What about the areas without description in the Forgotten Realms?

Question

I've noticed places in Toril without any sort of description. When I searched about it online, not even the Forgotten Wikia had anything about some of these places.

Let's use the Kryptgarden as an example.

It's an intriguing name, I would say. My players wanted to know about it. The name of the forest made them cautious.

I checked the book, I checked other books about Forgotten Realms, then the Forgotten Wikia. There's literally nothing about Kryptgarden. Not that I could find anyway, so I told them "A long time ago, there wasn't a forest. Some people say there was a war in the same spot and from the dead bodies, a giant garden was born. The garden is now the forest known as Kryptgarden"

It even sounds kinda cool or whatever but, the point is, was Kryptgarden not given a better description so the DM would create something about it? What about the other places in Faerûn that lack description?

Answer 1

They're there for you, the DM, to create something.

The usual complaint about the Forgotten Realms is that too much is already written, making it hard or impossible to learn the setting for DMs, let alone the poor players, or for DMs to fit in anything of their own.

Having "blank lands" like this scattered around the setting leaves room for DMs' own creativity. If you have an idea, but can't fit it into one of the more popular playing regions because the lore and canon conflict with what you want to create, these blank lands are there to give your idea a home.

---

As a point of history, Sembia (south of the Dalelands) was a large blank area right in the middle of one of the most heavily-developed regions in the Realms, in the original AD&D 1e Forgotten Realms Campaign Set. It was set aside for DMs so that they could place their own kingdom (or expand a home game into a Forgotten Realms game by locating their existing campaign kingdom there) without having to settle for a region far away from the majority of Forgotten Realms setting material.

TSR promised to never develop Sembia so that DMs' creations would not be interefered with. That lasted all of six years before Sembia was written up in the AD&D 2e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, and a bitter hue and cry was the result.

So thank WotC for leaving you these blank areas. They gave you a name and an evocative description to set fire to your imagination — now follow your dreams and create something awesome that your players will love.