Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Yamo 12-14-03, 01:50 PM	My players started throwing questions to this effect at me recently: Why are so many of the landmasses on Toril unknown to the inhabitants of Faerun? Technologically, Faerun seems to have 90+% of what the great powers of Europe did during the Age of Sail, when vast portions of the "New World" were being discovered, cataloged and subjugated. The rest would be more than made up for by magic. Why would your brave Faerunian sailors need to fear scurvy when a shipboard cleric could nip it in the bud? Why worry about running low on provisions when that same cleric (and possibly a couple underclerics) can create food so easily with magic? And what about wizards that can fly, scry and teleport with ease? And yet we're supposed to believe that entire continents are still wholly unexplored by Faerunians? Why? Thanks to the commonly-available magic that FR is (in)famous for, Faerunian explorers would have a much easier time traversing the world that their Earthly counterparts. Much, much easier, in fact. So what's stopping them? It should be the easiest thing in the world for Faerunians to travel anywhere on the globe they please.
Damador 12-14-03, 02:09 PM	maybe the gods forbid that travels - maybe wizards doesnt want to travel that far ? - or maybe they already traveled and wont come back from " terra incognita " ? as you noticed it is a equivalent of medieval age of sail - can it be a begin of it ? maybe the PC will discover new world ? maybe maybe maybe ... remember its your world - FR is open ended neverending story feel fre to settle the new worlds or let PC to conquer unknown lands
Kuje31 12-14-03, 02:16 PM	Also you have to include Krakens, giant sea monsters, and the other beasties that live in the water that are probably real in FR. Would you want to travel some where you never been when you could be destroyed or crushed by a dire octopus or sea monster. :) There are diseases that are resistant to divine magic also, which why Talona is so feared. Also don't you need to know the location you are going to scry (or maybe that's the old rules creeping into my thoughts and 3e scry is different now). As the other poster said also, who knows what might be found on those lands. They might have angry deities who destroy any one that steps foot on what they consider thier lands.
Wooly Rupert 12-14-03, 02:35 PM	Another issue is that the discovery of the new world was caused by a desire to reach the Far East. There's not been a lot of contact with the Far East in the Realms (though there has been some), so that's not become as much of an issue for the western powers. As others have pointed out, there's a lot of nasties living in the water. Even assuming you avoid kraken and big baddies like that, what about sahaugin and other undersea races? And let's not forget how much you'd have to appease Umberlee to want to make a voyage like that... Truly, though, I should like some other info on those other continents. However, considering that Kara-Tur, Maztica, and Zhakara are pretty much dead in the water, I don't see the PTB deciding to visit those lands any time soon.
sanishiver 12-14-03, 02:50 PM	Well, considering that Faerùn was originally thought of as being on "the other side of the world" relative to Oerth and the Greyhawk setting, and then places like Al Quadim, Maztica and Kara Tur were tacked on after the fact, maybe the answer is, "Well, the developers just haven't got around to figuring what else is out there yet". As far as an "In World" explanation, I dunno. I like the idea of the mystery of it all, though. ;) :whatsthis
Thrudjelmer 12-14-03, 03:02 PM	Part of the lack of established, published exploration of the campaign world is so that DMs can have room on the world to insert entire cultures and nations of their own design in far away lands... if they want to. You don't want to, you ignore those unknown parts of the world.
Kuje31 12-14-03, 03:09 PM	Originally posted by sanishiver Well, considering that Faerùn was originally thought of as being on "the other side of the world" relative to Oerth and the Greyhawk setting, and then places like Al Quadim, Maztica and Kara Tur were tacked on after the fact, maybe the answer is, "Well, the developers just haven't got around to figuring what else is out there yet". This is so not true and it still gets circulated as truth. FR and Greyhawk were never ever ever part of the same world. From the Candlekeep FAQ. "3.3. I thought the Realms were on the same planet as Greyhawk; does that mean Maztica is really part of Greyhawk? (Also known as "I heard it on the net so it must be true.") It's not true. For one thing, Spelljammer products clearly indicate that FR and GH are in different crystal spheres. For another, neither the FR team nor the GH team had ever indicated so (although, to be fair, we should admit that at one time, a joke article appeared on the TSR web page claiming it was true). But, if it makes you happy, run with it."
