| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Talinfein |
Posted - 25 May 2004 : 16:39:45
Greetings all,
I hope some of you sages here can help me with a question that I have about the original Realms.
I know that TSR has added certain areas and/or elements to the Realms over the years that probably wouldn´t have been there if Ed would have been able to stop them. The addition of Maztica is one, the addition of Kara-Tur is another, if I´m not mistaken.
What other areas/concepts were added onto the Realms in this way? I´m talking about fairly major changes and only changes, not additions in terms of an expansion of information on a certain area.
So, basically, what do Ed´s original Realms look like?
Thanks for your help. |
| 19 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| The Sage |
Posted - 28 Jun 2012 : 15:21:54
quote:
Originally posted by Markustay
I like the idea for the shaar - I personally replaced wemics with lionmen (NOT catfolk!) in my Realms. Monte Cook had those in his setting/rules.
You mean the Litorians? Cool.
I'd love to hear more. |
| Markustay |
Posted - 28 Jun 2012 : 07:20:22
I like the idea for the shaar - I personally replaced wemics with lionmen (NOT catfolk!) in my Realms. Monte Cook had those in his setting/rules. |
| Eilserus |
Posted - 27 Jun 2012 : 19:30:37
quote:
Originally posted by Steven Schend
quote:
Originally posted by Faraer
Here's one place Ed's answered this question. As well, Evermeet was much farther away in the west, and no Whamite Isles. Scott Bennie's Mulhorand, Unther, and Chessenta are more Egyptian, Sumerian, and Greek than Ed's; Steven Schend's Calimshan, I think, is more Arabian.
If there's any places I'd have loved to have tinkered in the Realms, it would have been Impiltur (and the Demonlands, a moniker that's fallen by the wayside), the Shaar (which I saw as a quasi-India with huge platform cities on stilts above the tiger- and rakshasa-filled plains), and perhaps one more delve into history to finish what history I started but didn't complete with CORMANTHYR.
Steven Schend
This would be some interesting stuff to possibly put into 5E. platform cities on stilts and rakshasa-filled plains is just cool(i'm stealing this idea!). Impiltur and the dwarves of Earthfast would be great places to give some love in 5E too. |
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 27 Jun 2012 : 19:08:40
This plus Ed's upcoming book on his home Realms game ought to make for interesting reading. I'm very excited about that book. |
| Markustay |
Posted - 27 Jun 2012 : 18:19:21
*BUMP*
Looking for any info on the Whamites, I stumbled across this old thread, and thought it interesting (and relevant) given the current state of things.
Not stirring the pot here - just wanted a decent list of non-Edwardian concepts that made it into the Realms, which 'may' help us establish things in other threads.  |
| Talinfein |
Posted - 27 May 2004 : 11:30:51
Thank you all for answering my question. The reason why I asked in the first place is that there are parts of the realms that don´t feel true, somehow. Mulhorand and the accompanying pantheon of gods for example just don´t seem to fit, at least the names don´t. And so I was wondering what other parts of the realms were changed or added onto.
As much as I don´t like RSEs I do like the return of Shade, for example, even if it isn´t "original realm" so to speak. |
| SiriusBlack |
Posted - 26 May 2004 : 23:10:25
quote:
Originally posted by Steven Schend
and perhaps one more delve into history to finish what history I started but didn't complete with CORMANTHYR.
I would have enjoyed seeing that. |
| ericlboyd |
Posted - 26 May 2004 : 20:57:49
Eskember is detailed here, as is Daufin, Helbrester, and Tor Mak.
http://oracle.wizards.com/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0304D&L=realms-l&P=R5617
--Eric |
| Faraer |
Posted - 26 May 2004 : 20:25:48
Hi Steven,
I think your Realms work is tremendous and it ending was one of the worst things that happened to the Realms. When I mentioned your Calimshan being more Arabian I was partly thinking of your Calishite names, the yrs and the els--they are quite Turkish, I was being vague--compared to Ed's where the influence is more buried.
