I'm coming in as a new DM that started a game in the Innistrad universe because I am far more familiar with the lore of MtG. There is also a great book that covers all of the Innistrad lore called the Art of Innistrad in addition to the Plane Shift Innistrad primer. That was great for my one campaign, but I wanted to run another one as the first could only meet twice a month. The other group wanted something more High Fantasy than gothic horror so I got the Princes of the Apocalypse adventure because the story arch sounded really cool.
However, I'm having a lot of trouble with the book. I'm new to adventure books and am having a real hard time understanding the content enough to run the game competently. I think it's something to do with it being rather open world, you kind of have to be familiar with all of the adventure before you start. I tried looking for reference sheets and the like but haven't found anything too helpful. So I decided to just take the story and elements to make a homebrewed version, and starting with that idea I started looking into the The Elder Elemental Eye, which lead me down a rabbit hole of Wiki pages that started to blur together.
So Is there a primer out there that gives a rundown of important events, gods, characters, history, etc. for the Forgotten Realms? I am fan-fiction writer trash and I love writing in a world as opposed to having to make my own so I'd rather be as true to the lore as possible. I'm also not sure this is the right forum to ask but I didn't see a better one >_<
Ok cool! I've seen that at my FLGS but I was told it was a book for players wanting to participate in Adventurer's league(?) and that I didn't need it. I'll have to pick it up, thanks for the info! Does 5e build off the story of previous editions?
I always use the FR Wiki to look up info - https://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page - people have added information from Hardcovers, adventurers, novels, computer games and of course from Ed Greenwood himself.
PotA takes place in 1491 DR (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/1491_DR) which is pretty much a year before the current timeline (give or take a bit). The adventurer is very sandbox though, feel free to change and adjust things to make it exciting (and remember, you as the DM should also be having fun). I'm sure if you get stuck for lore/knowledge or need help with tweaking there are many on this forum that would gladly offer assistance. :)
The Grand History of the Realms is a good place to start. It ends at the spellplague, but most people prefer to pretend it never happened. After that you can pick up The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide and that will give you an idea of what happens after the spell plague - Everything returns to normal. They just swept the whole thing under a carpet. If you want a more novel approach to the history of the Realms you can try The Avatar series, the Elminster series, The Rage series, and finally (if you want to read everything from a character that experienced nearly all the events) The 23 book Drizzt series.
Ok cool! I've seen that at my FLGS but I was told it was a book for players wanting to participate in Adventurer's league(?) and that I didn't need it. I'll have to pick it up, thanks for the info! Does 5e build off the story of previous editions?
Sword Coast Adventurer' Guide is for both players and DMs. For players there are some additional archtypes for classes, some new cantrips, and new backgrounds. For DMs, there is all the stuff I wrote in the post above. And it is not only for Adventurer League. It is for 5th edition in general. As Dm, it is arguably the most used book to create new adventures.
The Grand History of the Realms is a good place to start. It ends at the spellplague, but most people prefer to pretend it never happened. After that you can pick up The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide and that will give you an idea of what happens after the spell plague - Everything returns to normal. They just swept the whole thing under a carpet. If you want a more novel approach to the history of the Realms you can try The Avatar series, the Elminster series, The Rage series, and finally (if you want to read everything from a character that experienced nearly all the events) The 23 book Drizzt series.
Woof that's a lot of reading! I'll have to get on it. I'm looking for a digital copy of The Grand History of the realms now. I can see why people prefer that, an age without magic doesn't seem very fun, but I like the idea of magic reemerging and forgotten knowledge being ALL knowledge of magic.
I always use the FR Wiki to look up info - https://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page - people have added information from Hardcovers, adventurers, novels, computer games and of course from Ed Greenwood himself.
PotA takes place in 1491 DR (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/1491_DR) which is pretty much a year before the current timeline (give or take a bit). The adventurer is very sandbox though, feel free to change and adjust things to make it exciting (and remember, you as the DM should also be having fun). I'm sure if you get stuck for lore/knowledge or need help with tweaking there are many on this forum that would gladly offer assistance. :)
Thank you so much! That is in fact the wiki I spent 4 hours reading before realizing I was reading about events and characters my players would never meet X I am having a lot of fun DMing, in fact I dove so far into D&D that 3 months ago I'd never played once and now I'm painting an army of minis and writing all kinds of crazy adventures with eldritch monsters and Heists during masquerades.
