D&D 1E Forgotten Realms in AD&D 1st Edition a better setting for adventures?

[Yora]

Here's an old rpg.net thread about the changes in the North between 1e and 2e.

I know, that was me, back when I first discovered that the region was overhauled.

The following post from Reddit matches with what I've found when doing comparisons:

It's a bit more complicated than this, because there has been a lot of squishing going on. From what I can tell, the 2nd edition map is traced perfectly over the 1st edition map, with only some bits in the very west and south cropped off, so I assume they didn't mean to make any adjustments.
But I managed to get the other four maps to the same scale and overlay them for comparison. Since four transparent layers are a total mess, I picked a couple of reference points that are on all four maps and highlighted the lines connecting them, resulting in this.

As can be seen, the Northwest quarter of Faerûn (which is all I have for 5th edition) was shrunk down significantly in 3rd edition but remained effectively unchanged in 4th.
5th edition looks once again much more like 1st edition, though halfway between 1st and 3rd in size.

When you tilt the 3rd/4th edition map a bit, it becomes more clear.

 

[Scars Unseen]

when they finally abandoned that awful binder gimmick

I actually liked those. It made it super easy to prepare an adventure with the monsters you were planning on using separated for easy access. Completely obsolete now with digital tools being what they are, but it came in handy at the time, and I was actually annoyed when the MM came out as a book.

 

[Yora]

But weren't they printed double sided, so when you wanted to combine two tomes into one you couldn't get them in an alphabetical, or really any order?

I'm very much not a fan of the 2nd edition version (1996) of the setting, which was my main point for this thread. I feel that in that one, they removed all the most interesting parts and adventure hooks and replaced it with a giant renfaire of cute villages and taverns, in which there's much less to do for PCs.

 

[Voadam]

But weren't they printed double sided, so when you wanted to combine two tomes into one you couldn't get them in an alphabetical, or really any order?

There were a few places that would come up, but not many and they would generally be real close. Of course the more appendices you had the more this was an issue.

I'm very much not a fan of the 2nd edition version (1996) of the setting, which was my main point for this thread. I feel that in that one, they removed all the most interesting parts and adventure hooks and replaced it with a giant renfaire of cute villages and taverns, in which there's much less to do for PCs.

The first setting book I had for FR was the 2e Forgotten Realms Adventures hardcover which is light on nation states of the setting but really strong on things like specialty priests for a ton of FR gods and cool new spells and explaining the big picture things of the Time of Troubles and how magic works in the setting. Even though I generally continued running in other settings, I really liked the 2e FRA book.

 

[see]

My personal opinion is that the best published version of the Realms for D&D gaming is, was, and remains the Old Gray Box (1987).

This might, of course, be pure nostalgia talking, since that was my first version.

But it's why I was advocating (ten years ago on the Candlekeep forum) that the "Fifth Edition" version of the Realms should reboot the entire setting back to the standard of the Old Gray Box and 1357 DR, and then never advance the timeline in any subsequent tabletop RPG product. Let the Realms as a multimedia property setting (computer games, novels, whatever) do whatever, but don't back-import any of that to the TTRPG.

(The other part of my "reboot" approach was that any geographic area outside the OGB core would be subject to revision to fit OGB standards. One thing mentioned in the OGB is that the Realms does not have pantheons; therefore, the OGB gods would be the gods of the entire Realms, and so any new versions of Mulhorand, Unther, Chult, the Hordelands, Maztica, Kara-Tur, etc. would, among other things, use the standard Realms gods as the big gods, though they likely would have a profusion of minor local deities.)

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I’m also a 1987 box fan as well. I include a few of the FR accessories that followed. The 87 box is sparse enough that a Greyhawk fan of the Greyhawk original box or folio can appreciate. Really left large areas wide open for DM customization.

