Yora
Legend
After I had started RPGs with the Forgotten Realms and been really into it for the first couple of years, I did lose interest in it in late 3rd edition. Reading the regional sourcebooks and such was fun, but I never actually used any of it, except for a few bits and pieces from Silver Marches. But one sourcebook that has stuck with me the entire time was the very early The Savage Frontier for 1st edition from 1988. I didn't really pay attention to it while I was running Forgotten Realms campaigns, since the 2nd edition The North box and the 3rd edition Silver Marches were much bigger, with much more content and the updates from all the years, but I found it very compelling to get out and read again many times over the following years. It's pretty slim, and comparing it to the much bigger The North box that came out eight years later in 1996, I noticed that they present really different settings.
The original Grey Box campaign set for Forgotten Realms came out in 1987 for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1st edition). A new version for AD&D 2nd edition came out in 1993, which got a revised version in 1996. I only know the 1996 version, and don't know how the 1993 version compares to the ones that came before and after it. But the worlds that are presented by the Campaign Set and Savage Frontier in 1988, and the Campaign Setting and The North in 1996 are very different, and when you really start digging into it, barely seem like they are the same place.
The most interesting thing I discovered is actually the introduction of the first Forgotten Realms Campaign Set. (Who ever actually reads those?) It says there that the Forgotten Realms are a world that greatly resembles the society of 13th and 14th century Europe. I don't know if there is any comparable statement in the 2nd edition, but all the art I've seen for 2nd edition Forgotten Realms does not look like that all! 2nd edition looks like the time of Shakespeare, the English Civil War, and the Spanish an Portuguese Empires (just without gunpowder). That's 17th century.
The 13th century is at the tail end of the Crusades and the beginning of the Hundred Years War, the time of King Edward I of England and the Mongol Conquests, the forming of the Hanseatic League, and the conquest of the pagan Balts and Prussians by the Teutonic Knights. Art in the 1st edition books is quite sparse and doesn't really show any town scenes or detailed depictions of characters' clothing and armor. But there are references to the rise of a new affluent merchant class, early bank notes, and the appearing of the first printing presses in Waterdeep. And if we go with woodblock printing, then this all indicates that references to the 13th and 14th centuries do come from someone who was actually informed about that time period. (I had to look all those things up to check.) This is a technology level before plate armor, where knights would still wear mail hauberks with brigandines on top, and a breastplate would be a brigandine. Helmets with visors only appear towards the end of this period, with the big bucket great helms still the typical form of helmet. More or less still the kind of gear you see on crusaders.
The introduction to the Campaign Set further states that in large parts of Faerûn, the current state of civilization is still a quite recent development, and later the description of rangers mentions them being only found in the northern half of the realms where the wilderness is still being explored and developed. The ruling dynasty of Cormyr goes back 1300 years, but it is stated that for most of its history, they really just ruled over a small city state Suzail. Amn and Baldur's Gate are described in terms that make it sound like their rise to prominence is a fairly recent event and still ongoing process.
The entries for dwarves, elves, and halflings are quite interesting as well. Aside from the dwarven kingdom in the Great Chasm far in the south, the dwarves of Faerûn are a defeated people who have been on their way out for a long time. Some communities still exist in various mountains and hills, but they are highly isolationist, and when they come out to trade with human towns, they don't share any real information about what's going on at their homes. Dwarven PCs are explicitly mentioned as coming from dwarven clans that have found new homes in human cities. The elves are basically gone. Evereska really is the only remaining elven city anywhere in Faerûn, hidden away in a valley deep in the wilderness. In the North, the only elven community is a group of old elves living out their days in Ardeep Forest just outside of Waterdeep. Unlike in later edition, there is no indication of any elves living in the high forest. This is all very much Lord of the Rings, and actually more a situation like several generations after The Lord of the Rings. This is not a world where the streets of cosmopolitan cities are crowded with humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings, or more exotic people like tieflings or dragonborn. Things look different for the halflings though, in a surprising way. The halflings are described as a race on the rise. Halflings are described as looking forward to a bright and great future, which makes them daring and ambitious. They are definitely going to be a big part of this new era.
