Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting
The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is a role-playing game sourcebook first published by TSR in 1987 for the first edition of the fantasy role-playing game "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" that describes the campaign setting of the Forgotten Realms. It contains information on characters, locations and history. Various revised and updated editions have been produced over the years. 1st edition. Contents. The "Dungeon Master's Sourcebook of the Realms" describes how to set up and run a campaign in the Forgotten Realms. A pair of miniscenarios is included, and information is provided on wilderness terrain and  movement, important personalities, rumors, and significant and magical books. Written from the perspective of Elminster the sage, the book introduces the campaign setting, explains how to use it, and offers adventure resources. Large areas were set aside to be developed for house campaigns, and no published materials were intended to be printed to exploit those areas, while one area detailed in this package was intended to have no subsequent publications use that area. The package covers only the western half of a single continent, with the eastern half reserved for future publication of Kara-Tur. Two complete dungeon-style adventures  are provided: "Halls of the Beast-Tamers", a dungeon with many unconventional problem-solving exercises, and "Lashan's Fall", a dungeon with a mystery and an opportunity to parley with a monster.The "Books of the Forgotten Realms" section is a treatment of several magical tomes that suggests a variety of adventures, with a description of the appearance, history, and contents of each book. The "Cyclopedia of the Realms" provides background information on and details maps of the locations in the accompanying maps of the Forgotten Realms. It begins with an explanation of the Realms' treatment of time, names, language , and currency, and its gods and religion. The remaining 75 pages of the book is an encyclopedic and alphabetic listing of important places, races, nations, cultures, character classes, and organizations of the Realms. The set includes four full-color, 34" x 22" maps, two of which combine to form a large-scale (1" = 90 miles) map of the western half of the vast Realms continent, while the other two provide a more detailed (1" = 30 miles) map of the regions featured in this campaign pack. Publication history. Shannon Appelcine detailed how Ed Greenwood and Jeff Grubb collaborated beginning  in 1986 to publish Greenwood's Forgotten Realms campaign setting, and how "The result was the "Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting" (1987)." The "Forgotten Realms Campaign Set" was written by Ed Greenwood, with Jeff Grubb and Karen Martin, and illustrated by Keith Parkinson, Jeff Easley, Clyde Caldwell, and Tim Conrad. Greenwood and Grubb did the design, while Grubb was responsible for the development, and Karen Martin did the editing. It was published in 1987, as a boxed set which included two 96-page books (the "DM's Sourcebook of the Realms" and the "Cyclopedia of the Realms"), four large color maps , and two clear plastic hex-gridded overlays. 2nd edition. The "Forgotten Realms" boxed set was upgraded in 1993 to the "AD&D" 2nd Edition game rules, and was later republished in 1996. 3rd edition. In 2001, Wizards of the Coast, Inc. published an updated version for use with the 3rd Edition of the "Dungeons & Dragons" role-playing game. The book was written by Ed Greenwood, Sean K. Reynolds, Skip Williams and Rob Heinsoo, with additional contributions from members of the Wizard company's staff. Interior art was by Todd Lockwood, Sam Wood, Matt Wilson, Carlo Arellano and Stephanie Pui-Mun Law . The hardbound book is 320 pages in length and features color illustrations. Contents. Notable updates to the campaign setting included the widespread presence of Red Wizard enclaves in various cities, the presence of a mysterious group called the "Shades" in the southern Anauroch desert, and the increasing "surface presence" of Dark Elves in the Dalelands. The setting history was updated to reflect various major events such as the changes to the pantheon of Faerûn since the "Time of Troubles", and the defeat of the Tuigan Horde. The book was organized into nine chapters, which cover the campaign setting in broad  detail. The primary emphasis is on the continent of Faerûn, and the other continents are only briefly mentioned. The chapters are arranged as follows: This work contained a number of maps, and a fold-out map of the continent of Faerûn. There were also many sidebar topics and tables. Game statistics were provided for popular Forgotten Realms characters such as Drizzt Do'Urden, Artemis Entreri, Elminster, Khelben Blackstaff, Fzoul Chembryl and Manshoon. 4th edition. Wizards of the Coast released another revised edition of the "Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide" for the fourth edition of "D&D" in August 2008, and also released the  Forgotten Realms Player's Guide in September 2008. To usher in the new edition of "Dungeons & Dragons", major campaign world events included the death of the goddess Mystra and her Weave, and the subsequent Spellplague, which caused calamitous events such as animation of giant statues, violent earthquakes, corruption of various beings into monsters, and the collapse of some regions of the Underdark. An additional campaign setting book, covering the city of Neverwinter and its environs, was released in 2011, while an overview of the history, both fictional and real-world, of the Realms was published as "Ed Greenwood Presents Elminster 's Forgotten Realms" in 2012, written by Realms creator Ed Greenwood. Reception. Lawrence Schick, in his 1991 book "Heroic Worlds", describes the Forgotten Realms as a "fantasy world with a little bit of everything in it, the setting for most of TSR's "AD&D" scenarios from 1987 on. The world is designed to be flexible enough to act as a setting for a wide variety of campaigns." The reviewer from "Pyramid" noted that the third edition book covers "a vast land with knights, barbarians, horse archers, and just about any other type of fantasy archetype you can name". Forgotten Realms