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Originally posted by Zeromaru X

I believe planar travel would be even more dangerous, and the sages of the Realms have lots of treatises and books about three different sets of outer planes...

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Originally posted by Zeromaru X

I believe planar travel would be even more dangerous, and the sages of the Realms have lots of treatises and books about three different sets of outer planes...

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

In general, the planes are well-documented ...
... small snip ...
Contrast that to the unknown continents which are not documented at all ...

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Originally posted by Demzer

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

In general, the planes are well-documented ...
... small snip ...
Contrast that to the unknown continents which are not documented at all ...

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This is exactly the issue.

"Plane of Infite Magma? Sure, take this travel advisory pack. It contains travellogues and the reviews of the last 101 visitors with ratings for the salamander bubble-riding contest. Might I interest you in some night ... uh ... "life" ... on the Negative Energy Plane with the brand new stand up show from the renowned "Liches that leave you in stitches" crew? Oh sorry not the Planes but ... you want to go across the sea ...? Are you mad?!?!? NOBODY HAS EVER DONE THAT!"

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

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Originally posted by Demzer

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

In general, the planes are well-documented ...
... small snip ...
Contrast that to the unknown continents which are not documented at all ...

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This is exactly the issue.

"Plane of Infite Magma? Sure, take this travel advisory pack. It contains travellogues and the reviews of the last 101 visitors with ratings for the salamander bubble-riding contest. Might I interest you in some night ... uh ... "life" ... on the Negative Energy Plane with the brand new stand up show from the renowned "Liches that leave you in stitches" crew? Oh sorry not the Planes but ... you want to go across the sea ...? Are you mad?!?!? NOBODY HAS EVER DONE THAT!"

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Again, minutes to travel to a well-documented place where the dangers are known and can be prepped for beforehand, and where locations of resources are known, or months of sea travel to get to a place that's not documented at all, where you have to guess at dangers and hope that there are resources.

Sure, there are hostile planes. There are also planes that aren't hostile, and even the ones that are hostile, mages who do their research know what they're getting into.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert


But, as I also said, "If we play the spelljammer card, then we have to question why those lands are unknown. It can't be both ways -- it doesn't work to say that spelljammers have been used to extensively and accurately map coastlines but haven't bothered with interiors or landing anywhere other than Faer�n."

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I've long resisted the idea that similar words imply a connection. After all, just look at the English language. The words care, cart, carp, and card are all very similar,

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Originally posted by TBeholder

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert


But, as I also said, "If we play the spelljammer card, then we have to question why those lands are unknown. It can't be both ways -- it doesn't work to say that spelljammers have been used to extensively and accurately map coastlines but haven't bothered with interiors or landing anywhere other than Faer�n."

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We can assume some did. But the spelljamming folk rarely travels around just to gawk, and don't submit their journals to a neatly indexed site.
They have their own interests, which usually don't include "creating and distributing maps for the groundlings out of charity". And there's likely to be a huge selection bias, in that there will be reports that are repeated (thus likely to not be a lost oddity) only if our intrepid opportunistic explorers:
1. Managed to land and return successfully. As usual: weather patterns, flying monsters, dangerous natives... Which is also why IIRC reluctance to land in an unknown areas was noted. If so, exploratory landing in the first place happens very rarely if there are known nice places not so far away, where one's flying boat will not be suddenly attacked by a dragon or thrown at the rocks by a sudden turbulence. And
2. Marked a place as somewhere they may want to land again. Or marked a particularly dangerous area (Evermeet?) near more useful places.
Suppose a spelljamming craft landed on Maztica. Where? Well... at a village of Dog People. Wonder what they could record? Or even better, near Nexal (before Amnian invasion). It's easy to imagine how this could turn. In neither case they want to study the place more or return, never mind search for the best landing site around. They could make a new trade route if they landed in another place not so far away and looked around for a few days, but they missed it.
Conversely, other 'jammers contacted ports like Waterdeep, Rauthaven, or trade cities of Calimshan and Al-Qadim. They want to come there again, thus marked those on the map.

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Originally posted by sleyvas


Many planar spells drop you off "randomly" into a plane.

Gates mean you can't see what's on the other side of the entry.... I mean noone would EVER think it's a good idea to take control of a portal and start capturing folks as they come through...

