I was introduced to the Forgotten Realms early, early enough that I do not remember a time before it. My father handed me Elminster: The Making of a Mage and Homeland when I was young, and that was it. The hook was set. I played my first game of Dungeons and Dragons at five, and by six I was already running my own adventures. I did not know what I was doing, but neither did anyone else at the table, so it worked out.
I have always drawn maps. Because fantasy worlds feel unfinished to me without geography. As a kid I sketched my own settings, then moved on to places I loved like Middle-earth and Tamriel, anywhere that felt bigger than the page it was printed on. The Forgotten Realms eventually became the place I kept coming back to, mostly because it rewarded that kind of attention.
My first actual map of the Realms was rough. This was the early 2010s, before D&D 5e. It was a recreation of a fan made hodgepodge I found online, drawn entirely in ink on two poster boards taped together. Misspellings everywhere, coastlines that wandered like they were bored. It took me four weeks to finish for a new campaign. My players loved it. Within ten minutes someone spilled a full can of soda across it. Total loss. Still worth it.
That first map was about ambition. It was the largest map I had ever attempted, and finishing it felt like an accomplishment even if the execution was shaky. The maps that followed were driven by something else. I wanted quality. Around 2017 I started an online game set in Kara-Tur and quickly realized how few usable maps of the region existed. We had the old Kara-Tur Trail Map from the 1990s and the Interactive Atlas, but most material after 1999 was either heavily homebrewed or split into sections that could not be assembled cleanly. I wanted something cohesive, something that felt like a real place. So I made it myself.
I started with pen and poster board, then moved to Photoshop as better tools became available to me. I have always chased detail. What I learned over time was that non destructive editing is the difference between enjoying the process and slowly losing your mind. None of my skills happened overnight. It was learned through repetition and, occasionally, pain.
Nothing humbles you faster than spending three hundred dollars to print a massive wall banner, hanging it up, stepping back, and immediately locking eyes with a misspelling. It looked at me like it was mocking me. It would have been mostly fine if it was a fantasy word that had some swapped letters because no one would notice that. But no, it had to be a regular word.
My style evolved along the way, from hand drawn fantasy maps to cleaner digital work, and now toward something closer to hyper photorealism. For a long time I relied heavily on fan maps as reference. Many of them were beautiful and clearly made with care, but that approach came with problems. Creative liberties taken by other fans sometimes made their way into my work, and more purist corners of the community noticed when I shared those maps. That was a hard but useful lesson. For my current project I have taken an ultra purist approach where canon exists. We are working with spreadsheets that track over eight thousand named locations, all sourced and cross referenced. When something is canon, I want it as accurate as possible. When it is not, I am clear that interpretation has taken over.
There are entire continents in the Realms where the official lore barely exists. Osse, Katashaka, and Anchorome are often defined by little more than a paragraph and a stereotype. Those are the places where we knowingly diverge. If the material is thin or poorly presented, I would rather build something thoughtful than pretend there is nothing there. The approach is simple. Canon where canon exists, headcanon where it does not.
Mapping the Realms is everything at once. Drawing heightmaps can be genuinely meditative. Watching rivers settle into place feels right in a way that is hard to explain. Then a sourcebook comes along and moves a city hundreds of miles for no clear reason, and suddenly you are arguing with your monitor. I share my maps compulsively and always have. Sometimes that has backfired. Older maps caught criticism for spelling or for using fourth edition era references. But far more often the response has been positive. Even when I do not like those older maps anymore, knowing that other people still do brings me real joy.
Certain parts of the Realms keep pulling me back. I have a particular love for the Unapproachable East, now often grouped under names like the Arcane Empires or Forgotten Lands. Those regions feel dense with story. Rashemen and the Great Dale in particular refuses to let go.
Faerûn as a whole, never sit still. Every new map changes something. The 2025 maps resemble the old second edition ones at a glance, but they do not quite line up when you look closely. So I redraw it. Again. And probably again after that.
At the end of the day, these maps exist because the Forgotten Realms is a world worth exploring. Whether you are forging your own stories at the table or experiencing the ones told by the hundreds of creators who have shaped the setting over decades, geography matters. It grounds imagination. It gives stories somewhere to live. I am not a professional cartographer (yet). I am a fan who has just never stopped drawing, and I would not have it any other way.
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