I recently started this group off and they were very much looking for something more along the lines of Tolkien than Bram Stoker so I've been adapting. My main idea for turning this adventure into a campaign is to extend the goals of the princes. My idea is that they're going to be freed as a means of freeing Tharizdun and my players are going to try and stop them. But even if they do Tharizdun's avatar Shothragot is going to be collecting the 333 gems to release him by another means. And there's only going to be one chance to stop him before he regains all his power.
Sword Coast Adventurer' Guide is for both players and DMs. For players there are some additional archtypes for classes, some new cantrips, and new backgrounds. For DMs, there is all the stuff I wrote in the post above. And it is not only for Adventurer League. It is for 5th edition in general. As Dm, it is arguably the most used book to create new adventures.
Adding it to the shopping list. Thanks for letting me know, I've walked past it a dozen times and now I'm kicking myself.
This thread might be a little old (found it while searching for something else), but if you are interested in Forgotten Realms lore, a good site is youtube! There's a channel by a guy "Jorphdan" that I've been using to get caught up. The Realms have big shakeups every time a new edition of D&D is released where in-story things happen that explain or are supported by rules changes so the realms are not the same today as they were when I stopped playing several editions go. Going through the official D&D podcasts were useful to me too, when I started DMing for 5e. All of the recent ones have a section called "Lore you should know." where the designers talk about a monster, city, or famous Realms NPC. If worst comes to worst, google it. If you are still confused ... MAKE SOMETHING UP! (I give you my permission.)
There are a million novels and sourcebooks and modules released over the years for the Realms. Unless your players are Realms historians or Ed Greenwood himself, nobody is going to know.
Ok cool! I've seen that at my FLGS but I was told it was a book for players wanting to participate in Adventurer's league(?) and that I didn't need it. I'll have to pick it up, thanks for the info! Does 5e build off the story of previous editions?
It is the only book available for 5th edition that details any part of the Forgotten Realms with the exception of whatever appears in the adventure modules. With that said, you can go to the dmsguild website and buy either the 3rd edition or 4th edition Forgotten Realms book. I can't really recommend one over the other as they both have failures when playing 5th edition. 3rd doesn't detail the events that resulted because of the spellplague and 4th provides information about it that has kinda been undone now.
The SCAG is the primary source. I'd also use the FR Campaign Setting Book and the Player's Guide to Faerun from 3.5. sure the 3.5 stuff is a bit outdated, but I look at it like a history book.
This thread might be a little old (found it while searching for something else), but if you are interested in Forgotten Realms lore, a good site is youtube! There's a channel by a guy "Jorphdan" that I've been using to get caught up. The Realms have big shakeups every time a new edition of D&D is released where in-story things happen that explain or are supported by rules changes so the realms are not the same today as they were when I stopped playing several editions go. Going through the official D&D podcasts were useful to me too, when I started DMing for 5e. All of the recent ones have a section called "Lore you should know." where the designers talk about a monster, city, or famous Realms NPC. If worst comes to worst, google it. If you are still confused ... MAKE SOMETHING UP! (I give you my permission.)
There are a million novels and sourcebooks and modules released over the years for the Realms. Unless your players are Realms historians or Ed Greenwood himself, nobody is going to know.
I'll second this, both the Jorphdan videos and the "Lore you should now" segments of the Dragon Talk podcast have a lot of good content. I think there may now be another "history of forgotten realms" Youtube channel, as well.
Another good way to go is to check out the older editions' material on the Forgotten Realms, including the 1e and 2e boxed sets; these are now available relatively cheap as PDFs from Drivethrurpg. The history has technically "moved forward" since these sources, but you still get tons of great stuff, and honestly, you could choose to ignore a lot of that history (the spell plague (w/ the introduction of 4e) and the sundering (w/ the introduction of 5e, essentially undoing the spell plague)... they really don't have to play any role in a home campaign whatsoever... and campaigns may be better for ignoring them.)
This thread might be a little old (found it while searching for something else), but if you are interested in Forgotten Realms lore, a good site is youtube! There's a channel by a guy "Jorphdan" that I've been using to get caught up. The Realms have big shakeups every time a new edition of D&D is released where in-story things happen that explain or are supported by rules changes so the realms are not the same today as they were when I stopped playing several editions go. Going through the official D&D podcasts were useful to me too, when I started DMing for 5e. All of the recent ones have a section called "Lore you should know." where the designers talk about a monster, city, or famous Realms NPC. If worst comes to worst, google it. If you are still confused ... MAKE SOMETHING UP! (I give you my permission.)
