D&D General Forgotten Realms geographic changes.

[nevin]

Well, no, what they did in 3E was senseless by changing it without explanation, this was at least lampshades in the fiction when they fixed the geography.

pretty much every change starting with the godswar in 2e was senseless.

 

[Demetrios1453]

From the 1e Forgotten Realms Boxed Set page 5:

Two of the maps are drawn to provide a general overview of the Realms, running from the Moonshae Isles in the west to the land of Thay in the east, and from the Spine of The World Mountains in the North to the Jungles of Chult in the south. These maps have been drawn with that information available to our representative in the Realms, Elminster the Sage, and represents what is known of those lands from the mindset of the Dalelands and Cormyr.

The other two maps are detailed blow-ups of sections of the former maps, covering that region from the Sword Coast to The Dragon Reach in great detail, for use in adventuring through the Realms. As more of the world is fully explored, more maps of this and scale will be made available for use in Realms-related products.

So it sounds like the Sword coast maps are supposed to be game accurate down to the hex level for exploring and traveling, while the bigger map is a general overview that is specifically based on in world knowledge from a certain perspective.

And then the actual smaller-area maps (at a scale of 30 miles to the inch - other than FR10 The Old Empires and FR16 The Shining South, which, annoyingly, had maps at a different scale) that came with later products all agreed with the bigger maps from the setting box (which were at 60 miles to the inch). As I have all the FR-series (and the Chult and Vilhon Reach books that were outside that series) of regional sourcebooks with the smaller-area maps, I'd periodically spread them out when I had the space available to make one gigantic map of the areas those books covered. By the time they stopped producing that line of regional sourcebooks, their 30 miles to the inch maps covered probably 70% of the area covered in the maps from the Gray Box - and even further when it came to showing areas of Chult that were off the original maps - and they agreed with those older maps almost completely.

So, basically, in the end, all those supposedly more accurate regional maps agreed with the supposedly less accurate continental maps from the box sets...

 

[Parmandur]

And then the actual smaller-area maps (at a scale of 30 miles to the inch - other than FR10 The Old Empires and FR16 The Shining South, which, annoyingly, had maps at a different scale) that came with later products all agreed with the bigger maps from the setting box (which were at 60 miles to the inch). As I have all the FR-series (and the Chult and Vilhon Reach books that were outside that series) of regional sourcebooks with the smaller-area maps, I'd periodically spread them out when I had the space available to make one gigantic map of the areas those books covered. By the time they stopped producing that line of regional sourcebooks, their 30 miles to the inch maps covered probably 70% of the area covered in the maps from the Gray Box - and even further when it came to showing areas of Chult that were off the original maps - and they agreed with those older maps almost completely.

So, basically, in the end, all those supposedly more accurate regional maps agreed with the supposedly less accurate continental maps from the box sets...

Yeah, thst note was more of an acknowledgement of DM prerogative to change anything than an indication that TSR didn't see their cartography as consistent.

 

[R_J_K75]

Actually, the 2e - 3e transition has been the only one that didn't involve a massive world-wide upheaval in the setting, just a few minor changes that were basically just explanations for the new mechanics.

I liked the 2E-3E transition and prefer that map over any others TBH. It seems the most complete in a single map, but I could be wrong. As I usually set my campaigns in the 1360s-1370s makes the most sense. Only lore change I didn't like was that any race could be wizards, but that was just my personal opinion and I never banned anyone from making a dwarf (or any other race) wizard.

 

[Demetrios1453]

pretty much every change starting with the godswar in 2e was senseless.

Nah, the Godswar was kind of neat at the time. As a one-off thing. When we started getting continual Realms-shaking events on a semi-regular basis, it became tedious, and the Godswar became retroactively tedious along with its successors...

 

[Kannik]

What was amusing was how the Forgotten Realms Trail Map (think a huge fold-up road-map style map) and the Kara-Tur Trail Map didn't quite align with each other when you put them together... the explanation given was that they were "drawn by cartographers from both realms going from the coast inland, so there's some discrepancy..."

Fortunately with access to a roll-scanner and photoshop, I've been able to adjust and put them together in a way to give one heck of a mega map (along with some of the southern continent added in), all 8,705 miles wide of it.

Very interesting about the scaling issues! I hadn't realized that things had been so shrunk down, then unshrunk once again, back to where, if the Reddit thread upstream is accurate, the 1e/2e maps can be used with 5e without much difference...

 

[R_J_K75]

After 3 years, LOL, I just logged into Roll20 to make sure it didnt delete my campaign where I scaled the 3E FR map to use the measure tool for distances. Lets see how I did, anyone care to check my work? In Cormyr I came up with ~300 miles from Suzail to (pre-exploded) Tilverton.

 

[Parmandur]

I liked the 2E-3E transition and prefer that map over any others TBH. It seems the most complete in a single map, but I could be wrong. As I usually set my campaigns in the 1360s-1370s makes the most sense. Only lore change I didn't like was that any race could be wizards, but that was just my personal opinion and I never banned anyone from making a dwarf (or any other race) wizard.

As a cartography object, I do like it quite a bit: had it hanging in my living room for a while.

 

[Parmandur]

Nah, the Godswar was kind of neat at the time. As a one-off thing. When we started getting continual Realms-shaking events on a semi-regular basis, it became tedious, and the Godswar became retroactively tedious along with its successors...

I took advantage of some DMsGuild sales and being up for hous Hillingdon a baby at night during my latest paternity leave to catch up on old FR products: for me the shark jumping moment has to be the Horde campaign event, which was followed soon by Maztica. Really counter to what worked so well in the OG (Priginal Grognard) FR, IMO.

 

[Voadam]

As I have all the FR-series (and the Chult and Vilhon Reach books that were outside that series) of regional sourcebooks with the smaller-area maps, I'd periodically spread them out when I had the space available to make one gigantic map of the areas those books covered. By the time they stopped producing that line of regional sourcebooks, their 30 miles to the inch maps covered probably 70% of the area covered in the maps from the Gray Box - and even further when it came to showing areas of Chult that were off the original maps - and they agreed with those older maps almost completely.

That's pretty fantastic.

Physical maps folded out can be very evocative, having multiple ones all opened and connecting must have been really cool.

I only really started picking the FR sourcebooks up as PDFs after the fact for lore type stuff onscreen, and the PDF maps are not the most user friendly broken up over multiple screens in different orders. So the map stuff is very much a step out of my direct experience.

The only two maps I am really familiar with from the AD&D era is the WoG and the first Ravenloft ones, which were the settings I ran my games in.