Forgotten Realms Didn't Always Suck, Part 1

The Forgotten Realms. 

Toril.

Fantasy Seattle.

WotC's toilet paper.

It's a setting that the past 25-30 years have beaten the D&D consumers into an exhausted pulp. It's the home of 5e's fantasy Seattle. It's the place that just keeps changing to fit the times and new editions. It's been sanded down so hard and waterlogged for so long that any interesting aspects have been made flavorless. Something like 300, many disconnected, novels have only added to that. It became impossible to think of the Forgotten Realms without connecting it to Drizzt and Elminster. However, Forgotten Realms from it's bits in early Dragon magazines and the earliest published materials was very good. 

Greyhawk had a weaker setting, but some of the best adventures ever written and it was originally more conducive to applying exploration to. The Known World, later branded as Mystara, was... a world. To a lesser extent, a worse Greyhawk. Dragonlance should never be gamed in, as a setting that was built on the railroading DL series, then a failure to expand that into a gameable world. Other settings such as Spelljammer, Planescape, and Ravenloft existed in more of a 'other place' rather than a traditional D&D campaign. Birthright came after people stopped caring and revolved around resurrecting domain play.

But overall, anyone reading this blog doesn't want to use any of that except Greyhawk because running T1-4 and G1-3 make it look so attractive. However, I present the old Forgotten Realms material as a candidate. Not a candidate to run your own games in directly, but a candidate to look at the source material for your own worlds.

FR0 - Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting Boxed Set (1e)

I had posted a review in 2006 on Dragonsfoot for FR0 (The 1e Campaign Setting Boxed Set). I honestly have very little recollection of writing the review, only that I did it. But you know what? I'm going to plagiarize myself.

The following parts set the stage for the rest of the products I am going to detail. The history of how and why are of minor importance, but it's useful context.

The Forgotten Realms existed in Ed Greenwoods mind and short stories since the sixties, but when D&D was created, he made it his campaign world in 1978. He had run a number of his campaigns in that world, which his players helped him shape. In some early issues of Dragon magazine, he had published a few pieces which were set in the Forgotten Realms. Jeff Grubb was charged with contacting Ed and seeing if there was a developed world. There was, so Ed and TSR began working on the campaign setting. Ed would be the go-to guy to make sure future Realms products wouldn't conflict with the overall scheme of the world.

Since this was to be the new quintessential TSR world, many projects were squeezed into Ed's original world. The Moonshea Isles was Celtic-flavored project that Douglas Niles had worked on, and now would have a home in the Forgotten Realms. The Bloodstone Lands, based off of Douglas Niles H-series of modules were included as well. A few other places (some better than others) were developed and shifted to fit other accessories and novels until the realms was complete in TSR's eyes.

What was written in the set was how the major gods, locations, NPCs, and cities looked like at a high level. It provided maps, most with areas that aren't detailed.

The boxed set as I hold it in my hands was the finished product for the original campaign setting. For intent and purposes, the boxed set detailed the western Faerun continent while leaving the peripheral areas to future accessories. This would give us a close up of what is known as the heartlands, while releasing separate accessories for the outlaying lands (FR1 - Waterdeep and the North, and FR2 - Moonshea were released at the same time as the boxed set).

The set came with two books, the first (Cyclopedia of the Realms) being more of a players sourcebook to the realms that touches on certain things a character in the realms may know. This detailed the Forgotten Realms gods, with a portfolio of what they stand for. This also gave information on towns, kingdoms, and races of the realms in alphabetical order. There is also some good city detailing. Not all cities and towns have complete maps with keys, but there are enough to flesh out some of the more important towns.

The second book (The DM's Sourcebook of the Realms) was a DM's book that contained NPC's of the realms, some spells (and the cryptic spellbooks that they were hidden within), as well as two adventures. The NPC's were displayed in a minimalist fashion, detailing only the basic information of class, level, and alignment. As with all entries in both books, everything is encyclopedic with three sub-sections for each entry. First you get your general information, then Elminster's* Notes, and finally game information. The general information is self-explanatory, while the Elminster's Notes are more knowledgeable and more first-hand information from the sage's point of view. The game information is where statistics of mechanic related notes were made.

So you have a big continent, a write up about how the kingdoms are set up, major cities, npcs, etc. But the main take away is that it provided a good canvas for adventures. 

The two adventures that came with the book are set within Myth Drannor. Myth Drannor is an ancient elven city that has since fallen into ruin, which leaves endless possibilities for subterranean exploration. There were two dungeons that could be found there, which were solid.

One of the many dungeons spread around Myth Drannor

The set also comes with four maps. Two are larger scale maps of the continent, and two are more conventional closer-view maps of the heartlands in which the boxed set details. It also comes with hex overlays to give good measurement when parties are traveling across the continent.

Can it hexcrawl? Only if you re-draw the map as a hex map. Is it worth hexcrawling? Maybe. If you were going to redraw the entire area as a hexcrawl and then seed those keyed locations in with content, then you might as well start writing your own hexcrawl.

Let me reiterate: The Forgotten Realms can be stolen from with ease.

I've owned three copies of this in my life. The first, which I still have the 2 sourcebooks for, was bought with paper route money from a place called Toy City. The second, which was lost with most of my stuff was bought on eBay in the early 2000s to replace the absolutely decimated boxes and maps. And the third was bought in 2021 because it's something I felt I always wanted in my library.

Look at the gods, see which ones you can adapt, combine, and throw away for your own world. Look at the NPCs, is there someone like that you'd want in your game that might run a city, be a rival adventurer, or use as a blacksmith with a bit more history? Look at the gazetteer-styled entries and then look at your own. Did you forget something? 

