D&D 5E Forgotten Realms Prep

[I'm A Banana]

Here ya go!

Probably the best game-oriented sourcebook.

If you're more interested in the fluff than the rules, this should bring you pretty up to date.

This gives you a sense of how the world looks.

There's a LOT of FR material, but the big takeaway for me -- as someone who is kind of ambivalent about the setting -- is that this is a setting defined by epic, world-shaking events and characters.

The NPC's are all larger-than-life big time hero bags. The villains all want to destroy or take over the world. The dungeons are the ruins of past civilizations nearly wiped from the face of the planet. Magic is phenomenally powerful for those who tap it. The gods are highly active, very approachable. The disasters that have struck the planet (The Time of Troubles, the Spellplague) have been global in scale. A big of the Realms seems to be "Go Big Or Go Home."

It can also be used for smaller-scale generic fantasy romps, but as much as FR has its own kind of identity and voice, it is a place of big events, big characters, big villains, and big history.

 

[Faraer]

Yes, Elminster's Forgotten Realms is very representative, and it makes a fine companion to the Old Grey Box (the 1987 campaign set), the one discussing how things generally work, the other giving geographical, biographical and historical examples. As an introduction to the Realms it has the advantages of being easily available and non-era-specific. And -- like Ed's other sourcebooks, his current "Forging the Realms" column, and most other Realmslore -- it paints a very clear picture of the basically local nature of life and adventuring in Faerûn, where there are a hundred cruel, ambitious magelings and ten thousand self-interested merchants and bullyblades for every continent-spanning plot of the sort promoted by the books department and satirized within Realmslore as the stuff of sensationalist chapbooks.

 

[DEFCON 1]

There's a LOT of FR material, but the big takeaway for me -- as someone who is kind of ambivalent about the setting -- is that this is a setting defined by epic, world-shaking events and characters.

The NPC's are all larger-than-life big time hero bags. The villains all want to destroy or take over the world. The dungeons are the ruins of past civilizations nearly wiped from the face of the planet. Magic is phenomenally powerful for those who tap it. The gods are highly active, very approachable. The disasters that have struck the planet (The Time of Troubles, the Spellplague) have been global in scale. A big of the Realms seems to be "Go Big Or Go Home."

Although it should be noted and layered on top of what KM rightly points out (with regards to past FR history)... is that the stated function of 5E Forgotten Realms is to re-set things so that the god are no longer very active and approachable, and that there are much fewer "Big Heroes" walking around and that its the PCs that are meant to step in to become those "Big Heroes" themselves as the world progresses. 5E Realms is supposed to be more PC-centric than the Realms of the past (based on what WotC has mentioned).

Now for many people they're going to take those stated intentions with a grain of salt and a "Well, I'll believe it when I see it" attitude (and based upon past experiences they would not be wholly wrong to do so)... but at least for those people considering playing in the FR sandbox... it's not as potentially overwhelming as it might have seemed in the past.

 

[VenomousFiligree]

Thanks for all the advice, looks like I've got some reading to do!

 

[Elf Witch]

Although it should be noted and layered on top of what KM rightly points out (with regards to past FR history)... is that the stated function of 5E Forgotten Realms is to re-set things so that the god are no longer very active and approachable, and that there are much fewer "Big Heroes" walking around and that its the PCs that are meant to step in to become those "Big Heroes" themselves as the world progresses. 5E Realms is supposed to be more PC-centric than the Realms of the past (based on what WotC has mentioned).

Now for many people they're going to take those stated intentions with a grain of salt and a "Well, I'll believe it when I see it" attitude (and based upon past experiences they would not be wholly wrong to do so)... but at least for those people considering playing in the FR sandbox... it's not as potentially overwhelming as it might have seemed in the past.

I can understand why they are doing this but to Realms fans they are messing with a lot of what we liked about the setting. I wish they would leave it alone and make another setting the default.

 

[shadow]

I'm wondering about 5e's take on the Forgotten Realms setting. Will they keep all the baggage that has accumulated with each edition change (including the controversial Spellplague and Sundering) or will they go back to the basics and tell players to have the Realms as they like and ignore canon if they see fit?

