D&D 5E Happy 50th, Forgotten Realms!

[GMforPowergamers]

People repeatedly peddling their misconceptions like this used to really piss me off, and I used to REALLY enjoy delivering up a serving of holy hell to the ones who couldn't bother to learn a little bit before they put fingers to keyboard, but I have learned that it comes with the territory.

I am not peddling any misconception, I have hard facts to back up everything I said. I'm not someone who didn't look into it, infact last time it came up I did hours of research on this... and found that is just not there...

no one claims that ED isn't a great creater of settings, even though I don't like a lot of the realms, the stuff I loved in the grey box was mostly him. However trying to claim he gets to make up an age and say that is when he created the setting with no proof, and again a hard to swallow date (do you remember the date or even year of every made up adventure you did in the 1st or 2nd grade?)

Ed vs. Gary drama only exists to the degree that anonymous online strangers care to gin it up.

yes, that you are one of by claiming the 50th anaversry before the 30th...

On another note: I'd like to pin down exactly when the formative ideas for D&D came about and work got started. That would be a good day to hoist a beer and toast Gary, Dave, share a drink with friends and celebrate the birth of D&D.

I'l raise a glass to gary anytime, or dave, or ed, or evin skip Williams, and the cooks, and Mike Mearls... but I will go by actual dates of publish when talking about there deeds.

I would not even go with 40. The stuff I did back in the same timeframe can hardly be called a living breathing canon campaign world. Sure, I invented gaming systems back then and took them to conventions and had notebooks of campaign stuff, but I don't consider my teenage scriblings with influences from every fantasy and sci fi book and movie and module that ever came out to be a solid campaign. At best, Ed's campaign really became semi-polished in '86 when Ed really sat down and started collating and working to make it a cohesive whole for publication the following year. Sure, he already had a lot of the ideas before then, many of them in various notebooks. But the ideas that he had in '75 (and earlier) were a small fraction of those from the decade longer campaign he got published in '87 (and many of those earlier ideas probably got discarded anyway). It became canon when it became published. Two years from now, I will celebrate FR's 30th anniversary (cause I have always really really liked FR).

I will gladly wish the FR a happy 30th with you even if I am not the biggest fan.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I think the formative ideas can be traced to Gen Con I (1968), when Gary saw a demonstration of a medieval miniatures game "Siege of Bodenberg". This by all accounts interested Gary, and he began thinking about how to improve miniatures rules for 1-on-1 combat, eventually leading to the publication of Chainmail in 1971.

in 2018 when we hit the 50th anniversary of Gen Con, I think we can let that be the big event of the year and let it be a glories year of gaming...

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

I would not even go with 40... Two years from now, I will celebrate FR's 30th anniversary (cause I have always really really liked FR).

I will be celebrating then too.

Regarding the rest of your post: Ed's contributions to D&D predate the publication of the Realms boxed set. See Dragon/The Dragon. His campaign world was already highly detailed and realized, with play underway for some time before he ever sent anything in for magazine publication.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I will be celebrating then too.

Regarding the rest of your post: Ed's contributions to D&D predate the publication of the Realms boxed set. See Dragon/The Dragon. His campaign world was already highly detailed and realized, with play underway for some time before he ever sent anything in for magazine publication.

yes and none of those games of D&D predate D&D itself... 28 published years thirtysomething running but not 50 by a long shot... inless you have some info we do not. You did say I didn't have all the facts, so if you have some please share them.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Yes, that you are one of by claiming the 50th anaversry before the 30th...

Not at all. I am celebrating the birth of the Realms, not the date of its boxed set publication.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Not at all. I am celebrating the birth of the Realms, not the date of its boxed set publication.

and now that the 7 to 5 dates are off what does that mean?

 

[Gecko85]

Looks like the first published info about the Realms was 1979 in The Dragon #30. It's unclear when Ed's home version of the campaign started. He "discovered" D&D in '75, but seems like he wasn't serious about it until '78. So, FR as a *campaign setting for D&D* is somewhere between 37-40 years old. FR as a literary fantasy setting may very well be older than that, but as it directly relates to D&D, it's 37-40, depending.

 

[KarinsDad]

I will be celebrating then too.

Regarding the rest of your post: Ed's contributions to D&D predate the publication of the Realms boxed set. See Dragon/The Dragon. His campaign world was already highly detailed and realized, with play underway for some time before he ever sent anything in for magazine publication.

Yup. He did. It doesn't mean that most people celebrate those achievements as the anniversary of a campaign world.

The birth of the atomic age started on July 16, 1945 when Trinity detonated, not when nuclear chain reaction was first hypothesized 12 years earlier in 1933 or while the first A bomb was being developed.

Christianity (for most people) started with the birth of Christ (or alternatively the ministry of Christ), not when the Messiah was first prophesied 1400 years earlier. It's the fulfillment of an idea, not when the idea is first thought of or developed. Ed was effectively in beta pre-campaign publication date.

 

[Shasarak]

I am celebrating the birth of the Realms, not the date of its boxed set publication.

Happy Birthday to the Realms and for surviving yet another Realms Shaking Event!

 

[HobbitFan]

Let's not get in a fight over when Ed Greenwood first conceived of the Realms. Only he knows that...