A map of Toril overlaid on Earth. I never really "saw" this before, but the analogs are very obvious. Note that the land of "Osse" is inhabited by "aborigines" according to the 3e FR campaign guide. #dnd pic.twitter.com/bmf41gd54u
— M.T. Black (@MTBlack2567) June 28, 2019
Seldom remembered #DnD factoid:
Forgotten Realms was originally created as a parallel Earth, one of many Earths in a Marvel or DC style of increasingly divergent variants. This led to some seriously problematic developments as the game aged and its identity crisis intensified. https://t.co/5djQYOwMvE— PanzerLion 🇨🇦 (@POCGamer) June 28, 2019
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Nope. Sorry. The Realms was originally created as one of many parallel worlds (the others being my {as a 5-year-old} favourite fantasy settings, like Tolkien's Middle Earth, Dunsany's Dreamlands, etc.) linked by gates (as in the Wood Between The Worlds, …#Realmslore https://t.co/Y9aE5eJJ37— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 29, 2019
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…introduced by William Morris in his fantasy novels (which were among the very first novels ever written), to form a ‘multiverse’ (the name was coined to cover Michael Moorcock’s linked fantasies, but the concept predates DC or Marvel by about a half century, …#Realmslore…and D&D by about a century. The Realms was NEVER intended to have too-close real-world analogues, although game designers other than me inserted many such analogues in part for ease of understanding, and mainly because TSR bought the Realms to be a…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 29, 2019
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…”unified game world” for the 2nd Edition of D&D, which meant it had to accommodate jungle adventures, pirate adventures, glacier adventures, “Oriental Adventures,” “Arabian adventures,” and so on. It was certainly never meant to have continent/landmass…#Realmslore5)
…analogues with our real world, and if you'd ever seen either my original maps or the various in-house "wider world of Toril" maps used at various times by designers, you would just not be able to find any. Every time a designer went too close to real-world…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 29, 2019
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…history or Hollywood history (one egregious example: putting the Dalai Lama into the published Realms) I warned of the consequences. It’s tiresome, as the decades pass, having to field queries or opinions from gamers about my getting the historical dating of.. …stirrups wrong or using anachronistic terms or battlefield maneuvers when I have personally always avoided real-world analogues, but when real-world terms and concepts appeared in print, this is the boat we're stuck with bailing. And I'm fine with that, BUT…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 29, 2019
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…I am NOT fine with inaccurate information being spread about how I ‘originally created’ the Realms to be this or that. The Realms predates D&D by a decade, and my original Realms had no close real-world analogues, cultural or geographic. It DID have a.. …tech level that was "vaguely medieval" in some places, and "sputtering into Renaissance" in others, but I deliberately invented Realms words and cultural customs to AVOID real-world copies. Other cooks in the kitchen did not, and the result is what it is, but…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 29, 2019
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…I did NOT set out to copy, slight, “improve upon,” or answer real-world elements. I set out to entertain five-year-old me with stories that had swords and dragons and magic and wizards in them. D&D and real-world baggage came along later.
Got all that? I ask……because those topics just may be on the exam. ;}#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 29, 2019
I’m having trouble formulating an response to this. On one hand, that explains a lot. On the the other, it makes almost all the problematic parts worse, because they were what someone did deliberately during the design phase. What is this "design phase" you speak of? ;}
The Realms was bought by TSR as a detailed world (incomplete, sure, but far more complete than any world they've had before or since), and has had over a thousand "design phases" ever since…one for each product (game or fiction).— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 29, 2019
EVERY setting must have both gaps and problematic parts, because that's where the conflict arises and gamers and readers are spurred to create, and adventure. Static perfection is…dead.
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 29, 2019
One of the chief reasons I never contacted @TheEdVerse about stuff that flashed up problematic or bizarrely shoehorned in or bolted on. On the other hand, it makes me far more curious about the potential development trajectory of the FR had TSR not done what they did. #DnD https://t.co/AYMXFaPzNx
— PanzerLion 🇨🇦 (@POCGamer) June 29, 2019
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Me. too. ;}
Interestingly, from the very beginning, the published Realms veered away from my ‘home’ Realms not just because of in-house stuff being bolted on or swapped in (Doug’s Albion campaign Moonshaes replacing mine), but because the “home” Realms campaign was dominated.. ..by intrigue and roleplaying (e.g. machinations of noble houses in Cormyr, or the machinations of guilds, nobles, and everybody else in the city in Waterdeep), not dungeon crawling or hack-and-slashing…and the published Realms had to not just cater to the…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 29, 2019
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…latter, but centre-stage them, because the game was centered on them back then. So if I’d been controlling the publication of the Realms, all the social issues and power struggles would have dominated wordcount in the products, rather than stats (and, gods. help us, GOD and avatar stats!). Divine coverage would instead have focused on daily devout life (what do clerics DO?) and what priesthoods are up to in the Realms (like cornering the trade in bat guano or monk-made liqueurs). And all of the racial and gender…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 29, 2019
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…-role baggage of the real world just wouldn’t have been there, because we’d have the REALMS cultures instead, which game designers and fiction writers could use satirically to comment on real-world issues, but not HAVE real-world issues in the Realms.
So, it’s..#Realmslore very much a 'road not taken' thing, from my viewpoint. Yet I understood what would happen at the outset (Jeff Grubb explicitly warned me that "we'll make changes, and go on making changes, and here's why") and I was and am fine with that: the Realms had to be..#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 29, 2019
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…that way, to function as the “unified game world” for D&D 2e that TSR purchased it to be. The good thing was, as it came into their hands with a depth of detail and history and intrigue ready-made, these elements got included, and moved us a step beyond “this.. is the orc kingdom, here's their banner, and they can field X troops" into "this world is ALIVE, and these creatures get their food thus, and defecate it back into the cycle of life so," and moved gaming forward. THAT makes me smile.#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 29, 2019
I’m not talking about gaps or troubled areas; I’m talking more along the lines of whitewashing in art depicting POC, use of stereotypes for POC areas, lack of consistent and/or quality support for places not the Sword Coast, The Heartlands, or the North. That kind of problematic. Oh, yes, and that bugs me, too. Particularly as my original turnover described most humans (aside from the barbarians of the Sword Coast North, and the Sossrim) as "dusky-skinned" (not a bad term back then, though I understand that it has become so since).
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 29, 2019
And my original Realms had all sorts of relationships that weren't "one male hitches up with one female," and had lots of females in leadership roles, and I spent DECADES asking for opportunities to cover all of Toril, not go back to those three areas again and again and AGAIN ;}
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 29, 2019
For one thing, the trade routes (and consequences of adventurers disrupting or plundering wares on the move) don't make sense if you can't see nigh the whole picture…instead of "these ships and caravans arrive in Waterdeep every day with, uh, SOMETHING in the way of cargo." ;}
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 29, 2019
As Erik will tell you, we all think through all of this stuff when designing adventures or writing fiction, and try to get as much of it into print as we can. In between all the wild scenes of sex with dragons on fire that are chasing adventurers, of course. ;}
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 29, 2019