Forgotten Realms Didn't Always Suck, Part 3

Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

FR9 - The Bloodstone Lands

Full disclaimer, we spent years playing on this map in high school. There's a lot of nostalgia there, but also there was a lot of my DMs creativity that ran free during that time. The Bloodstone Lands allowed him to do it. You could own this and no other FR products and you get a 'here's a kingdom, there's these towns here, this barony there, and here's some influential shit that happened, now you fill in the rest'.

Historically, this takes place after the events of H1-H4, which you can happily ignore. Zhengyi's forces were overrunning Damara, the heroes defeated him, but the kingdom is left without a solid grasp on who the current king is. That's all you need to know.

The map is something I've run in my games plenty of times. I've converted into hexes, I've knitted together the surrounding kingdoms, and it saved me the trouble of naming a bunch of places and detailing every single city and town. While I've moved on from this recently, it gave me exactly what we needed for our groups in terms of: well-varied terrain, plenty of adventure rich locations, plenty of civilization and wilderness to explore, and it never once stepped on our nuts.

There is plenty of material inside that we never even got to. Like the adventures section, it gives you plenty of information to build on. 

There's even a suggestion on how to play a campaign out, that we never used.

What we used was simply the map, the town guild, the history, and the major NPCs. If you wanted a setting that, especially at the time, didn't have a dozen novel NPCs that players may or may not have read about, where expectations were pre-set, and you felt like you were in a campaign straight jacket, this was the place for you.

FR11 - Dwarves Deep

Dwarves Deep was printed during a time when the product line was starting to fall apart. The actual game usefulness for some of the FR series (I'm looking at you FR7, 8, and kind of 10) was questionable. It was fluff. NPCs from novels that might have been cool if you and the other 15 year olds were constantly arguing over who was tougher, Drizzt or Dragonbait... Elminster or Raistlin... Wulfgar or Caramon... we did this. I'm not sorry. I digress.

Most of the FR products coming out were really just not something that were helping people run games. The FR line was going the way of the rest of the TSR product line, even leading the way. However Dwarves Deep brought it back to usefulness.

Information about families, runic alphabets, brotherhoods, clans were all good to see examples of. And if you're like me, you're not going to weave an entire Dwarven Civilization from nothing. This can save you some time to inform your design decisions. Why is this abandoned dwarf mine like this? What kinds of stuff can players find evidence of? 

There's a lot of information on society and religion that can help that too, but you probably won't need it.

Too greedily and too deep?

However, Dwarves Deep gives us The Great Rift. This isn't an adventure. It's an overview where it could be expanded into it's own setting by itself.

There's a great section on The Lost Kingdoms which gives you just enough of a mental starter to form your own 'what remains of those lost Dwarven kingdoms?' What drove them out? Where did they go? What lives there now?

Finally, there is a dwarf name generator and information on Dwarven Runes (and Runestones, which is probably where Dwarrowdeep drew some inspiration). Seeing an example of the Runestone shows how the dwarves write in a wrapping spiral and how they express numerals. Little things like that help bring an old Dwarven ruin to feeling like one.

The Ruins of Undermountain

Often brought up in conversations about Megadungeons, Undermountain gets passed over. Why? Because it's not a full service Megadungeon. The boxed set just has three levels. And those three levels aren't even fully detailed. Over three massive, sprawling maps, there's 70 keyed locations. Some of them repeat too.

This thing requires patience to the degree of either 1) just taking stuff and moving it to your own dungeon or 2) sit down and key out a few hundred rooms yourself. Do you want to keep the ideas intact? Do you want to use the maps? 

Whatever the answer is, there's cool keyed areas in here. There's not that many compared to the scale of levels covered. While the room descriptions are almost Arden Vol in length, but they are usually worth absorbing. 

Fun fact about Undermountain. Portions of the maps were lifted from B1, B3, B5, and Empire of the Petal Throne.

If you ever found yourself looking for inspiration on how to set up some dungeon rooms, then flip this PDF open and pick a room at random. Most of the time you'll walk away with some pretty great ideas.

Forgotten Realms Didn't Always Suck, Part 2

If you haven't read part one yet, give that a read first. The Forgotten Realms line of products used to be useful and in this series, I talk about the ones worth pira... buying off eBay.

FR3 - Empire of the Sands

Empire of the Sands is a great supplement if you plan on introducing a desert-like kingdom to your game. It primarily details three major cities in the region, but does an admirable job providing ideas for desert raiders, social customs, and a lot of notes on climate and geography. Honestly, it's a weaker entry but not without value if this kind of setting is one you are looking to flesh out.

There's notes in here about certain slang phrases, which really can set apart an area in a very subtle way. Probably what has more heft is describing how the collective city mentality is. For example, "poverty is the ultimate sin."

FR4 - The Magister

How many of you AD&D guys use UA for basically just spells and/or magic items? This is a book of kick-ass new magic items. This really doesn't need to be a Forgotten Realms product. It just needed to be an AD&D product. If this had been expanded on scale, this would have been the best orange spine since Monster Manual II. It has a section that adds on to the DMG for magic item creation that might be useful to others. Additionally, it has new spells.

FR5 - The Savage Frontier

The cold north, the icy seas, barbarian tribes, and the settlements in between. Many of you will just be running games in a more centric area. However, there's the chance that your campaigns will grow to the icy howling winds of the north tundras. I love this shit. 

You get a snapshot of the people, how travelling in an chunky ice sea works, the mountains and rivers of the north, and a gazetteer style explanation of all of the areas which you can shamelessly borrow to flesh out your north. And it's well-written; look at who wrote it.

FR6 - Dreams of the Red Wizard

FR6... is awesome. Expansion of the world map, a unique nation based on... pretty fucked up wizards. A gazetteer of the area is well detailed, of course. But the politics in this area are very revealing. Giving this a read will really think about how you give wizards rulership roles in your world.

Of course, there are new spells. Nothing earth-shattering, but there are pages of them. Not everything in this book is original, reprinting spells and items that have been seen before in Dragon Magazine.

Finally, FR6 has a whole battery of adventure hooks to steal, rob, modify, or mangle. Multiple pages. Anecdotally, back in the day, we laid out all the FR maps from all the different products at the time and filled my living room. It was vast. Do you have an evil empire or kingdom? This has a ton of things to inspire you or let you steal from it.

FRE1 - The Haunted Halls of Eveningstar

Okay, okay. I know. The cover sucks all the dicks. The art has that 2e stink. It reeks even. Just ignore that because the inside is really nice. The only shameful thing about it is that TSR sucked ass at this point in time and made Ed Greenwood truncate this entry. There should be a kick-ass second level and more entries but we got just most of one level. But that level is solid.

Seriously, just ignore that 2e logo and art.

It opens up with some local flavor. You can ignore that. You won't be needing it. Just plop this bad boy in there somewhere and let her rip.

Now this module (as with most of TSR modules) is going to need a read through and some note-taking, but it's worth it. This thing is full of solid traps, kick-ass treasure, and proper exploration. It even has some new fuck-off monster that lives in locks just waiting for someone to peek through or try to pick it. 

You can expand upon the place easily by putting entrances downward at 14 and 31, near the crumbled areas. It also can fit in with an upper level that's a stronghold of at least 45 kobolds. Yeah, you gotta do the work. But maybe you already have a few maps that fit the bill and this can save you a whole floor of planning.

Drop some kobolds, traps, and treasure here.

There's also new magic items and the aforementioned locktrap monster and a winged cat. Cool shit.

Expand it or just run it by itself and it'll be a good time. Especially if you get them with the doppleganger.

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.