Forgotten Realms is a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy role-playing game. Commonly referred to by players and game designers as "The Realms", it was created by game designer Ed Greenwood around 1967 as a setting for his childhood stories. Several years later, it was published for the D&D game as a series of magazine articles, and the first Realms game products were released in 1987. Role-playing game products have been produced for the setting ever since, in addition to novels, role-playing video game adaptations (including the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game to use graphics), comic books, the Forgotten Realms play-by-mail game, and the film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

Forgotten Realms is a fantasy world setting, described as a world of strange lands, dangerous creatures, and mighty deities, where magic and supernatural phenomena are very real. The premise is that, long ago, planet Earth and the world of the Forgotten Realms were more closely connected. As time passed, the inhabitants of Earth had mostly forgotten about the existence of that other world – hence the name Forgotten Realms. The original Forgotten Realms logo, which was used until 2000, had small runic letters that read "Herein lie the lost lands" as an allusion to the connection between the two worlds.

Forgotten Realms is one of the most popular D&D settings, largely due to the success of novels by authors such as R. A. Salvatore and numerous role-playing video games, including Pool of Radiance (1988), Eye of the Beholder (1991), Icewind Dale (2000), the Neverwinter Nights and the Baldur's Gate series.

Creative origins

thumb|Ed Greenwood in 2012

Ed Greenwood began writing stories about the Forgotten Realms as a child, starting at the age of eight. Greenwood discovered the Dungeons & Dragons game in 1975, and became a serious role-playing enthusiast with the first Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) game releases in 1978. Greenwood then starting using the setting for his personal role-playing campaign. Greenwood began a Realms campaign in the city of Waterdeep before creating a group known as the Knights of Myth Drannor in the Shadowdale region. Greenwood felt that his players' thirst for detail made the Realms what it is: "They want it to seem real, and work on 'honest jobs' and personal activities, until the whole thing grows into far more than a casual campaign. Roleplaying always governs over rules, and the adventures seem to develop themselves."

Starting in 1979, Greenwood published a series of articles that detailed the setting in The Dragon (later Dragon) magazine, the first of which was about a monster known as the curst. When Gary Gygax "lost control of TSR in 1985, the company saw an opportunity to move beyond Greyhawk and introduce a new default setting". He sent TSR a few dozen cardboard boxes stuffed with pencil notes and maps, and sold all rights to the setting for a token fee.

Publication history

1985–1990

In 1985, the AD&D module Bloodstone Pass was released by TSR and is retroactively considered to be a part of the Forgotten Realms, although it was not until the module The Bloodstone Wars was released that it became the official setting for the module series. Douglas Niles had worked on a novel trilogy with a Celtic theme, which were then altered to become the first novels set in the Forgotten Realms, starting with Darkwalker on Moonshae (1987).

The Forgotten Realms Campaign Set was later released in 1987 as a boxed set of two source books (Cyclopedia of the Realms and DM's Sourcebook of the Realms) and four large color maps, designed by Greenwood in collaboration with Grubb. It sold ca. one hundred fifty thousand times in its first two years. The set introduced the campaign setting and explained how to use it,

TSR began incorporating elements by other designers into the Forgotten Realms, including the Moonshae Isles by Douglas Niles, the "Desert of Desolation" by Tracy Hickman and Laura Hickman, and Kara-Tur by Zeb Cook. The module Under Illefarn published in 1987 is set in the Forgotten Realms, Drizzt has since appeared in more than seventeen subsequent novels, many of which have appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list. In 1988, the first in a line of Forgotten Realms role-playing video games, Pool of Radiance, was released by Strategic Simulations, Inc. The game was popular and won the Origins Award for "Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game of 1988".

Several supplements to the original boxed set were released under the first edition rules, beginning with Waterdeep and the North, The Ruins of Undermountain (1991) was one of the first published mega-dungeons. 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 led to the setting being hailed as one of the most successful shared fantasy universes of the 1990s. By the first quarter of 1996, TSR had published sixty-four novels set in the Forgotten Realms out of the 242 novels set in AD&D worlds. These novels in turn sparked interest in role-playing by new gamers.

