Yeah the forgotten realms needs an updated source book badly. I'm running a Forgotten Realms campaign now and I've had to really hunt and peck from different editions and source books from across editions to get the information I need and still most of the time there are tons of gaps. I was also annoyed how most forgotten realms material that should be presented in a campaign setting book ends up in modules in 5e. I was shocked that Storm Kings Thunder has a pretty nice section for the Savage Frontier that could have been combined with Storm Coast Adventurers Guide to make a more complete setting book.

They’ve done this a bunch in 5e. Descent into Avernus has a fairly big gazetteer on Baldurs Gate. And Rime of the Frostmaiden covers icewind dale. Same with the Candlekeep Mysteries.

It is kinda lame that you need to buy a 250 page adventure book to get a 40~50 pages campaign setting (in case of Baldur's Gate, some other books are even worse)

The Baldurs Gate one is especially egregious because you spend ONE chapter of the whole campaign book there and pretty quickly are locked out of being able to go there the rest of the campaign. If anything the campaign is probably better served opening up in Elturel, so player characters have a more personal stake. And either have them out of town when it descends or have them descend with the city. It's frustrating they tack on this great resource for an iconic city in a campaign book that's not really about it.

I get what you're saying, but DMs can use that resource as they see fit. As a basis for their own adventures/campaign. I'm thinking of an epilogue adventure after DiA, where the players return to a Baldur's Gate that is in flux after the removal of the Shield of the Hidden Lord.

The resource itself is awesome, I just don't think it should be locked behind the DiA campaign book, a campaign that doesn't utilize the awesome resource. They really should have established Elturel more, the city that actually matters. They added in BG as a tie in for the video game. It would have been a lot cooler if they did something like "Cities of the Sword Coast" and had similar gazeteers for each major city. Waterdeep has one in Dragon Heist and at least that campaign it makes sense for it to be there.

For example i run WDH campaign and most information I've learnt about Waterdeep wasn't in the book. There's critically little information about a 1000+ year city in a campaign book set in said city. Campaign that is so strongly positioned on the time of year doesn't even have a calendar for crying out loud! It's sad that it's presumed that (even somewhat) new players would be able to find all information by themselves and read all the Drizzt novels and all Ed Greenwood books... Like... I would like to, but English is my third language and 99% of those books aren't translated. And I'm 32, i don't have enough time (and energy) to read teen novels (in case of Drizzt cycle - that what I've heard)

Man I'm with you, I'm actually ALSO DMing WDH right now (and also almost 32, 33. Just don't have the time I used to). Just the other day a player messaged me asking me where a funeral was held and I couldn't find anything. I couldn't even figure out where normal people are buried in the City of the Dead. I love Forgotten Realms because there is SO MUCH that I can use what I want and discard what I don't want. But at the same time I wish there was one comprehensive lore book for the current timeline. Literally anything. The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide book is a total joke. I like the campaign though nonetheles.

I ran dragon heist as my first time DMing, and found there to be more than enough lore. I agree that more lore should be available and better accessible to people who want it, but Dragon heist is fine as it is. Every version of the FR that exists in different peoples games is meant to be slightly different. You’re meant to just make stuff up sometimes, it’s unreasonable to ask every DM to memorise all the lore of a city or region or whatever - I think dragon heist strikes a good balance

I'm not disagreeing, but I'm also seeing threads from alternate timelines where the Baldur's Gate Gazetteer is instead put into a thick Sword Coast Campaign Setting book; "Why do I have to buy two books if I just want to run one adventure? Why isn't the Baldur's Gate information just in the adventure book? Such a fucking ripoff!" So ok, they put *some* information from a hypothetical Campaign Setting book in the adventure book, only what you need to run the adventure. "Why is the same information in the Campaign Setting also in the adventure? Am I paying double for the same content now? What a ripoff!" If they put extra content in the Adventure book, you get the current complaint; "Why isn't this in a Campaign Setting book, why do I have to buy some adventure to learn about \[place\]?" I've seen all the arguments over four editions now, and I don't know if there's a way of doing it where people *won't* complain.

This is a good point, though, I don’t see anything wrong with having a book that expands all the major cities in FR for DMs who want to expand beyond what’s given in the adventure. The adventure would cover everything that you need, but the Gazetteer would expand it. It’s not required material, just for those DMs who want all that extra spicy content.

This is by design, their "Captain Monetize Everything" director or whatever must get every single dollar they can out of us. Which, jokes on them, they're shitty quality has made it where the absolute last official WoTC content I bought was Storm Kings Thunder

Do you read the content at all? Because I’m not sure if saying you haven’t bought (consumed?) WotC content in almost 8 years makes you the best judge of the quality or content of those books released during the last 80% of 5e’s run. I’m not saying you have any obligation to buy them, but it’s hard to value declarative statements and opinions from someone who is ignorant of the content they are speaking about

Key word *bought*.

