Forgotten Realms edition question

[R_J_K75]

3E has only a little less than half the lore of 2E, and most of that is just copied over from 2E.

There was a lot of copy and pasting from 1EFR-3EFR.

For me I prefer 2E Forgotten Realms because there was so much lore, so many locales were detailed besides the Sword Coast. At the end of the edition Steven Schend and Dale Donovan wrote some amazing books/boxed sets. Lands of Intrigue, Empires of the Shining Sea and Sea of Fallen Stars were great books. You could open to any page, blindly point at a paragraph and you had an adventure idea. Faiths and Avatars, Powers and Pantheons and Demihuman Deities were by far the best take on Gods of any D&D setting. Cloak & Dagger was the last book published for 2E FR and wrapped up the edition very well. 3E wrapped up that edition very good as well with The Grand History of the Realms.

4E advanced the time line about 100 years and introduced alot of world shattering events. I understand why they did it, to try and reinvigorate the setting but for me it fell kind of flat. For a setting that was so detailed to leave that 100 years blank seemed lazy and uninspired to me, and in 5E its still vague at best as to what took place and what happened to alot of the staple NPCs in that time frame. So if I'm running a Realms campaign I usually set it the 2E timeline.

 

[TerraDave]

The original (1e) boxset and the main 3e book. That would be easy and give you a lot while avoiding a lot of the dretch.

 

[Autumnal]

Are you suggesting using both, or did I misread? (It’s an evening with a lot of autonomic nervous pain, which effectively knocks several points off my Int score. Pardon any missing of the obvious on my part.)

 

[R_J_K75]

Are you suggesting using both, or did I misread? (It’s an evening with a lot of autonomic nervous pain, which effectively knocks several points off my Int score. Pardon any missing of the obvious on my part.)

I could be wrong but I think what @TerraDave was saying that those 2 products have enough in them to run a campaign for years without being bogged down with too many details. I would even include the 1E-2E transition book Forgotten Realms Adventures and the 2E FR boxed set too. I think its safe to say that as good as FR products were they did suffer from too much detail at times. The 2E Secrets of the Magister and Cult of the Dragon are ones that comes to mind. Good fun reads but included lots of lore that I doubt most DMs used. But yeah 1E-3E Realms books were set between the late 1350's DR and late 1370s DR so I would and have used all those products in the same campaign. If I had to pick one single book to run a game with I think the 3E setting book is the one I'd choose, it's the sweet spot between not enough detail and too much.

 

[DarkCrisis]

I’ve been going through the Forgotten Realms grey box for 1E, and it is such a wealth of ideas and lore.

You just have the players decide to go anywhere flip over to that page, read the blurb and have an adventure idea.

 

[Firwood]

Every so often I think that I’d like to take the Realms and see how they go under other mechanics, like Mörk Borg Ironsworn plus fan supplements or QuestWorlds or “bare” Mythic Game Master Emulator (2e) or something. I have or have access to the first, second, third, and fourth editions. Which would you recommend?

This is crucial: please explain why, in useful detail. “It’s good” or “they suck because WotC is the devil” don’t help me. “This doesn’t have metaplot catastrophes”, “this has the exploding mushroom catastrophe metaplot, which I like for the effects on forests and how it screws over halflings that are too Tolkien-like”, and “this one sketches everything in a fairly detail-light way that I find better for okay than too-detailed later editions” are all very useful for me. Thank you.

In my opinion, the editions to consider are 2e and 3e (which has, in my opinion, the most beautiful and complete setting manual ever).
The cataclysmic events culminating in the Horde in the first edition never really got me that involved, whereas the fall of the gods on Faerun I have always found it to be a source of great narrative insights.
Similarly, the return of the Shadovars provides plenty of game ideas.
The geographical modules of 2e remain unsurpassed to this day and provide a manic amount of detail, which is available if you want it, otherwise you leave it out (I'd rather have a thousand pages of material to draw from and ignore 900 of them than have 10 and have to make it all up).
Also in 2e there are some goodies like Faiths & Avatars, Demihuman Deities and Cloak and Dagger that are qualitatively outstanding.
There are the Volo's Guides which add 'flavour' to the setting and depth to practically any aspect.
3e is a direct evolution, although the map has been changed, albeit not too significantly.
4e, on the other hand, is a total departure with the introduction of elements that have, again in my opinion, made the realms a joke and which I've always hated: in a setting where there are races that live over 300 years, suddenly EVERYONE has forgotten or almost forgotten what the world was like only 100 years before Spellfire... and again Abeir merging with Toril when Abeir-Toril is simply the name of the planet, etc. I rejected all this 'rubbish' as soon as I read it.
As a matter of fact, I use the 2e material enriched with what I found interesting in the 3e manuals, especially regarding races with the Player's Guide to Faerun and Races of Faerun. I supplement the material from Faiths & Avatars with what I like from Faiths & Pantheon and so on.

 

[bulletmeat]

Way back when I started playing we used FR 1e and played with a very frontier style campaign w/just the 1st 4 or 5 supplements since it was lightly painted w/hooks.
When 2e came out our game went much more Ren Fair socializing with book characters because of the DM's love of the novels.
With 3e a different group was very politics intense because the book just seemed to flow that way for us.
Years later, with other systems, I went back to 1e for the more malleable setting I could change how I wanted. We tried runequest (or one of those style variations with it) but came back to OSR systems for a more classic feeling.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I'd recommend either the original Grey Box or the 3e FRCS, depending on how extensive you would prefer your campaign material (the former is lighter, the latter much more dense; neither is close to exhaustive). Personally, I'd actively avoid anything beyond those two; the relative lack of material is a feature, not a bug for me. YMMV, of course.

Agreed. It all depends if you want a looser campaign framework (1e) or a detail-dense one (3e). If someone wanted to run the Forgotten Realms using a single resource, it's hard to argue with either of those.

That being said, if a person wanted to go down the rabbit hole, I think 2e has the largest warren, so to speak. There's a ton of content out there for 2e. The Volo's Guides alone are rich with adventure ideas.

 

[Li Shenron]

Generally speaking, I think the original version of any fantasy setting is preferable, where the authors vision in intact and not adapted to a rules edition change.

But I also think the 3e FRCS is possibly the best single book to start playing FR with. If you can afford to start with a larger set of books since the beginning, then I cannot say.

 

[Autumnal]

It sounds like some combo of 2e and 3e is what I want for this purpose I often enjoy making up my own stuff to fill in blank spots, but just right now I want the work done for me - being sick and working on recovery both tie up a lot of brain power, and will be continuing to do so for some time, and I’m not very hyped for frontiers at the moment. Thank you very much, everyone.