Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (Forgotten Realms)

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition

by Ed Greenwood, Jeff Grubb, Donald J. Bingle

It is a world where the gods have walked and fantastic armies clashed. It is the home of Elminster, Alias, Azoun, Khelben, and Drizzt the dark elf. It is the most popular fantasy campaign in history. Well met, traveler, and welcome to the Forgotten Realms!

The new campaign setting contains:
* A Grand Tour of the Realms - a 128-page book concentrating on the Heartlands, the land of the Dales, Cormyr, and Waterdeep, and chock full of useful information about other significant Realms locations on the continent of Faerûn.

* Running the Realms - a 64-page guide to the Forgotten Realms for the Dungeon Master showing how to create a Realms campaign and giving details about the secrets, NPC's, and deities of the Realms.

* Shadowdale - a 96-page book presenting the most important town in the Realms as the basis of an ongoing campaign, including a new introductory adventure, "Beneath the Twisted Tower."

* 8 Monstrous Compendium pages covering the deadliest creatures of the Realms!

* 6 card sheets showing nearly 100 signs, trail glyphs, symbols, magical sigils, and religious symbols of the Realm in full color.

* 4 all-new four-color maps, two of eastern and western Faerûn, and two smaller-scale, detailed maps of the heartlands of the Realms.

The revised FORGOTTEN REALMS Campaign Setting is both a perfect introduction and a concise restructuring of the earlier boxed set, not to be missed by either long-time fans or newcomers to the grandest campaign setting of all!

Genres: Role Playing Games, Forgotten Realms, Fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons, Gaming, Games, Reference

288 pages, Boxed Set

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Ed Greenwood is the creator of the Forgotten Realms fantasy world, which became the setting for his home D&D game in 1975. Play still continues in this long-running campaign, and Ed also keeps busy producing Realmslore for various TSR publications.

Ed has published over two hundred articles in Dragon magazine and Polyhedron newszine, is a lifetime charter member of the Role Playing Game Associaton (RPGA) network, has written over thirty books and modules for TSR, and been Gen Con Game Fair guest of honor several times.

In addition to all these activities, Ed works as a library clerk and has edited over a dozen small press magazines.

Invented the character Elminster from the popular Forgotten Realms RPG series. Currently resides in an old farmhouse in the countryside of Ontario, Canada.

Reviews

[Malum · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whenever I wanted a basic fantastic setting for my 2E games back in the day, The forgotten realms is where I would turn. Generic enough to plop almost any adventure down in, yet detailed enough to have plenty of fun thing going on in the background.

Wizards of the Coast has screwed this setting over pretty hard in the last few years, but this particular boxed set was great.

[Juho Pohjalainen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a tumultuous and in some ways contradictory relationship with this setting. It's a cliched and largely nonfunctional mess, full of high magics and secret societies and 20th level kings to make sure your player characters couldn't possibly even by accident make any difference of their own... but there's a charm to it all, and having the entire setting - down to almost every city - mapped well in advance, at least to the point of a line of two or information, never hurt my DMing job. And Shining South and Icewind Dale are genuinely pretty good places to adventure in. And, you know, if you do get bored of it all, there's a better campaign setting in every cardinal direction - Maztica, Kara-Tur, and Zakhara just waiting for the player characters to go in and have a great time. It's comprehensive and full and you'll never run out of adventure.

But still, with every coming edition I've liked it less. The changes were subtle up until third edition, then it was completely wrecked in fourth, then put back together because of fan cry in fifth - neither of which I was a fan of.

[Niall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was part of the era where m Forgotten Realms started filling up—characters, plots, ancient civilizations, and secret societies piling up until every corner had something going on. While this had some downsides, as someone who loved reading sourcebooks, it was wonderful. Many things read better than they play (if they were ever played), but this box is a reasonable mix. The included adventure has a cameo from the famous mage that I’ve often seen referenced as a low point in adventure design, but also highlights the (often overlooked) choice to play parts of the Forgotten Realms setting as deeply silly. The Gazetteer has enough odd details of each land to give a sense of differing flavor, and it cemented this as one of my favorite settings (and box sets) of the era.

[Cyber Killer · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really good fantasy setting, but the books read like a brick. It took me nearly half a year to read through them & it was a slow and exhausting read.