There are a million novels and sourcebooks and modules released over the years for the Realms. Unless your players are Realms historians or Ed Greenwood himself, nobody is going to know.
I'll second this, both the Jorphdan videos and the "Lore you should now" segments of the Dragon Talk podcast have a lot of good content. I think there may now be another "history of forgotten realms" Youtube channel, as well.
Another good way to go is to check out the older editions' material on the Forgotten Realms, including the 1e and 2e boxed sets; these are now available relatively cheap as PDFs from Drivethrurpg. The history has technically "moved forward" since these sources, but you still get tons of great stuff, and honestly, you could choose to ignore a lot of that history (the spell plague (w/ the introduction of 4e) and the sundering (w/ the introduction of 5e, essentially undoing the spell plague)... they really don't have to play any role in a home campaign whatsoever... and campaigns may be better for ignoring them.)
This is why I recommend the 3.5e stuff. it's more or less still true (some people/gods are dead, but history is mostly unchanged). and it came with a nice resources trading map.
The resource trading map sounds really cool. I'll have to look for it. That's in the player's guide? It looks like that, too, is available in PDF. I skipped everything between 2e and 5e (didn't play for over 15 years), so I'm not familiar with the 3.X resources... and I just have really fond memories of the 1e and 2e FR resources.
old post, but in case anyone else comes across this, AJ Pickett, on youtube has a HUGE collection of videos where he breaks down the monsters and races of faerun, he's got Tons of videos, for last 5 years, he's also a crafter so has some fun stuff there too. i think it was already mentioned but Jorphdan is pretty good too, though he's not been doing videos as long so his library is smaller, but just as good.
The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide is OK. But it's only one part of the Forgotten Realms. It's pretty light on lore and history. I suggest either the 2e or 3e campaign setting books. You can then supplement it with the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide to fill the in blanks after 1360s. The 3rd Edition Campaign Setting Book is great, but it's also very big at 300+ pages and a bit daunting.
If you're a newbie and want something you can actually digest quickly, I suggest A Grand Tour of the Realms, by Ed Greenwood and Jeff Grubb. It was for Second Edition, but it is mostly edition less. It is only 128 pages and gives you a general history and intro to all the regions of Faerûn, not just the Sword Coast. You can find the book by itself on ebay for a reasonable price. You can get a PDF as part of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting Revised (2e) on DMsGuild. It's date only goes to the 1360s I think. One of the other books in that box set has NPCs and gods, which are also good.
I'm coming in as a new DM that started a game in the Innistrad universe because I am far more familiar with the lore of MtG. There is also a great book that covers all of the Innistrad lore called the Art of Innistrad in addition to the Plane Shift Innistrad primer. That was great for my one campaign, but I wanted to run another one as the first could only meet twice a month. The other group wanted something more High Fantasy than gothic horror so I got the Princes of the Apocalypse adventure because the story arch sounded really cool.
However, I'm having a lot of trouble with the book. I'm new to adventure books and am having a real hard time understanding the content enough to run the game competently. I think it's something to do with it being rather open world, you kind of have to be familiar with all of the adventure before you start. I tried looking for reference sheets and the like but haven't found anything too helpful. So I decided to just take the story and elements to make a homebrewed version, and starting with that idea I started looking into the The Elder Elemental Eye, which lead me down a rabbit hole of Wiki pages that started to blur together.
So Is there a primer out there that gives a rundown of important events, gods, characters, history, etc. for the Forgotten Realms? I am fan-fiction writer trash and I love writing in a world as opposed to having to make my own so I'd rather be as true to the lore as possible. I'm also not sure this is the right forum to ask but I didn't see a better one >_<
For 5th edition, there is the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, which provides geography, story, religion information and more about the Sword Coast.
Ok cool! I've seen that at my FLGS but I was told it was a book for players wanting to participate in Adventurer's league(?) and that I didn't need it. I'll have to pick it up, thanks for the info! Does 5e build off the story of previous editions?
I always use the FR Wiki to look up info - https://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page - people have added information from Hardcovers, adventurers, novels, computer games and of course from Ed Greenwood himself.
