They only just recently made an adventure catering to high level characters. 2E, 3E offered stats, so clearly they intended there to be a path.
In the Forgotten Realms, there are nine layers of hell. What the domain of an evil god is like are as varied as the many gods. But they're not designed for punishment; what sense would that make?
Maybe in your campaigns, but that's absolutely not how the FR are designed. But, don't take my word for it. Per the official FR style sheet:
"The Forgotten Realms is a hopeful setting. The good guys will eventually win. ... While not every moment of a story or image in art should be hopeful (the villains need their time in the spotlight, and bad things do happen), keep this tone in mind."
Depends! 5E is broken at higher levels so rarely there. I've had a few complete campaigns in older editions though; a group with insanely high levels completed the Throne of Bloodstone and another custom campaign closed out after saving reality itself. As for killing gods, once. One of our PCs ascended to godhood too. For the hells, that's never been an overall goal. Freeing good souls, yes.
D&D generally is a game of heroism and hope. D&D's hells aren't the hell of out world, nor do devils serve the same role. Different settings have different themes (the style guides are useful for insight) but overall, heroism matters.
And if one likes and gets power enough, one can even descend into the hells to punch the devil himself in the face.
The edgelord DMs who say stuff like this tend to forget that D&D is in many ways meant to be a better world. Where slavery exists, for example, it exists as something that evil people do and heroes stop. If you're participating, you're not a hero; you're the asshole the heroes are there to stop.
Bigots exist in our campaign, but its because we utterly enjoy putting them in their place.
Hmm. Can we uno reverse this to shut down companies who are egregious polluters? Please say we can.
Don't forget that it saves even your deleted DMs for as long as you have an account!
And Nitro isn't exactly inexpensive either, or wasn't last time I used Discord.
The Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas. Its been discontinued for a while so eBay is prob your best bet.
Yes, Wizards does like to play fast and loose with the geography especially between editions. Our efforts are best effort using what we have on hand (or the stuff we buy;) the only other official depiction of Moonrise Tower we could find, for example, was in the FRIA which (I believe) is a late 2E / early 3E map. We're only 80% convinced that they're the same tower for in-game reasons. Regardless, we assumed it was, mapped from there.
TL;DR:
Elturel = 215 miles east of Baldur's Gate The Grove = 200 Miles East of Baldur's Gate Moonrise / Reithwin = 193 Miles East of Baldur's Gate
----- (Migrating accounts and reposting on TTRPG as it seems more relevant here. We're working on a more robust version of this.)
My partner and I have been trying to pinpoint the locations in Baldur's Gate 3 on the Sword Coast map.
Larian, in their Gameplay Demo, revealed two vital bits of information. First, that the nautiloid crash site was on the Chionthar and second, that it was approximately 200 miles east of Baldur's Gate. The Blighted Village, Goblin Camp, and everything else should be relatively close (within 5-10 miles) of The Grove. In-game text suggests that The Blighted Village, Moonhaven, is on the border of the lands controlled by Elturel, but where that border is or what it means is squishy.
Moonrise was more difficult. The only out-of-game reference to Moonrise was in an old adventure, and the only map we could find with Moonrise definitively mapped was in the old Forgotten Realms Interactive Access mapping tool. We got our hands on a copy and proceeded to measure distances. The results are available above.
Caveat: The maps of the Sword Coast have changed over time. Sometimes, TSR / Wizards changes distances dramatically, so this estimate is only that. Take this with a grain of salt / as a fun project we undertook to better understand how in-game locations meshed with Sword Coast locations.
Diotima @ttrpg.network Amateur tiefling wizardess & earth realm exile.
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