FR1 - Waterdeep and the North

Waterdeep and the north came in a 64-page booklet, like a double-module, complete with a slip cover and fold out map of Waterdeep. Using this directly as Waterdeep could result in having a detailed city with movers and shakers spelled out ahead of time, but nobody who plays old school games wants to play in Waterdeep. However, the material goes beyond that, much like FR0.

There's more gazetteer-styled entries on the surrounding areas which might be valuable to mine. However, the usefulness comes with being able to model your own large cities. There's a sewer system to consider. Have you thought of one for your games? Would a history be beneficial to your game? What about the laws and government? Are the guards in your city heavily patrolling certain areas over the others? What if you got caught fencing stolen property? How long would that jail time be?

The booklet goes on to detail wards of the city, the households (noble and otherwise), temples, dress and mannerisms. Do the people of your major city have a certain way of acting? Does that matter to you? There is information, more importantly, for factions and guilds within the city. 

Chapter 9 gives seven adventure hooks to steal as well. If not steal, they do provide good inspiration for your own city-based adventures. Finally, there are common building floorplans included. Do your players get caught up in a breaking and entering situation in a grand residence and you need an idea of how the floorplan looks on the fly? Waterdeep and the North might have something for you.

FR2 - Moonshae

I mentioned above (and in my Dragonsfoot review 17 years ago) that the Moonshea Isles weren't originally part of the Forgotten Realms until it made it to TSR. Douglas Niles was working on a series that didn't yet have a home and it got placed off the Sword Coast originally.

Moonshae is a resource best used as mineable content for a Celtic area. The gazetteer for the islands, the conflicts that exist there politically, and environmental overviews that might be useful for one setting up a Celtic area, complete with random encounter tables. 

There's the legendary Leviathan provided as well. Do you have a Leviathan? There's the Kazgoroth, a 16 HD disruptor of balance (a big theme in Moonshae with lots of druidic influence and king unicorns and such) that can inflict lycanthopy with it's bite and summon up to 500 blood warriors. I don't know if you need THAT, but this book definitely has some cool monster entries.

Moonshae does include some adventure suggestions, as well, but the primary one is to play out the Moonshae novel trilogy and that is awful. However the new magic items section is pretty cool on it's own.

REF5 - Lords of Darkness

Forgotten Realms adventures don't have the best reputation, which is a sentiment well-deserved. However, there is still gold out there from the beforetime. I have precious few that I'd recommend and the first is Lords of Darkness. This 1988 anthology doesn't necessarily take place in any specific part of the Forgotten Realms, but does include some monsters that belong to it. 

Alternatives to level draining are introduced and the concept of non-evil undead is discussed. But this isn't what we're here for. We are here for the lairs of various undead types. This anthology gives lairs for skeletons, zombies, ghouls and ghasts, wights, shadows, mummies, vampires, ghosts, spectres, and a lich.

Not all of these are gold. I'd skip skeletons and zombies right away. The shadow adventure sucks. Deborah Christian wrote Skeletons, Shadows, and Spectres. And she did some Dungeon Magazine story gaming level shit for this. 

Jump to Jennell Jaquays Ghouls and Ghasts. It's a solid adventure as a hex entry and provides good opportunity for exploration, a reason for things happening, and challenging encounters to overcome. You'll have to ignore the introduction to the horror mechanic in the beginning, but if you read further into the ecology of ghouls you can get decent suggestions for running them such as them being able to track like a 7th level ranger using Unearthed Arcana.

Steve Perrin's Wight adventure is a little weak, but I was delighted to see a Wight Advancement table:

Jennell Jaquays Mummies is pretty fucking rad. Lizard men, Mummies, and Undead Dinosaurs? Hell yeah. This one alone is worth the cost of admission. The adventure itself is cool, but there is a bit of lore tie-ins with the Forgotten Realms, which are easily replaced by locations, factions, and the like. Nothing is specific. Steal this.

Fuckin' A

Jean Rabe's and Vince Garcia's Vampires is almost great. The first major strike against it no fucking map. There's a keyed area, and those keyed areas are solid, but there's no map. Such a shame. 

Vinca Garcia's Ghosts is decent. It's a haunted mansion adventure and has a decent map to explore. Like kind of a 'Mom, can we stop and get Tegel Manor?' 'We have Tegel Manor at home.' 

This is Tegel Manor at home.

Finally, we get to Liches. Bitches.

Ed Greenwood, some might think, didn't do good stuff. I'm here to fuck that up for you. In part 2 and 3, I'm gonna rip your nostril hairs out to make you sneeze so hard you fart.

The lich, The Dread Lair of Alokkair, is a 10th level adventure. This is set in the Area of Shadowdale in a haunted cave. We can just yoink that and drop it into our own. We start off with some mild resource expending encounters into a really nasty trap. I should steal it. It introduces a new monster, the Ghost Spider, which isn't so much for a 10th level party to handle, but they would make mean low-level encounters.

That's going to be par for the course on the first half. Cool traps, mild encounters, but plenty of exploration and interaction. Once you get to the back half of the dungeon, you get more challenging encounters. The environmental hazards are sure to bring of wear and tear on the adventurers, as is the thieving Gargoyles who try to snatch magical items and the animated weapons. 

Throughout the whole thing, the Lich is using illusionary magic to keep the PCs from retreating, which is given plenty of suggestions of what to employ. The lich itself is nasty, clearly written by someone who is no stranger to higher-level spell battles. The spell list almost feels like cheating. Solid stuff.