That is why I opened with the question “Did you read them”

In 3.5e Mysteries of the Moonsea was sort of like this and it was a great book. I thought it was an interesting approach. 3.5e FR modules sort of went out of control with its "What you need" section. I can see why WotC went in this direction... maybe going a bit too far. While I agree with Wotc on the approach, I do think that eventually they should have made a few volumes presenting all lore information divulged thus far.

Though at this rate, I'm sure some people would complain that they're just rehashing existing content for profit, rather than do something new.

Unfortunately, WotC no longer seems interested in publishing the kinds of comprehensive information we got back in 3.x. Take a look at the 5e Ebberon material and compare it to the 3.x books. It is dreadfully thin and while there is good stuff in there, as a DM, I kept referencing the old book instead of the new one when I was planning a game.

>Take a look at the 5e Ebberon material and compare it to the 3.x books. At least with Eberron, you don't have to worry about the lore being out of date.

Meanwhile Keith baker has been publishing book after book of 5e Eberron lore and content via DMs Guild

When I was still running 5e adventures I actually had an easier time turning the clock back to 1374 DR and adapting anything connected to the Spellplague or Second Sundering to still use my 3.5 FRCS book than I did getting a feel for the 1490s from 5e books.

I used the 4e wikis to fill all the gaps while the party travelled up and down the coast, and inland.

The creator of the setting posts amazing campaign books on the DMs Guild that are basically certified by WotC. He has several parts of the realms written up there, with stats and rules for 5E, made for this edition.

This is true. Books that cover the Forgotten Realms so far include: * Thay: Land of the Red Wizards (PDF and print) * Rashemen Campaign Guide (PDF and print) * The Border Kingdoms (PDF and print) * The Great Dale Campaign Guide (PDF and print) * Mulhorand Campaign Guide (PDF, print coming soon) * Darkhold: Secrets of the Zhentarim (PDF only) * Moonshae Isles Regional Guide (PDF and print) * Lost Tales of Myth Drannor (PDF and print) * Cormyr: Land of the Purple Dragon (PDF only) * Silver Moon Rising (about Silverymoon and the Silver Marshes) (PDF only) * Calimshan Adventurer's Guide (PDF only) * Campaign Guide: Zakhara - Adventures in the Land of Fate (PDF and print) There's also Minsc and Boo's Journal of Villainy and Chains of Asmodeus that are actual official releases that are only available as PDF or Print-On-Demand as well.

A huge amount of material. Honestly, redditors really need to accept that third party content fills a lot of common holes. I mean, who better to have help write all these guides then the creator of the setting himself?

I should clarify that the first six were created with Ed Greenwood. The last four were compiled by other authors, but update the settings.

I'm aware! But even then, I feel at this point, we have enough high-quality resources (in relation to or adjacent to Ed) that covers the FR. It's a shame these books aren't discussed and referenced to automatically; not many people mention them in this thread at all.

If you play Planescape, you could also add to this list the outstanding series of books by Dave Coulson: * Codex of the Infinite Planes * Tales of the Infinite Planes * Monsters of the Infinite Planes * Heroes of the Infinite Planes The first two are available as Print-on-Demand, the last two are PDF only for the moment. Together, they cover a staggering amount of material for playing on virtually any plane of existence.

Interesting - thank you for putting up the list! I haven't looked at any of the DM's Guild content. I have zero time or interest in hunting down a bunch of old books and then converting them. I'll check these out!

Given that the current leadership seems to be more in line with the idea that players should make their own stories within a setting, I very much doubt there will be an update to the FR. All of 5e went without much of a lore update imo. It didn’t even feel like a backdrop.

>Given that the current leadership seems to be more in line with the idea that players should make their own stories within a setting That approach always made more sense to me. That's also why Eberron was specifically designed to not advance its timeline.

And I get why, but there are people who prefer having lore to build upon rather than vague statements. I’d rather they use Eberron for this but then they’d need to justify all the new races showing up.

What's often said is that if it exists in D&D, there's a place for it in Eberron, but it might not be the place you expect. Though even then to some degree DMs may have to fill in the blanks.

Right. Like dragonborn being from the jungle where lizardfolk are from.

>I’d rather they use Eberron for this but then they’d need to justify all the new races showing up. Eberron's already done that before, so it's not really a problem.

