Product Description

Dark perils and great deeds await!

Welcome to Faerûn, a land of amazing magic, terrifying monsters, ancient ruins, and hidden wonders. The world has changed since the Spellplague, and from this arcane crucible have emerged shining kingdoms, tyrannical empires, mighty heroes, and monster-infested dungeons. The Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide presents a world of untold adventure; a land of a thousand stories shaped by the deeds of adventurers the likes of which Faerûn has never seen before.

This book includes everything a Dungeon Master needs to run a D&D campaign in the Forgotten Realms setting, as well as elements that DMs can incorporate into their own D&D campaigns. The book provides background information on the lands of Faerûn, a fully detailed town in which to start a campaign, adventure seeds, new monsters, ready-to-play non-player characters, and a full-color poster map of Faerûn.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34933 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-19
• Released on: 2008-08-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

About the Author
RICHARD BAKER is a senior game designer at Wizards of the Coast as well as a New York Times best-selling author of the Forgotten Realms novel Condemnation.

BRUCE R. CORDELL is an Origins award-winning game designer for Wizards of the Coast, Inc. He has also written several Forgotten Realms novels.

ED GREENWOOD is the creator of the Forgotten Realms setting, as well as the author of numerous Forgotten Realms novels and roleplaying game products.

CHRIS SIMS is a game designer for Wizards of the Coast, Inc. and has worked on numerous 3rd-Edition game supplements and adventures.

Customer Reviews

The Forgotten Realms lie in ruins
Having received and read the 4th edition rules recently, I was anxious to see how Wizards would treat my favorite setting, the Forgotten Realms. The Forgotten Realms (FR) have allways been a fairly standard campaign world, and I have considered that the main strength of the setting. It was a setting in which wizards, dragons, heroes and villains prospered, but none dominated. No huge cataclysms or specific perks were entered into the FR setting. It was just a plain fantasy setting. With it's huge history and detail, any adventurer placed in the FR felt like a guest in the Realms, a small part of it's huge story and background. That all has changed. The new fourth edition Forgotten Realms campaign focusses on the heroes instead of the campaign setting itself.

Although this at first would look like a very good thing, it essentially means the Realms lack depth. The same depth that made the Realms the most popular D&D setting in the first place. The 4th edition campaign setting is placed 100-odd years later than the 3rd edition. This is perhaps unsurprisingly, because of the many, many changes the 4th edition rules have made compared to the third edition. Whereas the 3rd and 2nd edition of the core D&D rules were generally using the same system, the fourth is different. And it shows in the Realms, and feels rather forced-upon the setting. The thing that strikes me most, and which I thoroughly dislike about this book, is that no particular attention is dealt to the events between the third edition and this new, revised edition. The rich history of Faerun, which has always driven the campaign, is now gone. In the fourth edition campaign setting, a total of 2 (two) pages is spent on Faerun's history - the equivalent of: "and there was light". Recent eventes are covered by two lines at most, from which we must deduct the state of the Realms. Hints are given as to what has happened to our favorite nations, heroes and even gods, but no where is to be read what exactly happened.

The book subsequently concentrates on describing locales and a few protagonists. Considering Faerun has changed tremendously, describing the reasons for those changes would have made for a far more involving campaign setting. Additionally, the many characters and orders of the FR campaign setting, like Elminster, Khelben, the Harpers and so on, are all suspiciously missing in this edition, with only a side-remark spent at best.

Now on the book itself: I really don't know who has editted this book, as well as the Player's Handbook, but it's disastrous. The PHB already left me mind-boggling when reading it, refering to abilities and systems unknown to the reader when reading from front-to-back. The Forgotten Realms Setting is doing the same, starting with a little adventure and subsequently turning to two pages of history and then... magical items and treasure! Just as in the PHB powers were described before the combat sequence, in the FRCS, magical items are deemed more important than the Realms itself. This is not just a fluke - the next chapter is on the Realms of the Gods (Cosmology) while the Gods itself, frequently referenced to, are not introduced until a chapter later! Had I not known most of the gods from previous editions, I would have been puzzled. The artwork itself is nice and frequent, but lacks the detail of previous editions, as well as a short undersign about what exactly is depicted. The artwork is fitting, but seems hurried.

