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

[Demetrios1453]

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?

The 3e FRCS is considered to be one of the best one-book settings done for the game. It's very thorough and comprehensive, while not getting to bogged down in the details. Either it or the Gray Box would be fine thought.

 

[SPECTRE666]

OGB along with the 2e Volo Guides & Cloak and Dagger.

 

[Demetrios1453]

The Goldenfields and the plant growth spell? It also felt implied that all the towns up the Dessarin Valley were involve exporting food to Waterdeep.

Beyond that, it has good fishing offshore, and it's a middleman for a lot of ore and metal originating from the various cities and settlements (often dwarvish) in the Spine of the World mountains, the trade of which presumably would go towards any additional food necessary.

 

[S'mon]

The Goldenfields and the plant growth spell? It also felt implied that all the towns up the Dessarin Valley were involve exporting food to Waterdeep.

The main problem IME is that the maps don't distinguish settled farmland from wilderness, so some authors will place wilderness right up to the city walls. I tend to put some work into drawing out/circumscribing the farmland around the towns and cities. Waterdeep needs dozens of farming villages and noble estates to make any sense at all. 555 square miles of farmland at minimum to support 100,000 people at 180 per square mile, but IRL agricultural surplus rarely exceeded 20% so to look historical you really need 400,000 rural people for a 100,000 city, and 500,000 people needs 2,777 square miles of farmland. Fishing should help, of course.

Mind you, even 2777 square miles of farmland can fit in a 60x60 mile square, so it's not undoable. Just don't put Waterdeep population much over 100,000. While Waterdeep looks more like medieval London (100,000 people in a national capital), classical Athens was a city state that also reached about 100,000 with a relatively small hinterland - plus rich silver mines and a maritime empire.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

ust don't put Waterdeep population much over 100,000. While Waterdeep looks more like medieval London (100,000 people in a national capital), classical Athens was a city state that also reached about 100,000 with a relatively small hinterland - plus rich silver mines and a maritime empire.

Yeah, putting the population of Waterdeep at over 2 millions is really exaggerated. Even more so when the smaller villages around the city, which should be farming estates and other production villages, are pushing populations over 50 000 themselves!

 

[Blue Orange]

I have to say, I'd hate to be the continuity editor for these people. Can you imagine keeping track of everything that's been written about Zhentil Keep in 40 years?

 

[Parmandur]

I have to say, I'd hate to be the continuity editor for these people. Can you imagine keeping track of everything that's been written about Zhentil Keep in 40 years?

That's why they officially don't.

 

[Scars Unseen]

I have to say, I'd hate to be the continuity editor for these people. Can you imagine keeping track of everything that's been written about Zhentil Keep in 40 years?

Seems pretty easy by dint of the permanent nature of text. It's not like they don't know what they've published. Time consuming? Absolutely. But only for the initial setup. Hire a team to comb through all the old material, build a wiki out of it, and then create custom software similar to the old FR Atlas, but made searchable by location, name, event, author or year. Once it's setup, you could find out every event that's happened in a location, everything a specific characters has done, interactions they've had with other characters, every major and minor event that happens in a given year, etc. Once you have that, it's simply a matter of keeping minimal staff - possibly even just a single person - to update as new material is released. And any authors -novelists or adventure writers - could get any information they needed at a few keystrokes.

 

[haakon1]

One thing to be ready for, compared to Greyhawk of any era, Faerun has comparably fewer state borders drawn on the map. It’s an adjustment to get used to, but the main focus of attention (dalelands, heartlands, moonsea, the north) is all basically city-states… except for Sembia and mountain-surrounded Cormyr.

Got ya on the FR city-states. But Greyhawk, on the Darlene maps (1981 folio/1983 gold box) doesn’t show any borders - I like that it’s vague and variable.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

True regarding the Darlene map, but in the book I recall that you have the resources and national alignment map showing “borders”.