Retrospective: Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting

Let's begin by making a clarification. This week's Retrospective concerns the AD&D Second Edition boxed set released by TSR in 1993 called the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. This is not to be confused with the AD&D First Edition product released in 1987 called the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, about which I've already written a Retrospective post – though the former is indeed a revision and expansion of the latter. Why the two products have such similar yet still different titles eludes me. I expect the answer is most likely an oversight on the part of TSR's production team.

In any case, the 1993 product is a simultaneously terrific and frustrating product. At the time of its release, I was just beginning a campaign set in the Realms – the last AD&D campaign I would run before more or less abandoning the game for other RPGs – so its appearance was a godsend. Though I already owned (and loved) the 1987 set, it was several years out of date, both with the current AD&D rules and with events in the setting itself, so a more substantial update than the Forgotten Realms Adventures hardback was long overdue.

Say what you will about TSR in the 1990s, but one thing the company did very well was produce boxed RPG products and this one is no different. Coming in a sturdy, deep box, the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set was positively stuffed with material: a 128-page A Grand Tour of the Realms, 64-page Guide to Running the Realms, a 96-page Shadowdale book (not to be confused with the terrible adventure module of the same name), several Monstrous Compendium pages and cart-apart sheets of cards, and, of course, four large, full-color maps of the Realms. It's a truly impressive collection of softcover books and other accessories.

A Grand Tour of the Realms is the heart of the boxed set, providing an overview of the setting and its locations. It's packed with information – probably too much, to be honest – and that's both a blessing and a curse, as I'll eventually explain. When I was refereeing a Realms campaign, it was probably the book I consulted the most often. By contrast, the Guide to Running the Realms, though seemingly intended as the Dungeon Master's companion book to the setting, is much less useful. More than half of its pages are spent detailing NPCs, large and small, as well as the various deities of the setting. It's not a useless book by any means, but I rarely looked at it.

Shadowdale is better. It's a deep dive into the most famous of the Dalelands, making it a suitable starting point for a new Forgotten Realms campaign, as well as a "home base" for adventurers who want to roam the region between the Moonsea and the Sea of Fallen Stars. The Dale is described in exhaustive detail – a recurring pattern in this boxed set – with almost every location given at least a short paragraph, often more. Several of these locales even have interior maps. Finally, there's a lengthy adventure, "Beneath the Twisted Tower," for beginning characters that not only makes good use of the material already presented but could easily serve as the kick-off to an entire campaign in and around the Dales.

Combined with all the other extras included inside the box, the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is a terrific product, one that really does give the Dungeon Master nearly everything he could possibly want for starting a new campaign in Ed Greenwood's storied setting. I know I found it invaluable when I was refereeing my campaign decades ago, especially as I hadn't been keeping up with all the changes TSR wrought on the Realms during the years since the release of the original 1987 boxed set. In terms of simple utility, this is a good candidate for the best setting material TSR produced during the company's existence (though there's an embarrassment of riches to choose from).

At the same time, if you're familiar with both the original boxed set and/or Greenwood's articles about the Realms in the pages of Dragon, it's hard not to be a little frustrated by the 1993 set. I've already noted several times now how much material is found within the three included books – so much that it could be overwhelming. I understand that not everyone is put off by lots of detail and, as a longtime fan of Tékumel, I feel vaguely hypocritical for grousing about the much more modest information found in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. Still, I feel as if the nature of the Realms started to change in this era, moving away from a more open-ended, almost sandbox-y setting into something more defined and therefore less flexible, at least when compared to its roots.

A big part of that probably has to do with not merely the Time of Troubles but how many products TSR had already produced for the setting. TSR turned the Forgotten Realms into the default, baseline setting of Second Edition, which meant that it shoehorned all manner of stuff into the setting that didn't really fit with Greenwood's original depictions of it. For example, several regions were made less fantastical and more like analogs of real world cultures and historical periods. This genericized the Realms and bled it of its original flavor. That disappointed me even at the time and does so even more now.

For all that, I still have a lot of affection for this boxed set. I not only made good use of it, but it's a fine example of a style of RPG product that no one really makes anymore – a largely complete description of a setting in a single box. I know there are all sorts of reasons why such a product is no longer as feasible as it was in the early 1990s, but that doesn't change my nostalgia for it. At the end of the day, I feel the only true judge of a gaming product is how much fun it engendered in play. By that standard, I consider the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting a winner.