Faraer said:
The factors I mention skewed the way the Realms was presented, not how the Realms work -- I was never aware of the idea that the Realms was good-dominated till I read it online.
Ed's Realms might always have been balanced, but the stuff published hasn't always been. I'll admit I'm no great expert on the topic, but before the 3e Realms we had:
1. Three evil (LE, LE and NE) gods and one LN goddess killed, and replaced by one NE god and one NG goddess. Win for good, loss for evil and loss for law.
2. Part of that NE god's power gets moved to a new LN god, and the NE god becomes CE. Loss for evil.
3. Zhentil Keep gets pretty much destroyed, related to the events in #2. This lessens the power of one of the most visible evil organizations in the Heartlands, the Zhentarim, as well as the church of Cyric.
4. The wartorn land of Tethyr gets a new king (who happens to be Elminster's scribe) and queen, stabilizing the country (I was quite miffed by this - I bought Lands of Intrigue because I liked the description in the box set of Tethyr as a land with lots of competing warlords, and then I find that the situation has been fixed).
5. The Good city-states of the Savage North join into an alliance.
6. The evil rulers of Vaasa were killed off.
I'm sure there are other things I'm forgetting, but basically Evil lost a lot of ground during 2e. This changed with the release of Cloak & Dagger, which did fun stuff like make Fzoul Chembryl the chosen of Xvim and put him in charge of the Zhentarim, split up the Harpers, and so on. The 3e FRCS and later products continued the trend, smashing up Cormyr a bit and stuff like that.
Sounds good, just don't bring Orcus. 
