Welp, I screwed up.
A bit of backstory for how this happened: when I started this retrospective, I only intended to look at the Monstrous Compendia, including only those AD&D 2E monster books which weren't technically part of that line (i.e. the
Monstrous Manual and
Blood Spawn). However, the second Ravenloft appendix (that is, MC15) was part of the MCs, but also a "bestiary" of specific individuals, which was something I'd always been quite fond of. Using that as a pretext, I decided to fold NPC folios into this look-back, since there weren't many of them and there are one or two of those which I
really enjoy.
However, on reviewing the list of titles I'd set for myself, I realized that I'd missed a few. Specifically, three character galleries from the Forgotten Realms:
FR7 Hall of Heroes, the
Heroes' Lorebook, and the
Villains' Lorebook. Now, normally folding in a few extra titles after I've started one of these is no big deal: in my limited series retrospective, I added the last three products in when I was roughly halfway through the whole thing. Shouldn't be a big deal here, right?
Except, if you look at the list in the OP, you might have noticed that the listed products are arranged by date. Now, for the
Heroes' Lorebook and
Villains' Lorebook, that's not a big deal; they're both late 90s products. But FR7 isn't; it came out in February of 1989, literally the same month as the AD&D 2E PHB...and a few months before MC1 actually released. And while FR7 has a
lot of 1E-isms, it's still given the trade dress of a 2E product, so by my own rules I have to give it a look.
As such, I'll be taking this opportunity to talk about the "first" product in this retrospective, and a book of NPCs that technically predates even AD&D 2E's debut monster book:
FR7 Hall of Heroes.
...all of which is a very long lead-in for my not having much to say about this particular book. At least, unto itself.
Certainly, it's notable as a historical artifact in the progression of D&D in general, and the Realms in particular. While not the first time we got a book of NPCs (as far as I know, that was
The Rogues Gallery for AD&D 1E, which came out in 1980), it was the first time we got a book dedicated (near-)totally to characters from D&D novels. While there'd been sporadic "official" conversions of literary characters for quite some time (e.g. the "Giants in the Earth" columns in
Dragon magazine), D&D's own novels getting their own game supplement was a watershed moment.
While I can only speculate if this was done in some sort of attempt to create crossover appeal between TSR's novel fans and the people who actually played D&D (though I'd guess that most of the latter were already part of the former), I can't help but notice that this is a James Lowder product, and that he was quite involved in TSR's novel division for quite some time. Was this his brainchild? Did it help to bring the (Forgotten Realms) novels into greater prominence? We may never know, though if Mr. Lowder himself happens to read this, I'm sure we'd all appreciate any insights he might have to offer. <hint hint>
As it stands, Shannon Appelcline's history on this book's sales page notes that there were only seven Realms novels published when this book came out, though it includes the major NPCs for the forthcoming Avatar Trilogy (aka the books that kicked off the Time of Troubles, the first of many Realms-Shaking Events that marked an edition change...save only for 2E to 3E, as I've
noted before). Interestingly, there are
also characters from a novel set in Kara-Tur...which was never published. That, alone, makes this of interest to collectors, as it makes FR7 the only place to find out about these characters who were all queued up to get their own outing...and then were mothballed (though, as Appelcline helpfully notes, they do make appearances in
OA6 Ronin Challenge and
OA7 Test of the Samurai).
That said, don't expect those characters – or any of the characters here – to be AD&D 2E characters, despite the logo on the front of the book. Yeah, remember those "1E-isms" that I mentioned? Turns out that means "literally everything except the cover." Stat blocks are formatted entirely in 1E, with things like movement being noted in inches, characters having a "psionic ability" listing (even if they have no psionics, which most don't), and lots of references to classes like assassins and cavaliers.
They even have Drizzt Do'Urden's nemesis Artemis Entreri being listed as having levels in the assassin class, which would come back to bite them hard when the Avatar Crisis saw them killing off literally everyone with assassin levels, and Salvatore got a phone call telling him that he therefore needed to have Entreri die. Allegedly, Salvatore got around this by telling them "he's not an assassin, he's a dual-classed fighter/thief who kills people for money." Being the company that invented rules-lawyering, TSR allowed Entreri to live. But this book proves that they were fudging the rules!
I think the single biggest takeaway here, however, is that this is an early indication of just how quickly TSR started leaning on the Forgotten Realms as their flagship campaign setting. The original
Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting was barely eighteen months old by that point, and while (as I noted before) Ed Greenwood had been sowing the seeds of popular interest with his
Dragon articles for years, it's astonishing just how fast the world was becoming TSR's golden child. While it might not be entirely fair to characterize FR7 as a glimpse into just how big the setting would become, I think that the clues were there.
Of course, at the time I didn't know any of that. Truth to tell, I hadn't even heard of this product until well after the aforementioned lorebooks of heroes and villains had come out, so in my eyes this book was already obsolete. And to a very large degree that's true, at least from any contemporary stance of practicality; there's some minor value if you want to chart the power-growth of characters like The Simbul or Elminster (26th-level and with no special "Chosen of Mystra" powers was the weakest that guy's stat would ever be), and of course it has those characters from the unpublished Kara-Tur novel, but otherwise? It's kind of hard to see the point.
Of course, I suspect a lot of people thought that even at the time this came out. See, the way I figure it, giving game stats to literary characters – particularly when the canon puts them within the world your PCs are gaming in – is one of those things that I think highlights the differences between simulationism and game-ism. From a game-ist standpoint, having novel characters (at least, when they're high-level and are known for saving the world when it's in trouble) exist in the game world tends to overshadow the PCs. I can't tell you how many letters I recall reading in early issues of
Dragon where people expressed a mad hate-on for Elminster and his ilk. Apparently it's pretty hard to feel like big damn heroes when there's a more powerful good guy with a history of heroism waiting in the wings.
And yet, from a simulationist standpoint I can see this book being extremely engaging. If you read the novels and played D&D, then what you had here was a way of using the latter to understand the former. I've long been a proponent of the idea that being able to appreciate something on multiple levels at once (what I call "modes of engagement") is one of the key ways to heighten enjoyment. A fantasy novel is a fantasy novel, but when you can also look at it via the objective metric of the game rules – and, for that matter, look at how it alters and integrates with a wider body of lore – then it's not
just a fantasy novel anymore.
In other words, that's why "canon" is important to (a lot of) fans in general, and gamers in particular. It's also why I shake my head whenever anyone talks about a supplement, adventure, or sourcebook only in context of "what can you use in your game?" and eschews any other way of approaching them. There is (or should be, at least to my mind) more to it than that, hence why I frown at what I think is the pejorative tone in the "lonely fun" expression so often thrown at books like this nowadays.
That's really FR7 in a nutshell. It's notable not so much for what it was, but what it represents.
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