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

[haakon1]

So I’m bringing this thread back from the past because Google took me here and I thought the conversation has been very interesting.

I just last night or so finished reading the original 1e Gray Box, and I don’t fully understand why it is so beloved. It was an interesting read in the sense that it was purposefully evocatively underbaked. It felt like Greenwood’s home campaign put into sourcebook form, and that was fun and cool! But I don’t get the same sense of love that some posters seem to have—I feel like I’m missing something. My entry into the Realms was the 3e book, so perhaps it all just depends where you begin from.

Nostalgia maybe? First setting you saw patriotism?

That’s probably the true reason I love Greyhawk.

 

[Voadam]

I just last night or so finished reading the original 1e Gray Box, and I don’t fully understand why it is so beloved.

This is going to vary a lot by individual I think.

I particularly liked the 1e version of the Red Wizards of Thay, Conan style Stygian sorcerers in D&D running a magocracy. 2e had them not able to win or ultimately be competent, 3e turned them into interesting but differently focused international evil magic item merchants with diplomatic immunity. Eventually Szass Tam turns it into a NecroMagocracy which I do not care for as much. I really like the 1e Thay D&D Conan wizards as a group.

2e was the full setting version I first got myself with the fantastic bare bones early Forgotten Realms Adventures hardcover with the huge array of specialty priests which is very cool, but I had earlier bits and pieces of Realms stuff and left the setting for a friend to get into for when he DMd while Greyhawk was the campaign I ran and got most 1e stuff for. Thay as a concept and a little art worked well for me in 1e.

 

[Yora]

I guess there's two different questions there. What makes 1st edition a compelling campaign setting, and what makes some FR fans prefer the 1st edition over others?

All the way back 20 years ago, I had just gotten inti D&D and Forgotten Realms and wanted to get all the Forgotten Realms setting information that I could. There wasn't a whole lot for 3rd edition but a huge backlog of 2nd edition material. And I looked for that to get additional information that would fill the gaps of the current state of Faerûn with details that wouldn't have changed much in the four or six years of the timeline advance.
When I had gone through that I did turn to 1st edition sources and found those to be a great disappointment. It was largely like the 2nd edition version but much more sparse in detail, and the current events and conflicts were even more outdated. That had pretty much no value to me for expanding my knowledge of the 3rd edition world.

And even back then there were some holdouts who praised the virtues of the Grey Box, and I really couldn't see what was supposed to be good about.

At that time, I think my goals were first to be entertained by learning about a big fantastical world, and second to have as much information as possible on the world as it is in 1372 so I can run the best campaign I could in it.

It was only way, way later, probably some 15 years, which much more GM experience under my belt, and a greater understanding of scenario design and adventure structure, that the 1st edition material started to look interesting.

It was the perspective of looking at a campaign setting as a tool for running adventures, and I guess a specific kind of adventures, that I started seeing real value in the 1st edition material.

Partly related, just this month I made the realization that in the Grey Box, the elves suddenly abandoned Chormanthor only 2 years before the current point in the timeline. It's just starting to really settle in with people that this big exclusion zone of exciting mysterious ruins is now suddenly wide open for anyone to just stroll in. And very little is known about what's actually in there.
Going into the elven forest 20 years later just isn't anywhere near as exciting an idea for adventure.
And I think I mentioned at the start of the threat how The North removed a number of cool places for adventures or cool villains to fight by saying some NPCs destroyed them and adding nothing new in their place.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I just last night or so finished reading the original 1e Gray Box, and I don’t fully understand why it is so beloved. It was an interesting read in the sense that it was purposefully evocatively underbaked. It felt like Greenwood’s home campaign put into sourcebook form, and that was fun and cool! But I don’t get the same sense of love that some posters seem to have—I feel like I’m missing something. My entry into the Realms was the 3e book, so perhaps it all just depends where you begin from.

I’m sure when the first exposure has an affect for some. I would say that the 3E hardback was an excellent achievement and is a great starting resource for some!

I started with the gray box, hoarded every accessory all the way through the end of the 3E era. By the end, my appreciation to the first box set rose to the top and I started selling off most everything except the handful of early products.

To be able to explain best why I personally prefer the gray box, could you compare it with another product that you rate higher? Describe what you see as shortcomings? Describe the highlights of the other product?

 

[haakon1]

Admundfort, as a fellow Greyhawker, unless I’m mistaken about your user name, I suspect people like the Grey Box version of FR for some of the same reasons I like Greyhawk:

(1) Incomplete hints rather than encyclopedic details. This leaves room for DM creativity, adding anything you like, and excluding anything you don’t. It also means the DM and players don’t need to read hundreds of books to be schooled on the setting, and there’s much less likelihood of “setting lawyering”.

(2) Less populated by details = possible to be more points of light and “what’s beyond the next hill” feel. You explore, rather than reading what Volo found.

(3) Single point in time. Rather than centuries of huge rewrites for each edition, it’s a single coherent setting. (For Greyhawk, I use a combination of the AD&D and 3e versions, but those are only 15 years apart. My campaign is now 13 years after the original boxed set, but with those 13 years based on what happened in my campaigns, and my take on what “should have happened” in the 2e era, rather than the full official story that I find silly in parts.)

One thing I really appreciate about Harn is it’s always the same year in that game’s materials, across decades of writing, so it’s all compatible.