Yokinobu 12-14-03, 03:29 PM	Like Trudjelmer said, I always thought those extra landmasses were to leave room for one's own manipulation of Toril. What I mean is that you could have a campaign completely unrelated to the Forgotten Realms in some of that unexplored area and you wouldn't really have to cut anything out to have room for the campaign, because the blank slate is there available for DMs to write on.
sanishiver 12-14-03, 04:11 PM	Originally posted by Kuje31 This is so not true and it still gets circulated as truth. FR and Greyhawk were never ever ever part of the same world. Hi Kuje, Part of why I said "originally" was so that it would be clear this wasn't the thinking in-place during the later years when products (like Spell Jammer) came out. To further clarify: when the Realms were invisioned as campaign setting by Ed, they were indeed thought of as existing opposite the Greyhawk setting. I don't know how far along this thinking lasted, or if it effected design policy for TSR designers in the late 80's or early 90's. However we do know that Ed always maintained a close and strong working relationship with the people responsible for translating his world notes into the original Grey Box, so it's not really reaching to assume at least some knowledge of this idea possesed by the designers. Since the world was given its own name (Toril), we could assume that the designers were operating under a "one setting, one world" idea, however later designers (like Sean Reynolds) still bring up the idea of both settings existing on one world whenever the topic the origins of the Realms comes up. :whatsthis
Iakhovas 12-14-03, 04:12 PM	Mr. Reynolds posted this ages ago on the old TSR website back when he was webmaster. It was intended as a joke, but it's fun nonetheless. http://www.geonomicon.com/portal/images/tabloid-FRGHplanet.gif
Kuje31 12-14-03, 04:37 PM	Originally posted by sanishiver Hi Kuje, Part of why I said "originally" was so that it would be clear this wasn't the thinking in-place during the later years when products (like Spell Jammer) came out. To further clarify: when the Realms were invisioned as campaign setting by Ed, they were indeed thought of as existing opposite the Greyhawk setting. I don't know how far along this thinking lasted, or if it effected design policy for TSR designers in the late 80's or early 90's. Doubtful, since Ed created FR in 1967, as a world for him to tell stories for and to write novels for. D&D didn't exist and Greyhawk didn't exist. It's still only a internet rumor that is no way truth and never has been. FR and the world of Greyhawk were never on the same planet and never have been and it continues to be one of the most repeated D&D Urban Legends. This answers why it was given the name it was given. "NOTE: The following comes from a Jeff Grubb interview at DL3E.com and a seperate post to the Realms-L list. A lot of my regulars were immortalized in one way or the other in stuff that I have written over the years. The name of my old campaign, I mentioned, was Toril, which became the name of the Forgotten Realms' planet. Ansalon's planet, Krynn, was named after my sister-in-law, Corrine. Faerun was the name of the continent Ed's original campaign was set on, but Ed had no name for the planet itself. I looted the name Toril from my own campaign for the world. When we did the original grey box, we did all the entries in alphabetical order. It made sense to put something about the world itself FIRST, so I tacked on the Abeir title before it so it world fall at the beginning of the catalog. I remember mentioning elsewhere that the Abeir-Toril title means "cradle of life" in an archaic tongue. While I never stated which was which, I always assumed that "toril" was the word for life and "abeir" was the word for originator, cradle, or home. Finally, as a note, Toril was not my original name for my campaign back in '75 - it was Toricandra, influenced by CS Lewis. Toril quickly became the shorthand I used, and eventually took over entirely."