The World of Greyhawk comparison is interesting. I like that world too and Gary is its seat of authority for me as Ed is for the Realms--he wasn't able to publish as much for it as he wanted due to having to also run TSR--I just don't connect the post-Gygax Greyhawk stuff to that setting: for me, the stream continues in his Dangerous Journeys and Lejendary Adventure and Castle Zagyg work. The key is imaginative sympathy and negative capability: if you show me you like the setting you're writing in, and are willing to try to internalize how it works and get inside it, you've won me over.
My ideal Realms is just a little less shared and more compact than it became--I can reach that Realms easily enough in my head, but for newcomers there's a lot obscuring those original ideals and rhythms now. |
| Steven Schend |
Posted - 26 May 2004 : 19:15:36
quote:
Originally posted by Faraer
Here's one place Ed's answered this question. As well, Evermeet was much farther away in the west, and no Whamite Isles. Scott Bennie's Mulhorand, Unther, and Chessenta are more Egyptian, Sumerian, and Greek than Ed's; Steven Schend's Calimshan, I think, is more Arabian.
Just to be fair and put credit where due, here's some clarity (at least on what I contributed to the Realms):
Calimshan (and Amn & Tethyr): All the basics were in Ed's Realms, then Scott Haring wrote up the original EMPIRES OF THE SANDS that covered all three. I had the good fortune to get to revamp and update those areas in LANDS OF INTRIGUE and EMPIRES OF THE SHINING SEA. My major contributions were in finishing the Restoration of Tethyr, making Amn a little more aware of the consequences of its actions (i.e. Maztica, ogre mages, rebel cities, etc.), and making Calimshan less Arabian and more Turkish / Ottoman Empire (since we had AL-QADIM covering the Arabian stuff quite well).
The only places I can lay claim to having added wholly that weren't in Ed's Realms were Erlkazar (LOI Book 3) and the undersea realms in SEA OF FALLEN STARS. I've mostly just tinkered in the corners, otherwise, of Waterdeep, Undermountain, Myth Drannor, and a few other places.
If there's any places I'd have loved to have tinkered in the Realms, it would have been Impiltur (and the Demonlands, a moniker that's fallen by the wayside), the Shaar (which I saw as a quasi-India with huge platform cities on stilts above the tiger- and rakshasa-filled plains), and perhaps one more delve into history to finish what history I started but didn't complete with CORMANTHYR.
Even so, Ed did the greatest thing (as was underscored by Jeff Grubb and me) in creating a world where everything was possible--if fantasy fans wanted something, we knew where they could find it in the Realms. As it was impossible for Ed to write everything, it's a true shared world and I don't know how different it would be if it were all Ed; it probably would have been smaller, like Greyhawk, a world where one writer (Gary Gygax) called all the shots and rarely allowed much work there without his say-so until much later. Food for thought, eh?
Steven Schend |
| Israfel666 |
Posted - 26 May 2004 : 14:01:17
Thank you, Faraer. |
| Faraer |
Posted - 26 May 2004 : 00:24:59
quote:
This small island realm [Eskember] never made it into the Old Grey Box for the same reason Evermeet got shoved several thousand leagues east (closer to mainland Faerûn): accurate maps of my 'home' Realms campaign would have been map panel after map panel ('panel' meaning one fit-the-box folded rectangle of those fold-out map pages) of mostly empty water stretching west, with only a few islets and island chains scattered thereon.
|
| Israfel666 |
Posted - 25 May 2004 : 21:32:01
quote:
Originally posted by Faraer
Evermeet was much farther away in the west
?!
How much more to the West could it be than it already is? |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 25 May 2004 : 20:04:34
quote:
Originally posted by Faraer
p. 83:quote:
Tamper Tencoin is known to have traveled many planes in his career, and he is often accompanied by creatures strange to the Realms. His companion at the time he fought alongside the Knights was the Nehwon ghoul Lacheera (an axe-wielding warrior-woman of a race from another plane), but more recently Tamper has been seen alone, strangling Zhentilar and Zhentarim in Daggerdale to aid Randal Morn.
Ah, thank you for that reference!
