Forgotten Realms

The Forgotten Realms is a fictional alternate world that has been published as a campaign setting for Advanced Dungeon &amp; Dragons (AD&amp;D) and Dungeons &amp; Dragons (D&amp;D) 3rd Edition, by TSR, Inc. and Wizards of the Coast (WotC).

It was originally created in 1967 as a setting for short stories by Ed Greenwood but it has since become the most enduring campaign setting for D&amp;D.

The primary focus of the setting is the continent of Faerûn, part of the world of Abeir-Toril, an Earth-like planet with certain obvious influences and similarities from the real world and fantasy fiction.

The Forgotten Realms setting owes a lot of its popularity to the many novels using the setting, like R. A. Salvatore's works detailing the life and adventures of the famed drow Drizzt Do'Urden, as well as computer games like Pool of Radiance, Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights.

Geography
The planet of Abeir-Toril consists of several large continents, including Faerûn, the focus of the setting, which was first detailed in the original Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, published in 1987 by TSR. The other continents include Kara-Tur, Zakhara, Maztica, and other as-yet unspecified landmasses. Kara-Tur, roughly corresponding to ancient East Asia, was later the focus of its own publication, Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms, released in 1988.

Various products detailing specific areas of Faerûn have been released, and as such much of the continent has been heavily detailed and documented to create a highly developed setting.

In early publications about the setting, The Realms shared a unified cosmology with various other campaign settings. In this way each of the Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings were linked together to form one interwoven world connected by various planes of existence. With the release of the 2001 Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, the setting was given its own distinct and separate cosmological arrangement, with unique planes not explicitly connected to those of the other settings.

Sourcebooks
The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting has seen three complete revisions of the core setting over three editions of Dungeons & Dragons rules:


 * Forgotten Realms Campaign Set (1987) &mdash; called "The Old Gray Box", and including Cyclopedia of the Realms and DM's Sourcebook of the Realms, 4 poster maps and 2 hex grids &mdash; for 1st edition AD&D.
 * Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting 2nd edition (1993, revised edition in 1996) &mdash; another boxed set, including A Grand Tour of the Realms, Running the Realms, Shadowdale, 4 poster maps, Monster Compendium sheets and 2 hex grids&mdash;for 2nd Edition AD&D and post-Time of Troubles.
 * Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting 3rd edition (2001)&mdash;a 320-page hardcover book with poster map &mdash; for 3rd edition D&D.

Various campaign accesories, including:


 * Menzoberranzan (1992)&mdash;A 240 page boxed set detailing the drow city of Menzoberranzan, which featured heavily in The Dark Elf Trilogy.
 * City of Splendors (1994)&mdash;A 320 page boxed set detailing the city of Waterdeep. A revised version entitled City of Splendors: Waterdeep for 3.5 edition was released in 2005.
 * Sea of Fallen Stars (1999)&mdash;A campaign expansion that covers the events of The Threat from the Sea trilogy.
 * Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas (1999)&mdash;A PC-based atlas with over 800 maps of the Realms in Campaign Cartographer format.
 * Players' Guide to Faerûn (2004)&mdash;A supplement detailing the creation and play of characters within the Forgotten Realms setting.

A number of older, out of print sourcebooks are available for free on the Wizards website and provide a good way to discover more about the Forgotten Realms before deciding to spend money on the more modern products.

Website
A website with realmslore made up of articles by Ed Greenwood and other Realms authors, with weekly updates.

Video games
A large number of computer role-playing games have been released since the inception of the Forgotten Realms. Notable titles include:


 * Pool of Radiance (1988) - The first Forgotten Realms based computer game released, also the first in a long series of Gold Box engine games.
 * Neverwinter Nights (AOL game) (1991) - The first graphical Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG).
 * Baldur's Gate (1998) - The first game to utilise the Infinity Engine, it was highly popular and spawned a sequel.
 * Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000) - Several other games based on this engine were also released, including Icewind Dale.
 * Neverwinter Nights (2002) - a highly popular third-person perspective role-playing game set in the Forgotten Realms. The game features online play and a toolset allowing creation of new adventure modules.
 * Neverwinter Nights 2 (2006) - the long-awaited sequel to Neverwinter Nights, using an upgraded 3d engine and an improved (but more complicated) toolset.