Yora
Legend
While Forgotten Realms as a whole is a creation of Ed Greenwood, my recent journey of researching what the setting looked like in its original state turned up that there are at least several areas that are now taken for granted, which definitely where later additions by TSR.
The best known one is the Moonshae Islands off the Sword Coast, which were originally originally intended as a campaign setting and had some novels written for it by Douglas Niles (of Against the Cult of the Reptile God fame), but it was then decided to wrap it all into the Forgotten Realms. Which is why the gods have different names there, and the region pretty much never mentioned again after the region book that came out four months after the original Grey Box Campaign Set.
Another one I now found is the Bloodstone Lands, which were originally created as a stand-alone adventure by ...oh, it's Douglas Niles again. (And Michael Dobson.) The region book Bloodstone Lands primarily focuses on Damara, but also provides more information on Impiltur and Narfell than I've found anywhere else, until Narfell got covered again in 3rd Edition in The Unapproachable East. These two seem to have played an important part in the Bloodstone modules, along with Vaasa and Thar, so I assume they are all creations of Niles and Dobson. (The first of the four modules have no mention of Forgotten Realms on the cover and the first one came out two years before the Grey Box.)
Those are the two that I know for certain not being part of Greenwood's own setting.
Another interesting case is The North.
The region is mentioned only very briefly in the Grey Box, with Waterdeep and Neverwinter being the only places of any kind that get mentioned at all, but it is shown on the map with a couple of places marked. The very first sourcebook that followed was Waterdeep and the North by Ed Greenwood, which came out three month after the Grey Box and has short descriptions of the places from the Grey Box map.
However, that one is 54 pages on Waterdeeep and 8 pages on the North. And only a map of Waterdeep, but no new one of the North.
That did change very much 10 month later with the release of The Savage Frontier by Jennell Jaquays, which covers the are in much greater detail and presents in the form very much known to probably nearly every Forgotten Realms fan today. Is there anything known about how much Greenwood had provided in notes for the region, and how much of that iconic sub-setting is her own creation?
The first Drizzt books came out the same year. But The Savage Frontier already mentions Mithril Hall and the dragon that lives there, but unless I am mistaken those appear only in the second book that came out a year later. Anyone know anything about the collaboration that took place there?
Mulhorend, Unther, and Chessenta have only about a sentence each in the Grey Box. Chult and Halruaa don't even get that, but the later is at least mentioned twice as a land of mages.
Aglarond, Rashemen, and Thay, and the Red Wizard all get a pretty high amount of coverage though. Which I find surprising, as with the exception of Thay, they would only get covered in more detail again in the Spellbound box eight years after the Grey Box.
The best known one is the Moonshae Islands off the Sword Coast, which were originally originally intended as a campaign setting and had some novels written for it by Douglas Niles (of Against the Cult of the Reptile God fame), but it was then decided to wrap it all into the Forgotten Realms. Which is why the gods have different names there, and the region pretty much never mentioned again after the region book that came out four months after the original Grey Box Campaign Set.
Another one I now found is the Bloodstone Lands, which were originally created as a stand-alone adventure by ...oh, it's Douglas Niles again. (And Michael Dobson.) The region book Bloodstone Lands primarily focuses on Damara, but also provides more information on Impiltur and Narfell than I've found anywhere else, until Narfell got covered again in 3rd Edition in The Unapproachable East. These two seem to have played an important part in the Bloodstone modules, along with Vaasa and Thar, so I assume they are all creations of Niles and Dobson. (The first of the four modules have no mention of Forgotten Realms on the cover and the first one came out two years before the Grey Box.)
Those are the two that I know for certain not being part of Greenwood's own setting.
Another interesting case is The North.
The region is mentioned only very briefly in the Grey Box, with Waterdeep and Neverwinter being the only places of any kind that get mentioned at all, but it is shown on the map with a couple of places marked. The very first sourcebook that followed was Waterdeep and the North by Ed Greenwood, which came out three month after the Grey Box and has short descriptions of the places from the Grey Box map.
However, that one is 54 pages on Waterdeeep and 8 pages on the North. And only a map of Waterdeep, but no new one of the North.
That did change very much 10 month later with the release of The Savage Frontier by Jennell Jaquays, which covers the are in much greater detail and presents in the form very much known to probably nearly every Forgotten Realms fan today. Is there anything known about how much Greenwood had provided in notes for the region, and how much of that iconic sub-setting is her own creation?
The first Drizzt books came out the same year. But The Savage Frontier already mentions Mithril Hall and the dragon that lives there, but unless I am mistaken those appear only in the second book that came out a year later. Anyone know anything about the collaboration that took place there?
Mulhorend, Unther, and Chessenta have only about a sentence each in the Grey Box. Chult and Halruaa don't even get that, but the later is at least mentioned twice as a land of mages.
Aglarond, Rashemen, and Thay, and the Red Wizard all get a pretty high amount of coverage though. Which I find surprising, as with the exception of Thay, they would only get covered in more detail again in the Spellbound box eight years after the Grey Box.
