Rewriting History...Sort Of...

Retooling the Realms

Over at RPG BLOG II was the post Death By Canon suggesting that it's hard to DM in the Forgotten Realms because there's frankly SO much "Canon" material out there that it's impossible to keep up - and yet, you're likely to find some player who knows more "official bits" than you do. And I get it - that's true in ANY published setting - try running MERP or Greyhawk or Star Wars or whatever, and you'll find somebody who will say, "They'd never tothat" to something you've set up, stated off the cuff, created, whatever...

So I suggested in the comments to "file the serial numbers off" - I hear this a lot on blogs and in forums, but I don't see it done in practice all that much. The simplest way to do it is to just use the map and change the names - heck, you can even keep them similar - and maybe use some of the same (though I'd avoid Waterdeep and the Dalelands and the like). Waterdeep can become Deep Port (so that I can remember what city the new name is replacing) Silverymoon can be Goldsun or something like that - Hellsgate Keep can be Watchgate Keep, etc., etc.

Gimpshop makes quick work of maps. Here's one I pulled form the 1st Ed boxed set - the Waterdeep region with quickly reworked tags. Took me about 10 minutes. Yeah, I don't know if I'd keep some of the names...

It's a pretty simple matter - go through your books and pencil in the new names (what??? deface my game books??? Bah, they're meant to be used...) and/or make a book of notes with the salient points of what Deep Port is (maybe with a note like "Deep Port is Waterdeep - see FR DM Sourcebook page XX" or whatever).

Better yet would be to do all of the above, but draw a completely new map - not HUGELY different, but different enough that players who know the Forgotten Realms inside and out from all the novels and whatever might not even guess they are in the Realms - of they might say something like, "Boy, this sure seems like Silverymoon...hmmm, Goldsun, I wonder if yon MR. DM is using Silverymoon for this town..." Or whatever. That kind of Metagaming never really bothered me - they know that it sounds like Silverymoon, but it definitely is not Silverymoon, so when the Lord Mayor (or whatever - maybe I make Goldsun a "den of scum and villainy" and it's the Pirate Lord Roberts who is running the place) says something like, "It's Thursday, strangers, and no one wears shoes on Thursday," the player can't say, "Well, that would NEVER happen in Silverymoon." Or, well, they COULD, but then you can just say, "Yes, but this isn't Silverymoon."

It's, heh, Inspired By A True Story... You know how the movies that state this have about 1% "true story" and 99% Inspired by in them. Or pick any Conan movie. Yeah, it's kind of like that. Only good - because it's yours...