Editing Maztica (section)

==AD&D==
Maztica made its debut in 1989 with [[Douglas Niles]]' novel trilogy. It made it to earliest [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] 2nd edition, as the Maztica Boxed Set, co-written with Tim Beach.

We'd tell you the lore but if you've read William Prestcott's ''The History of the Conquest of Mexico'', you know it already. Seriously. The main difference is that after <strike>Cortes</strike>the Amnites shows up, the Not Aztecs (well, the ones worshipping Not Huitzilpochtli, anyway) get transformed into [[orc]]s and [[ogre]]s by MAGIC.

This box was followed by three further publications: '''FMA1: Fires of Zatal''', a basic setting-introducing adventure; '''FMA2: Endless Armies''', an adventure in which Maztican or explorer PCs try to stop a plague of giant ants that is devastating the jungle, and '''FMQ1: City of Gold''', a campaign expansion that details the more Incan-flavored northern reaches of Maztica.

[[Ed Greenwood]] didn't write any of this shit and he didn't like that it got tagged into his Realms. He has always asserted that he felt it and the other more [[Historical Fantasy]] focused Realms subsettings of [[Kara-tur]] and the [[The Horde|Hordelands]] were a bad idea that took away from the fundamental fantastical feel of the Realms, led to problems at the table when you got [[That Guy]] yammering on about "historical inaccuracies" in a game that wasn't supposed to be real-world history in the first place, and was just generally a bad idea. Given the [[SJW|reception]] to such sub-settings in the modern era, ol' Greenwood hit the nail on the head with prophetic accuracy.

Playing a Maztican native in this book is... kind of terrible. The [[cleric]]s are underpowered, the only [[wizard]]s are [[rogue]] [[kits]] using [[Pluma]] and [[Hishna]] magic, and the native gear basically sucks compared to the tech that the invaders are using. Yes, it meshes with the story that the Amnish were able to literally run roughshod over the entire Maztican nation because they had better wizards and gear, but it doesn't really encourage you to want to play a local.