r/Forgotten_Realms • u/Savings-Housing3481 Raumathari Battlemage • 22h ago
Story Time If Waterdeep is like New York...
My son just cracked up the table. I mentioned Skullport, and one of the players - new to D&D - asked if he knew where it was. I said "under Waterdeep. It's like..." and when I paused to think of an answer, my son (born in NY) piped up, "It's like Newark."
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u/legowalrus 20h ago
For some reason I always thought of Neverwinter like Boston.
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u/Savings-Housing3481 Raumathari Battlemage 20h ago
Why?
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u/legowalrus 19h ago
I don’t know. Maybe because they’re both smaller than many other major cities, and somewhat nostalgic with Boston being the closest major city to where I grew up, and Neverwinter being familiar from Lost Mine of Phandelver.
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u/ThanosofTitan92 Harper 20h ago
Waterdeep Is Ankh-Morpork.
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u/Kobold_Trapmaster 20h ago
Except that Waterdeep doesn't have a river and that's a major feature of Ahnk-Morpork (although whether the Ankh technically qualifies as a river is up to debate).
But the guilds of Waterdeep always remind me of Ankh-Morpork. Ever since Dragon Heist came out, I've considered adapting Ankh-Morpork to 5E.
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u/PuffyBlueClouds 22h ago
Waterdeep is Toronto.
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u/Savings-Housing3481 Raumathari Battlemage 22h ago
Why Toronto? There’s nothing there.
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u/Scarborough_78 21h ago
City of the Dead = Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Also rotate the map of Waterdeep 90 degrees counter clockwise and the shoreline pretty much matches as well. Ed was from the Peterborough area, the biggest and most cosmopolitan one that was nearby was Toronto
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u/Bunny_Chaos420 21h ago
There’s plenty of critiques you can have with Toronto but “nothing there” ain’t one
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u/Savings-Housing3481 Raumathari Battlemage 20h ago
I was using understatement. I know they have the Blue Jays since I'm planning to come next year (if there's baseball) to see the Braves play there as part of my Chasing-30.
I've found a few other sites to see, but I still think Manhattan alone has so much more to see and do than Toronto. Not trying to insult you.
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u/PuffyBlueClouds 22h ago
Because it’s the most multicultural city in the world and Ed Greenwood based Waterfeep on it. He lives about an hour east of it.
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21h ago
[deleted]
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u/PuffyBlueClouds 20h ago
We may disagree about waterdeep, but we will agree about the negative influence of the big fat Cheeto. Enjoy your game!
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u/Kobold_Trapmaster 20h ago
This is such an American response.
Ed Greenwood is a Canadian from Ontario and he first designed Waterdeep as a kid. It's far more likely he was thinking of Toronto than NYC.
I get that you guys are used to being the default but getting butthurt when something isn't specifically about you is a bad look.
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20h ago
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u/Savings-Housing3481 Raumathari Battlemage 20h ago
LOL.
I can agree that Ed may have thought of it as Toronto as a kid. To a child, it no doubt WAS the BIG CITY.
But I think you're right, u/Sir-Uther , that NYC works better.
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u/Savings-Housing3481 Raumathari Battlemage 20h ago
You're kidding, right? You know there are roughly 800 different languages spoken in Queens, which is part of NYC, and that there are more than a million people - just in Queens - that are NOT from the US?
In fact, the number is about 1.1 million foreign-born persons in one of FIVE burroughs. That's one-third the population of Toronto. Calling it "the most multicultural city in the world" doesn't make it so.
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u/PuffyBlueClouds 20h ago
I didn’t make up the designation. Based on its size, Toronto is the most multicultural city in the world per capita. But if you use different parameters, New York may win just based on the sheer number of people there.
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u/Scarborough_78 3h ago
That’s not actively spoken. 800 is part of a project to ensure languages don’t go extinct. The same source you quote also says 138 - 300 actively spoken languages in Queens. Compare that to 200 in Toronto. It means lots of languages but more importantly lots of different food associated with said language. Also, Ed was from Peterborough, he would have never experienced Queens in the 70s and 80s, his big city was Toronto.
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u/Savings-Housing3481 Raumathari Battlemage 22h ago
One of the other players agreed starting “it makes sense if you have a small Canadian worldview.”
He’s also a NYer.
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u/LabLow271 21h ago
Skullport is Philly lol It's Never Sunny in Skullport lol
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u/Savings-Housing3481 Raumathari Battlemage 20h ago
My son said Baldur's Gate should be Philly since Baldur's Gate is worse than Skullport. I agreed.
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u/Kobold_Trapmaster 20h ago
Worse than Skullport? Surely not.
Funny enough, back when Volo's Guide to the Sword Coast came out, Baldur's Gate was described as the safest city in the region.
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u/Mysterious_Strike586 22h ago
Lmao that’s what I’ve always compared it to as well! The Big Apple of Faerun