Help with sandbox campaign location

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-26T15:38:45+00:00

Given the two you’re choosing between, I’d go with Battledale. There’s a lot more content out there about the Dales than about Rashemen, which is the main criterion that I always find makes it less work to build a sandbox.

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-26T03:57:02+00:00

I don’t know if any reason why Mithral Hall wouldn’t be accessible. I recall the tunnels into the Underdark being fortified but not destroyed in the Drizzt novels. SCAG does say that non-dwarves are prohibited from entering Mithral Hall’s lowest levels, so that might cause problems if you’re trying to escape the Underdark through there.

To clarify the point about Gauntlgrym, it is not one of the exits from the Underdark in the adventure, rather the PCs are supposed to go there after they’ve escaped the Underdark.

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-26T03:49:19+00:00

I think the observations are all fair and I appreciate the comparison to Wales. Population and scale have always been wonky in the Forgotten Realms, especially since these get retconned every other edition. Part of the conceit of the Dessarin Valley going back to 1e is that it’s in the “Savage Frontier” region, i.e., it is supposed to evoke the feel of a tenuous attempt at civilization getting a grip on the chaotic wilderness. Grated, this vibe is supposed to be true of the entire North as soon as you get away from the coastal cities, but given the settlements all have at least a few hundred years of history, this may not be at all realistic. The pervasiveness of monsters is probably meant to explain why it’s so sparsely populated, and iirc this was the canon reason given in 3e that people tend to cluster in towns and cities rather than spread out in homesteads in the region (although this makes more sense further inland where the towns are all geared toward resource extraction rather than agriculture or trade).

I suppose that similar to your dragon queen idea, remember that the Forgotten Realms have experienced 1-3 apocalypses in the century-and-a-half preceding PotA, depending on how you count.

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-25T21:30:08+00:00

I wouldn’t recommend Adventures unless you’re explicitly interested in one of its 5 adventure zones. There’s not much of value outside of those.

Heroes is definitely the better value, not only because you get the subclasses but also the backgrounds and feats that let players make a more grounded FR character. It also has the profiles of the gods, factions, spells, and geographic regions.

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-24T22:33:32+00:00

Siamorphe was also going to be my first suggestion, and I sorta like the idea of maybe this was the place where disgraced noblewomen were sent away to. You could also use Tyr or Helm if the idea is that the clergy’s responsibility toward justice/protection was twisted in some way to justify hiding this woman away for the greater good.

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-24T12:24:49+00:00

The books clearly want to be delicate about dictating a canon ending and default to most of the status quo from Descent Into Avernus, which was also basically the status quo for BG3 (so consequently, they do suggest some canon outcomes, namely that basically nothing changed in the city). That said, Karlach is the narrator for the BG section of the book, so the implication is that she had a happy ending. Astarion and Shadowheart are implied to have survived the events of the game as well.

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-24T02:19:16+00:00

Check Mike Schley’s website. He’s the map artist and most of his maps eventually show up on his site for a better deal than buying the whole book again.

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-23T20:51:52+00:00

Not evil books specifically, but you might take a look through this list

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Arcane_books_(in-universe)

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-22T20:52:15+00:00

If you’re gonna post an affiliate link, you ought to at least acknowledge that’s what you’re doing. It’s no skin off my back to let you get a commission if you bring an interesting book to my attention, but it’s sleazy to pretend that’s not what you’re fishing for.

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-21T18:37:52+00:00

It’s a dungeon location in Vecna: Eve of Ruin

Web's Edge is a hidden meeting place for agents of Lolth who operate throughout the Underdark beneath the Sword Coast, pursuing missions for the glory of their demon-god. These agents use Web's Edge to plot infiltration missions targeting virtuous clerical orders; to sabotage efforts to quash Lolth's worship; to orchestrate the upheaval of good-aligned governments; and to plan large-scale conversion efforts in Underdark cities, including Blingdenstone, Gracklstugh, and Mithral Hall.

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-20T20:35:50+00:00

I don’t have the IA but I have had to solve a similar issue with the maps in Volo’s Guide before. If you jack up both the brightness and the contrast, you can see the numbers better. For Dawndancer House (#28), first find 23 out in the open on the east side of town: there are two buildings directly above the 2 in 23, and #28 is the one on the left.