PotA takes place in 1491 DR (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/1491_DR) which is pretty much a year before the current timeline (give or take a bit). The adventurer is very sandbox though, feel free to change and adjust things to make it exciting (and remember, you as the DM should also be having fun). I'm sure if you get stuck for lore/knowledge or need help with tweaking there are many on this forum that would gladly offer assistance. :)
Site Rules & Guidelines || How to Tooltip || Contact Support || Changelog || Pricing FAQ || Homebrew FAQ
If you have questions/concerns, please Private Message me or another moderator.
Wary the wizard who focuses on homebrew, for he can create nightmares that you wouldn't even dream of
The Grand History of the Realms is a good place to start. It ends at the spellplague, but most people prefer to pretend it never happened. After that you can pick up The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide and that will give you an idea of what happens after the spell plague - Everything returns to normal. They just swept the whole thing under a carpet. If you want a more novel approach to the history of the Realms you can try The Avatar series, the Elminster series, The Rage series, and finally (if you want to read everything from a character that experienced nearly all the events) The 23 book Drizzt series.
Site Rules & Guidelines --- Focused Feedback Mega Threads --- Staff Quotes --- Homebrew Tutorial --- Pricing FAQ
Please feel free to message either Sorce or another moderator if you have any concerns.
Thank you so much! That is in fact the wiki I spent 4 hours reading before realizing I was reading about events and characters my players would never meet X I am having a lot of fun DMing, in fact I dove so far into D&D that 3 months ago I'd never played once and now I'm painting an army of minis and writing all kinds of crazy adventures with eldritch monsters and Heists during masquerades.
I recently started this group off and they were very much looking for something more along the lines of Tolkien than Bram Stoker so I've been adapting. My main idea for turning this adventure into a campaign is to extend the goals of the princes. My idea is that they're going to be freed as a means of freeing Tharizdun and my players are going to try and stop them. But even if they do Tharizdun's avatar Shothragot is going to be collecting the 333 gems to release him by another means. And there's only going to be one chance to stop him before he regains all his power.
This thread might be a little old (found it while searching for something else), but if you are interested in Forgotten Realms lore, a good site is youtube! There's a channel by a guy "Jorphdan" that I've been using to get caught up. The Realms have big shakeups every time a new edition of D&D is released where in-story things happen that explain or are supported by rules changes so the realms are not the same today as they were when I stopped playing several editions go. Going through the official D&D podcasts were useful to me too, when I started DMing for 5e. All of the recent ones have a section called "Lore you should know." where the designers talk about a monster, city, or famous Realms NPC. If worst comes to worst, google it. If you are still confused ... MAKE SOMETHING UP! (I give you my permission.)
There are a million novels and sourcebooks and modules released over the years for the Realms. Unless your players are Realms historians or Ed Greenwood himself, nobody is going to know.
The SCAG is the primary source. I'd also use the FR Campaign Setting Book and the Player's Guide to Faerun from 3.5. sure the 3.5 stuff is a bit outdated, but I look at it like a history book.
The resource trading map sounds really cool. I'll have to look for it. That's in the player's guide? It looks like that, too, is available in PDF. I skipped everything between 2e and 5e (didn't play for over 15 years), so I'm not familiar with the 3.X resources... and I just have really fond memories of the 1e and 2e FR resources.
well, it's online. you can do a google search.
old post, but in case anyone else comes across this, AJ Pickett, on youtube has a HUGE collection of videos where he breaks down the monsters and races of faerun, he's got Tons of videos, for last 5 years, he's also a crafter so has some fun stuff there too. i think it was already mentioned but Jorphdan is pretty good too, though he's not been doing videos as long so his library is smaller, but just as good.
The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide is OK. But it's only one part of the Forgotten Realms. It's pretty light on lore and history. I suggest either the 2e or 3e campaign setting books. You can then supplement it with the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide to fill the in blanks after 1360s. The 3rd Edition Campaign Setting Book is great, but it's also very big at 300+ pages and a bit daunting.
If you're a newbie and want something you can actually digest quickly, I suggest A Grand Tour of the Realms, by Ed Greenwood and Jeff Grubb. It was for Second Edition, but it is mostly edition less. It is only 128 pages and gives you a general history and intro to all the regions of Faerûn, not just the Sword Coast. You can find the book by itself on ebay for a reasonable price. You can get a PDF as part of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting Revised (2e) on DMsGuild. It's date only goes to the 1360s I think. One of the other books in that box set has NPCs and gods, which are also good.