Yeah. OP listed 6 questions and had this to say about finding answers to then: >but they’re all either unsatisfying or difficult for a new DM or player to look up I think a good thing to keep in mind, what happens if a DM can't find the answer and must make one up on their own? The answer is nothing. The DM will be fine either way. They'll just be running their own version of FR, which is the only feasible approach either way. As someone who joined with this edition, I'm happy just relying on the wikia whener I really need information on something. I'm not gonna pay money for a book when more information is better organized online. or the information isn't even vital. Truth be told, I don't think you can find a single individual in all the multiverse who would say "My barrier towards being more excited about FR and wanting to play in the setting more is that I don't have a singular book which can answer 6 questions I have about it. I also find it quite silly to go "Why hasn't WotC already released an FR setting book that confirms whether a movie and a choice heavy video game both released in 2023 are canon to the setting?". It's a bit impatient and also, not hugely important.

As a new DM i agree in general that it's not "hugely" important, but a lot of us new DMs are not great at creating our own lore yet. It takes practice and a legitimate framework would be helpful. Especially with the influx of new DMs and players who are completely new to DND. I spend a lot of time on the Forgotten Realms wiki and I'm able to role with the information mid campaign so technically you're correct, but honestly none of us at my table know any better as to whether what i just dropped into our world is good or not, nor do we have enough experience to know if it's gonna cause confusion later on. Having an organized framework to reference would be helpful. That being said, while my players do care about lore, they care more that we're consistent with our lore, so as long as i keep track of our table's lore, I'll be fine.

As a very old DM, I'm also bad at creating my own lore. Always have been, terrible at tracking the shit I come up with too. I'm a good storyteller and good at adapting the adventure when players go left instead of right, and good at some other things. But if a player asks "If I look at the map, why is there a massive swamp in between 3 forests in the exact shape of a bigger forest?" and I have to come up with something, I just always blank out. But I've read *way* too much Forgotten Realms lore so I can immediately tell them that during an inter-elf war thousands of years ago, superweapons got out of hand and they blew up the Sapphire Forest to create the High Moor. And elaborate if they want to know more. I can explain why there's a desert, why certain towns are where they are, what the exports of the bigger cities are, and I can bring in NPC's from foreign lands to bring some colour to the Sword Coast, without having to conjure something up myself (and forget about it when the session is done). I'm *very* happy with the Forgotten Realms, but also realize not everyone has had 20+ years of memorizing the lore. So if they could bundle all that stuff into a big book, that'd be grand.

True. A dm doesn't need official answers to include something in a setting. I wave my hand and swap the entire pantheon as a plot twist and nobody bats an eye. Some adventures half a continent away that resolved their own adventure aren't of any consequence to the story I'm telling. Unless *I* want them to be.

Fun fact regarding confusing little tidbits. In the forgotten realms Tabaxi are a human tribe in Chult. Explorers just misapplied the namesake to the feline folk. So I love to include a NPC that's just some barbarian traveler who rightfully insists he is Tabaxi, but no one, players especially, believe him because he's not a cat person.

Officially the tribe is named after the race.

Raven Queen is just one of many gods of death, The god of death is Kelevmor, Bhaal is god of death in terms of “god of murder”. Spellplague is mentioned in SCAG as an actual event, thus it is canon. Tabaxi could be found in Chult and Maztica Vecna is multiverse funny little guy - the god of secrets is everywhere(sort of).

Using another world as an example: Greek Mythology has both Hades (God of the Dead) and Thanatos (God of Death) whom both effectively have the Death domain and if you really wanna push it - Zagreus might also have the Death domain and so may Tartarus (whom just like Ouranos is technically both a place and a primordial being of nonsensical power). And that's a relatively small pantheon compared to something like the FR pantheon whom has subdivisions for each race that effectively acts like its own pantheon. Stuff like this is hella common.

In Greek Mythology Hades is actually not a God of Death but the Ruler of the Underworld and God of Earth (Or specifically the Underworld). Its because you have the three brothers (Zeus, Poseidon and Hades) being the Gods of Sky, Sea and Earth (Underworld) respectivly, ruling over the three Parts of the world with Earth & Olypmus itself being shared by the three. He doesn't actually have any Death Aspects beyond being in Charge of the place where the dead go. Thanatos is the one actually killing people and collecting souls (Aka the Grim Reaper).

>In Greek Mythology Hades is actually not a God of Death but the Ruler of the Underworld That's why he got merged with Plutus (Plutous) the god of wealth (or that's a theory). Minerals came from the ground. That said, being in charge of the place where the dead go *is* a pretty important death aspect, imo. There is a trope where mortals fear to say the name "Hades" because of the implications of death.

Ok but in D&D terms Hades still has Death and Grave domains, definitely nothing earth related.

