Are there factories in Forgotten Realms? I'll bet you Wyll's good eye that there are and that you'll start to see more and more of this stuff as WotC releases more and more product . . .
You may be right that more may be coming. The Pathfinder setting has places with guns and a part of the map that is entirely steampunk. If you played WOTR you might have remembered the joy that was fighting the cybermen.
Like you I prefer setting without guns and factories but thus far the one in BG3 is the only one I know of. There is a swamp in Cormyr with buildings formed of glass and steel that sounds like it contains technology but to the best of my knowledge that never got anything more than a paragraph.
I dunno what to say about this way of arguing - we all acknowledge that there is a factory in BG3. Right? That's a given. But I don't think think you can argue that the factory seems perfectly in place in the setting because it is in BG3. Were that the case *nothing* could be ruled out of place in the setting.
Imagine if we couldn't say "Astarian and Shadowheart shouldn't be texting on iPhones because that seems out of place in Faerun" and getting the response. "iPhones are in BG3 so they are not out place in the realms and I suspect we will be seeing many more iPhones in the future"
I mean that wouldn't convince you, would it?
Now I am both saying what is and would I like to remain. Am I saying that I want see the realms remain a high fantasy, medievalish, hot mess of setting. I am also saying that it is currently a high fantasy, medievalish hot mess of setting. Both Faerun and Golorian are hodgepodge settings but Faerun has a bit less hodge and Golorian has a bit more podge.
There has long been debate about how much technology to include in the setting - I provided a link to internal discussion about firearms - and up until now WotC has decided that Faerun is neither Ebberon nor Golorian.
