Realm transitions

I am new to D&D as are the other players in my group. As the person who tends to pick thing up the quickest, I became defaco DM. I enjoy the role and am constantly learning new things. I decided to start with the Keep on the Shadowfell adventure because it was freely available and I didn't want to invest too much in case people lost interest.

After a few sessions, everyone is really enjoying themselves and I am beginning to look to the future. Although we are all new to the D&D game, one of the guys in my group is a huge fan of the Forgotten Realms books. I was wondering if there is an easy way to transition the party from its current location (once we finish the adventure) into the Forgotten Realms or if we would just have to start fresh with new characters to get there.

Any advice on this would be great. Thanks in advance for all the help.

Glad you're having a great time!

Honestly? I'd say you don't need to go to any lengths at all to switch the game to the Forgotten Realms. Just put Winterhaven up in the northwest of the Realms, and call it a day. You can switch some of the deity names around, but there's no need to start from scratch, really. Just do a quick retcon, and you're done!

-O

Well, I'd ask your players if they're comfortable just moving things to the Realms, if you'd like to do that. No reason the players would have to make new characters, though they might well wish to do that.

Or you can do the classic magic portal option. Which has a number of variants from:

Being summoned by some wizard who needs their help
Walking through a cave and coming out in the Realms.
Pushing the wrong button.

The only issue with this latter option is the players may be aware of the nature of the Realms which can create some conflict if they don't pretend they don't know things.

Though you can always handwave magical explanations for it if you want.

Really, the geography of the Realms is big and vague enough that you can drop Fallcrest and the Keep just about anywhere in there with no problems. The only reason to start fresh with brand new characters is if you want to. Worst-case senario, you might want to re-spec any divine characters to worship FR gods.

Be aware, though, that they changed a lot of stuff about the Forgotten Realms in 4th Edition. You might want to make sure your buddy who's a huge FR fan knows about that, I've seen a fair few old-school FR fans who really hate the changes they made.

Then again, it's fairly simple to run a 4E realms game that uses the 3E pantheon and geography... (I know this from experience)

You do realize that there was an article in Dungeon 155 that gave you a whole conversion and extra encounters to place this in the Realms.