The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Hail and well met! Welcome to the Realms...
This is a review of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, but not the version you probably expected. This is not the Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition version, recently published by Wizards of the Coast. What I'll be discussing here is the first incarnation, published by TSR in 1987. That's right, back in the days when Wizards of the Coast didn't even exist.
This setting was to be a huge success, even bigger than the Dragonlance setting. The Realms are known throughout the world and known for popular characters such as the drow Drizz't and the sage Elminster. R.A. Salvatore wrote some hugely successful novels set in the Realms. The best known D&D computer games are placed in the Realms: Eye of the Beholder, its successors, and Baldur's Gate I & II. It's the place to be for many D&D players.
I was wondering why this world made such an impression on the players back then. Thanks to a friend, who borrowed me the box, I could experience the wonder first-hand. Who better to review it than me, who was ignorant of the whole idea of RPG's back in '87? I don't own any of the versions published later: I've read neither the AD&D 2nd Edition version nor the recent D&D 3rd Edition rendition.

The forgotten what?

For those few who haven't heard of the Forgotten Realms, I'll briefly describe them. The Realms are the western end of a continent. (On the eastern end of the continent the Kara-Tur setting is placed.) The continent is set upon the world Abeir-Toril, which has the same characteristics as Earth: same size, one satellite which is of the same size as the Moon, its year numbers 365 days and has a leapyear once every four years, etc. This familiarity with our own world helps to get a grip: why make a year longer, or physics work different, if the rest of the setting is so fantastic and difficult to get?
The Realms are locked in some sort of medieval era with all the regular fantasy trappings: Gods are very much in evidence, fearsome monsters walk the land, dwarves, elves, gnomes and still other demihumans can be found and magic exists. That's right: the Forgotten Realms are a place of high magic: archmages can be found in every major city and magical items in every nook and cranny. Woo-hoo! Want a sword 2? You'll probably find it in the first dungeon at your left. The bad thing is that the Realms are not very original: the setting is sometimes just a rip-off from Middle-Earth. We have dwarves that only seem to care about gold and killing goblins, we have elves that are leaving the known world toward a mythical place in the west, and so on. At least it has flavour... it tastes like magic.

Opening the box...

So what did you get for you bucks in those days? Hmm... two soft-cover books following the time-honoured tradition of having one for the players and one intended solely for the DM. Both are adorned with a beautiful cover by Keith Parkinson. The pages in each book have a faux parchment background and dark sepia printing. Illustrations are few by standards nowadays, with whole chapters without a single drawing. Too bad, because the pictures are by Keith Parkinson, Clyde Caldwell, Jeff Easley and Tim Conrad and depict the epic feel quite well.
Apart from the books we have 2 maps depicting the whole Realms and 2 maps the intended area of adventure, a close up of the north-western part. Both maps are full-colour and are well done. There's a lot of free space where adventurous DM's can map out whole area's for themselves. And did I mention "the Realms is are VERY large place"? To illustrate this point, the authors show a map of the United States next to the Realms. Let's just say that the Realms are about twice as large as the United States.
To help you wandering in this place we get two plastic transparent grids with a hexagonal grid printed on them. The rules and suggestions on using them are in the DM's Sourcebook of the Realms (see below).

Cyclopedia of the Realms

The Cyclopedia is the Player's Handbook for the Realms: it contains all the things the player can know. This knowledge is presented as an encyclopaedia. Each entry is separated in 3 portions:

At a glance:: Information available to all inhabitants of the Realms
Elminster's Notes:: The trademark sage tells the players more information: gossip, inside information, rumours, etc.
Game information:: Statistics for gameplay are included here: which level is the NPC, how many people live in the town, and so on.