sanishiver 12-14-03, 05:11 PM	Originally posted by Kuje31 Doubtful, since Ed created FR in 1967, as a world for him to tell stories for and to write novels for. D&D didn't exist and Greyhawk didn't exist. Kuje, Please take the time to actually read what I wrote. I said, "..when the Realms were invisioned as campaign setting by Ed. I'm not saying the Realms were first created for playing DnD, because I know they were not. What I am saying is that they were thought (by Ed) of as existing opposite Greyhawk for a time, and that this thinking (whether official or not) may have been passed on to the first group of designers who originally worked on the Realms as a product for TSR. I'll hunt around for Ed's post on this idea (from the Realms-L list) when I have time (at work today). :whatsthis
Kuje31 12-14-03, 05:25 PM	Originally posted by sanishiver Kuje, Please take the time to actually read what I wrote. I said, "..when the Realms were invisioned as campaign setting by Ed. I'm not saying the Realms were first created for playing DnD, because I know they were not. What I am saying is that they were thought (by Ed) of as existing opposite Greyhawk for a time, and that this thinking (whether official or not) may have been passed on to the first group of designers who originally worked on the Realms as a product for TSR. I'll hunt around for Ed's post on this idea (from the Realms-L list) when I have time (at work today). :whatsthis And im telling you it's a Urban Legend that isn't the truth. :) Jeff Grubb and Ed created the campaign setting, for TSR, and NO where is there mention that FR existed in the same world as Greyhawk, not even in the Dragon material that Ed wrote, since Ed originally created and mapped out Faerun back in the mid to late 60's, then converted it to D&D in the 70's for his players, but it was still his own world and not part of Greyhawk. However, I will grant you that there is a lot of material that Ed used in 1e, because at that time the rules and Greyhawk went hand in hand and you couldn't really seperate one without the other. "1. According to legend, you became a professional in this industry after becoming known as a player and DM. I'm sure you've told the story a million times before, but how did you break into RPG writing? A: The short answer is: I sat down with a pencil and some paper, wrote something, retyped it so someone besides me could read it, drew a tiny little picture to go with it (that when printed got blown up to thrice its original size, and therefore looked like it had been done with a crayon) and mailed it off to what was then called (circa issue 28 or so) "The Dragon." In issue #30 they printed my piece, a monster called "The Curst," so I thought 'that was easy' and wrote and sent another. Sixteen days later, it ("The Crawling Claw") came back to me in print, in issue #32, so I thought: "My gosh, they're desperate for monsters!" I'd been enticed in the first place by the declaration that any published monster was as "official" as anything in the Monster Manual, so I was emboldened to do two things: write up a bunch more, and some magic items, too, and do a really big article on gates. It was published in #37, and impressed the heck out of then-assistant-editor Kim Mohan because i was the first article they'd ever received that had footnotes. Writing DRAGON articles became a regular thing, and I was soon asked to become a "Contributing Editor" so as not to anger other writers who might be waiting and waiting for their works to be published while mine appeared every month. I started using Elminster as a mouthpiece to avoid stating things as definitely as an omniscient author must, and thereby dragged the Realms into my articles, and the rest, as the cliche goes, is history. As Dragon approaches the 300-issue mark, I'm closing in on three hundred articles and columns for it; as it said, writing DRAGON articles has become a habit. A bit of background: I grew up as a voracious reader of everything, loved fantasy world settings, created my own circa 1967, and 'adapted' it to D&D later. Much of the detail for the world was developed for my superb bunch of regular Realms players, who are inquisitive and demand realism and don't mind 'heavy intrigue and ham acting' roleplaying. They demanded the Realms seem real, so I did the gruntwork to make it so. I remain a 'storyteller' DM (I don't care about stats and rules, and am always wryly amused when a gamer accuses me of fostering "munchkinism" or "power gaming," because if I controlled what was published, there wouldn't be any stats at all!) and a heavy-acting player (I was good enough to win a Best Player Award at a GenCon AD&D Open, long ago, and promptly retired from Opens!). At one point (until they lost all the computer records for the third time) I was a 7th level judge and a Grand Master player in the RPGA, of which I'm a Charter Life Member, but I'm not sure such rankings even mean anything, any more. :}" Yes at that time the only other official world was Greyhawk and so the material reflects that but FR has never been part of the same world as Greyhawk and has never have been in Ed's campaigns. http://oracle.wizards.com/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0309B&L=realms-l&P=R6566 or http://oracle.wizards.com/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0309B&L=realms-l&P=R7366
Thrudjelmer 12-15-03, 04:05 AM	I'm convinced.