I wonder how she got to the Realms, and how many portals there are between Nehwon and Toril... |
| Faraer |
Posted - 25 May 2004 : 19:24:37
p. 83:quote:
Tamper Tencoin is known to have traveled many planes in his career, and he is often accompanied by creatures strange to the Realms. His companion at the time he fought alongside the Knights was the Nehwon ghoul Lacheera (an axe-wielding warrior-woman of a race from another plane), but more recently Tamper has been seen alone, strangling Zhentilar and Zhentarim in Daggerdale to aid Randal Morn.
|
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 25 May 2004 : 18:28:36
quote:
Originally posted by Faraer
(I like the Nehwon ghoul mentioned in FOR4).
Having just read the Newhon stuff for the first time, can you tell me what page of FOR4 that reference is on? |
| Faraer |
Posted - 25 May 2004 : 17:50:34
Here's one place Ed's answered this question. As well, Evermeet was much farther away in the west, and no Whamite Isles. Scott Bennie's Mulhorand, Unther, and Chessenta are more Egyptian, Sumerian, and Greek than Ed's; Steven Schend's Calimshan, I think, is more Arabian. The overall timbre of the pre-TSR Realms can be felt in the Band of Four novels or, I think, in the Polyhedron Border Kingdoms articles. More characters and groups, fewer iconic things hogging the spotlight. Various aspects have been underplayed, such as trade, sexuality, and gates between worlds (I like the Nehwon ghoul mentioned in FOR4). Various important magical details have never been made explicit in print. Ed's Realms also has/had no Wall of the Faithless and accompanying crypto-monotheism, and 3Eisms like the Thunder Blessing, the Shadow Weave, Shade, etc. aren't his.
As to which of these additions and changes Ed would have wanted at the time, or thinks are good ideas now, he's said in some cases and not others. Some of his comments are both legitimately open-minded and diplomatic. |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 25 May 2004 : 17:18:47
I don't recall who stated it, but this is something I found somewhere on this site:
quote:
Ed DIDN’T create Vaasa, Damara, Bloodstone Pass, the people or folk of the Moonshaes (though the name is his), the Uthgardt barbarians, Drizzt or the drow (though he did give the drow lots of Realms rules and two gods, Eilistraee and Vhaeraun), Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim (though he did contribute some spells to that setting), Shade, some features in Anauroch, the Hordelands, or Maztica. He isn’t responsible for the Egyptian pantheon of gods put into Old Empires, or most of the nonhuman deities (though he created a few gods for the dwarves). He didn’t create Danilo Thann or Arilyn, though he DID create Elaith. Most of the lead characters in novels not by him were created by others, though he did name and create a surprising number of them, from almost all of the Uskevrens in the Sembia series to Myrmeen Lhal in The Night Parade.
Everything else came originally from Ed, even to the name “Forgotten Realms.” The map of Faerûn has been tinkered with a bit, but what you see today is, more or less, what Ed handed to TSR back in 1986.
Ed is very quick to credit others for expanding his creation and putting it into D&D form, from staffers like Jeff Grubb and Steven Schend to freelancers like Eric Boyd and many, many others. The Realms is a shared world, now, but as someone who saw it before TSR ever did, I can swear beyond any doubt that Ed Greenwood is THE Creator of the Realms. He even created Candlekeep (not this site, but the monastery it is named for . . . plus Alaundo, most of the Roll of Years, the Calendar of Harptos and Harptos himself, and so on and on and on).
BTW, welcome to Candlekeep! |
| Brother Ezra |
Posted - 25 May 2004 : 16:51:38
Well, I don't know if it's accurate to say that Ed Greenwood would have "stopped them" from being included. It's more accurate to say that there were areas in the Realms that were either added or altered in some way from Ed's original maps and notes.
1. The Moonshae Isles were originally a large archipelago of very small islands running in a chain from the north Sword Coast to the current location of the Moonshaes. They were added to place the location for the Darkwalker on Moonshae novel by Douglas Niles.
2. Similar situation with Icewind Dale. The whole Frozenfar area was not detailed by Ed Greenwood, but was chosen by Bob Salvatore as his setting for The Crystal Shard precisely because no one had detailed it yet.
3. The areas now known as Vaasa and Damara were originally covered by the Great Glacier. The Glacier was pushed northward, leaving those two realms clear of ice in order to place the "H" series of modules into the Realms.
4. Zakhara, and Maztica were not part of Ed's original Realms concept, but I'm unsure if Kara-Tur was or not.
There may be others as well, but those are the major ones that I'm aware of. |
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