The idea here is that a player can find game information separated from the flavour. The idea is sound, but after a while I found it annoying to read about a "7th level magic user" in the Game information while just having read the juicy, in-character notes from Elminster.
In front of the actual entries are treatises on the calendar of the Realms, guidelines for naming your (N)PC's, languages, currency and deities of the Realms. This information gives you a solid foundation to work from.
The big thing that was missing here is a timeline of the Realms. The Realms are now at the beginning of the Year of the Shadows, but the players lack any information on what has happened before. Sure, you can get some information from the entries, but that's hard work. Actually, that's my major gripe with this presentation as an encyclopaedia: the information can be found, but you'll have to read the whole book first and then connect the lines for yourself.

DM's Sourcebook of the Realms

The DM's Sourcebook contains the things a DM will want to know. It offers you statistics and advice. The first meaty part after the Introductions are notes on how to use the Forgotten Realms: what to do if your players are newbies, what if they have characters on other worlds and want to come to the Realms, that kind of stuff. Very helpful! The advice for new players probably well known to more experienced players, but helps the new DM a lot. "The basic requirements for a first-time campaign are a home base and an area the player-characters can explore and adventure in (a 'dungeon')." As you can see, it's leaning towards the hack-and-slash style of playing, but the advice is sound. Following are the aforementioned notes on how to use the maps and instructions on how to make your own random encounter tables.
19 pages of NPC stats are next. Every NPC description is short, but includes name, nickname, dates of birth (and death), title, base of operations, level, class, group affiliation, alignment, powers worshipped, race, sex and background. That's a lot and all you'll need in a long time. Some of the NPC's mentioned in the Cyclopedia appear again here. To prevent your PC's from going to the low-level NPC's and attack them ('He's only a 3rd level cleric!') we get a NPC Level modification table to alter the NPC's level. On a roll of 81-95, for instance, the "stories are badly dated: individual is of two levels higher than listed."
The chapter Recent News and Rumors in the Realms is a two-year, month by month listing of rumours and serves both as a timeline and as story seeds. Next are two adventures for low-to-intermediate level parties. Both are regular dungeon crawls in the ancient elven city of Myth Drannor.
To round out the book, we get a listing of magical tomes that can be found in the Realms, complete with appearance, history and contents. If there are spells that are not included in the Player's Handbook, you'll find the descriptions here. The majority is mage spells, but there are some priest spells and even some poisons. Unfortunately, there are no magical items, armour or weapons to be found here... A pity for your fighters.
Hmmm, I almost didn't mention the two-page index. Often neglected or outright forgotten in RPG books, this one is pretty complete.

The prose is eloquent and nice to read, if sometimes a bit flowery and overwrought. Having read some articles by Greenwood in Dragon magazine, I know that this is just his style. There are quite a few typos however.

What do you do with it?

The books sketch a high-magic world, with many kingdoms which are often in conflict. If you want to build a world-shattering campaign, you can do that. Want to start small? You can do that, too, with maps of several cities. One area, Shadowdale, is presented in an appendix in minute detail: every citizen is portrayed, complete with occupation and demeanour. This makes for an ideal starting ground. Want to explore dungeons? You get two sample dungeons, and a plethora is mentioned throughout the texts. Want to elaborate on a rumour, or a place, without your actions affecting the world? There are small towns mentioned in the Cyclopedia which only get two or three lines of description. Whole areas of the map can be fleshed out. The Sourcebook specifically mentions rumours that will never have follow-up in the published Realms. Likewise, there are areas that are left solely for the DM to elaborate, without having to fear that later publications will 'overwrite' her setting.
All in all, the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set gives you all you need to adventure in a fantastic world. I'm not happy with the encyclopaedia-style presentation (and the style rating goes down considerably because of this) and a timeline for the players would have been nice. The books are packed with story ideas and possibilities, resulting in the high substance rating. The box is well worth a try, if you can find it in the bargain bin of your gaming store.
Fare thee well, traveller!