ENHenry 12-15-03, 11:08 AM	In answer to the original poster: What makes you think there's so much unexplored land out there? 80% of the map is "known", albeit in 2nd edition products: Kara-Tur (both north and south), the Hordelands, Zhakara, Maztica - all of these aer known, and the lands that are NOT known, are beyond them. Think of the state of exploration of the real world in the 1600's: All continents were known, but what was on them was NOT necessarily known. It's not implausible to say that the same is true of Faerun - they know the broad strokes, but know nothing of the narrow strokes and fine points. In order to explore, you need to be able to reasonably travel and return to the lands to be explored. Sufficient bases have not been established in these remote lands to allow exploration further. You have to have a support structure in order to explore with a reasonable chance of success. Consider Magellan, whose exploration circumnavigated the globe, but (A)Magellan's crew was VERY lucky, (B) Magellan didn't survive the trip, and (C) they didn't have real sea monsters to be afraid of. Consider also a moment not just the powers of a Faerunian expeditionary force, but the obstacles they faced that Earth's explorer's did not: Reclusive Elves, Real Monsters, Hostile peoples who have just as much force as the explorers do -- all these things contribute to the slowing of exploration. It's also true that you need a REASON to explore - even Columbus and Leif Ericcson were looking for new toys to play with - they weren't exploring out of an altruistic sense of knowledge collection. Faerun as a land is still brimming with riches for the taking by the ambitious - the European Old World was in a very different state of affairs when the lands to the west and east were to be opened up.
Faraer 12-15-03, 02:40 PM	Also, here (http://oracle.wizards.com/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0309C&L=realms-l&P=R1510):The "Realms on the far side of Oerth" idea was a TSR joke tossed out at GenCon years back, in the throes of one of those "let's link all our campaign worlds more closely" corporate stances (soon thereafter abandoned).It's another canard, as baseless as 'Ed Greenwood is a munchkin pervert', 'the Realms is good-dominated', 'Greyhawk is low-magic', 'the Realms is a powergaming setting', and other ideas that don't deserve the time it takes to refute them.
Lashan 12-15-03, 05:04 PM	I thought the whole idea of Maztica was exactly this idea?
Iakhovas 12-15-03, 07:11 PM	...not to mention it would take a spelljammer vessel a couple hours tops to visit the other continents.
High elf Sniper 12-15-03, 07:37 PM	In the campaign I'm about to start I'm starting on a ship headed for a newly discovered land that previously was shrouded in mist so heavy you couldn't seel your hand if it was in front of your face. I was sent by the church of Solonor Thelandria and The elven god of the forest(I forget his name). We are to set up a permanent camp to protect the froest from people trying to clear the land.
the_heart 12-17-03, 07:54 AM	there have been hints that faeruneans have visited these other realms, not always with a great deal of success. the Amnian expedition to maztica didn't go exactly perfectly, but exploration and trade is getting underway. and there are indications that drow from faerun have been there for a long while. in the Lands of Fate, an expeditionary force of ? (Helm again, i think, but could have been Torm) abandoned it's plans after its attempts to lay claim to Zakhara were disabused by some sha'irs(sp? it's been a while) and their genie allies. and the far south of faerun (can't remember the realms, those east of halruaa, var the golden?) do have trade routes open to Zakhara. as mentioned Shou and Kara Turan are uncommon but not unheard of in the eastern realms of faerun, and trade is fairly well developed between the two. so whilst the commoner of faerun will have little knowledge of distant realms, there will be many rumours/hyperbole regarding these fantastical realms. but they will not be unheard of. faeruns magic is more powerful than maztica's but probably on a par with Zakhara and the far east. so explore away.
