Stalwart Greyhawk maven, Grendelwulf posted this quite simple yet important map mash up. I'm sure it's been discussed before, but due to the heavy interest on the forums lately about Beyond the Flanaess regions, I thought to open up this thread.
When OA first came out this is how I assumed west of Oerik looked. The inset map even seemed to indicate a west coast that then would imply another ocean to cross to Kara-Tur. This isn't what we got of course, and the rest is history. Sadly, seeing this map reminds me of how Oerth's continents should've flowed instead of this monstrosity of a Pangea-Oerik we now have to work with.
Nice work. How do the scales of those maps correspond, rasgon? Kara-Tur seems quite large by proportion.
I have no idea what the scale of the original Kara-Tur maps was supposed to be, but it includes two different China analogues set on top of each other, so it's pretty big. Jeff Grubb has said they shrunk the original Kara-Tur considerably to fit it into the Forgotten Realms later on, so clearly the scale was mutable anyway.
If TSR had decided to continue to use Greyhawk as the default AD&D setting despite its strong associations with the recently departed Gary Gygax and the fact that it was still being chronicled in the then still-ongoing Gord the Rogue series at New Infinites, I think we probably would have seen a map that looked something like this. We might well have seen the Moonshaes, Maztica, Zakhara, Vaasa, Damara, and Icewind Dale crammed somewhere on Oerth too. Was what we got instead better or worse, do you think? I don't even know.
If I were completely redesigning what Oerth beyond the Flanaess looked like, I'd keep the East Asia analogue in Western Oerik; the Baklunish already serve as Mongols, so I think it fits best there. I'd separate the "Black Moon/Sundered Empire" region into its own continent, if I decided to use it at all, and increase Hepmonaland in size, basing it at least partly on the "Dark Continent" David Howery detailed in Dragon #189. Probably Aquaria would be its own island in the Solnor Ocean.
Nice work. How do the scales of those maps correspond, rasgon? Kara-Tur seems quite large by proportion.
I found someone here saying that the Kara Tur map scale had to be reduced once they matched it up with FR to get the maps to match. The Hordelands sourcebook says to reduce all Kara Tur maps by 1/3. Somebody else on the thread confirmed that when they produced the Kara Tur trail maps they matched up perfectly with the FR maps. If I remember right the scale on the Kara Tur maps was a piece of clear plastic with hexes and the scale printed on it that you could overlay on the map.
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