I am not sure how much the map for Faerûn was changed over the editions (though it definitely was changed to get rid of large blank spaces), but the version here is just massive. Easily twice the size of all of North America. You can easily fit five or six Europes in there, and the map here doesn't even include good parts of the very south and east that are on many later maps. And this appears to be not accidental, as with the weird scale of the Eberron map, that doesn't make much sense when you compare it with the descriptions. Here the discriptions make it clear that the land is supposed to be huge and large unpopulated, or even unexplored. Though I guess being the creation of a Canadian, the sense of distance might have been very different from that of medieval Europeans. I checked, and it turned out that at a travel speed of 18 miles per day (reasonable for adventurers with all their gear), getting from Waterdeep to Silverymoon would take 50 days. Get some interruptions and it easily becomes 2 months. When you make that journey, you're probably expecting to spend the winter there, unless you want to turn back around and start your return trip right after you arrived.
But I think this is fun. If you're looking for a version of the Forgotten Realms that feels different from the more familiar one, making it a vast outdoor wilderness setting sounds cool.
Another thing I very much noticed is that with the 2nd edition version, you really get a massive Renfairification of the Forgotten Realms. The story of how the three most coolest evil edgelord gods got axed is well enough known, but it goes much deeper than that. It's very striking in the North, which I have compared to greater detail. In the 2nd edition version, you find description of numerous monster haunted ruins and potential villains from the 1st edition version, which inform you that adventurers have taken care of it and the threats are all gone now. What you don't find are really any meaningful new threats that have moved in to replace them. What you get instead are pages and pages of descriptions of all the quaint little inns and taverns and cute local craftsmen shops that you can find in the countless charming happy villages. It's cute, but what about the dungeons? What about the dragons? Isn't this supposed to be a setting for dangerous and thrilling adventures? Where the adventure at?
With this very long preamble, I now want to come to an actual discussion. Thoughts?
I don't think there's too many people hanging around here who are deeply familiar with this oldest published iteration of the Forgotten Realms. But what's your perception of how the setting has changed over the three decades and what that means for it's appeal to GMs to use it for their own games?
The original Grey Box campaign set for Forgotten Realms came out in 1987 for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1st edition). A new version for AD&D 2nd edition came out in 1993, which got a revised version in 1996. I only know the 1996 version, and don't know how the 1993 version compares to the ones that came before and after it. But the worlds that are presented by the Campaign Set and Savage Frontier in 1988, and the Campaign Setting and The North in 1996 are very different, and when you really start digging into it, barely seem like they are the same place.
The most interesting thing I discovered is actually the introduction of the first Forgotten Realms Campaign Set. (Who ever actually reads those?) It says there that the Forgotten Realms are a world that greatly resembles the society of 13th and 14th century Europe. I don't know if there is any comparable statement in the 2nd edition, but all the art I've seen for 2nd edition Forgotten Realms does not look like that all! 2nd edition looks like the time of Shakespeare, the English Civil War, and the Spanish an Portuguese Empires (just without gunpowder). That's 17th century.
The 13th century is at the tail end of the Crusades and the beginning of the Hundred Years War, the time of King Edward I of England and the Mongol Conquests, the forming of the Hanseatic League, and the conquest of the pagan Balts and Prussians by the Teutonic Knights. Art in the 1st edition books is quite sparse and doesn't really show any town scenes or detailed depictions of characters' clothing and armor. But there are references to the rise of a new affluent merchant class, early bank notes, and the appearing of the first printing presses in Waterdeep. And if we go with woodblock printing, then this all indicates that references to the 13th and 14th centuries do come from someone who was actually informed about that time period. (I had to look all those things up to check.) This is a technology level before plate armor, where knights would still wear mail hauberks with brigandines on top, and a breastplate would be a brigandine. Helmets with visors only appear towards the end of this period, with the big bucket great helms still the typical form of helmet. More or less still the kind of gear you see on crusaders.