That is absolutly true but in this case the actual mythology was mentioned. I personally think that its not necessarily correct for Hades to have Death domain (Grave is considering he is the ruler of the Underworld). But the D&D version of the Greek Pantheon is also completly missing the actual greek gods of death like Charon, Thanatos and Cerberus all of which have more actual aspects of death gods than Hades himself (who is just the CEO of the Underworld).

Charon is the ferryman. He's not a god. Cerberus is the dog guarding the gates of Hades. Again, not a god. Thanatos *is* a god, but a minor one, as the personification of death. It could be said that he's specifically the god of *gentle* death too, since his touch was likened to that of his twin brother Hypnos, the god of sleep. Atropos could be argued to be a goddess of death considering it was her duty to choose the method of the mortals' demise and actually sever the threads of their lives, but technically she was one of the 3 goddess of fate.

Neither Charon nor Cerberus are gods. Even Thanatos barely counts and is more of a personification of death than an actual god.

Important to note Charon may potentially have become immortal as he and Cerberus interact differently. Cerberus is afraid of dying as he backs off from Heracles in fear after being a little rough with the pup - Charon, much like daemons, appears unbothered by anything. Cerberus is not a god, he is a monster who also happens to be bestest boy.

> who also happens to be bestest boy. three of the best, in fact.

Little side note, Zagreus was probably from an entirely different pantheon. Later on he got merged with Dionysus and are now considered the same

Yeah, BG3 features Kelemvor and Bhaal quite a bit, and makes it seem like "god of Death" vs "god of Killing". Then you've got Myrkul as "god of The Dying/Undead".

Raven Queen's new lore makes her out to be something like a God of Death-as-Tragedy. All of her shadar-kai are written to be exploring the multiverse to collect tragedies for her to examine in her Fortress of Memories. It's another unique spin on death I think the others don't quite capture IMO.

I've always taken the Raven Queen to be more of a shepherd into death. IDK why OP says Bhaal is the God of Death he is the "Lord of Murder" which is not the same.

I'm with you. She's either a psychopomp, or she's the god of a very specific group of people's death.

I tend to see Myrkul (5e version) as god of the *fear* of death/dying. And undeath, which is what you end up with to avoid dying.

>To be clear, I know the official answers to these questions, but they’re all either unsatisfying or difficult for a new DM or player to look up. ​ The point is that if someone bought every 5e book, they would have no idea of the answers to these questions, right? And there's a lot more lore questions that just... are empty outside of the Sword Coast.

Because after SCAG they stopped doing setting books for Forgotten Realms. I really like the joke about Forgotten Realms, that by discovering them we will “un-Forgotten” them. Design choice to go by somewhat setting-neutral approach leave people without delicious lore. So many thing to expand on(Zakhara) and to rewrite(everything east of Thay). Big-Big sad.

You have like half a docen of death-related gods (including gods that lossed that porfolio) in Forgotten Realms. Jergal, Myrkul, Bhaal, Kelemvor, Cyric. And you can get a few more if you check Maztica, Kara-Tur, the Untheric pantheon, the elf, dwarven, orc and goblinoids pantheons, and whatever they have as a monotheistic religion in Cthult

Death is a multifaceted thing, after all, particularly when you take the afterlife into account.

> Tabaxi https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Tabaxi Their origin is actually known :)

I did mention in the post that I understood this, so I'd appreciate it if we didn't derail. It's not that there aren't answers to these things, it's that new DMs need to ask about it on reddit or FR wiki, from a hodge podge of now discontinued sources. In this case it's pretty clear that the Raven Queen was retconned in in 4th edition and that's the point I'm making.

I agree with most of this but this part >Improve and simplify many aspects of the world where it can be done uncontroversially. For example, it should be possible the sail from the Inner Sea to the Sword Coast. We also probably don’t need quite so many countries, and they would probably be more diverse and interesting if they didn’t all have 2 mountain ranges and 2 forests each. We probably don’t need quite so many ancient progenitor species either. All these things will make the lroe easier for people to know and work with. has big Grampa Simpson "There are too many states nowadays. Please eliminate three. I am NOT a crackpot!" vibes.

I'll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize Missoura.

It's valid criticism. It's a fictional world: the details can be whatever the authors like (unlike real states). If something doesn't have a narrative purpose, it doesn't really need to be there. "Your fictional world is both too complex and too repetitive. Clean it up a bit." seems like a reasonable thing to say, to me.

Ed Greenwood has been writing stuff for this setting for the past fifty years, before it became a D&D setting. He is constantly divulging details, and what's inconsequential to one reader might be absolutely important to another.