But sitting on a ship, using magic to enhance its speed if you need to when the weather isn't what you want so that we're not talking about colonial movement speeds.... all while dining on the luxurious foods you're carrying in your extradimensional space.... nah, that's just too horrible.
Then once you land, you setup an extradimensional mansion and explore what's nearby. Then you setup a small settlement over a year's time.... while setting up a teleportation circle.
Hmmm, now with just a little time investment, you can go home, teleport back with whoever you want... go explore.... Maybe you bring some farmers with you if you feel its safe and they are so thankful for just access to acres of land that they agree to tithe to you. After all, who says that those lands over there are any more dangerous than the savage frontier of Faerun.
You setup guards over your portal entry, but only charge a modest fee, and set the portal outside of your new town that you are building. You now have a foothold on a new continent. Travel there doesn't need to be "arduous sea travel for weeks", for everyone else, as people go there and return to Faerun. Slowly civilization builds on both sides. Transportation of large scale goods (like timber) might start being sent by sea between the two places. People get born across the sea and begin to know of Faerun only through books.
I'm not saying this is some perfect plan mind you, but it doesn't sound all that hard. All it took was one group of adventurers going there, which is exactly all it took for much of the exploring of various planes.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

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Originally posted by sleyvas


Many planar spells drop you off "randomly" into a plane.

Gates mean you can't see what's on the other side of the entry.... I mean noone would EVER think it's a good idea to take control of a portal and start capturing folks as they come through...

But sitting on a ship, using magic to enhance its speed if you need to when the weather isn't what you want so that we're not talking about colonial movement speeds.... all while dining on the luxurious foods you're carrying in your extradimensional space.... nah, that's just too horrible.
Then once you land, you setup an extradimensional mansion and explore what's nearby. Then you setup a small settlement over a year's time.... while setting up a teleportation circle.
Hmmm, now with just a little time investment, you can go home, teleport back with whoever you want... go explore.... Maybe you bring some farmers with you if you feel its safe and they are so thankful for just access to acres of land that they agree to tithe to you. After all, who says that those lands over there are any more dangerous than the savage frontier of Faerun.
You setup guards over your portal entry, but only charge a modest fee, and set the portal outside of your new town that you are building. You now have a foothold on a new continent. Travel there doesn't need to be "arduous sea travel for weeks", for everyone else, as people go there and return to Faerun. Slowly civilization builds on both sides. Transportation of large scale goods (like timber) might start being sent by sea between the two places. People get born across the sea and begin to know of Faerun only through books.
I'm not saying this is some perfect plan mind you, but it doesn't sound all that hard. All it took was one group of adventurers going there, which is exactly all it took for much of the exploring of various planes.

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I've never said that seaborne expeditions to distant continents were impossible. I've been saying, repeatedly, that we can't just say "oh, magic!" as the solution for finding and exploring unknown continents.

Making a months-long trip by sea is not a cheap undertaking, and it's not something that can be done on the spur of the moment. Anyone doing that is going to expect a return on their investment, and it's going to be a large investment indeed.

Some estimates for Columbus's first trip to North America would be the equivalent of $1,000,000 USD -- and that was a three-month trip where they thought they knew exactly where they were going. It wasn't sailing blindly in hopes of finding something, they expected to get to India and have access to those trading opportunities, without having to make the very difficult land journey.

This is why I brought up planar travel in the first place. It was suggested, earlier in this discussion, that the mere possibility of finding resources was justification enough for a wizard to put in the time and effort of finding and exploring an unknown continent. But with instantaneous planar travel as an option, to known locations, with known resources and conditions, why would a wizard decide to spend months at sea going to an unknown place, with unknown resources and conditions, and without even a reasonable assurance of getting what he wanted?

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Originally posted by sleyvas

I submit that realms travel by sea is nowhere near as arduous as Columbus' travels. He was severely hampered by little ships that could only hold minimal stores (realms people have extradimensional storage). He was hampered by being dependent on the weather (realms people can change the weather or provide magical motive force). That's of course assuming that its even a sea travelling ship that would be used and not a flying ship for instance (which Halruaa, Thay, elves, Kara-Tur, and Wa are just some of the cultures known for having flying ships.... Halruaa is just better known for having lots of them).

