Grand History of the Realms

The Grand History of the Realms

It would be hard for a title to me more exact. The hardbound book is not a gaming book, but can be a great gaming resource. It was published in 2007 a year before fourth edition Dungeons and Dragons came out. This of course means that the changes and advancement in the time line of the Forgotten Realms in fourth edition are not present in this book. This book will be very useful for people that want a Forgotten Realms campaign that has a theme of history and what has come before now in it. I also think this would be a cool aid for running a historical Forgotten Realms campaign though I do not know if that is something that interests people. The book can also be useful for fans of the novels especially someone who is just reading them now and might not have a great understanding on what came before what. I know I would never be able to keep the chronological order of all those novels straight.

The book is about one hundred and sixty pages long. The history of the book is quite interesting. It started out as a fan web site that impressed the people enough at Wizards of the Coast to buy it. It was a feature on their web page for a while and not has been brought to book form. That is quite an accomplishment for something that started as a fan project. The book is the work of Brian R James, Ed Greenwood, George Krashos, Eric L Boyd, and Thomas Costa. While those are the names on the book it does give thanks to the hundred or so writers who over the past three decades have helped write bits and pieces of the Forgotten Realms. I’m sure there must have been hundreds of books for the setting over the past three editions.

The quality of the book is there. It is very complete as a time line of everything. I am no expert on the setting so I am just going to assume that everything is here. I did not notice any omissions. There are great side bars and lots of nice information. As it covers so much listing every year and giving a short description I am sure there are details that are left out. After seeing such a book it makes one want to see a complete index so that if a DM wants on 428 DR Year of One’s Tears there would be a listing of books that contain information on that if such a book exists. That would be a huge undertaking and not something I expect to see. Basically each year gets a single event listed. Sometimes that’s a short paragraph and other times it is a single sentence.

Through out the book are very nice sidebars. Some of these are an in depth look at an event others contain historical documents of importance. There is little art in the book but the lay out is very nice looking. In the middle of the book are thirteen pages of the different monarchies of Faerun. There is a little of everything it seems that falls under the History of the Realms.

This is one of those books that fans will want but people with no interest in the setting will stay away from. It is well researched and very thorough and will leave fans of other setting wishing those settings would get such awesome treatment.