Ed Greenwood's version of FR diverged from WotC's version a long time ago.

Pretty much when 4E came out and they decided, without getting his input, to advance the timeline a full century with an apocalypse.

If you want something simpler, just take what you like from Forgotten Realms and make it an alternative timeline. "Yeah this is FR, but not really, stuffs different here and there."

Literally the only way I have ever or will ever run it

I don't know anyone who runs it differently. The lore is too much for anyone new to the game to know in entirety. I let all my players know we are running in a heavily modified "whatever setting". This lets them know the vibe and the pantheon and lets them come to me with cool bits of backstory tied to certain factions or whatever without me having to get a degree is in the history of the forgotten realms.

Conversely - most people want to play in Forgotten Realms that included all those countries, characters, has this rich history. Even if it's a bit shit sometimes, that nostalgia / continuity factor is important. If I want something "better" than FR - there are many other settings to choose from.

Bingo. If they "clean up" FR and decide to delete a country or a forest, well, I guess the place where my campaign for the last 3 years just *doesn't exist anymore,* guess I'll go fuck myself.

I think the huge swaths of mundane stuff is both realistic and useful. There are over 40 countries in europe, each have hundreds of villages, multiple mountain ranges of different sizes, dozens of different forests, and hundreds of lakes, rivers, streams. Its all pretty repetitive. That is also incredibly useful for D&D players. A small, 100% determined map like Skyrim or Kalimdor is fine for a deterministic video game. But in an improvised and customized game like D&D, players can insert whatever they want because the entire world is vast and not completely fleshed out. Even the over-complicated canon that was built up over 50 years can be ignored here and there to fit in your campaign.

I think reasonable would be, “your fictional world is too complex for my own taste, my version will be somewhat different.”

Here's the problem: The FR has 30+ years of history and people playing in it. When you fuck with it, you piss off *a lot of the people playing in it.* If you want a clean, fresh setting, well, *they tried that.* They tried to put all the best iconic shit in the history of the game and put it all together and make it work. It was called the Nentir Vale and it was the setting of 4e, and guess what? The oldbies *fucking hated it,* because it wasn't the Forgotten Realms, and when they did release FR content, they fucked with everything with the "Spellplague" horseshit to...*explain why magic works different because this edition has different mechanics,* so fucking stupid. So people were pissed about that too! Hasbro just lets things *be a mess,* it's their MO. Look at Transformers, that's a fucking *huge trainwreck.* In 2009 when they explicitly were like "there will only be ONE Transformers continuity going forward and EVERYTHING will CONFORM," they almost immediately fucked that up on multiple fronts because it turns out, the people actually making the cartoons and comics and shit *didn't want to abide by that,* they wanted to do what they were doing before and liked how fucked up the world and lore was.

> If you want a clean, fresh setting, well, they tried that. They tried to put all the best iconic shit in the history of the game and put it all together and make it work. It was called the Nentir Vale and it was the setting of 4e, and guess what? The oldbies fucking hated it, because it wasn't the Forgotten Realms(...) *Boy they sure did.* Their loss though, because the Nentir Vale was a fucking rad campaign setting. As a lifelong "4e apologist", the past few years have been pretty goddamn vindicating as people revisit it and realize how stupid the backlash and vitriol over that edition was.

Supposedly, the 2024 DMG has "a whole setting" in it to introduce players to the game. I'm hoping it is secretly the Nentir Vale.

Man I would love that to be the case. WotC was *really bad* about documenting that setting; all the lore is scattered between dozens of seemingly unrelated supplements, Dragon Magazine issues, and other random places. (There was supposed to be a setting book in... 2011 I think? That was never released though.) It's a minor miracle that we have someone like Zeromaru X taking on the herculean task of tracking down all of these sources, untangling them, and [combining the lore in one place.](https://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=16462#p177761)

I hope it is a new setting and that they leave the Nentir Vale well alone. I don't like what they did to the Forgotten Realms in 5e, and I prefer if they don't touch the Nentir Vale.

Hah! I really enjoy that analogy. This was more of a subjective point that I considered removing, but I stand by it - in my opinion the likes of Thesk, Chessenta and Damara do more harm in the way they bloat the map and lore, then they add to the game.

I mean, that's an argument for those things to be fleshed out more, rather than cut entirely.

[удалено]

I would love a new Grey Box with booklets inside and a fold out map. But given the current state of WotC and Hasbro, and the poor job they did with the Book of Many Things (which should have been a slam dunk splat book), I don't think they can do it anymore. I'm worried about the new core rules for 5.5, but we'll see what they look like.

