D&D General Ed Greenwood's $5K Contract To Sell The Forgotten Realms

D&D historian Ben Riggs has a copy of Ed Greenwood's original Forgotten Realms contract and spends a few words covering it, calling it "The best $5,000 D&D Spent". The setting was sold to TSR for $4,000 in 1987, with another $1,000 for comsulting services.

Ed Greenwood, the creator of the Realms, said he never regretted the decision to sell the property to TSR, the first company to make D&D. The five grand he made was $4,000 for the Realms itself, and then $1,000 for services as a design consultant. (That’s $13,000 in 2022 dollars).

The Best $5000 D&D Spent: Buying the Forgotten Realms — Ben Riggs

How did D&D manage to snag its flagship setting for the price of a car?

www.writerbenriggs.com

 

[darjr]

I thought I heard him getting a favorable deal but I can’t find source

Might be here.

TSR - Ed Greenwood Sold The Forgotten Realms For $5,000

This week in Ben Riggs' podcast, he interviews Ed Greenwood, father of the Forgotten Realms, about his 1987 agreement with TSR wherein he sold the rights to the Realms for $5,000. "We also discuss the origin and publication of the Realms, and I am able to tell Ed, officially, how many units his...

www.enworld.org

 

[Jaeger]

Ed is too nice, his setting has to to be worth $100s of millions of dollars by now, and he git screwed out of his novel deal, he should have sued WotC for millions.

Ed is fine. He has done plenty of promotional stuff for WotC; I'm sure he got paid...

That is certain to change in 2024, they will want a FRCG book or box set to go with 1D&D & to milk the possibly increased fandom caused by the D&D movie.

If they were smart they'd do a setting Boxed set like the Essentials set.

In my opinion; the setting guides should not have any greater page count than what is in the starter set. 32 page gazeteer, 68 page setting guide, and a short adventure with lots of maps, that are all reusable for FR play.

Keep it light and accessible.

 

[darjr]

The Essentials box set is the Essentials, Forgotten Realms boxed set, it’s just not the essentials of the Forgotten Realms box set.

 

[Umbran]

I'm more surprised/impressed that Keith Baker won $100k for Eberron, that's a monumental amount of money and he's still making money off of Eberron today in various ways.

So, we can think of it less that he won $100K for Eberron, and more that he got some for the rights to Eberron and the rest for developing it into a saleable product.

 

[DorkForge]

So, we can think of it less that he won $100K for Eberron, and more that he got some for the rights to Eberron and the rest for developing it into a saleable product.

Ohh, so he would have continued to work with them post winning the competition like the consultation fee Greenwood was given?
It still seems absolutely crazy, I never would have guessed there was this much money in D&D back then.

 

[darjr]

Ohh, so he would have continued to work with them post winning the competition like the consultation fee Greenwood was given?
It still seems absolutely crazy, I never would have guessed there was this much money in D&D back then.

I do think the contest nature of it and the public/marketing nature if it inflated the prize money.

Though I wonder how much would have been needed in a private transaction if he had been developing Eberron for years before WotC noticed?

 

[DorkForge]

I do think the contest nature of it and the public/marketing nature if it inflated the prize money.

Though I wonder how much would have been needed in a private transaction if he had been developing Eberron for years before WotC noticed?

Hmm, you could possibly argue more? Looking up Eberron on Wikipedia it looks like WotC spent a fair amount of man hours on the whittling down of the contestants, as well as flying the final three and coaching them. If it was just one guy with a product that didn't need all of the WotC input to get to the final form, then they could likely pay even more for it and end up spending less than they did.

 

[Davies]

When was the last reference to FR's back door to Earth? I feel safe guessing it was before 4e at least and not surprised if it was 2e.

I believe it was in the last "Wizards Three" article in Dragon #359, so, yes, right before 4E.

 

[Haiku Elvis]

Another thing to note, yes $5k isn't much. But it put Ed on the map so to speak. Had he not sold them the Realms, it is unlikely any of us would know Ed's name. He would not be a celebrity, would not be able to sell books or anything else based upon his name. He would just be a librarian somewhere with a homebrew setting that a few folks would have played in at his home games or at cons.

I think this hits the nail on the head. If he hadn't sold the rights what would he have done with it. No Kickstarter or DMs guild to digitally publish without upfront costs. TSR made FR popular by buying it and putting their resources behind it.
He got a good deal for what he was selling compared to his other options.

 

[Parmandur]

I think this hits the nail on the head. If he hadn't sold the rights what would he have done with it. No Kickstarter or DMs guild to digitally publish without upfront costs. TSR made FR popular by buying it and putting their resources behind it.
He got a good deal for what he was selling compared to his other options.

Plus, I'm sure they paid him for all the sourcebooks and novels he wrote.