A Retrospective by Ralf Schemmann
The Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas (FRIA) was—and is—a comprehensive collection of maps for the eponymous D&D setting. Its 800+ maps are all hot-linked together, forming a gigantic reference and resource collection for gamers wanting to explore the Forgotten Realms. The FRIA was produced by ProFantasy Software Ltd and its Campaign Cartographer users under license by, and in collaboration with, Wizards of the Coast.
I cut my teeth on the FRIA. I have never been a D&D player (other RPGs, yes, but not D&D), but I was an avid Campaign Cartographer 2 user at the time and very active on the social media of the era: a beloved and venerable mailing list. A stripped-down version of CC2 (called Campaign Mapper) was included in the digital tools for AD&D Core Rules 2.0, and the collaboration between ProFantasy and Wizards was going strong.
I don’t know who came up with the idea, but someone thought of converting ALL the wonderful Forgotten Realms maps into digital format, linking them together, filling in the gaps (or at least some of them), and compiling them as one big, wonderful atlas. A Herculean task, if I’ve ever seen one.
It quickly became apparent that this was nothing a single mapper (or even a few) could do, so ProFantasy approached its community to see whether this could be turned into a group effort. Lots of people volunteered—being the passionate fans they were—for the promise of a copy of the final product and lasting fame (or something like that) in the annals of RPG cartography. I was one of them.
The task of coordinating, prodding, and wrangling the horde of fledgling mappers (no less Herculean than the mapping itself) fell to Linda Kekumu and Ian Malcomson. They organized the workload by map types (dungeons, towns, cities, etc.) and assigned them to mappers according to their availability, skill, and the preferences they had shown in the community. I ended up being the guy to create the big overland map of Zakhara, the setting of AD&D’s Al-Qadim.
I vividly remember poring over bad scans of original maps, long lists of places and features to include, and many emails back and forth with Linda to compile all the information into one CC2 map. By the end, I even had the time and energy left to create a few more town and location maps for the region. I shudder to think that I was just one of many whom Linda, Ian, and the others at ProFantasy had to organize.
It is to their everlasting credit that this project did indeed come together, creating one of the most amazing cartography packages in the hobby. It wasn’t entirely complete or mistake-free by any means, but three major updates added the missing maps and corrected most, if not all, of the little errors that inevitably sneak into a project of this scale.
Everything got bundled into a single viewer software that allowed the maps to be displayed in their linked vector format without owning CC2. Furthermore, Joe Slayton added a wonderful globe functionality to the package, which shows the whole of Toril (the world of the FR) as a rotatable globe.
From there, you can drill down into continents, countries, and regions, right down to the cities and towns, and even further into blocks, buildings, and the dungeons underneath. One of the hidden gems in the package is the amazing city plan of Waterdeep, which features a myriad of building and location floorplans linked directly to it.
One of the most amazing things for me is that all of these maps are still editable in all versions of Campaign Cartographer from CC2 onwards. For example, there are ongoing projects on the ProFantasy community forum to re-map the Atlas in more modern styles and fix any remaining errors or gaps.
Of course, the Forgotten Realms have changed over the years, and the geography in the atlas doesn’t 100% match today’s FR anymore, but it remains an incredible resource for any gamer—if you can get your hands on it, of course, since it has only been available on the secondary market for decades. And I’m not parting with my copy any time soon.
Nor with the document proclaiming my everlasting fame as a cartographer of the Forgotten Realms.
Thanks Ralf, the FRIA was the first product that really got me deep down the rabbit hole that is cartography. 🙂
Great backstory and a very cool mapping product indeed!
What a blast from the past! I didn’t get the original, unfortunately, but this post has inspired me to check my old CD’s (if I can find them) – I think a friend may have made me a copy…Would be good to check it out again…
What a blast from the past! I don’t think I got the original when I started GMing in the early 00’s, but a friend may have given me a copy – I’ll have to check through my old PC CD’s and see if I can find it…
A truly epic effort by everyone involved!
Nice blog post. Brings back memories. Wish ProFantasy and Wizards (Hasbro), could come up with a deal to make it available as a download either here or there, or both. Probably make a little bit of money in the process.
I still have Interactive Atlas. I don’t use it much as it was created for CC2 but occasionally, I will interact with it.
It’s nice to see this remembered. It was a fun and very… diverse project to be involved in – and I enjoyed my time working alongside Ralf and the folk at ProFantasy on it.
Still have my copy. 🥳
I fondly remember this. I was a FR player at the time, so it was hugely useful to me. And the fact that maps could be edited was maybe even more valuable.
And the format of the atlas, with linked detail maps from overland maps was my inspiration for the organization of the community atlas project as well.
Wow totally missed this blog.
I wanted this product when it came out. It wasn’t until 12 years ago I got a pristine copy for 20cdn.
The one thing I wish it had was a list of all the amazing people who mapped it and what they contributed.
It would be stellar if they made a new one for 5th edition!
Kudos to all the amzing people who worked on this!
Thanks for all your work on this, Ralf!
As I read this and comment, the FRIA is open right now for my FR campaign. I use it to this day. It remains the top level map of the Realms that I use.
Thanks!
Take care!
Seems eBay has a few copies…will this work on Windows 11?
The maps will. The map viewer and globe view might – and probably will under compatibility.
All the maps are Campaign Cartographer FCWs. They can be opened with CC2 or higher.
The software still works fine under Windows 11. I have it running without problems on such a system here.
I have it running on Windows 11 as well. No problem
I had the CD ROM as well as the UPDATED MAP FILES. But I lost them. I am looking for downloads for the FRIA as well as the additional MAPS. Please let me know where I can get them. Thank you.