The introduction to the Campaign Set further states that in large parts of Faerûn, the current state of civilization is still a quite recent development, and later the description of rangers mentions them being only found in the northern half of the realms where the wilderness is still being explored and developed. The ruling dynasty of Cormyr goes back 1300 years, but it is stated that for most of its history, they really just ruled over a small city state Suzail. Amn and Baldur's Gate are described in terms that make it sound like their rise to prominence is a fairly recent event and still ongoing process.
The entries for dwarves, elves, and halflings are quite interesting as well. Aside from the dwarven kingdom in the Great Chasm far in the south, the dwarves of Faerûn are a defeated people who have been on their way out for a long time. Some communities still exist in various mountains and hills, but they are highly isolationist, and when they come out to trade with human towns, they don't share any real information about what's going on at their homes. Dwarven PCs are explicitly mentioned as coming from dwarven clans that have found new homes in human cities. The elves are basically gone. Evereska really is the only remaining elven city anywhere in Faerûn, hidden away in a valley deep in the wilderness. In the North, the only elven community is a group of old elves living out their days in Ardeep Forest just outside of Waterdeep. Unlike in later edition, there is no indication of any elves living in the high forest. This is all very much Lord of the Rings, and actually more a situation like several generations after The Lord of the Rings. This is not a world where the streets of cosmopolitan cities are crowded with humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings, or more exotic people like tieflings or dragonborn. Things look different for the halflings though, in a surprising way. The halflings are described as a race on the rise. Halflings are described as looking forward to a bright and great future, which makes them daring and ambitious. They are definitely going to be a big part of this new era.
I am not sure how much the map for Faerûn was changed over the editions (though it definitely was changed to get rid of large blank spaces), but the version here is just massive. Easily twice the size of all of North America. You can easily fit five or six Europes in there, and the map here doesn't even include good parts of the very south and east that are on many later maps. And this appears to be not accidental, as with the weird scale of the Eberron map, that doesn't make much sense when you compare it with the descriptions. Here the discriptions make it clear that the land is supposed to be huge and large unpopulated, or even unexplored. Though I guess being the creation of a Canadian, the sense of distance might have been very different from that of medieval Europeans. I checked, and it turned out that at a travel speed of 18 miles per day (reasonable for adventurers with all their gear), getting from Waterdeep to Silverymoon would take 50 days. Get some interruptions and it easily becomes 2 months. When you make that journey, you're probably expecting to spend the winter there, unless you want to turn back around and start your return trip right after you arrived.
But I think this is fun. If you're looking for a version of the Forgotten Realms that feels different from the more familiar one, making it a vast outdoor wilderness setting sounds cool.
Another thing I very much noticed is that with the 2nd edition version, you really get a massive Renfairification of the Forgotten Realms. The story of how the three most coolest evil edgelord gods got axed is well enough known, but it goes much deeper than that. It's very striking in the North, which I have compared to greater detail. In the 2nd edition version, you find description of numerous monster haunted ruins and potential villains from the 1st edition version, which inform you that adventurers have taken care of it and the threats are all gone now. What you don't find are really any meaningful new threats that have moved in to replace them. What you get instead are pages and pages of descriptions of all the quaint little inns and taverns and cute local craftsmen shops that you can find in the countless charming happy villages. It's cute, but what about the dungeons? What about the dragons? Isn't this supposed to be a setting for dangerous and thrilling adventures? Where the adventure at?
With this very long preamble, I now want to come to an actual discussion. Thoughts?
I don't think there's too many people hanging around here who are deeply familiar with this oldest published iteration of the Forgotten Realms. But what's your perception of how the setting has changed over the three decades and what that means for it's appeal to GMs to use it for their own games?
