So, I'm planning a new campaign in the Forgotten Realms.I really like having that much source material to draw on an not have to create, and I used to adventure as a Player there back in the day - it would be fun to revisit those old stomping grounds as a DM now.
But I'm wondering where people have set their campaigns with regards to the Forgotten Realms timeline, and why?
I'm really not a huge fan of the events of the Godswar - and the Time of Troubles, and The Second Sundering, etc. etc. - I'm more a fan of the pre-Godswar Realms. Buuut... maybe I should just take it all in stride, and embrace the new 5e Faerûn, since we're past all that nonsense.
However, setting in 3rd or 3.5 edition lore and events, using 5e rules has the advantage of there being a ton of source-books available for that version of Faerûn, and now there's just one for 5e, no? Plus setting a campaign in Faerûn's deep past means that I won't really want for "current events": just tick them off the historical timeline as time goes on.
So - I'm looking for people's experiences and opinions about using Forgotten Realms in a 5e campaign.
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I'm kind of torn between either "current date", or about 30 years predating the Godswar - depending if I want to be current, or be able to leverage the thousands of pages of 3e source material available which hasn't been updated for 5e yet
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You can still base your timeline on the current date and still use the 3e source books for reference. 5e is suppose to be almost like a reset on the Forgotten Realms and the 3e books are relevant up to a point. Wizards want you to make the world your own, so you can go based off of the 3e material and make it work for the current timeline. The main differences that you would have to come up with are the major players in politics and the like (mostly the humans). There are 131 years between the first timeline and the current, so elves and dwarves would still have knowledge and had possibly lived through it all. It would make for great rp possibilities.
In the end what we think and what you want to do is entirely up to you and I know us in the community will help you where you need it and support you in which ever direction you decide.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Remember this is a game and it's suppose to be fun for everybody. Let's all have fun and kill monsters.
I guess I'm just being lured by the possibility of leveraging pre-existing timeline of events from the 3e history - and wondering whether it is worth it.
For example - if you look here - you can see the events that occur canonically in Faerûn in 1335 DR:
In the Evereska Charter, elves lay claim to the Greycloak Hills.
In the Hordelands, Yamun Khahan becomes a chieftain of a tribe.
The Zhentarim send a group of groundlings (magically-warped dwarves) to assassinate Prince Azoun IV. Having narrowly escaped them outside Waymoot, he literally stumbles across a pair of highwaymen. Having lost his horse and suffering several minor wounds, he survives through the quick thinking and reflexes of the younger bandit, Artus Cimber.
A rampaging red dragon kills three of the Rangewatchers and blinds Montolio Debrouchee. The ranger becomes a recluse in his grove.
Etc.
If I make a "historical" instance I can have these pre-generated events just happen in the world. It makes the world dynamic and it seems more real to the Players. Sure, they're up in Port LLast, so the attempted assassination of Azoun IV, and the red dragon rampaging in the Rauvin Mountains is only going to reach them as rumors and stories - but the world still seems to be alive and dynamic. The downside is that if I do this, I have to do a lot of translation between the 3e material and the 5e rules - plus it becomes really challenging to incorporate future 5e source books as they are released.
If I make a "current" instance, I can incorporate all the new books easily, and I can still use all the 3e and 4e material for historical information and/or inspiration for new events - but now I'm on the hook for generating new regional and political changes in my instance of Faerûn. That's a lot of work - and, to be honest, I'm probably not as good at it as whole departments of TSR/WoTC writers. But to not do that makes the world seem a whole lot less alive.
Perhaps there's an opportunity here for a project, where DM's collaboratively generate a shared collection of "world events", and share them across the project.
For example, my Players are adventuring in the North around Luskan - so I generate political and "world events" for The North - not only what my Players are doing, but I spin up the current events for everything going on in that region.
Meanwhile you have a setting around The High Forest, so you're creating local events there.