The core part of the book covers the geography of Toril, as it should. This part concentrates primarily on why adventurers should be in that part of Toril and what they can experience in that particular region. Again, a focus on the adventurer instead of the setting, with only little history and main players (NPC's). The book concludes with a decent description of protagonists, however it's too focussed on encounters to my liking, instead of the underlying motives of these protagonists.

Concluding, I am very disappointed in this edition of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. All the flavour that made the Realms my favorite campaign setting is gone. Or is it? Given the frequent hints about recent history as well as characters, I can't help but wonder whether Wizards won't disclose this information in another supplement. Even if it were to be covered in another supplement, it should not be. The Realms is more than just geography, it is being part of a huge detailed history and playing with notorious non-player-characters like Elminster, Khelben, Drizzt and Manshoon. That is what made the Realms the most popular role-playing setting. For me, it no longer is.

I suggest adapting the third edition FR setting for the new fourth edition rules, if you are inclined to use these rules. This campaign book could have offered so much - but provides so little.

A decrease in depth and coherence
First off: this is not the worst RPG product I have ever seen. (I think that anyone who has won a prize at a gaming convention, where prizes are usually cast-offs - I mean, *donations!* - from the sellers' boothes, will agree. I think I've only ever used one supplement I acquired in this way.) However, now that this declaration is out of the way, I must say: even though worse RPG books exist, this one deserves a low rating because it is such a downgrade compared to the previous book that described the Forgotten Realms campaign setting.

This 4th version of the setting is intended to get rid of a number of qualities that supposedly deterred people from roleplaying in the Forgotten Realms previously: too many gods, too many high-level NPCs, too many different cultures and nations, too much accrued lore. Apparently the history of the Realms and its various personalities were problems rather than assets. Thus, the changes between the previous edition and this edition were intended to make it attractive for a new audience.

Well, unfortunately, I don't think it has succeeded. It can't please old fans, because it has destroyed so much that was characteristic of the Realms. But I don't think it can please new ones either, because it spends so much time saying "such-and-such was like this before, but now it's like this." It doesn't always explain the significance of the changes, though - so new readers are left scratching their heads wondering why the devs bothered mentioning the fact that things used to be different at all. For instance: the attempt to copy Eberron with the "10 things you need to know about the Realms" doesn't actually succeed in copying it well, because half of them seem to be more concerned with telling old fans that things aren't the same as they used to be, rather than encapsulating what the setting is *now*. (Incidentally, the magical catastrophe of the Spellplague and the resulting plague areas and spellscars are obviously rip-offs of Eberron's Day of Mourning, Mournland, and dragonmarks, respectively. But we already have one Eberron - and a darned good setting it is too. Why try to make FR into a weak copy?) In other cases, though, when some references to changes from the old situation might prove an interesting read for everyone (e.g. a description of whatever it was that led to the current religious situation, where it's no longer necessary to worship gods and the Wall of the Faithless is gone), there is not even the slightest bit of explanation. It's almost as if explanations were made in none of the cases where they should have been and in all of the cases when they shouldn't have been.

Anyway, the chapters proper start off with a look at the town of Loudwater. This town was chosen to be a close-up example and a base for a number of possible adventures, but it is difficult to muster any enthusiasm about it whatsoever - it's just that boring and generic. Also, the fact that this section and the various possible adventures are put first in the book, before almost anything else about the setting is explained, will no doubt be confusing to those approaching the setting for the first time.

By and large, the book tends towards vagueness and blandness. There are a few nice exceptions (such as the table of art-type treasure), and it's difficult to go too wrong with some of the iconic areas like Rasheman and Cormyr... However, I found myself wondering why some of the gods were in the book at all - and, considering that the devs killed off quite a lot of the old ones or amalgamated them into other ones, that's saying something. In terms of the gods that the devs didn't cull, some of the choices are quite baffling. The drow deity of oozes is now a greater god in the main pantheon? Tyr, Mask, and Mystra (gods of paladins, thieves, and magicians, respectively) are gone - but minor halfling goddess of beauty Sheela Peryroyl is now a standard god? This problem with the gods carries through to nations and geography as well: nearly all of the new countries are less interesting, rich, and uniquely Realmsian than those they replaced. Where, exactly, was the central vision when this book was being put together? Finally, although the page count of the FRCG is not a huge amount smaller than the 3e FRCS, the print size is so much bigger that it really has far, far, far less content in it by far than its predecessor.

