Forgotten Realms Dragons Views

Books

In early editions of the setting, The Realms shared a unified cosmology with various other campaign settings called the Great Wheel. 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.[7][8]

The original gray boxed set received a revision in 1993 to update it to the second edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) rules system, with the release of a new Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting boxed set, containing three books (A Grand Tour of the Realms, Running the Realms, and Shadowdale) and various monster supplements ,[25] with a new graphic look.[20] Additional material for the setting was released steadily throughout the 1990s. Forgotten Realms novels, such as the Legacy of the Drow series, the first three books of The Elminster Series, and numerous anthologies were also released throughout the 1990s, which lead to the setting being hailed as one of the most successful shared fantasy universes of the 1990s.[26] These novels in turn sparked interest in role-playing activity by new gamers.[27]

With the release of the 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons rules system in 2000 by Wizards of the Coast, the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting was released as a hardcover, in 2001, updating the official material and advancing the timeline of the game world.[7] In 2002, the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting won the Origins Award for Best Role-Playing Game Supplement of 2001.[34]

With the release of the Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, the Forgotten Realms were updated again to the new rules system, featuring a very changed Realms and moving the fictional world's timeline 104 years into the future.[35][36] The Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, released August 2008, is a 288-page book for Dungeon Masters. The Forgotten Realms Player's Guide was released the following month, and contains information for players to help create Forgotten Realms characters. An adventure, Scepter Tower of Spellgard, was also released in September 2008 and can be used in combination with the adventure in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide to start a Forgotten Realms campaign.[37] In 2008, the Forgotten Realms also became the setting for the RPGA's sole living campaign, Living Forgotten Realms, replacing Living Greyhawk.