 

[DEFCON 1]

I'm wondering about 5e's take on the Forgotten Realms setting. Will they keep all the baggage that has accumulated with each edition change (including the controversial Spellplague and Sundering) or will they go back to the basics and tell players to have the Realms as they like and ignore canon if they see fit?

The Sundering had Ao reform the Tablets of Fate, Abeir and Toril got split again, gods were eliminated or reconstituted, portfolios were re-established, and then Ao told all of the little divine buggers to go back to their home domains and piss off, leaving all the people on Faerun alone finally.

The setting has not gone back in time, there hasn't been a "reboot" or retcon of past events, but rather Ao has just cleaned things up to more of a state the Realms were in prior to the Time of Troubles. And that's where everything picks up so far as the 5E adventures are concerned.

 

[Lhorgrim]

The Sundering had Ao reform the Tablets of Fate, Abeir and Toril got split again, gods were eliminated or reconstituted, portfolios were re-established, and then Ao told all of the little divine buggers to go back to their home domains and piss off, leaving all the people on Faerun alone finally.

The setting has not gone back in time, there hasn't been a "reboot" or retcon of past events, but rather Ao has just cleaned things up to more of a state the Realms were in prior to the Time of Troubles. And that's where everything picks up so far as the 5E adventures are concerned.

I never followed the Realms much, but I did get an awesome 4 part poster map from Dragon or Dungeon magazine back in the 3.X days. My understanding was that 4E made that map obsolete with the merging of Abeir and Toril. When you say that they have been split apart, does that mean that my old map is useful again? If so, I would be more inclined to give the Realms another try. I was introduced to the Realms through the 2E boxed set, and I didn't really enjoy it that much.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I never followed the Realms much, but I did get an awesome 4 part poster map from Dragon or Dungeon magazine back in the 3.X days. My understanding was that 4E made that map obsolete with the merging of Abeir and Toril. When you say that they have been split apart, does that mean that my old map is useful again? If so, I would be more inclined to give the Realms another try. I was introduced to the Realms through the 2E boxed set, and I didn't really enjoy it that much.

I cannot say for sure, because as far as I know there haven't yet been any major specifics written for the Realms post-Sundering. Everything thus far we've gotten have come from the six novels and the few D&D Next adventures (Dragonspear Castle, Vault, Scourge, Dead in Thay, and soon Hoard and Rise). So we don't have a full map, we don't have detailed descriptions of all the areas, we don't know officially which gods now have portfolios, so on and so forth. Truth be told, I can't even say with any definity that Abeir and Toril actually HAVE separated again as I'm just using what could be faulty memories from info I've been picking up. I think they were splitting again, but I haven't read any of the books to know if it gets detailed anywhere or confirmed.

That being said... a 4E map of the Realms would still be much closer to the current situation of the Realms than a 3E would. Because although the few landmasses that had gotten swapped would be swapped back... much of the results of the Spellplague and 100 year jump are all changes to coastlines and stuff that wouldn't go back because they were cataclysmic results, and not Abeir/Toril land swaps. The Chultan penninsula is still much underwater, what was the Anauroch desert is now and still Netheril, the Underchasm is presumably still there in the center of the Shaar. Etc. Etc.

Perhaps if they decide to write and release a campaign setting book for the Realms for 5E we'll get better details... but for now, I think that your 3E map is probably 'eh' when it comes to being useful. But you can google plenty of 4E Realms maps to check it out for yourself. (And indeed, if you really like the map that comes with the 3E campaign setting book, someone did photoshop that map to add in all the 4E details and I think it looks really good. You can see it HERE.)

 

[Agamon]

This is why I just pulled my 3e books of the shelf and am just using that for a setting. Granted, I'm running my own game instead of running the published adventures, so I'm not sure how well the 5e adventures would fit into an older version of the setting (certainly not seamlessly, I'm guessing).

That map from Dragon is pretty awesome.