Numerous Forgotten Realms video games were released between 1990 and 2000. Eye of the Beholder for MS-DOS was released in 1990, which was followed by two sequels: the first in 1991, and the second in 1992. All three games were re-released for MS-DOS compatible operating systems on a single disk in 1995. Another 1991 release was Neverwinter Nights on America Online, the first graphical massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). In 1998, Baldur's Gate, the first in a line of popular role-playing video games developed by BioWare and "considered by most pundits as the hands-down best PC roleplaying game ever", was released. An official material update and a timeline advance were introduced to the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition in 2001 with the release of the hardcover book the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, The timeline was officially advanced from 1358 DR to 1372 DR. The event moved the fictional world's timeline 94 years into the future to 1479 DR. Laura Tommervik, from the Wizards of the Coast marketing team, explained the approach: "We use Neverwinter as the connective tissue across multiple product categories. The transmedia campaign is an opportunity for fans to experience the brand however they choose to". This release included a weekly D&D Encounters in-store play event, a free-to-play mobile game Arena of War (2013), a social networking app called the Sundering Adventurer's Chronicles, and a collaborative novel series: The Companions (2013) by R. A. Salvatore, The Godborn (2013) by Paul S. Kemp, The Adversary (2013) by Erin Evans, The Reaver (2014) by Richard Lee Byers, The Sentinel (2014) by Troy Denning, and The Herald (2014) by Ed Greenwood. Liz Schuh, Head of Publishing and Licensing for Dungeons & Dragons, said:<blockquote>The Sundering is the last of a series of ground-shaking events. It really affects the whole world of the Forgotten Realms in a major way. You may remember when the Spell Plagues began, the two worlds of the Forgotten Realms, Abeir and Toril, crashed together. That created both geographic changes (the map of the Forgotten Realms and Faerûn actually changed due to that collision), and also changed the way magic works. It changed the pantheon of the gods. The Sundering is all about those two worlds separating—coming apart—and the process of that separation is really the story that we're telling over the next year. At the end of this story arc, Abeir and Toril will be separate again, and many of the things that happened when they crashed together will go back to the way they were before. So magic will be much like it was before the Spell Plague. Markings that marked spell-plagued people and animals will fade and go away. It's really about moving the Forgotten Realms forward, but also about bringing it around to the most beloved and most fondly remembered Forgotten Realms.</blockquote> The result of The Second Sundering, in game terms, was the transition from 4th edition rules to 5th edition rules of Dungeons & Dragons, published in 2014.

2014–2024

When D&D 5th edition was published in 2014, Wizards of the Coast announced that the Forgotten Realms would continue to serve as the official campaign setting for its upcoming published adventure materials. The village of Phandalin in the Forgotten Realms acted as the primary setting for the new 5th edition Starter Set (2014) which was published before the release of three new core rulebooks. "Tyranny of Dragons" was the first multimedia storyline for the new edition and included two adventure modules, Hoard of the Dragon Queen (2014) and The Rise of Tiamat (2014), and an update to the Neverwinter (2013) video game. The next two storylines, "Elemental Evil" which included Princes of the Apocalypse (2015) and "Rage of Demons" which included Out of the Abyss (2015), were also set in the Forgotten Realms.

The first campaign guide for the new edition, the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide (2015), was released on November 3, 2015, and only covered a fraction of the Forgotten Realms. The video game Sword Coast Legends (2015) published by Digital Extremes was also released in the same month as the tabletop campaign guide. The adventure module Storm King's Thunder (2016) "sprawls over the northern Forgotten Realms–from Waterdeep to Icewind Dale". 5th edition details on "the rest of Faerûn had been untouched until the Tomb of Annihilation (2017), an adventure that leaves the northern Sword Coast for the southern jungles of Chult".

In 2023, the Forgotten Realms role-playing video game Baldur's Gate 3 (2023) was released by Larian Studios. It had record-breaking awards success such as becoming the first game to win Game of the Year, or the equivalent category, at all five major ceremonies: the Golden Joystick Awards, the Game Developers Choice Awards, the DICE Awards, the BAFTAs, and The Game Awards. Also released in 2023 was the film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves which is set in the Forgotten Realms and features Neverwinter as a major location.