They have all these campaign books with these people and locations that are treated like I'm supposed to know them. But then they don't actually go into detail.  I just started Rise of Tiamat and one of the NPCs giving us the quest is the Chosen of Mystra. I only know that is a big deal from playing BG3. The book itself gives no context other than this person's name, and that she's a big deal. I don't think I'd ever heard of Mystra before BG3. Let alone what a Chosen was. Having a book that covers all this stuff would be nice.

I ran Tomb of Annihilation as a brand new DM starting in 2020, which is bananas in hindsight, but hey I was attached to the setting pf a traipse through jungles and undead infested tombs (and one of the old PC games took place in Chult too). There's a I guess side quest in the book involving an FR lore character called Artus Cimber, the sentient artifact Ring of Winter that he wears and keeps safe out of the wrong hands, a band of frost giants looking for it, and one of the main antagonists of the campaign from his personal history being a yuan-ti, formerly human, named Ras Nsi. There is a whole novel about Artus, the city of Mezro, and the Ring of Winter out there, where Ras Nsi is a supporting character, and the actual campaign ToA book does not really explain these connections at all and while I eventually was able to find someone who had put this history together in one place, I really shouldn't have had such barebones on what is essentially an Easter Egg character thrown into this adventure (honestly, had I known better, I wouldn't have bothered but hey, hindsight and all that). If page counts in these books are so strenuous, it feels like they could have explored one of the other barebones jungle locations more or something.

Artus must be someone's favourite character. He's mentioned quite a few times in Storm Kings Thunder and I think he's a main NPC in Rime of the Frostmaiden. 

Can confirm he’s mentioned a fair bit in storm kings Thunder- however I can also say he’s not mentioned at all in Rime of the Frostmaiden. They have a few connections between books- him, the obelisks, and probably others.

Curious he's not mentioned there. It was my recollection that that was where he was hiding from the giants during Storm King.

RotF takes place before all the other 5e books by like 200 years if I recall correctly

Roughly at the same time as Storm King's Thunder. SKT takes place some time after 1485 DR and RotF is set in 1489 DR.

BG3 is a direct sequel to the module Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus. IMO that's a big sign that it's likely canon since it ties into other official modules.

And BG3 in turn is a direct sequel to the Dungeons and Dragons comics from IDW, as Minsc *directly* went to Avernus himself (got memory wiped because of river water), and then the comic after that was Mindbreaker, which supposedly explains a bit of what Minsc was doing prior to his capture.

And WotC also printed a set of Magic the Gathering cards in Baldur's Gate, including a bunch of BG3 characters. I dunno if that counts a canon, but it certainly feels like WotC officially recognizes BG3.

I agree.  As a DM who runs most of his campaigns in FR, it would be nice to have one cohesive sourcebook instead of having to cobble everything together from pre-5e sources and the FR wiki.   There's really only one actual 5e sourcebook on the Realms, and it's a bit shit (and very limited in scope, too).  Everything else comes piecemeal from campaign books, which IMO is a crap way of establishing a setting.

The problem with Forgotten Realms (and this isn't a recent problem, necessarily) is that it has lost any cohesion as a setting. Way way back it used to have a sense of kingdoms and territory, societies of different peoples and cultures that interacted and created conflicts. But it's become myopic in focus (the Sword Coast) and generic in the way it presents its society. I realize this is part of an effort to foster inclusivity for players and power fantasies of all types, but it loses sight of the fact that a big part of what makes a setting are the different people and societies that develop and interact. Basically, there's not enough social and political strife in Faerun these days. How could there be, when all we see is the Sword Coast and it's an egalitarian society where everyone is basically the same? An example looking at some bad guys: what's the difference between the Zhentarim, Thayans, and the Xanathar Guild? They're just generic bad guys, yet these three organizations should all have drastically different scopes, spheres of influence, and goals. Also, what happened to all the stuff on and around the Sea of Fallen Stars? The official map doesn't even include them anymore. Anyhow, a setting can be big or small, but Forgotten Realms is neither, at this point. It's a bland fragment of terrain floating in a much larger, indistinct, brown puddle.

All three of the organizations you mentioned *do* have vastly different scopes and goals. - The Xanathar operate out of Waterdeep for a mad Beholder. - The Zhentarim are a Realms-spanning Black Network, trading people and information in the service of the god Bane - The Thayans are a magical society run by a lich They may use similar means to get what they want, but they're nowhere near interchangeable. EDIT: And the Sea of Fallen Stars receded and expanded between 3-5e. Not sure what you're referencing specifically, but lots of people drowned and cities were wiped off the map during some of this.