We tell each other what the events for "next month" are going to be. Where our events are going to interact or collide, we work out a resolution, and hit upon a canonical version of events which doesn't create contradictions.
We then both incorporate both sets of events into our setting. That way, I have a living and dynamic region around The High Forest, and you have a living dynamic region around The North.
Expand that out across a "regional controller" for many regions in Faerûn, and we all have a living breathing dynamic world, and the setting can be "current".
Of course - there are some potential problems:
How to deal with disagreements around events that span multiple regions?
How to deal with different rates of time flowing in Campaigns?
How to deal with people who are late with submissions?
How to incorporate newly publish WoTC material which contradicts "world events" ( this will absolutely happen )?
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That is a good idea and you bring up some good points. Here is another say "con", hearing stories or rumors in another area may look like plot hooks to get your players to that region. Unless you tell your players what is happening and that this is the region that we are exploring. You would have to get a a good number of DMs to cover each region. If you look at most of the campaign books they have the players cover a good portion of the region (which they seem to favor the Sword Coast for now), so it would be far to say that most settings would cover an entire country. So if you run a campaign in Luskan, you would be in charge of the Sword Coast region, and somebody would run one in Amn or Cormyr, etc. It may be a good idea to have may 2 DMs running each region. You then can have it where there are conflicts that would have 2 or more groups meet up to face a common BBEG in like a massive siege or battle. That last part would be hard to pull off because it would then require all the DMs involved to collaborate on the setting and BBEG along with how it all would play out. You can also have events that take place in one part of Faerun effect another. A plague that one group is working of fighting off is forcing refugees into another region which can cause conflict itself.
Back to your original thing on year, you can always create rumors, or other information as you go along. Either direction you go though you will have work to either make it up as you go or to shift things to fit with the current rules. Another way to do it (if you don't mind going to another universe) is to go to another universe like Eberron, Greyhawk, or even Dragonlance.
You could also ask your group when they would like the setting be in. However you go I hope you have fun doing it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Remember this is a game and it's suppose to be fun for everybody. Let's all have fun and kill monsters.
I use Forgotten Realms exclusively because, like you say, it's so vast and thoroughly developed that there's a massive quantity of lore to draw from whenever you need it.
As for timelines, I started my current “world state” with a campaign several years ago and put that about 100 years later than the most recent timeline I could find. That gave me enough wiggle room to hand wave changes in the political and literal landscape that suited the story.
Since that campaign ended I've run several sequential campaigns in the same world with anywhere from 60 to 1000 years between each. That gives me a more than comfortable freedom to say “Kingdom X died out when Y happened, and now this new nation lives there.”
What this practice has given me is a world where there's detailed history already prepared, but enough passage of time to pick and choose which bits I want to carry forward.
I started mine using 5E rules, but it is still set in 3E rules @ 1372, using the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book. I have too much source material to draw from, and I did not care for the way the Realms advanced through 4E and 5E.
isn't 1372 DR into the 4th edition material - in the middle of theEra of Upheaval? Did you just ignore the 4e events, and extrapolate out from the 3e material?
Not criticizing either way - just curious as to how you dodged the Godswar, the rewriting of the geography as Abeir and Toril merged, etc.
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
isn't 1372 DR into the 4th edition material - in the middle of theEra of Upheaval? Did you just ignore the 4e events, and extrapolate out from the 3e material?
Not criticizing either way - just curious as to how you dodged the Godswar, the rewriting of the geography as Abeir and Toril merged, etc.
Directly quoted from the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book, 1372 is the main year that the 3E/3.5E campaign begins. Specifically, Shieldmeet 1372. It's on page 271.
4E takes place about 107 years into the future @ 1479.
I guess that makes sense - I'm making my mental divisions along the lines of in-world events, not along strict edition of real-world publication divisions, or strictly what fell into what editions.
I ( was ) trying to sidestep the pseudo-historical events of the Time of Troubles and the Era of Upheaval - which to me starts with the Godswar, and extend until The Second Sundering. To me that makes better sense from an in-world perspective, and matches my personal dislike of the events of the Godswar.