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

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Originally posted by sleyvas

I submit that realms travel by sea is nowhere near as arduous as Columbus' travels. He was severely hampered by little ships that could only hold minimal stores (realms people have extradimensional storage). He was hampered by being dependent on the weather (realms people can change the weather or provide magical motive force). That's of course assuming that its even a sea travelling ship that would be used and not a flying ship for instance (which Halruaa, Thay, elves, Kara-Tur, and Wa are just some of the cultures known for having flying ships.... Halruaa is just better known for having lots of them).

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Using any of those methods is going to increase the cost -- mages aren't cheap.

Halruaan skyships are slow and can't carry a lot.

All the others are spelljamming, which goes back to the question of if it's an option, why hasn't it been done before?

Travel by sea in the Realms would likely be more arduous than in the real world. The real world didn't have various actively hostile critters like sahaugin, krakens, and dragon turtles, or a capricious sea goddess known as the Bitch Queen, and any other intelligent sorts like dragons that might not like ships in their territory.

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Originally posted by sleyvas


Mages are incredibly cheap when you are one.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

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Originally posted by Demzer

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

In general, the planes are well-documented ...
... small snip ...
Contrast that to the unknown continents which are not documented at all ...

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This is exactly the issue.

"Plane of Infite Magma? Sure, take this travel advisory pack. It contains travellogues and the reviews of the last 101 visitors with ratings for the salamander bubble-riding contest. Might I interest you in some night ... uh ... "life" ... on the Negative Energy Plane with the brand new stand up show from the renowned "Liches that leave you in stitches" crew? Oh sorry not the Planes but ... you want to go across the sea ...? Are you mad?!?!? NOBODY HAS EVER DONE THAT!"

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Again, minutes to travel to a well-documented place where the dangers are known and can be prepped for beforehand, and where locations of resources are known, or months of sea travel to get to a place that's not documented at all, where you have to guess at dangers and hope that there are resources.

Sure, there are hostile planes. There are also planes that aren't hostile, and even the ones that are hostile, mages who do their research know what they're getting into.

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Originally posted by Demzer



My (arguably very small, as it hasn't come up on my games) problem with the internal consistency with the setting is that across millenia of several civilisations who could fly, teleport, swim, travel underground and sightsee at leisure, people decided to dive into eternal lava or brave countless hordes of demons or explode due to positive energy overcharge instead of finding another way to Kara-Tur.

Given the much higher difficulties of planar travel and environment, just saying "they found hostile territory or hostile natives" when crossing the oceans to justify lack of knowledge is ... almost laughable.

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Originally posted by Zeromaru X

"Finding an alternate way to Kara-Tur" is a reference to the discovery of the Americas. Colon wasn't trying to discover a new, unknown land. He was searching for a new way to get to India, so Spain could get better sea trading routes. Wasn't that the same reason Cordell discovered Mex... Maztica?

Anyways, such is a powerful reason to launch sea expeditions, especially when in the Realms there is evidence of other inhabited lands beyond the sea.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

It's not reasonable to assume, though, that no spelljammers have ever traded a map

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or that no locals have ever gotten their hands on a spelljammer and decided to explore more of home.

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Per Spelljammer canon, there are several places in the Realms that see high amounts of spelljamming traffic, and the Elven Imperial Navy maintains contact with Evermeet.

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There is simply no justification for having entirely unknown lands if regular space travel is a thing.

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Originally posted by Zeromaru X

"Finding an alternate way to Kara-Tur" is a reference to the discovery of the Americas. Colon wasn't trying to discover a new, unknown land. He was searching for a new way to get to India, so Spain could get better sea trading routes. Wasn't that the same reason Cordell discovered Mex... Maztica?

Anyways, such is a powerful reason to launch sea expeditions, especially when in the Realms there is evidence of other inhabited lands beyond the sea.

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@questinggm

How were these 'agreed' continents (Anchorome, Laerakond, Osse, Katashaka, Arandron, Kara-Tur, Maztica and Zakhara) discovered? Sailing expeditions? Divinations? Spelljamming? Portals? Strangers from distant lands?

@TheEdVerse

"Discovered"?

People LIVE on them.

They looked down between their feet, and there the continent was. ;}

Before the rise of humans, dragons flew free. Elves had airships before spelljamming ships. And networks of gates (portals) linking various Realms continents predate the lands that flourish today. So SOME folk on the Realms have always known the gross/general layout of landmasses, if not every nook and cranny of even the continent they spend most time on.

