Forgotten Realms

Ed Greenwood began writing stories about the Forgotten Realms as a child, starting at the age of eight. Greenwood discovered the Dungeons & Dragons game in 1975, and became a serious role-playing enthusiast with the first Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) game releases in 1978. Greenwood then starting using the setting for his personal role-playing campaign. Greenwood began a Realms campaign in the city of Waterdeep before creating a group known as the Knights of Myth Drannor in the Shadowdale region. Greenwood felt that his players' thirst for detail made the Realms what it is: "They want it to seem real, and work on 'honest jobs' and personal activities, until the whole thing grows into far more than a casual campaign. Roleplaying always governs over rules, and the adventures seem to develop themselves." Starting in 1979, Greenwood published a series of articles that detailed the setting in The Dragon (later Dragon) magazine, the first of which was about a monster known as the curst. When Gary Gygax "lost control of TSR in 1985, the company saw an opportunity to move beyond Greyhawk and introduce a new default setting". He sent TSR a few dozen cardboard boxes stuffed with pencil notes and maps, and sold all rights to the setting for a token fee. == Publication history ==

1985–1990 In 1985, the AD&D module Bloodstone Pass was released by TSR and is retroactively considered to be a part of the Forgotten Realms, although it was not until the module The Bloodstone Wars was released that it became the official setting for the module series. Douglas Niles had worked on a novel trilogy with a Celtic theme, which were then altered to become the first novels set in the Forgotten Realms, starting with Darkwalker on Moonshae (1987). The Forgotten Realms Campaign Set was later released in 1987 as a boxed set of two source books (Cyclopedia of the Realms and ''DM's Sourcebook of the Realms) and four large color maps, designed by Greenwood in collaboration with Grubb. It sold ca.'' one hundred fifty thousand times in its first two years. The set introduced the campaign setting and explained how to use it, TSR began incorporating elements by other designers into the Forgotten Realms, including the Moonshae Isles by Douglas Niles, the "Desert of Desolation" by Tracy Hickman and Laura Hickman, and Kara-Tur by Zeb Cook. The module Under Illefarn published in 1987 is set in the Forgotten Realms, Drizzt has since appeared in more than seventeen subsequent novels, many of which have appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list. In 1988, the first in a line of Forgotten Realms role-playing video games, Pool of Radiance, was released by Strategic Simulations, Inc. The game was popular and won the Origins Award for "Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game of 1988". Several supplements to the original boxed set were released under the first edition rules, beginning with Waterdeep and the North, The Ruins of Undermountain (1991) was one of the first published mega-dungeons. Additional material for the setting was released steadily throughout the 1990s. Forgotten Realms novels, such as the Legacy of the Drow series, the first three books of The Elminster Series, and numerous anthologies were also released throughout the 1990s, which led to the setting being hailed as one of the most successful shared fantasy universes of the 1990s. By the first quarter of 1996, TSR had published sixty-four novels set in the Forgotten Realms out of the 242 novels set in AD&D worlds. These novels in turn sparked interest in role-playing by new gamers. Numerous Forgotten Realms video games were released between 1990 and 2000. Eye of the Beholder for MS-DOS was released in 1990, which was followed by two sequels: the first in 1991, and the second in 1992. All three games were re-released for MS-DOS compatible operating systems on a single disk in 1995. Another 1991 release was Neverwinter Nights on America Online, the first graphical massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). In 1998, ''Baldur's Gate, the first in a line of popular role-playing video games developed by BioWare and "considered by most pundits as the hands-down best PC roleplaying game ever", was released. An official material update and a timeline advance were introduced to the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition in 2001 with the release of the hardcover book the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting'', The timeline was officially advanced from 1358 DR to 1372 DR. The event moved the fictional world's timeline 94 years into the future to 1479 DR. Laura Tommervik, from the Wizards of the Coast marketing team, explained the approach: "We use Neverwinter as the connective tissue across multiple product categories. The transmedia campaign is an opportunity for fans to experience the brand however they choose to". This release included a weekly D&D Encounters in-store play event, a free-to-play mobile game Arena of War (2013), a social networking app called the Sundering Adventurer's Chronicles, and a collaborative novel series: The Companions (2013) by R. A. Salvatore, The Godborn (2013) by Paul S. Kemp, The Adversary (2013) by Erin Evans, The Reaver (2014) by Richard Lee Byers, The Sentinel (2014) by Troy Denning, and The Herald (2014) by Ed Greenwood. Liz Schuh, Head of Publishing and Licensing for Dungeons & Dragons, said:The Sundering is the last of a series of ground-shaking events. It really affects the whole world of the Forgotten Realms in a major way. You may remember when the Spell Plagues began, the two