2024–present

Dungeons & Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Tavern is a stage production which combines actual play, improv, and immersive theater as the player cast navigate a Dungeons & Dragons adventure set in the Forgotten Realms. It officially opened on off-Broadway on May 5, 2024, at Stage 42 in New York City; it closed on May 11, 2025. In December 2024, it opened at the Sydney Opera House's Studio venue in Sydney; it closed on April 6, 2025. The U.S. national tour began in July 2025. Two Forgotten Realms focused sourcebooks – Heroes of Faerûn (2025) and Adventures in Faerûn (2025) – were scheduled released in November 2025. Following the announcement of these sourcebooks, Game Rant noted that "outside the brief documentation for many areas in the Storm King's Thunder adventure, the only real sourcebook the [Forgotten Realms] setting saw [in 5th Edition] was the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide". Heroes of Faerûn (2025) is aimed at players and "will include new subclasses, feats, backgrounds, items, along with new rules for Circle magic, a gazeteer-style guide to the Realms, a guide to the gods of the Realms, and more information about the factions that rule Faerûn".

Fictional setting

The focus of the Forgotten Realms setting is the continent of Faerûn, the western part of a continent that was roughly modeled after the Eurasian continent on Earth. It was first detailed in the original Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, published in 1987 by TSR. The other continents of Toril include Kara-Tur, Zakhara, Maztica, Kara-Tur, roughly corresponding to ancient East Asia, was later the focus of its own source book Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms, published in 1988. There is also a vast subterranean world called the Underdark beneath the surface.

Religion

Religion plays a large part in the Forgotten Realms, with deities and their followers being an integral part of the world. Deities interact directly in mortal affairs, answer prayers, and have their own personal agendas. All deities must have worshippers to survive, and all mortals must worship a patron deity to secure a good afterlife. A huge number of diverse deities exist within several polytheistic pantheons; a large number of supplements have documented many of them, some in more detail than others. Greenwood created a pantheon of gods for his home Dungeons & Dragons game, in his Forgotten Realms world, which were introduced in his article "Down-to-earth divinity" from Dragon #54 (October 1981).<!-- According to the article, these consisted at the time of: Auril, goddess of cold; Azuth, patron of magic users; Bane, god of strife, hatred, and tyranny; Beshaba, goddess of mischief, misfortune, ill luck, and accidents; Bhaal, god of death; Chauntea, goddess of agriculture; Deneir, god of literature and art; Eldath, goddess of waterfalls, springs, streams, pools, stillness, peace, quiet places, and guardian of druids' groves; Gond, god of blacksmiths, artificers, crafts, and construction; Helm, god of guardians; Ilmater, god of endurance, suffering, martyrdom, and perseverance; Lathander, god of spring, dawn, conception, vitality, eternal youth, renewal, self-perfection, and beginnings; Leira, goddess of deception and illusion; Lliira, goddess of joy, carefree feeling, contentment, release, hospitality, happiness, dance, and patron of festivals; Loviatar, goddess of pain, hurt, and patron of torturers; Malar, god of wild, marauding beasts, bloodlust, and hunting; Mask, god of thieves and intrigue; Mielikki, goddess of forests, dryads, and patron of rangers; Milil, god of poetry, eloquence, and song; Myrkul, god of the dead,

When the Forgotten Realms was published as a setting in 1987, the pantheon added Waukeen, the goddess of trade, money, and wealth, who was created by one of Jeff Grubb's players, and added to the Forgotten Realms by Grubb. Tyche was replaced with Tymora, and the elemental lords from Melniboné were replaced by Akadi, Grumbar, Istishia, and Kossuth.

Much of the history of the Forgotten Realms detailed in novels and source books concerns the actions of various deities and The Chosen (mortal representatives with a portion of their deities' power) such as Elminster, Fzoul Chembryl, Midnight (who later became the new embodiment of the goddess of magic, Mystra

Characters

The setting is home to several noteworthy recurring characters that have gained wider reception, including:

