Orius
Legend
I'm pretty much going to repeat what's already been said. Most of the available material is 2e and 3e. 1e had some early stuff and some of it is decent, though much of it was expanded on in 2e and 3e. 4e blows up the setting and advances the setting about a century which I've never cared for and I'm not even a big fan of the setting. Then 5e pushes a giant reset button and mostly just uses the setting for a few adventures. Hope you don't like anything outside the Sword Coast.
Grey Box or Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. These are the two best entry points into the Realms. Grey Box is the original starting point which is praised for its potential without the eventual 2e and 3e metaplots piling up. But the 3e book is also a good start which built on the best that 2e brought to the setting while trying to make the setting gameable again.
Faiths and Avatars etc. What else needs to be said? Just about everyone else has already recommended these three. These books flesh out the religions of the setting giving the fluff that doesn't need to depend on edition. The 5e PHB already lists the domains for the important gods, and FRCS covers the 3e mechanics, so these books still give useful descriptions.
Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue. A whimsical little product inspired by early 20th century mail order catalogues, this thing has a lot of unique flavor. Curate it if you're a DM though, there's a lot of stuff in here that has potential for min-maxer abuse, and some of the entries get a bit redundant.
Pages from the Mages. A compilation of Ed's Dragon articles of the same name, describing a number of unique spellbooks from the setting. Lots of interesting lore in here. Also is the definitive 2e source for the some of the well known spells from the Realms though they're also in the Spell Compendiums. 3e has most of the spells in Magic of Faerun and later updated them in the 3.5 Spell Compendium, but that work changed some of the spell names unnecessarily IMO.
Underdark. One of the 3e books that has the right balance of fluff and crunch. There's a good amount of material here that can be used in any world with a typical Underdark in addition to the Realms specific stuff. This book is what 1e's Dungeoneer's Survival Guide attempted to do and failed.
Serpent Kingdoms. Just a good all-around sourcebook on reptilian races that is another 3e FR book that has use outside the setting.
Grand History of the Realms. THE timeline for the setting, though I recommend ignoring the the preview for the Spellplague crap at the very end. It includes not just the standard FR material but also Kara-Tur and Maztica as well which raises it into the ranks of the top products by tying everything together in a unified whole. In particular, one of the main downsides of Kara-Tur was that the boxed set didn't have a timeline or a conversion of Shou dates to Dalereckoning, and this book remedies that. The only flaw is that it doesn't cover Al-Qadim dates. If you want to do Toril as one big world and have things happening beyond Faerun, this is one of the sources that'll really help.
Ed Greenwood Presents Elminster's Forgotten Realms. This might be all flavor but it gives one of the most comprehensive looks into how Ed conceptualizes the setting. It's edition neutral too, defaulting all the way back the Grey Box's starting point of 1356 DR. Ed does mention how things change over more than a century, but one could still use this in a barebones 1e game that ignores all the subsequent developments without much trouble.
Grey Box or Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. These are the two best entry points into the Realms. Grey Box is the original starting point which is praised for its potential without the eventual 2e and 3e metaplots piling up. But the 3e book is also a good start which built on the best that 2e brought to the setting while trying to make the setting gameable again.
Faiths and Avatars etc. What else needs to be said? Just about everyone else has already recommended these three. These books flesh out the religions of the setting giving the fluff that doesn't need to depend on edition. The 5e PHB already lists the domains for the important gods, and FRCS covers the 3e mechanics, so these books still give useful descriptions.
Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue. A whimsical little product inspired by early 20th century mail order catalogues, this thing has a lot of unique flavor. Curate it if you're a DM though, there's a lot of stuff in here that has potential for min-maxer abuse, and some of the entries get a bit redundant.
Pages from the Mages. A compilation of Ed's Dragon articles of the same name, describing a number of unique spellbooks from the setting. Lots of interesting lore in here. Also is the definitive 2e source for the some of the well known spells from the Realms though they're also in the Spell Compendiums. 3e has most of the spells in Magic of Faerun and later updated them in the 3.5 Spell Compendium, but that work changed some of the spell names unnecessarily IMO.
Underdark. One of the 3e books that has the right balance of fluff and crunch. There's a good amount of material here that can be used in any world with a typical Underdark in addition to the Realms specific stuff. This book is what 1e's Dungeoneer's Survival Guide attempted to do and failed.
Serpent Kingdoms. Just a good all-around sourcebook on reptilian races that is another 3e FR book that has use outside the setting.
Grand History of the Realms. THE timeline for the setting, though I recommend ignoring the the preview for the Spellplague crap at the very end. It includes not just the standard FR material but also Kara-Tur and Maztica as well which raises it into the ranks of the top products by tying everything together in a unified whole. In particular, one of the main downsides of Kara-Tur was that the boxed set didn't have a timeline or a conversion of Shou dates to Dalereckoning, and this book remedies that. The only flaw is that it doesn't cover Al-Qadim dates. If you want to do Toril as one big world and have things happening beyond Faerun, this is one of the sources that'll really help.
Ed Greenwood Presents Elminster's Forgotten Realms. This might be all flavor but it gives one of the most comprehensive looks into how Ed conceptualizes the setting. It's edition neutral too, defaulting all the way back the Grey Box's starting point of 1356 DR. Ed does mention how things change over more than a century, but one could still use this in a barebones 1e game that ignores all the subsequent developments without much trouble.
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