There have been constant migrations of all sentient races and "beasts" in almost every direction, down the passing ages, but the Realms isn't historical Earth: humans did not "colonize" the globe to try to build empires.

@questinggm

The debate was why we know so little about these continents than the planes (if true). I suspect it had more to do with lack of documentation/chronicling than sources of knowledge (like aforementioned people). Or is there other reasons for secrecy/mystery (other than NDAs)?

@TheEdVerse

Travel between most continents is difficult (the gate networks are largely forgotten or hidden or controlled) due to harsh terrain and prevailing weather, and long distances. The few who "make it" (e.g. fartraveled merchants) don't want to encourage competition.

Add to that the abundance of monsters and sentients who prey on any sort of critters passing by, or who just don't like intruders, and you have travel at a trickle. And on top of THAT, place this: (control of) knowledge is power. Rulers don't WANT everyone to readily know alternatives, and where sources of desired things are.

And to that, add that communications is and continues to be lousy, with word of mouth from peddlers and other travelers the main news sources. The game gives us a distorted view of ease of travel and communications due to magic, which is unaffordable or simply unavailable to the vast majority of sentients. Most in the Realms are either farmers or foragers; they are tied to terrain they know, and don't move around much unless forced to. So they see little of the world and are limited to what they're told. Which tends to be embellished and unreliable tavern-talk, or information they have to pay for (sages and tomes). If you're not desperately interested in getting elsewhere, that's a low-priority luxury spend.

@questinggm

You have said that this Scholar's View is not an accurate map of Toril's continents.

@TheEdVerse

As for that Scholar's View, I like it as a piece of art. I have no idea why it was substituted for the thumbnail "master map" that existed at the time.

Here's what's wrong with what is generally accepted of what we know about the continents of Toril: the assumption (Faerûn-centric) that Faerûn must be the largest continent; the assumption that we have to have real-Earth analogues, and Gamer X wants Australia represented, so we have to have something called Osse; and the assumption that Laerakond appeared in the Abeir/Toril conjunction, plopping down or rising up in empty ocean, and when the Second Sundering was over, it was back in Abeir and there was "just ocean" at that spot. I see the Scholar's View art as an attempt to fancifully put continents that look like a twisted projection of real Earth's continents into the Realms, because we have to have real-world equivalents and analogues. Except we don't. And trying to have them unnecessarily borrows all sorts of real problems with gamer audiences, when instead we could have a lot more CREATION going on. What it does get right is when it suggests that there are a lot of seas crowded with large and small landmasses (chains of islands, etc.) rather than big honking chunks of land with even bigger empty oceans between.

@questinggm

Would it be safe to say at the current state of lore known about the other landmasses (big or small), any representation of Toril derived from them would be incomplete at best?

@TheEdVerse

Yes. That's putting it nigh-perfectly: "incomplete at best."

I have a master full-globe map (faint pencil, Mercator projection with all of the faults that has) dating from 1982. TSR had at least two updates of that (subsituting their Moonshaes for mine, then substituting KaraTur, Zakhara, and Maztica for what I had in those locations; that's why it's not as simple as my saying "Here's my One True Original" to you, because the published Realms diverged so much from my original.

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Originally posted by sleyvas

In the aforementioned he also states that its a false assumption that faerun must be the largest continent. On THAT piece, I'm guessing he would mean the portion known as Faerun (i.e. not including hordelands, Kara-Tur, Zakhara, and Utter East). If that were the case then the place down in the bottom right which people have called Osse (but that I just said might be Shyr) would work. I say this because he's also said that Toril and earth are roughly equivalent in size, so if there were another "supercontinent" bigger than the whole "Kara-Tur,Faerun,Zakhara, utter east, hordelands" then I'd be hard pressed to believe the world was the same size as earth.

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Originally posted by Zeromaru X

My bad, it's Thuin:

There is no Maztica (or Osse) in the original Realms, but instead: Laerakond, and SE of it/SW of Faerun, there's Thuin, a N/S-long-axis continent with dark-skinned human peoples (many squabbling city-states)

https://twitter.com/TheEdVerse/status/1145397200958230528?t=HQGBtqjvSmtJqq4OSIGW5A&s=19

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