D&D 5E Forgotten Realms

[Gargoyle]

I have sort of a love/dislike for the Forgotten Realms. I love the maps and all the support it's gotten in the past, and the overall flavor of it, and many of the factions and settings within it, but I dislike a few things about running a game in any established campaign setting. I like to know everything about the world I'm running, and FR is just too big and complex for that. So in the past I just mined the sourcebooks for stuff, and created my own campaign settings or ran less developed settings.

With 5th edition featuring FR as its "flagship" campaign setting and including lots of little FR details in the core books though, I can see the benefit of running a campaign in it, especially since I don't have a lot of time these days to create pantheons and other details that will be right in the Player's Handbook. Just looking at the Basic Rules, there is some direct support for FR even in that; just look in the description of humans and the examples of names and kingdoms. My new job is nice because I no longer work on the weekends so I can run a campaign again, but it keeps me too busy during the week to prepare the way I'd like. I really don't have time to reinvent the wheel anymore, as much as I would enjoy doing so, so the Realms might be a good fit for me right now.

So I'm thinking of placing my campaign in the Realms for the first time since I had the original boxed set. But to satisfy my creative urge, I'm thinking of making up a previously undiscovered continent/island and starting them off there. Eventually they will travel to the mainland and I"ll run published adventures (I love Tiamat as a villain, I blame the old D&D cartoon for that), or if I feel I have time I'll just write adventures and make it more sandboxy.

I have the 3rd and 4th edition FR books, and was thinking of using the 4th edition FR Campaign Guide map and set it in that era. Kind of curious on whether they will advance the timeline of the Forgotten Realms again; hoping they will keep it sort of ambiguous in new published content, as I believe I've read that they intend to support all eras of play. I'd hate to see them blow everything up again and rearrange the pantheon, etc, for the new products and invalidate stuff I've bought further.

Anyone else doing anything similar with the Realms? In the past I've either used campaign settings as written, or made my own. This will be my first attempt to make a published setting my own by adding content to it, while not conflicting with it.

 

[Mirtek]

Kind of curious on whether they will advance the timeline of the Forgotten Realms again

They already did. The Sundering advances the timeline by around 10 years for 5e. It's now 148x (forgot the exact year, but sometime in the 1480s)

 

[Sonny]

It will be somewhat amusing if they start 5e at the very end of 1467/ start of 1468 since that's 100 years after the 2nd edition box set. (For anyone who doesn't know, the 4e starting year was exactly 100 years after the grey box's starting point.

 

[Gargoyle]

1479 is the year in the 4th edition FR Campaign Guide, I'm just curious if they will advance it past that. I don't keep up with the novels so I have no idea where the canon is for the "present" time, and my Google fu is failing me. My hope is that adventures like the Lost Mine of Phandelver or Tyranny of Dragons don't have a specific date, or too many references to current events or NPCs. If they are ambiguous enough, it shouldn't matter regardless of what era you are running.

 

[Gargoyle]

They already did. The Sundering advances the timeline by around 10 years for 5e. It's now 148x (forgot the exact year, but sometime in the 1480s)

Thanks, I wasn't aware that Salvatore's new novels advanced the timeline.

 

[Thaumaturge]

As of the end of The Adversary it's 1486.

Thaumaturge.

 

[rastus_burne]

Ew...Salvatore.

I was wondering a similar thing about the realms. We have the 3rd ed sourcebook which we used a lot. Never played 4th and don't own any material. I've considered picking up the original '87 grey box and seeing how well that fits in, or maybe just waiting until something official is released for 5e. I've gotten so lost since 4th came out though. If I decide not to use the realms, I'll just use my homebrew setting.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Kind of wish they had blown up the Realms, making a post-blown up world where the characters are re-establishing empires or raiding what was.

 

[TheObserver]

I did almost the same thing with the FR game I'm running currently except instead of 3.5 I'm using the Pathfinder rules. When we officially move to D&D 5th I'm still undecided a whether to advance the time or just set in the same time as my current game. I have quite a bit of FR material starting from the gray box set to the 4th Edition FR books.

Also if I recall correctly from the original box set I believe that Sembia and Impiltur were left undetailed so that a DM could flesh it out themselves.

 

[Agamon]

I have the 3rd and 4th edition FR books, and was thinking of using the 4th edition FR Campaign Guide map and set it in that era. Kind of curious on whether they will advance the timeline of the Forgotten Realms again; hoping they will keep it sort of ambiguous in new published content, as I believe I've read that they intend to support all eras of play. I'd hate to see them blow everything up again and rearrange the pantheon, etc, for the new products and invalidate stuff I've bought further.

I haven't run FR since I ran a campaign in the Dalelands in 2e, but I also have the 3e and 4e setting guides. I decided for my 5e game to set it in the Silver Marches circa 3e FR (seeing as I had that book as well). I also picked up Legacy of the Crystal Shard, as I read review saying it was useful as a setting for Icewind Dale regardless of timeline, and it looks to be that way, so I'm hopeful hat the rest of the products will be similarly useful.