What's so special about Forgotten Realms?

[Ariosto]

I'm looking through the 1987 boxed set with eyes all the fresher for not having gotten much into what followed (Time of Troubles and on).

It would be more work of critical analysis than I care to get into just now to distinguish it rationally from the Greyhawk boxed set, with "corrections" per the earlier folio, that my players would more expect.

On an intuitive/ holistic/ "feeling" level, though, there is for me an immediate sense of something different.

 

[rounser]

Ed Greenwood.

Man, he can write!

I like his adventures the most. Spellfire turned me off his novels for good, and his setting fluff I find more evocative than applicable. Like Gygax he's really good at conveying a certain eldritch vibe, though (although their styles and the resulting feel are not the same), and few people have that.