 

[haakon1]

If you like Greyhawk then OGB Realms is more like Greyhawk than later Realms. The FR series of sourcebooks as well. It was edgier and slightly darker. Then the Realms became... Disneyland with the guards from Hogan's Heroes as villains and all the heroes characters from Hercules and Xena.

I guess I don’t know what Realms I want. As a Greyhawk DM (running 3.5e), I would use it as an alternate world, and it sounds like the Gray Box AD&D is the good one (~1357 DR). My PC’s used Dismissal on a semi-friendly NPC and I randomly determined he’s in FR … probably at the Yawning Portal.

Seems like 2e was ~1367 DR, 3e ~1379 DR, 4e ~14xx DR, not sure on 5e, with huge changes for the editions. At least in Dungeon, it seems to matter a lot what DR it is, if it’s after Spellplague or not, certain gods dead or not, etc.

Whereas GH has only the GH Wars changing the setting between AD&D and 2e, with the 3e setting making sense of a 2e messy setting … and frankly the Wars don’t change game play. Most DM’s, including myself, have rejected at least some aspects of the Wars changes. (Not to get too far off topic, for me the concept that wars were all related and conveniently started and stopped together with a treaty with an evil god(!), and that PC actions in the mega adventures TOEE and G123D123Q1 are “fail” and in the past is where I say, um, no.)

For FR, perhaps it’s better to know the 5e version, to keep up with the game? But consensus seems to be AD&D 1e, eh?

 

[Stormonu]

Yeah, I pre-ordered it on the assumption that the blurb and the "old notes" explanation was true. And it's got some old stuff, sure . . . along with a bunch of stuff that was clearly later-edition material.

(And some bits that didn't, in fact, make any sense at all whatever point in the timeline you were playing. It is extremely clear that coffee could not be shipped in from Maztica prior to the establishment of trade with Maztica. Coffee never gets mentioned a single time in the Maztica set or books, and therefore clearly was not a major crop in pre-contact Maztica; pre-contact Mazticans explicitly drank beverages based on cocoa beans, not coffee beans. The life cycle of coffee from planting to maturity is such that even if people immediately started coffee plantations upon the opening of trade with Maztica, it would require massive investments of magic to get substantial quantities for export grown between the opening of trade with Maztica and the Spellplague. And from the Spellplague until the Second Sundering, there is no Maztica on Toril to import coffee from. So how, exactly, did Faerun import coffee from Maztica, as stated in Ed Greenwood Presents Elminster's Forgotten Realms?)

Coffee originally was Arabic/African in nature, and in FR features prominently into practices and rituals of the Old Empires. On our world, coffee has come from the middle east at least as far back as the 1100's, and was not grown in the New World until around the 1700's as part of colonization.

 

[Parmandur]

I know, that was me, back when I first discovered that the region was overhauled.


It's a bit more complicated than this, because there has been a lot of squishing going on. From what I can tell, the 2nd edition map is traced perfectly over the 1st edition map, with only some bits in the very west and south cropped off, so I assume they didn't mean to make any adjustments.
But I managed to get the other four maps to the same scale and overlay them for comparison. Since four transparent layers are a total mess, I picked a couple of reference points that are on all four maps and highlighted the lines connecting them, resulting in this.

View attachment 147429

As can be seen, the Northwest quarter of Faerûn (which is all I have for 5th edition) was shrunk down significantly in 3rd edition but remained effectively unchanged in 4th.
5th edition looks once again much more like 1st edition, though halfway between 1st and 3rd in size.

When you tilt the 3rd/4th edition map a bit, it becomes more clear.

View attachment 147430

The 1E-5E differences seem like they could attributed to cartographer error.

 

[Alzrius]

Coffee originally was Arabic/African in nature, and in FR features prominently into practices and rituals of the Old Empires. On our world, coffee has come from the middle east at least as far back as the 1100's, and was not grown in the New World until around the 1700's as part of colonization.

It's worth noting that there's an article on the Forgotten Realms wiki about coffee in the setting.