region, as well as some canonical timey-wimey effects.In sum, the differences in coastlines dont matter. The differences have never come up in my campaign, when using the 2024 map as-is. If they ever do turn out to require an explanation, it will be, "because magic", including reality-instability.Note, in the original Arneson map, the Regent of the Mines is a mountainous area that is significant because it is a main access point to a kind of vast Underdark populated by a culture of dwarven miners. This Underdark has never been officially mapped, and who knows, it might be under the entire region of Arn! Perhaps the Regent of Mines that is now underwater is because this part of the Underdark collapsed. A new Regent of Mines can exist elsewhere as a main access point into the Underdark.Also note the splotchy black square on the overlaid maps. This is the official location of the "ruins" that are in the region of Arn. When overlaying the Arneson setting onto the old Darlene map, it made sense to identify the ruins as that of Ringo Hall. However, here on the 2024 map the ruins are in a different location closer to Bramwald. The Darlene map is more sketchy and suggestive of a medievalesque map pieced together from disparate sources. The new 2024 map looks more "technomagically" precise, drawn by cartographers employing accurate divination magic. In my earlier campaigns, the ruins are Ringo. But now in my new campaign for the 2024 map, the ruins are "Old Ringo". There is now also a "New Ringo", a different elven city named after it.The 2024 region of Arn is nice because it is a pervasively magical area, yet it is almost entirely rural. The only urban locales are Dantredun in the distance − and even then "urban" is an exaggeration. Plus: "New Ringo" that I style as an elven magitech city that blends seemlessly within the natural woodland, alongwith the Underdark where various dwarven cities are. But the environs that adventureres normally come across are many people, but across modest farming and fishing villages. Arn is a great setting for an ambient old-school low-magic campaign − with a dash of old-school gonzo.Here is a map of the original Blackmoor local setting locations, but instead using the official 5e 2024 map of Greyhawk. Notice where the Egg of Coot − and its psionic aberrant sorcery − locate.[ATTACH=full]419270[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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