(4) The original breakthrough version of things, just in life in general, is often best. First Star Wars movie released. A bands first breakthrough album. The first version is the reason for all the others.

 

[Divine2021]

This is going to vary a lot by individual I think.

I particularly liked the 1e version of the Red Wizards of Thay, Conan style Stygian sorcerers in D&D running a magocracy. 2e had them not able to win or ultimately be competent, 3e turned them into interesting but differently focused international evil magic item merchants with diplomatic immunity. Eventually Szass Tam turns it into a NecroMagocracy which I do not care for as much. I really like the 1e Thay D&D Conan wizards as a group.

2e was the full setting version I first got myself with the fantastic bare bones early Forgotten Realms Adventures hardcover with the huge array of specialty priests which is very cool, but I had earlier bits and pieces of Realms stuff and left the setting for a friend to get into for when he DMd while Greyhawk was the campaign I ran and got most 1e stuff for. Thay as a concept and a little art worked well for me in 1e.

I only know how to reply to one person at once, so you’re the lucky one I guess

Your response here got me thinking about what I’m looking for in a campaign setting, and why my reactions to 1st and 2nd (and tbh 3rd) are so different. I think I enjoy reading 2nd and 3rd more than 1st, but if I were to actually play 1st as written, I would probably really really find it a ton of fun, as it purposefully designed to be played AS IS. The lore is there to complement gameplay, it doesn’t exist in and of itself just to exist as lore. As I’m the type who reads more campaign settings than ever plays them, I find the reading of the book typically more enjoyable than other factors. Perhaps that’s why I reacted to my 1st edition read through in the manner I did. Perhaps?

 

[el-remmen]

As someone who has never run an FR campaign, but played in a few and stole liberally from parts of it for my own homebrew, I loved this thread and it actually made me feel like maybe I'd want to run an FR game someday, but if the Old Grey Box is the band's "first album," I prefer the demos and EPs to be found in the pages of Dragon, which is how I first learned about the setting (and from whence I first stole ), so maybe I'd run a game only using that material. Then again, all this also makes me want to revisit my old homebrew and rebuild it from the ground up.

I do wish PoD version of Faiths & Avatars and those books were available, as all I can find of online to order are PDFs. I probably stole most from those books for my own specialty priests back in 2E days - and if I revived/revised my homebrew - Aquerra - for 5E, I'd house rule cleric sub-classes to essentially be specialty priests. I'd probably run an FR game that way too.

 

[the Jester]

As someone who has never run an FR campaign, but played in a few and stole liberally from parts of it for my own homebrew, I loved this thread and it actually made me feel like maybe I'd want to run an FR game someday, but if the Old Grey Box is the band's "first album," I prefer the demos and EPs to be found in the pages of Dragon, which is how I first learned about the setting (and from whence I first stole ), so maybe I'd run a game only using that material. Then again, all this also makes me want to revisit my old homebrew and rebuild it from the ground up.

I do wish PoD version of Faiths & Avatars and those books were available, as all I can find of online order are PDFs. I probably stole most from those books for my own specialty priests back in 2E days - and if I revived/revised my homebrew - Aquerra - for 5E, I'd house rule cleric sub-classes to essentially be specialty priests. I'd probably run an FR game that way too.

Remember the "Into the Forgotten Realms" adventure in Dragon? That was great.

 

[ThrorII]

So this thread necro is very timely for me. My group plays B/X-OSE, and I am prepping a FR campaign using only the Grey Box and FR5 Savage Frontier. I am porting in the AD&D type classes from OSE Advanced Fantasy (Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Gnome, Half-elf, Illusionist, Paladin, and Ranger).

As a guy who has played in Greyhawk since 1980, and loves both the folio and Gold Box, the FR Grey Box hits the right spot for me, for all the reasons others here stated: Broad strokes of history, dungeons and lairs hinted at, just enough information to make it your own. And as others have pointed out, it has a Tolkienesque fading of the elder races that is very evocative. It is more wild, woolly, and open for adventure than 2e, and less kitchen sink than 3e or 5e.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Admundfort, as a fellow Greyhawker, unless I’m mistaken about your user name, I suspect people like the Grey Box version of FR for some of the same reasons I like Greyhawk:

I’ve long had a deep affection for Greyhawk, helped run the Shield Lands region’s triad in the Living Greyhawk era, and I took my name as a nod towards doing an extended project mapping the Flanaess (which you can see hosted on my Deviant Art page). I am more or less a fan of most TSR’s old settings, some more than others and there was a time the Realms was my top. I also had other later mapping projects for Mystara and Dark Sun also hosted at my page.

While I like the Greyhawk 83 box, and I got my introduction with it, I far prefer the From the Ashes era. That’s partly why I know for me my preference of the gray box FR era is not just because it was first exposure, like a baby animal imprinting on something. Or even the nostalgia because at this year even 3e FR is in a nostalgia rear window, .

My affection for most of the old TSR worlds came from being very into worldbuilding. Wanting to know all the lore out there I could get and make sense of how things stitched together, how the cosmologies functioned, how political states interacted, the ancient histories that left an impact and left magic behind, how core D&D-isms were used differently, is there any metaplot that the future is moving towards fulfilling, what corner would I pin down my attention to develop a campaign.

I’m also a sucker for being absorbed by someone else’s passion. So when someone tells me they like something else much more, I honestly want to hear their case!