But, the events of the Godswar, and some of the fallout, still were published under second edition, and the third edition starts somewhere in the middle of the Era of Upheaval.
I think I've decided to just "suck it up" and go with a "modern"Faerûn setting, and generate my own "in world current events". That's a bit more work on my part, but no more than I was doing in my homebrew campaign worlds.
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
I almost posted a link sending you (Vedexent) to the same Forgotten Realms fandom wiki site that you posted earlier in your conversation. I've done too much reading on that site to reference stuff or get a starting point or book reference to send me down one of many rabbit holes.
One of my earlier posts that I created talks about the beginning (and especially the dates) of the Forgotten Realms world as an official setting (and the dates of the setting) and mentions some in-game stuff too.
I'll post it here in case it helps or others want to read about its history.
Although I've found that the current Dale Reckoning date is slightly ahead of what I say as more modules came out since the information I referenced was made. In any case, I've made posts on other people's forums where I do several hours of research in order to answer questions.
If you would like me to research something, I would be happy to help. I usually try to get information .
Just in case anyone is reading, below contains spoilers for video games that are 30+ years old by now.
In the first D&D video game that FEELS like a D&D game, "Pools of Radiance" the Dale Reckoning for the game seems to be 1340 DR as referenced between the game's plot synopsis, the novel that the game spawned, and the Forgotten Realms fandom wiki that was linked earlier. This puts it before the first Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting of... First Edition I think. But the game came out in 1988 real world time where the original Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting was suppose to have come out in 1987, a year earlier.
After that, the next D&D video game that felt like a D&D game would be Eye of the Beholder which seemed to take place in 1358 DR as it is mentioned that's when the beholder Xanathar was slain by adventurers like in the game (although I swear I remember reading that the original Xanathar was slain by another beholder who took "Xanathar" as a title before this.)
In any case, being the DM, you can set it whenever you need to. But it always feels more like a living, breathing world when you research and include events that your players might have read about. In which case, the fandom site usually lists lots of things that can be referenced or mentioned in passing.
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Good luck and may you roll 20's when you need them and 1's when you need a laugh. - myself
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So, I'm planning a new campaign in the Forgotten Realms.I really like having that much source material to draw on an not have to create, and I used to adventure as a Player there back in the day - it would be fun to revisit those old stomping grounds as a DM now.
But I'm wondering where people have set their campaigns with regards to the Forgotten Realms timeline, and why?
I'm really not a huge fan of the events of the Godswar - and the Time of Troubles, and The Second Sundering, etc. etc. - I'm more a fan of the pre-Godswar Realms. Buuut... maybe I should just take it all in stride, and embrace the new 5e Faerûn, since we're past all that nonsense.
However, setting in 3rd or 3.5 edition lore and events, using 5e rules has the advantage of there being a ton of source-books available for that version of Faerûn, and now there's just one for 5e, no? Plus setting a campaign in Faerûn's deep past means that I won't really want for "current events": just tick them off the historical timeline as time goes on.
So - I'm looking for people's experiences and opinions about using Forgotten Realms in a 5e campaign.
Thoughts?
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
I think good starting year is 1479 DR. I found information of book "Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide" useful.
As far as I know latest map for whole Faerun is this 1479 DR map: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/5/59/1479-faerun_low-res.jpg/
Spellplague did some changes especially in south part of Faerun.