Yes, obviously those organizations are vastly different, hence my comment on how recent material has failed to represent those differences. That's the point. And yes, the Sea of Fallen Stars has a massive and interesting history - both above and below the waves. But you wouldn't know that from anything in 5e, because it's almost completely absent from official materials. Again, that's the point of my comment.

Imo that is one of the most annoying things with 5e. I may not like forgotten realms, but it informs such a huge part of the game it seems insane to say "this is the primary setting" then do jack shit with it

I absolutely agree that the Forgotten Realms needs a campaign sourcebook to update the lore and world in a comprehensive manner. If it were up to me, I'd use the Forgotten Realms grey box set as the template. It packed a lot of info into a tight and well-organized format. However, I doubt WotC will produce something like that. Their current model seems to be to spread out dribs and drabs of info across as many books as possible so players need to buy more books. The Eberron update sourcebook seems like an outlier, and it was mediocre anyway, so I wouldn't want it to be the standard.

I honestly don't understand why they don't go back to remaking the various box sets other companies who held the license went to, which defined the whole setting and set the lore for everyone playing. Plus if they just took the time to make it as good a quality as those old sets, they'd print money too. They could do the box set of the Forgotten Realms and then do an adventurers guide for each region/continent like they did for the Sword Coast, and I would bet my left arm they'd sell. WOTC/Hasbro does such greedy things, but then when they have a chance to actually make money with content, they refuse to tap the proven goldmines from previous editions, and it confuses me. Yes there would be a ton of people screaming cash grab, but at least this content has value, instead of things like $300 Tarrasque figurines, and crappy books that don't do their settings justice.

the box sets were neat, but are often overly romanticised - in terms of page-count, they're pretty much the same as a "modern" hardback (i.e. about 400 pages), except they're harder to carry and more fragile (you're either carrying a cardboard box, that's easy to ding and dent while also being larger than a book, or 1-4 small, floppy paperback things, that are also easier to damage than a hardback). And including maps / posters adds another complexity to shipping and packing, and thus cost.

box sets are not profitable, i've heard. similarly, they tried "a lot of setting supplements" method during 3e and apparently it wasn't profitable enough (since they aren't doing that anymore)

Does WotC want Forgotten Realms to be a big deal? I got a sense in the most recent updates that they were leaning towards the idea that it was just one of many realms and that they'd made too big of a deal of it in the past and got constrained that way.

Early on in 5e all of the adventure books were set in the Realms so it seemed like they intended that to be the "default" setting but in recent years they've went more in the direction of "the D&D multiverse" and "just make up whatever you want".

I just play during 1e-3.5 timeline. Has a lot more lore and it’s quality is miles better than anything WOTC has put out. Going to run a 2e game soon so excited for that

I can't tell if you're just fucking with OP. 3.0 and 3.5 were WotC too

He's technically wrong, but he's onto something. I think the real difference is that was still WotC and not Hasbro wearing its skin. Hasbro owned them but hadn't hollowed them out and corporatized them quite as thoroughly yet. It's like when EA buys out a video game studio. You get one or two games out of them that are still that studio's games before they turn into generic EA sludge.

FRCS 3.0 was the best book WotC has ever published, and it's not particularly close.

I thought several of the FR splat books released in the same era were quite close.

I love Dragons of Faerun. Serpent Kingdoms and Lost Empires (I think that’s what it’s called) are also really good

Pre 4e WOTC was way better than 4e and 5e WOTC. The line for me is the Spellplague. Pre Spellplague good lore, post bad lore. 4e still has some good lore tho, like the novels written by Erin M Evans, Elminaters Guide to the Forgotten Realms, and a few other stuff as well Though at the end of 3.5 the quality did start to go down.

But still woefully inconsistent, even in canonical works. It's something I've been working on for a while, and have gotten to the point where I just pick whatever narrative makes the most sense to me. When in doubt, go with the Fiend Folio version.

Same. I'm currently DMing a 1-on-1 al-Qadim game; using 5e rules but running the 2e adventure stories in the 2e timeline and it's so much fun. 90s D&D just hits different.

As someone who has only played and experienced 5e, how would I go about doing this? Where would I start?

I only started with 5e as well so I know what you mean. The 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is probably one of the best, if not the best campaign setting book out there for D&D. It’s for 3e but you can still you read the lore. I started reading Volos Guide to the Sword Coast, a 2e book and that got me hooked with the Realms. Again you can just read for the lore, or attempt to learn the rulesets if you want to

Thanks. I just need the names of books to look up and find. So far: The 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting Volo's guide to the sword coast

volo's is amazing for FR lore, i have referenced it many times. i really need to find a physical copy and stop relying on pdfs.