Cernunnos 12-17-03, 09:17 AM	There are hints that there is (or rather, was) an Underdark passage between Faerun and Maztica, but that it (or part of it) was destroyed. The desert dwarves of Maztica used to live in the Underdark, but after their city was destroyed in an undersea cataclysm they came out in Maztica. As for drow there, in the novels there were only a handful (but there could be more).
Alac Luin 12-17-03, 11:41 AM	There are drow in Meztica? I really need to read those novels. Lets see, travel due west out of waterdeep, your boat would be torn apart by the defecees of evermeet, travel east, well, after you got past Kara-Tur, you would have to then build your boat capable of long sea voyage. Spelljammers? Sure, but not every DM likes the idea and would be loath to put in anything from that into their game. Even still, Spelljamers and spelljaming lore is not something well known to the masses of Faerun, so maybe they have be semi investigated by say the spelljamming fleets of Coyrmer and knowledge held secret. As a side note, spelljaming travel within a planetary gravity field is different from space travel and would take much longer then minutes to travel from one side of world to the other. It really isn’t hard to believe that these areas were left blank for individual DM purposes. So, have fun with it and having your PC’s being the Faerun’s Amerigo Vespuche(sp?)
Wooly Rupert 12-17-03, 12:15 PM	Originally posted by Alac Luin As a side note, spelljaming travel within a planetary gravity field is different from space travel and would take much longer then minutes to travel from one side of world to the other. So, have fun with it and having your PC’s being the Faerun’s Amerigo Vespuche(sp?) That's why you make a sub-orbital hop. 40 minutes to get out of the planet's gravity well, only a minute or two, at imterplanetary speed, to get to the other side, and 40 minutes to put it back on the surface. Total time is less than an hour and a half. And correct me if I'm wrong, but did Amerigo Vespucci actually discover much of anything? I've been under the impression that he did more studying what others found... Though I have heard that he was the first to realize that the Americas were something other than Asia...
Alac Luin 12-17-03, 01:07 PM	Originally posted by Wooly Rupert That's why you make a sub-orbital hop. 40 minutes to get out of the planet's gravity well, only a minute or two, at imterplanetary speed, to get to the other side, and 40 minutes to put it back on the surface. Total time is less than an hour and a half. This hour and a halh is still longer then the mere minutes someone origanally stated. this is really nither here nor there, like i said, spelljaming lore isn't that prevalent in Faerun sociaty. Originally posted by Wooly Rupert And correct me if I'm wrong, but did Amerigo Vespucci actually discover much of anything? I've been under the impression that he did more studying what others found... Though I have heard that he was the first to realize that the Americas were something other than Asia... No correction needed, it's well, known the vikings were in the America's before his time. It is working on the idea that somethings there, what is it. Would using a referance to Lewis and Clark sound better? I chose a name from the RL past that was more in line with the apparent time in Faerun.