Forgotten Realms Campaign Set
Forgotten Realms Campaign Set Capsule Review by Jake de Oude on 04/09/01 Style: 2 (Needs Work) Substance: 4 (Meaty) This first incarnation of the Forgotten Realms has a wealth of information. The presentation could have been better, though. Product: Forgotten Realms Campaign Set Author: Ed Greenwood Category: RPG Company/Publisher: TSR Line: Forgotten Realms Cost: US$ 15.00 Page count: two books of 96 pages Year published: 1987 ISBN: SKU: TSR1031 Comp copy?: no Capsule Review by Jake de Oude on 04/09/01 Genre tags: Fantasy	Hail and well met! Welcome to the Realms... This is a review of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, but not the version you probably expected. This is not the Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition version, recently published by Wizards of the Coast. What I'll be discussing here is the first incarnation, published by TSR in 1987. That's right, back in the days when Wizards of the Coast didn't even exist. This setting was to be a huge success, even bigger than the Dragonlance setting. The Realms are known throughout the world and known for popular characters such as the drow Drizz't and the sage Elminster. R.A. Salvatore wrote some hugely successful novels set in the Realms. The best known D&D computer games are placed in the Realms: Eye of the Beholder, its successors, and Baldur's Gate I & II. It's the place to be for many D&D players. I was wondering why this world made such an impression on the players back then. Thanks to a friend, who borrowed me the box, I could experience the wonder first-hand. Who better to review it than me, who was ignorant of the whole idea of RPG's back in '87? I don't own any of the versions published later: I've read neither the AD&D 2nd Edition version nor the recent D&D 3rd Edition rendition. The forgotten what? For those few who haven't heard of the Forgotten Realms, I'll briefly describe them. The Realms are the western end of a continent. (On the eastern end of the continent the Kara-Tur setting is placed.) The continent is set upon the world Abeir-Toril, which has the same characteristics as Earth: same size, one satellite which is of the same size as the Moon, its year numbers 365 days and has a leapyear once every four years, etc. This familiarity with our own world helps to get a grip: why make a year longer, or physics work different, if the rest of the setting is so fantastic and difficult to get? The Realms are locked in some sort of medieval era with all the regular fantasy trappings: Gods are very much in evidence, fearsome monsters walk the land, dwarves, elves, gnomes and still other demihumans can be found and magic exists. That's right: the Forgotten Realms are a place of high magic: archmages can be found in every major city and magical items in every nook and cranny. Woo-hoo! Want a sword 2? You'll probably find it in the first dungeon at your left. The bad thing is that the Realms are not very original: the setting is sometimes just a rip-off from Middle-Earth. We have dwarves that only seem to care about gold and killing goblins, we have elves that are leaving the known world toward a mythical place in the west, and so on. At least it has flavour... it tastes like magic. Opening the box... So what did you get for you bucks in those days? Hmm... two soft-cover books following the time-honoured tradition of having one for the players and one intended solely for the DM. Both are adorned with a beautiful cover by Keith Parkinson. The pages in each book have a faux parchment background and dark sepia printing. Illustrations are few by standards nowadays, with whole chapters without a single drawing. Too bad, because the pictures are by Keith Parkinson, Clyde Caldwell, Jeff Easley and Tim Conrad and depict the epic feel quite well. Apart from the books we have 2 maps depicting the whole Realms and 2 maps the intended area of adventure, a close up of the north-western part. Both maps are full-colour and are well done. There's a lot of free space where adventurous DM's can map out whole area's for themselves. And did I mention "the Realms is are VERY large place"? To illustrate this point, the authors show a map of the United States next to the Realms. Let's just say that the Realms are about twice as large as the United States. To help you wandering in this place we get two plastic transparent grids with a hexagonal grid printed on them. The rules and suggestions on using them are in the DM's Sourcebook of the Realms (see below). Cyclopedia of the Realms The Cyclopedia is the Player's Handbook for the Realms: it contains all the things the player can know. This knowledge is presented as an encyclopaedia. Each entry is separated in 3 portions: At a glance: Information available to all inhabitants of the Realms Elminster's Notes: The trademark sage tells the players more information: gossip, inside information, rumours, etc. Game information: Statistics for gameplay are included here: which level is the NPC, how many people live