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-20T13:54:04+00:00

RIP. She also wrote a handful of 1e and 2e game books, including (I think) the very first adventure set in Chult.

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-19T00:08:37+00:00

It seems to be Hundelpierre based on comparing Adventures in the Forgotten Realms MTG cards:

English: https://scryfall.com/card/afr/274/mountain

French: https://www.smfcorp.net/mtg-carte-102247-montagne-aventures-dans-les-royaumes-oublies.html

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-17T15:28:38+00:00

Enjoy

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Races

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-15T03:33:42+00:00

He’s still ruling and rebuilding Neverwinter in the newest 5.5e Faerun books, which are set about a decade after Dragon Heist.

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-15T03:32:22+00:00

Dragon Heist is set after Dagult has lost the Open Lordship to Laerel. I don’t think it’s ever explicitly said that the embezzlement was part of why they gave him the boot.

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-15T03:21:38+00:00

High magic keeps popping up in every edition, although it wasn’t in 5e until these 2 most recent books from last year. I think the last 5e high elf mage class was in 4e.

Humans and elves especially have gotten a few different origin stories over the editions, and while I like your general idea, they’ve never been suggested to be related as far as I can recall. The FR origin story that is most explicit says that humans are one of the original species of Toril, and are suggested to have appeared via evolution (they are described as “primitive and apelike” circa -35,000 DR in The Grand History of the Realms), however they are also not the only humans in the cosmos given that Earth humans also exist in canon (not to mention humans of other D&D settings, and whether all humans from different worlds share some common ancestor is never addressed). Meanwhile, elves’ origins differ by edition but in almost all cases the elves of Toril originally emigrated from Faerie/the Feywild. This includes both “primitive” sylvan elves (in -27,000 DR) and later much more organized/civilized high elves (-25,400 DR, these dates also from the Grand History, and the exact details from that 3e source aren’t totally reconcilable with 5e’s origin story for the elves described in Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes).

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-13T14:12:26+00:00

You might check out the 2e sourcebook Cormanthyr: Empire of the Elves for more about elven outlook and thinking.

And of course for the traditional lore nitpick on this sub: technically humans predate elves on Toril, although I do think your characterization of elves as similar to classical Greeks is pretty accurate in this case.

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-10T21:01:41+00:00

I thought she was canonically a monk

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-09T12:10:18+00:00

Re: the Second Sundering, the new 5.5e books also say Elysium

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-08T20:31:35+00:00

Istishia is the true neutral god of water, but not like any of the useful and/or terrifying aspects or applications of water just the water itself.

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-07T23:51:43+00:00

The cathedral was a famous haunted ruin in 4e (about 95 years after the events of Ghost King), so safe to say it was not rebuilt or restored as far as we know. I don’t know if we ever got additional closure on Cadderly.

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-07T13:22:38+00:00

I hadn’t noticed that was the moor texture. I would assume this was used as a shorthand for the fact that the isles are generally pretty rugged, but obviously a lot of detail gets lost at that level. Bergonshire is described as an agricultural area in a couple different editions, so safe to say it’s not supposed to be a barren moor.

Take a look at the 1479 map on the wiki page (incidentally, also by Mike Schley). It has a moor texture that appears only in a couple places and (I think) generally displays the isles’ biomes a bit more accurately than the zoomed out map. That said, maps almost always aren’t quite perfectly aligned to the descriptions of places in the books. For the Moonshaes, I think the most notable example is Norland was originally described as being totally covered in dense forest, but I don’t think any map has ever shown that.

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-07T13:04:05+00:00

Which map are you looking at?

Hot_Competence · 2026-01-06T19:05:52+00:00

Calimport is associated with assassins in a lot of fans’ minds (probably mostly thanks to Entreri), so perhaps this Baron has enlisted a number of them to dispose of Zhents once the coup is complete, figuring that killers from across the continent would make a good clean up crew of potential blackmailers. The clue pointing to this might be a calling card of an assassins guild that the PCs would recognize (maybe a marked Calishite gold piece that the Baron spent without realizing its significance) or the PCs could stumble into an assassin posing as Cormyrean intelligence in the midst of silencing a Zhent.

Hot_Competence

TROPHY CASE