  • The Companions of the Hall, a group of adventurers that were created by R. A. Salvatore and introduced in The Crystal Shard (1988). Each of these characters "fit into an RPG archetype". They include:
  • Drizzt Do'Urden, a drow, or dark elf, ranger who is the main character of 34 novels. Drizzt as a character is often used to represent issues of racial prejudice, particularly in The Dark Elf Trilogy. Drizzt is also troubled by the lifespan discrepancy between himself and his human romantic interest Catti-Brie.
  • Wulfgar, a massive human barbarian; in The Crystal Shard, Wulfgar's combat prowess is significant enough that along with Drizzt and his magic panther Guenhwyvar, they manage to "beat 25 giants by themselves".
  • Bruenor Battlehammer, a dwarven fighter who retakes Mithral Hall with the help of the other Companions and becomes its king. in The Crystal Shard, Drizzt referred to her as his soulmate.
  • Regis, a halfling member of the Companions, who behaves in the stereotypical manner of J.R.R. Tolkien's hobbits. Bricken noted that Regis is a rogue who "set himself apart a bit by carrying a crystal pendant he can use to charm people", though he is sometimes forced into dangerous situations and "ends up saving the day, Bilbo-style", such as in the final battle of The Crystal Shard. he is "a founding member of the Harpers and one of the oldest surviving and most powerful Chosen of Mystra". The Harpers are a semi-secret organization; Jonathan Palmer, for Arcane magazine, called them "Laudable" and commented that they are "fighters for freedom and justice". Bricken described Elminster as "the most powerful, important, and smartest wizard in the Forgotten Realms, and one of the setting's most important characters [...] more Merlin than Gandalf, which makes him less enigmatic and prone to tomfoolery than other major fantasy wizards, which I count as a good thing".
  • Volothamp Geddarm, a human adventurer who is famed within the setting Faerûn for the number of guidebooks he writes about the various regions within the Realms. The character's name is often attributed in real-world D&D publications as the in-universe narrator of said works. Paul Pettengale from Arcane described him as "one of those characters that everyone's heard about, and one that just about every Dungeon Master must have been tempted to introduce to their campaign at some point or another".
  • Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun, developed by Greenwood and game designer Steven Schend, is a character noted for his appearances in several novels set in the Forgotten Realms, A powerful wizard renowned for his namesake staff, in earlier editions he is the Archmage of Waterdeep, leading member of the Harpers, and one of Mystra's Chosen.
  • , also a character by R. A. Salvatore, was introduced in the 1990 novel Exile. He also appears in Promise of the Witch King, Road of the Patriarch and The Pirate King, as well as The Sellswords and the Paths of Darkness trilogies. Described by Christian Hoffer from Comicbook.com as a popular and intriguing supporting character, Jarlaxle is the charismatic and opportunistic drow leader of the mercenary band Bregan D'aerthe. Anglistics scholar Caroline de Launay characterized Jarlaxle as an independent character inclined to "subtle manoeuvres", while Hoffer explained that he is an amoral villain who has "plenty of contingencies and secret plots".
  • Artemis Entreri, a human assassin described by Bricken as "cold-blooded" and Drizzt's "equal in fighting and opposite in morality", a mirror image of how Drizzt would have ended up if he had remained part of the universally evil drow society instead of forsaking it.
  • Gromph Baenre is Archmage of the city of Menzoberranzan, the City of Spiders. Gromph is a rival in power to the other archmages of the Forgotten Realms, such as Elminster and Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun. In a review of the 1995 novel Daughter of the Drow, Gideon Kibblewhite for Arcane, called Gromph the "only interesting character" in the book, describing him as "the bitter and twisted archmage", and lamented that "he rarely makes an appearance after the opening".
  • Liriel Baenre is the daughter of Gromph Baenre; she originally belonged to House Vandree before her talent for arcane spellcasting was discovered by Gromph. After being sent away to hone her magical talent rather than study as a priestess, Liriel uses a book given by her father to travel to the surface lands, where she encounters followers of the goddess Eilistraee, the Dark Maiden of benevolent drow, comes to possess the magical artifact known as the Windwalker, and eventually settle down on the surface world permanently. Liriel was created by Elaine Cunningham for Daughter of the Drow, and is described by Trenton Webb of Arcane as "the oddest Drow" due to her lack of traits deemed as stereotypical of her people.
  • Erevis Cale, first introduced in the short story "Another Name For Dawn" published in issue 277 of Dragon magazine, is a pivotal character in novels by Paul S. Kemp, including The Halls of Stormweather, Shadows Witness, the Erevis Cale Trilogy, and The Twilight War trilogy. Originally a normal human, he accepts the gift of the Fane of Shadows in Twilight Falling and becomes a shade; being imbued with the essence of matter integral to the Plane of Shadow brings about drastic changes to his appearance and physiology. Don D'Ammassa described Erevis Cale as "a man tormented by questions of right and wrong".
  • Alustriel Silverhand is the ruler of the city of Silverymoon in "The North" of the setting. Writing in 2000, ' magazine reviewer Stylo counted her among the most prominent Forgotten Realms characters thanks to R.A. Salvatore's novels.
  • Szass Tam is a lich and leader of the Red Wizards of Thay.