Greyhack 12-18-03, 07:54 AM	It's my opinion, given the multiple millenia that civilized races have existed on Toril, that the planet has pretty much been explored, but unlike the explorers of western europe, who did a lot of the real world 'mapping it all together', Toril's explorers didn't cooperate much and weren't exploring/colonizing places simultaneously, so a grand vision never really came to be. Elves explored this and that, Dwarves likewise, different human nations explored different things (didn't the Mulhurondi Mages have flying ships in 2e? That would make mapping new realms a lot easier) and so on, but unless you're privy to one of the few collective archives of their findings and records (such as Candlekeep), you aren't going to be able to find out much. If you think about it, Lief Ericson is generally credited with 'finding' North America long before Columbus, but that's beside the point, really. Humans explored North America long before either of those guys came around. Native Americans weren't much interested in cataloging their knowledge for future conquerors (or, were ignored by said conquerors, depending on one's point of view). A Faerunian example is the Savage Frontier region. Surely the Netherese had a pretty good idea of where things were in that area, but so much of their knowledge is lost to forgotten ruins now that the current societies had to pretty much start over. A side note about the Faerun/Flanaess shared globe theory It's likely that part of the "evidence" used to support this idea (which I dismiss, btw, there's no hard evidence that it was ever intended and the two worlds have little in common to suggest such coexistance.) comes from the fact that Kara Tur, as originally outlined in the 1e Oriental Adventures sourcebook was intended by Gary Gygax to be located on Oerth. When the Kara Tur setting was later expanded though, Greyhawk canon had failed to reflect the existance of the oriental setting, and FR had become the favored world setting at TSR, so the change was made. I'm a pretty well versed Greyhawk fan (who's just now getting back into FR for a change of pace), and I've never heard any real suggestion that Maztica or Al-Qadim were ever intended to be part of Oerth though, just Kara-Tur (which, by the way, was supposed to have been somewhere on the far side of the Oerik continent, which, like the main continental body of Toril, is big enough to be considered "the other side of the world").
Arkenian 12-18-03, 04:24 PM	Originally posted by Yamo My players started throwing questions to this effect at me recently: Why are so many of the landmasses on Toril unknown to the inhabitants of Faerun? Technologically, Faerun seems to have 90+% of what the great powers of Europe did during the Age of Sail, when vast portions of the "New World" were being discovered, cataloged and subjugated. The rest would be more than made up for by magic. Why would your brave Faerunian sailors need to fear scurvy when a shipboard cleric could nip it in the bud? Why worry about running low on provisions when that same cleric (and possibly a couple underclerics) can create food so easily with magic? And what about wizards that can fly, scry and teleport with ease? And yet we're supposed to believe that entire continents are still wholly unexplored by Faerunians? Why? Thanks to the commonly-available magic that FR is (in)famous for, Faerunian explorers would have a much easier time traversing the world that their Earthly counterparts. Much, much easier, in fact. So what's stopping them? It should be the easiest thing in the world for Faerunians to travel anywhere on the globe they please. Faerun is just now moving into the early parts of the age of sail . . . Although I admit that some of the common problems have easier solutions, there are also extra difficulties. And how unknown ARE the other land masses? We have a silk road to Kara-Tur (We don't really have a sea route to Kara-Tur, explicitly, but then, there was no real trade routes to India/China until well into the late 16th century.) Not to mention that the archipleago nature of southern Zakhara strongly encourages piracy from people attempting to sail around that way. Amn has not only discovered Maztica, but began attempting to colonize the place, as per the conquistadors. There is open trade with Zakhara . . . On the whole, the addition of sea monsters tends to make an already marginal sea trade business even more so, discouraging major things, but I'd say that Faerun is ripe for a Magellan. Hmmm that could be a really cool campaign. -Arkenian the Golden
Iakhovas 12-18-03, 06:02 PM	It's not Maztica, Kara-Tur, and Zakhara that are unknown. These lands are regularly, if infrequently, visited by residents of Faerûn. Its the other large continents (FRCS p.231) on the planet that we are talking about. Given magic, spelljamming, ocean travel etc... more should be known about these lands.
the_heart 12-19-03, 04:09 AM	i think they were deliberately left for individual DM's to fill. they are quite literally a blank canvass. go wild! and lets face it WotC don't feel they can make a profit on the popular parts of faerun that are known. they aren't gonna risk filling in the blanks are they. although the Maztican maps had some blatant clues as to how close to our earth they expected the northern part of that continent to be :)