My current projects, One click download PDFs:
- Clam Island campaign questbook: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/By3s5Uqqf (Levels 1-4)
- Frostglade Tundra campaign questbook: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/SyZ_4eEyKE (Levels 1-4)
- Goldfish Archipelago campaign questbook: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/-3HajWXM (Sequel to Clam Island, Levels 5-8)
I'm kind of torn between either "current date", or about 30 years predating the Godswar - depending if I want to be current, or be able to leverage the thousands of pages of 3e source material available which hasn't been updated for 5e yet
So 1479 DR or 1338 DR respectively.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
You can still base your timeline on the current date and still use the 3e source books for reference. 5e is suppose to be almost like a reset on the Forgotten Realms and the 3e books are relevant up to a point. Wizards want you to make the world your own, so you can go based off of the 3e material and make it work for the current timeline. The main differences that you would have to come up with are the major players in politics and the like (mostly the humans). There are 131 years between the first timeline and the current, so elves and dwarves would still have knowledge and had possibly lived through it all. It would make for great rp possibilities.
In the end what we think and what you want to do is entirely up to you and I know us in the community will help you where you need it and support you in which ever direction you decide.
Remember this is a game and it's suppose to be fun for everybody. Let's all have fun and kill monsters.
I guess I'm just being lured by the possibility of leveraging pre-existing timeline of events from the 3e history - and wondering whether it is worth it.
For example - if you look here - you can see the events that occur canonically in Faerûn in 1335 DR:
If I make a "historical" instance I can have these pre-generated events just happen in the world. It makes the world dynamic and it seems more real to the Players. Sure, they're up in Port LLast, so the attempted assassination of Azoun IV, and the red dragon rampaging in the Rauvin Mountains is only going to reach them as rumors and stories - but the world still seems to be alive and dynamic. The downside is that if I do this, I have to do a lot of translation between the 3e material and the 5e rules - plus it becomes really challenging to incorporate future 5e source books as they are released.
If I make a "current" instance, I can incorporate all the new books easily, and I can still use all the 3e and 4e material for historical information and/or inspiration for new events - but now I'm on the hook for generating new regional and political changes in my instance of Faerûn. That's a lot of work - and, to be honest, I'm probably not as good at it as whole departments of TSR/WoTC writers. But to not do that makes the world seem a whole lot less alive.
Perhaps there's an opportunity here for a project, where DM's collaboratively generate a shared collection of "world events", and share them across the project.
For example, my Players are adventuring in the North around Luskan - so I generate political and "world events" for The North - not only what my Players are doing, but I spin up the current events for everything going on in that region.
Meanwhile you have a setting around The High Forest, so you're creating local events there.
We tell each other what the events for "next month" are going to be. Where our events are going to interact or collide, we work out a resolution, and hit upon a canonical version of events which doesn't create contradictions.
We then both incorporate both sets of events into our setting. That way, I have a living and dynamic region around The High Forest, and you have a living dynamic region around The North.
Expand that out across a "regional controller" for many regions in Faerûn, and we all have a living breathing dynamic world, and the setting can be "current".
Of course - there are some potential problems:
Just some food for thought.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
That is a good idea and you bring up some good points. Here is another say "con", hearing stories or rumors in another area may look like plot hooks to get your players to that region. Unless you tell your players what is happening and that this is the region that we are exploring. You would have to get a a good number of DMs to cover each region. If you look at most of the campaign books they have the players cover a good portion of the region (which they seem to favor the Sword Coast for now), so it would be far to say that most settings would cover an entire country. So if you run a campaign in Luskan, you would be in charge of the Sword Coast region, and somebody would run one in Amn or Cormyr, etc. It may be a good idea to have may 2 DMs running each region. You then can have it where there are conflicts that would have 2 or more groups meet up to face a common BBEG in like a massive siege or battle. That last part would be hard to pull off because it would then require all the DMs involved to collaborate on the setting and BBEG along with how it all would play out. You can also have events that take place in one part of Faerun effect another. A plague that one group is working of fighting off is forcing refugees into another region which can cause conflict itself.
Back to your original thing on year, you can always create rumors, or other information as you go along. Either direction you go though you will have work to either make it up as you go or to shift things to fit with the current rules. Another way to do it (if you don't mind going to another universe) is to go to another universe like Eberron, Greyhawk, or even Dragonlance.
You could also ask your group when they would like the setting be in. However you go I hope you have fun doing it.