Reception

In his book The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible, Sean Patrick Fannon describes the Forgotten Realms as being "the most ambitious fantasy game setting published since Tekumel", Over time these novels have gained "unprecedented popularity", which led, as Marc Oxoby noted in his book, The 1990s, to the novels having an "extraordinary shelf life", remaining in print for many years. D&D chroniclers Michael Witwer et al., in the book Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana, noted that the "level of Tolkienesque history and detail that Greenwood had infused in his creation - and almost "real world" quality - granted the Realms an irresistible allure [...]. While at its core the Forgotten Realms is a familiar, almost traditional, medieval-styled fantasy setting, it boasted unprecedented scope". "It is, quite simply, Dungeons & Dragons at its very core." Brian Silliman, for SYFY Wire in 2017, described the Forgotten Realms as "a classic fantasy backdrop" and highlighted that "at one time in our history, our world and this one were connected, but over time this magical realm was, well, forgotten. It is an ideal place for any D&D adventure, inspiring limitless possibilities for any smirking dungeon master". In 2019, academic Philip J. Clements called the "highly popular" Forgotten Realms "an unusually well-developed D&D setting" and "more-or-less the flagship setting for D&D". He also noted that it has received the greatest number of supplements.

In a retrospective on the legacy of Dungeons & Dragons, academic Daniel Heath Justice commented that the "Forgotten Realms was explicitly based on the civilized-versus-savage binary and leaned in hard on racial essentialism in its sadistic black-skinned drow led by vicious matriarchs and their terrible spider goddess, firmly melding anti-Blackness with misogyny, a once-civilized people gone feral under the debased rule of women".

Edition updates

The 4th edition update to the Forgotten Realms brought massive lore changes which were "tied to a number of other design philosophies" and the Forgotten Realms "simultaneously had become a grittier setting, on the edge of collapse, while also becoming a more fantastic one, full of wonder and mystery". Jason Wilson, for VentureBeat, highlighted that unlike the Time of Troubles cataclysm, the 4th edition Spellplague cataclysm was "one players never embraced in the same manner as the earlier disaster". Shannon Appelcline, author of Designers & Dragons, wrote:

<blockquote>[The 4th edition] Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide may be the most controversial D&D book ever produced by Wizards. That's entirely due to the large-scale destruction of the Realms. Similar updates have been tried by other companies — to reinvigorate settings, to make them more accessible to new players, or to make them more adventuresome. [...] It never seems to go well, because old fans feel left behind. With that said, some folks did love the changes, because the setting was now more playable, more accessible, more fantastic, and more PC centered. [...] Meanwhile, a series of adventures and novels called The Sundering (2013–2014) reversed many of the 4e changes to the Realms, but without rebooting the timeline. Instead, the Realms continues to evolve and advance, as it has since its earlier days. <blockquote>[B]asically, we authors were handed a document and told how things were going to be. We were asked our opinions, but they mattered very little – the changes were being driven from a different direction. [...] To have characters that have built such a strong history, then have that upset on the orders of someone else was very disconcerting. I will admit that the abrupt changes forced me into an uncomfortable place, and from that place came some of the better things I've written, but I very much preferred the way it was done this time, with 5th Edition and the changes, where we, the authors, were told what was happening to the game and asked how we could make the world and the lore live and breathe it.</blockquote>Christian Hoffer, for ComicBook.com, reported that Wizards of the Coast's 5th edition publishing strategy, which focuses on the Forgotten Realms and newer intellectual property for campaign settings, has created a rift in the fan base where some "feel that this push for new players has come at the cost of keeping the game's current players sated" by not updating campaign settings that "predate the Forgotten Realms". Hoffer highlighted that Wizards of the Coast has a much slower publication schedule than with previous editions with a focus on quality and profit and "the D&D teams knows that they have plenty of great campaign settings in their back pocket and are either actively developing more settings or have ideas for them further down the line". Francesco Cacciatore of Polygon noted that the 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (2001) sourcebook was "an ambitious attempt at a comprehensive look at the Realms, and while many locations remained sketched, it was still enough to feed our imagination (and campaigns) for decades".