There is so much more I would like to write about, but it would be too long for an Amazon review. Suffice it to say: while there is an amount of good work in this book, it is so poor by comparison to the third edition version of the campaign setting that I cannot but give it one star. If you want to play 4e D&D in the Forgotten Realms, my personal advice is that you pick up a copy of the 3e FRCS and work out your own adaptation of 4e magic (and the rest) to the campaign setting. It could scarcely make less sense than the one published here, so what do you have to lose?

Empty. Soulless, Forgotten
First of all let me say this review is written from the point of view of a gamer who has used the Forgotten Realms as his primary game world for a little over 18 years but is willing to embrace a new system when it works such as the transition between 2nd and 3rd ed.

I had already felt like D&D had been destroyed by the 4th ed. I hated the video game approach to the game and laughed at the explanation that they are taking the game back to "role playing". As I have said elsewhere regarding this subject, If you need a new system to inject role playing into a game, you're doing it wrong. I also laughed when I read that the reason the Realms has changed so much is to better reflect the new system. This baffled me, it still does. They didn't need to tear apart the Realms when the 3rd edition came out.

"That's OK though" I thought. "Forgotten Realms has always been about the lore and substance of the world, I can still use the 4th ed Realms books for their information rather that their implemented rules" (I still have many 1st and 2nd edition books that serve this purpose admirably). With growing incredulity I watched the writers gloss over almost everything of any interest.

Things that are major issues to fans receive little or, more often, no explanation. For example (SPOILER ALERT) the entry on The Silver Marches (Now called Luruar for no explained reason) casually states "Before she passed away, High Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon founded a mutual defense league in the region." That's the soul mention of Alustriel in the entire book. No how, when or why. Just "passed away". This would mean nothing to the casual reader but to myself and countless other fans of the Realms it requires a little more than that. To put it into broader terms, this would be like reading and loving the Sherlock Holmes stories and then picking up a book one day and reading "Before he died, Watson was a close friend and confidante to Holmes" with no further explanation or insight as to why or how this major character was tossed aside without rime or reason.

It didn't take too long to sadly see that the Realms no longer existed. Now I'm not talking about "The Realms you knew no longer exist due to a great calamity" kind of no longer existed, I'm talking about the kind of "no longer existing" that involves throwing out every single piece of what makes something appealing, intriguing and deep, and replacing it with something else that calls itself by the same name but is simply a shadow of it's predecessor. I can only describe it as...well, empty. This word kept coming back to me as I turned page after soulless page. Empty. The heart of the Realms has been ripped out and replaced by a clockwork replica that tries to do the job but is so distant from the original it might as well be something else entirely.

WOTC could almost have released this as a new campaign setting and got away with it. Change the names, countries etc and voila, new money making scheme. This is to the Realms what the Highlander, Robocop and The Crow sequels were to their original incarnations. An Insult. They took a wonderful, creative concept that fans embraced and loved and then decided to ignore everything that came before it and turn it into an empty shell of it's former self.

The only people I can see enjoying this game are the people who were introduced to D&D via 4th ed and have never heard of the Forgotten Realms before and good luck to them. It just saddens me that they missed out on such a good thing.

I always liked to remain relatively faithful to official Realms canon for simplicities sake. That way, when new books or source material came out that is specific to events or history, I don't have to twist things around too much to make use of it. With all the little details and events taken care of in the official lore, I could concentrate on merging my game/story into that world and use the wealth of information as a foundation to build upon. I have now abandoned official Realms at this point and will do as I damn well please because I no longer care what WOTC do with it because I won't be buying it. (I know I could have done this anyway as any game world is the DM's to do with as he/she pleases but I explained why I didn't). I'll start by fully embracing the Pathfinder system by Paizo Publishing, currently available as a free beta PDF, which both streamlines and expands upon the 3.5 core rules under the open game license. Wow, that sounded like an infomercial, I swear I don't work for them. I just like 3.5 and would rather give my money to a company who is going to do something with it when the 500+ page final release comes out next year.