Click on the multivesr button.
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/excerpt-multiverse
"On Toril (the heroic-fantasy world of the Forgotten
Realms setting), fantastic cities and kingdoms stand
amid the remains of ancient empires and realms
long forgotten. The world is vast, its dungeons rich
with history. Beyond the central continent of Faerûn,
Toril includes the regions of Al-Qadim, Kara-Tur,
and Maztica"
It's back so it can be utterly ignored for another two decades.......
When will people face the reality that the Forgotten Realms is practically the continent of Faerûn and some window dressing for the other 75% of the entire planet. And because mexico-based campaigns are all the rage these days...... 
Diffan wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
The Thinly Veiled Allegory Theater of it was kind of amusing at first, but I have to admit, it really soured me on Amn and made it difficult to see them as anything but scum who needed to be stomped on.
Diffan wrote:
Diffan wrote:
Could Have, Would Have, Should Have... seems to be WotC's mantra of late as far as the Realms are concerned. Pity they're still kinda getting it wrong though, or so it seems at least. Time will tell that though, since that's based largely on conjecture and assumptions tainted by the foul taste that 4e left in my mouth. 
Love this sort of post. WotC isn't back peddling on the Realms. 4e was a commercial success. There was no edition war.
Denial is something strong. Scary too.
WotC is indeed backpeddling on FR decisions, it has been said countless times now, the changes in the Sundering novels are only a narrow perspective on the whole, and the more we know, the more it looks like they are reverting 4e changes (and the returned gods aren't few, they are basically all of them. Also Maztica is back, Unther/Mulhorand too, since Erin is going to cover it in the novel which will come after her next scheduled one).
However I think that Diffan has a point when he says that they decided that it is impossible to please FR fans, but probably not in the sense he meant it (i.e. the pre-4e fans being the mad guys who won't be happy no matter what WotC does, which is plain wrong, since what most people asked for simply is the restoration of what was lost). After 2 years of extreme hype, all we have is some promises and no lore. It seems to me that WotC has decided that it is not worth to truly invest work and resources in FR anymore, due to the fractured fanbase that their removing so many popular things from the setting created. So they are merely using it as a very vague background environment for some cheap, ''hurr, save the world from the evil dudes that for some random reason want to smash it'' organized play adventures, and to dish out a few novels/year. They do this while telling people to not worry and that everything is awesome and cool in the shiny (non-existant, for all we know) new setting. The fact that they announced that the only thing we will see for the Realms in the next years are those modules (which contain very little lore and that will take plenty of years in RW time to even cover a region) says a lot.
I hope to be dead wrong (and I woud be immensely happy if that was the case), but I'm really discouraged about it at this point...
I never understood why people where so upset about the loss of Mulhorand and Maztica to Tymanther. Yeah, I get it, giant country comes out of nowhere and crushes what was there. But, as far as I know and I could be wrong, that was exactly what Maztica and Mulhorand did.
That's why we had literal egiptian gods, and almost literal aztec gods on an eitherwise original pantheon. The people that inhabited those countries brought them in. I guess Myrkul/Kelemvor had to open their guests rooms to Anubis; and Amaunator and Lathander had to welcome their distant cousin Ra.
To me, at least, a kingdom of Dragonborn and planetouched makes more sense into the Realms, than Egiptians and Aztecs cohabitating with elves and orcs. One is quite D&D, the other not so much.
Kram-Odlog wrote:
Helwar wrote:
Helwar wrote:
Mulhorand wasn't dropped on Toril from the skies, its people arrived on Toril because they were enslaved by the Imaskari, and a whole story of rebellion and -after that- inner conflict (which spawned Thay) followed it. A story which was further being developed during 3.5e, with the conflict with Unther, and that was suddenly dropped because ''LOL CONTINENTS RAIN FROM THE SKIES!!''. About the gods, why would other deities need to make room for the newcomers? FR people pray to a huge variety of gods for a huge variety of reasons, only few ones dedicate themselves to a single deity. Furthermore the Mulhorandi deities are worshipped among their people and their presence in FR has an explanation, I don't see the problem here.
Don't pretend that Mulhorand merely is egyptians on Toril, because it has its own lore and story which is connected to many other elements of FR history (Thay, the Imaskari for example. Also, according to what we've been told, RW analogies were largely overplayed by the publishers in comparison to Ed's original take. They could have made those two nations closer to his original ideas, if that was the problem).
Now don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against Tymanther, but the way it was implemented is definitely wrong (and IMO quite ridiculous) because it took away instead of building upon, same as so many other changes that were just slammed into the FR to adapt it to the devs' new vision, and not to enrich its story (at least Tymather did add something in place of what was thrown away).
I mean, is it necessary to destroy a huge part of the setting to add something, why couldn't they add Tymanther without removing Mulhorand and Unther? It's just the same now, why do they need to throw Tymanther away to restore those two countries? i just don't get them, it's like they go out of their way to alienate/fracture the fanbase. And please don't tell me ''but it doesn't make sense to have both'', because so far the Realms have been plagued by so much nonsense and ridiculousness used as deus ex machina to enforce design decisions (just look at the motivation behind the Sundering, or all the gods acting like clowns), that at this point I'd be willing to soak up some more in order to have an inclusive setting that can appease to as many of its fans as possible.
Irennan wrote:
Diffan wrote:
Diffan wrote:
Kram-Odlog wrote:
Irennan wrote:
Kram-Odlog wrote:
My problem with putting Maztica in FR (and this is purely personal):
I read through the TORG Supplement for the Aztecs, which made them the discoverers of Earth's native Darkness Device.
Now when I think about a fantasy version of the Aztecs, I think of THAT (horror-movie-esque) setting.