in the town, and so on. The idea here is that a player can find game information separated from the flavour. The idea is sound, but after a while I found it annoying to read about a "7th level magic user" in the Game information while just having read the juicy, in-character notes from Elminster. In front of the actual entries are treatises on the calendar of the Realms, guidelines for naming your (N)PC's, languages, currency and deities of the Realms. This information gives you a solid foundation to work from. The big thing that was missing here is a timeline of the Realms. The Realms are now at the beginning of the Year of the Shadows, but the players lack any information on what has happened before. Sure, you can get some information from the entries, but that's hard work. Actually, that's my major gripe with this presentation as an encyclopaedia: the information can be found, but you'll have to read the whole book first and then connect the lines for yourself. DM's Sourcebook of the Realms The DM's Sourcebook contains the things a DM will want to know. It offers you statistics and advice. The first meaty part after the Introductions are notes on how to use the Forgotten Realms: what to do if your players are newbies, what if they have characters on other worlds and want to come to the Realms, that kind of stuff. Very helpful! The advice for new players probably well known to more experienced players, but helps the new DM a lot. "The basic requirements for a first-time campaign are a home base and an area the player-characters can explore and adventure in (a 'dungeon')." As you can see, it's leaning towards the hack-and-slash style of playing, but the advice is sound. Following are the aforementioned notes on how to use the maps and instructions on how to make your own random encounter tables. 19 pages of NPC stats are next. Every NPC description is short, but includes name, nickname, dates of birth (and death), title, base of operations, level, class, group affiliation, alignment, powers worshipped, race, sex and background. That's a lot and all you'll need in a long time. Some of the NPC's mentioned in the Cyclopedia appear again here. To prevent your PC's from going to the low-level NPC's and attack them ('He's only a 3rd level cleric!') we get a NPC Level modification table to alter the NPC's level. On a roll of 81-95, for instance, the "stories are badly dated: individual is of two levels higher than listed." The chapter Recent News and Rumors in the Realms is a two-year, month by month listing of rumours and serves both as a timeline and as story seeds. Next are two adventures for low-to-intermediate level parties. Both are regular dungeon crawls in the ancient elven city of Myth Drannor. To round out the book, we get a listing of magical tomes that can be found in the Realms, complete with appearance, history and contents. If there are spells that are not included in the Player's Handbook, you'll find the descriptions here. The majority is mage spells, but there are some priest spells and even some poisons. Unfortunately, there are no magical items, armour or weapons to be found here... A pity for your fighters. Hmmm, I almost didn't mention the two-page index. Often neglected or outright forgotten in RPG books, this one is pretty complete. The prose is eloquent and nice to read, if sometimes a bit flowery and overwrought. Having read some articles by Greenwood in Dragon magazine, I know that this is just his style. There are quite a few typos however. What do you do with it? The books sketch a high-magic world, with many kingdoms which are often in conflict. If you want to build a world-shattering campaign, you can do that. Want to start small? You can do that, too, with maps of several cities. One area, Shadowdale, is presented in an appendix in minute detail: every citizen is portrayed, complete with occupation and demeanour. This makes for an ideal starting ground. Want to explore dungeons? You get two sample dungeons, and a plethora is mentioned throughout the texts. Want to elaborate on a rumour, or a place, without your actions affecting the world? There are small towns mentioned in the Cyclopedia which only get two or three lines of description. Whole areas of the map can be fleshed out. The Sourcebook specifically mentions rumours that will never have follow-up in the published Realms. Likewise, there are areas that are left solely for the DM to elaborate, without having to fear that later publications will 'overwrite' her setting. All in all, the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set gives you all you need to adventure in a fantastic world. I'm not happy with the encyclopaedia-style presentation (and the style rating goes down considerably because of this) and a timeline for the players would have been nice. The books are packed with story ideas and possibilities, resulting in the high substance rating. The box is well worth a try, if you can find it in the bargain bin of your gaming store. Fare thee well, traveller!