Diotima

With respect, bullshit.

"Closing the border" is a meaningless statement where the southern US border is concerned. More than a thousand miles of border, much of it sparsely inhabited, and he's going to secure it all?

Sure.

We can close official crossings as much as we like, but it will do little to stop people immigrating. I'm guessing that this is targeted at southern crossings, too, as I doubt the govt is seriously considering turning people away in airports or up north.

1. Because "closing the border" is a nonsense statement that doesn't account for the reality of the border abd its size. Thousands of miles of border means it is nearly impossible to patrol even a small fraction of it.

2. People working for super low wages is a product of policy and exploitation. Making it easy and legal to immigrate for work is the right answer, as is enforcing labor law.

Are you sure you want to do that? -The GM

I do. There are, of course, as many Realms as there are campaigns in the multiverse, but I do assume that most of the geography and core lore is consistent across most of them.

Thanks!

I haven't tried with 1 and 2. The BG3 in-games maps are useless except as notes, but context clues, dev statements, and prior material helped quite a bit, as did paying $100 for the official mapping software.

We don't need flavor text. We know that the Realms have existed through multiple editions of the game; if spells were this consistent then they would operate consistently across the different rulesets. They do not, though.

Using Locate Object as an example:

2E Distance: 60 feet per level of spellcaster (so variable between 120 and 1200 feet for levels 2-20)
3E Distance: 400 feet plus 40 feet per level.
4E Distance: ???
5E Distance: Up to 1000 feet.

The spell itself is the same, but the gameplay limitations vary for the purposes of game balance. I sincerely doubt that a spell in-world changed; rather, we set limits to ensure balance in gameplay. We should be distinguishing between rules meant to balance play and in-world realities, here.

This, exactly. We can get a sense of this from the old novels too; magic is not nearly as restrictive as it is in-game; those rules exist to simplify gameplay, not to turn combat, magic, travel and healing into math problems.

Heck, Long Resting is an excellent example of how things 100% do NOT work in "real" Faerun. We think someone who survives being tagged with dragon claws, burned in a breath weapon, and sent flying with a tail attack is healed and ready to go with a nice 8 hour nap? Nah...

I'll address Wish.

Wish states the following:

You might be able to achieve something beyond the scope of the above examples. State your wish to the GM as precisely as possible. The GM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance; the greater the wish, the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong. This spell might simply fail, the effect you desire might only be partly achieved, or you might suffer some unforeseen consequence as a result of how you worded the wish.

As the Faerun canonically has inaccurate maps, we can assume that Wish has failed to provide accurate maps. I cannot imagine that a Wizard hasn't tried to create one in the thousands of years that Toril has been populated, after all. Heck, if we are talking magic, Wish is amateur hour when one considers ancient Netheril and the possibility of 10-12th level spells.

Locate object does not provide measurements, it provides a direction and whether the object is moving.. Canonical lore states very clearly that maps are inaccurate in the FR. That is a canon statement, pulled from a sourcebook written by the man who created the Realms. Whatever explanation we prefer, that is an in-game reality. We can assume that the "easy" methods of offering accurate maps have failed, which would necessarily include magical means.

That maps are as accurate as they are is likely a reflection of the use of magic to assist with their creation.

Welcome!