worlds of the Forgotten Realms, Abeir and Toril, crashed together. That created both geographic changes (the map of the Forgotten Realms and Faerûn actually changed due to that collision), and also changed the way magic works. It changed the pantheon of the gods. The Sundering is all about those two worlds separating—coming apart—and the process of that separation is really the story that we're telling over the next year. At the end of this story arc, Abeir and Toril will be separate again, and many of the things that happened when they crashed together will go back to the way they were before. So magic will be much like it was before the Spell Plague. Markings that marked spell-plagued people and animals will fade and go away. It's really about moving the Forgotten Realms forward, but also about bringing it around to the most beloved and most fondly remembered Forgotten Realms. The result of The Second Sundering, in game terms, was the transition from 4th edition rules to 5th edition rules of Dungeons & Dragons, published in 2014. 2014–2024 When D&D 5th edition was published in 2014, Wizards of the Coast announced that the Forgotten Realms would continue to serve as the official campaign setting for its upcoming published adventure materials. The village of Phandalin in the Forgotten Realms acted as the primary setting for the new 5th edition Starter Set (2014) which was published before the release of three new core rulebooks. "Tyranny of Dragons" was the first multimedia storyline for the new edition and included two adventure modules, Hoard of the Dragon Queen (2014) and The Rise of Tiamat (2014), and an update to the Neverwinter (2013) video game. The next two storylines, "Elemental Evil" which included Princes of the Apocalypse (2015) and "Rage of Demons" which included Out of the Abyss (2015), were also set in the Forgotten Realms. The first campaign guide for the new edition, the ''Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide (2015), was released on November 3, 2015, and only covered a fraction of the Forgotten Realms. The video game Sword Coast Legends (2015) published by Digital Extremes was also released in the same month as the tabletop campaign guide. The adventure module Storm King's Thunder (2016) "sprawls over the northern Forgotten Realms–from Waterdeep to Icewind Dale". 5th edition details on "the rest of Faerûn had been untouched until the Tomb of Annihilation'' (2017), an adventure that leaves the northern Sword Coast for the southern jungles of Chult". In 2023, the Forgotten Realms role-playing video game ''Baldur's Gate 3 (2023) was released by Larian Studios. It had record-breaking awards success such as becoming the first game to win Game of the Year, or the equivalent category, at all five major ceremonies: the Golden Joystick Awards, the Game Developers Choice Awards, the DICE Awards, the BAFTAs, and The Game Awards. Also released in 2023 was the film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves which is set in the Forgotten Realms'' and features Neverwinter as a major location. 2024–present Dungeons & Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Tavern is a stage production which combines actual play, improv, and immersive theater as the player cast navigate a Dungeons & Dragons adventure set in the Forgotten Realms. It officially opened on off-Broadway on May 5, 2024, at Stage 42 in New York City; it closed on May 11, 2025. In December 2024, it opened at the Sydney Opera House's Studio venue in Sydney; it closed on April 6, 2025. The U.S. national tour began in July 2025. Two Forgotten Realms focused sourcebooks – Heroes of Faerûn (2025) and Adventures in Faerûn (2025) – were scheduled released in November 2025. Following the announcement of these sourcebooks, Game Rant noted that "outside the brief documentation for many areas in the ''Storm King's Thunder adventure, the only real sourcebook the [Forgotten Realms] setting saw [in 5th Edition] was the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide". Heroes of Faerûn'' (2025) is aimed at players and "will include new subclasses, feats, backgrounds, items, along with new rules for Circle magic, a gazeteer-style guide to the Realms, a guide to the gods of the Realms, and more information about the factions that rule Faerûn". ==Fictional setting==

The focus of the Forgotten Realms setting is the continent of Faerûn, the western part of a continent that was roughly modeled after the Eurasian continent on Earth. It was first detailed in the original Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, published in 1987 by TSR. The other continents of Toril include Kara-Tur, Zakhara, Maztica, Kara-Tur, roughly corresponding to ancient East Asia, was later the focus of its own source book Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms, published in 1988. There is also a vast subterranean world called the Underdark beneath the surface. Religion Religion plays a large part in the Forgotten Realms, with deities and their followers being an integral part of the world. Deities interact directly in mortal affairs, answer prayers, and have their own personal agendas. All deities must have worshippers to survive, and all mortals must worship a patron deity to secure a good afterlife. A huge number of diverse deities exist within several polytheistic pantheons; a large number of supplements have documented many of them, some in more detail than others. Greenwood created a pantheon of gods for his home Dungeons & Dragons game, in his Forgotten Realms world, which were introduced in his article "Down-to-earth divinity" from Dragon #54 (October 1981).