I never actually played in Maztica, but I did read a bit about the setting, and unlike most people I actually enjoy how the realms emulates a fantasy Earth (That's how it was designed - of course they removed the symbol alluding to that in 4e).
Even though the 4e realms has grown on me a little (not entirely), this is one thing I cannot reconcile. A merger would have been far better, or just transplanting the island without erasing anything already existing. Even replacing Osse would have been better, as nothing about it is known.
I'm thinking of writing my own homebrew story for Abeir/Maztica, as it isn't likely either setting will ever be officially fleshed out more than it already is. Ideas? Or is such a project already underway?
But I'm with you Einlanzer, I'd rather have both.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Maztica didnt just dissappear, it just happens to be on Abeir now, and since i dont see WotC doing anything with either, we pretty much have free reign to do what ever we want!
I've tried to look at it from every angle, but despite how much I actually enjoy 4e I just can't help but think they really, really mucked up with 4e FR, and I wasn't even a diehard fanboy of the previous editions. I can't really understand what they were thinking.
Like I said in my above post, I like the Realms as a fantastical mirror of the real world, I never understand why people are so critical of that. A fantasy world to me is a more interesting when it has real world parallels. I read the other day that that was how it was conceived, with that little crescent symbol above the log prior to 4e meaning "herein lie the lost lands"
I would just stick to 3x but converting seems to be harder than you'd think, so...
I think I'm just going to homebrew my own version of the 4e realms, which will mostly be like the existing realms with a few major exceptions (retconning the death and subsuming of all the deities, and making RA either separate or only partially replacing Maztica, and pretending the cosmology had always been like 4es (I like it better) instead of the hokey 'Shar reshaped the plane of shadows' nonsense.
Like I said in my above post, I like the Realms as a fantastical mirror of the real world, I never understand why people are so critical of that. A fantasy world to me is a more interesting when it has real world parallels. I read the other day that that was how it was conceived, with that little crescent symbol above the log prior to 4e meaning "herein lie the lost lands"
This is actually something I always disliked about FR. I never liked buying a setting that took too much RL stuff and just "fantasied" it up. It always felt boring and something I could easily do myself. I much prefer my fantasy settings to be more fantastic. A lot of the areas they removed or did things to (changed) in 4E FR are many of those real world parallels. Probably why I don't miss them at all.
Cool map there Brian, although if Laerakond was suposed to replace Maztica specifically shouldnt it be alittle further south? But thats one of the things that bug me, it didnt seem to replace just Maztica but the entire contenent that Maztica was part of. That seems strange that Abeir would get this large continental mass and Toril gets this island. It would make sense for some parts of the Maztican continent to remain on Toril. Did that continent as a whole have name or did Maztica refer to the entire continent?
Another thing to keep in mind is that Maztica didnt just dissappear, it just happens to be on Abeir now, and since i dont see WotC doing anything with either, we pretty much have free reign to do what ever we want!
the way that the whole continent can be taken away is that both ocean and land were brought from Abeir.
after all, there's that big gulf in the middle of Returned Abeir, which we can presume is full of water and seabed from the other world.
as such, the whole continent was taken to Abeir, and replaced with Abeiran ocean