D&D General Forgotten Realms geographic changes.

[R_J_K75]

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

I had the two HUGE FR Trail Maps hung together on my bedroom wall back in the day. It was cool because I could just look at them when I was reading a book, helped a lot, but they weren't extremely detailed IIRC. I think one was 4' x 6' so together they were 8' x 12'. Big enough to where I had to walk around to see some parts. The City Systems maps are ridiculously huge for a city to the point they are pretty much unusable.

We bought the Ruins of Undermountain boxed set in the mid 90s and hung the maps on my friends wall; he had no shades or curtains in the room. One night we were playing and went for a beer run and noticed on the way back that you could see them very clearly at night from main street his house was on. To anyone who didn't know what they were, we must've looked like a sleeper cell hatching a nefarious plot. I'm still surprised the FEDs didn't break down the door.

 

[Yaarel]

For my own games, I use a reallife "cloudless" satellite map of Earth. It is nice to generate regional maps on the fly.

At the same time, I find the history of D&D to be fascinating. I have a keen interest in the evolution of the maps of Realms/Toril and Greyhawk/Oerth.

 

[Epic Meepo]

But that's what makes it hard for me: real world cartographers did not make mistakes of that scale, they knew better.

In the post you're responding to, I provided an example of a real-world, modern-day professional cartographer making the exact mistake you say cartographers don't make. I can inspect my physical copy of the mislabelled map and point to the place where they incorrectly stated 90 miles instead of 60 miles.

 

[Epic Meepo]

The City Systems maps are ridiculously huge for a city to the point they are pretty much unusable.

I'd forgotten about those City System maps! I couldn't find any practical use for them, but younger me sure had fun laying all ten panels out on the living room floor and admiring how much space they occupied.

 

[Parmandur]

In the post you're responding to, I provided an example of a real-world, modern-day professional cartographer making the exact mistake you say cartographers don't make. I can inspect my physical copy of the mislabelled map and point to the place where they incorrectly stated 90 miles instead of 60 miles.

90 instead of 60 is nowhere near the kind of difference in question, which is millions of square miles and more than halving the size of the world.

 

[Demetrios1453]

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.

Yeah, by the end of 2e and the end of the old small module-like sourcebooks line (where there was an outer cover containing a booklet and a map or two) as well as some regional boxed sets later in the 2e era, the entirety of the area of the large regional maps from the Gray Box set was basically covered, only missing out areas in the south and east (and a lot of the south was off the edge of the box set maps anyway); the only other missing area I can think of is a relatively small area north of the Moonsea between the Anauroch Desert and the Great Glacier, which is probably one of the most backwater areas of the setting anyway. That's why it was annoying that the maps from the Old Empires and Shining South books not being to the 30 miles to the inch scale was so annoying - if they had been to that scale, you'd be able to add them as well and have one huge, basement-filling map that included virtually everything on the continent. Granted, they switched the map background coloration from orange-brown to light green about halfway through 2e (although the basically everything else in the maps' style stayed the same), so there's unfortunately some color clash when you lay them all out.

 

[Kannik]

I had the two HUGE FR Trail Maps hung together on my bedroom wall back in the day.

Haha, I put those on my wall as well. I mean, how could we not?

The City Systems maps are ridiculously huge for a city to the point they are pretty much unusable.

Aye. Still have them, and don't think I've looked at them since the day I got them...

 

[Epic Meepo]

90 instead of 60 is nowhere near the kind of difference in question, which is millions of square miles and more than halving the size of the world.

90 instead of 60 is a 50% increase in latitude and a 50% increase in longitude. If that error is accepted as fact, it more than doubles the surface area of the world. Millions of square miles.

 

[R_J_K75]

I'd forgotten about those City System maps! I couldn't find any practical use for them, but younger me sure had fun laying all ten panels out on the living room floor and admiring how much space they occupied.

It was like painting yourself into a corner. Still to this second, I want a good Waterdeep map. 2E was close but then TSR shaped it (insert expletive) here) a bag of balls. But Volos Guide to Waterdeep was good. I always pictured Volo like Clark Griswold.

 

[R_J_K75]

Haha, I put those on my wall as well. I mean, how could we not?


Aye. Still have them, and don't think I've looked at them since the day I got them...

I think they lasted on my wall about 8-12 year before I realized the error of my ways.

The maps weren't good, but the book was!