Remember this is a game and it's suppose to be fun for everybody. Let's all have fun and kill monsters.
I use Forgotten Realms exclusively because, like you say, it's so vast and thoroughly developed that there's a massive quantity of lore to draw from whenever you need it.
As for timelines, I started my current “world state” with a campaign several years ago and put that about 100 years later than the most recent timeline I could find. That gave me enough wiggle room to hand wave changes in the political and literal landscape that suited the story.
Since that campaign ended I've run several sequential campaigns in the same world with anywhere from 60 to 1000 years between each. That gives me a more than comfortable freedom to say “Kingdom X died out when Y happened, and now this new nation lives there.”
What this practice has given me is a world where there's detailed history already prepared, but enough passage of time to pick and choose which bits I want to carry forward.
I started mine using 5E rules, but it is still set in 3E rules @ 1372, using the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book. I have too much source material to draw from, and I did not care for the way the Realms advanced through 4E and 5E.
isn't 1372 DR into the 4th edition material - in the middle of the Era of Upheaval? Did you just ignore the 4e events, and extrapolate out from the 3e material?
Not criticizing either way - just curious as to how you dodged the Godswar, the rewriting of the geography as Abeir and Toril merged, etc.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
Directly quoted from the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book, 1372 is the main year that the 3E/3.5E campaign begins. Specifically, Shieldmeet 1372. It's on page 271.
4E takes place about 107 years into the future @ 1479.
I guess that makes sense - I'm making my mental divisions along the lines of in-world events, not along strict edition of real-world publication divisions, or strictly what fell into what editions.
I ( was ) trying to sidestep the pseudo-historical events of the Time of Troubles and the Era of Upheaval - which to me starts with the Godswar, and extend until The Second Sundering. To me that makes better sense from an in-world perspective, and matches my personal dislike of the events of the Godswar.
But, the events of the Godswar, and some of the fallout, still were published under second edition, and the third edition starts somewhere in the middle of the Era of Upheaval.
I think I've decided to just "suck it up" and go with a "modern"Faerûn setting, and generate my own "in world current events". That's a bit more work on my part, but no more than I was doing in my homebrew campaign worlds.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
I almost posted a link sending you (Vedexent) to the same Forgotten Realms fandom wiki site that you posted earlier in your conversation. I've done too much reading on that site to reference stuff or get a starting point or book reference to send me down one of many rabbit holes.
One of my earlier posts that I created talks about the beginning (and especially the dates) of the Forgotten Realms world as an official setting (and the dates of the setting) and mentions some in-game stuff too.
I'll post it here in case it helps or others want to read about its history.
Although I've found that the current Dale Reckoning date is slightly ahead of what I say as more modules came out since the information I referenced was made. In any case, I've made posts on other people's forums where I do several hours of research in order to answer questions.
If you would like me to research something, I would be happy to help. I usually try to get information .
Just in case anyone is reading, below contains spoilers for video games that are 30+ years old by now.
In the first D&D video game that FEELS like a D&D game, "Pools of Radiance" the Dale Reckoning for the game seems to be 1340 DR as referenced between the game's plot synopsis, the novel that the game spawned, and the Forgotten Realms fandom wiki that was linked earlier. This puts it before the first Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting of... First Edition I think. But the game came out in 1988 real world time where the original Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting was suppose to have come out in 1987, a year earlier.
After that, the next D&D video game that felt like a D&D game would be Eye of the Beholder which seemed to take place in 1358 DR as it is mentioned that's when the beholder Xanathar was slain by adventurers like in the game (although I swear I remember reading that the original Xanathar was slain by another beholder who took "Xanathar" as a title before this.)
In any case, being the DM, you can set it whenever you need to. But it always feels more like a living, breathing world when you research and include events that your players might have read about. In which case, the fandom site usually lists lots of things that can be referenced or mentioned in passing.
Good luck and may you roll 20's when you need them and 1's when you need a laugh. - myself