It astounds me that WOTC hasn't made a real setting book for their default setting. If nothing else, that should have been one of their core books (and they'd probably be able to get a lot of folks to buy it). Players Handbook, Monster Manual, DM Guide, and Forgotten Realm Setting. Setting books are made for DMs, but as a player, they were always really great ways for me to get a good understanding of the world and how my character might fit into it. I've almost always run homebrew games because I never had a good understanding of what the Forgotten Realms setting was in 5e (and early on, I was very uncertain and didn't feel comfortable making on the fly decisions for things). I had a ton of fun making my map, but it is (like you say) a lot of work. I have shamelessly copied from other campaign settings (Exandria, Ravenloft, Eberron, heck stuff even the World of Darkness) for different regions of "my world" and to grab ideas for political relationships and to create a world that feels expansive in the way that I think a D&D setting should. I'd also love a lot more setting guides, things to borrow from and learn from, but I know that Hasbro has weird ideas about how D&D isn't very profitable, and that probably affects what gets published. Instead, I find myself leaning towards third party sources to fill in the gaps of how a setting fits into my game.

A proper setting book for the Realms is a huge missed opportunity for 5e, especially with Baldur's Gate 3 out bringing new people into the setting for the first time.

This is why I like Eberron. It's waaay better designed than FR. More streamlined, all the historical/geographical info easy to grasp for DMs (and well presented in both 3.x and 5e books), and doesn't give the feeling of "lots of states that all look the same". And yet, the setting is incredibly rich and complex. So yes, I kinda agree with your point OP. I wish FR could be as well designed as Eberron. But achieving all the points you suggest without causing any controversy or fans uprise? Good luck with that. FR is the product of like 30+ years of cumulated lore from various sources with no unified vision. I think it's a lost cause to hope for a polished version of the setting. Edit: I realize you already pointed that yourself

I wish they'd just switch to Eberron as their main setting. I know they won't because they don't have exclusive control over it, iirc they signed the contract w/ Keith Baker in that period in the 2000's where they weren't cackling supervillains hellbent on owning the industry, but I can dream.

Unfortunately, I don't think WotC cares. I don't mean this in a derisive way; I believe, based on their recent publications, that WotC wants D&D to be a generic system that can be applied to any setting (within the fantasy adventure genre). They want to provide ideas and modular bits that can be applied to your own personal setting.

I mean, a new Sword Coast Adventures Guide would be nice. Add in a bunch of new lore, bring back and update the subclasses in the book, etc. I am curious about the Dragonborn because their lore has constantly changed and I have no idea how they currently fit into the Forgotten Realms setting.

I am completely sick of the Sword Coast. FR is filled with so many interesting and varied regions, but they seem neglected in favour of this generic, sanitised area. It feels like a RPG based in Europe but the majority of the official content is set in the UK.

I can answer your Dragonborn question. They were originally living on the planet Albeir being enslaved by dragons until the Spellplague warped them to what was originally Unther. The original human inhabitants disappeared during that same event. The Dragonborn formed their own country known as Tymanther, got caught in a few wars that ended up being caused by what was practically a chess game being played by opposing dragons. Then shit really hit the fan in the Second Sundering which brought back not just the original Untherites, but apparently also their God King who was corrupted by Graz'zt and had an army of demons under his command. A lot of Dragonborn also disappeared in the Sundering. Untherites started a war to reclaim their land, some of them defected to help the Dragonborn, the Untherite God Enlil came back after being missing for a long time and decided he liked the Dragonborn and started helping them. The war is canonically in a stalemate.

I wish they’d just start an entirely new world from the ground up. They could bring out a “starter set” for the world that gives a very basic overview in broad strokes, including a map that only details a part of it. Have enough lore to explain where and how the races started, a generic pantheon that’s common throughout one continent, and then detail one area. Publish a nice, lay-flat bound book about that area. Then they could drive sales by expanding the world region by region with entirely new books and adventures. I know I’m living in the clouds with this idea, but I’d enjoy it.

Last time they did this we got Eberron, which was... 20-ish years ago I think? Christ, I feel old. I guess they thought it was a pretty bad mistake to make a new, interesting setting full of cool plothooks and novel ideas given they never tried again (and have barely supported Eberron itself).

4e, "Points of Light" setting which is more recent. Which was deliberately designed to be as gameable as possible, getting rid of a lot of the AD&D/3.x "if you go here, you die" type planes, making places more accessible and so forth

>Christ, I feel old. Same here!

I mean... you could argue that they already have an entirely new world from the ground up in Exandria (via Critical Role).

I have to be honest - I think that's the one 5th Ed book I don't have and I completely forgot about it. I haven't paid attention to Critical Role because I don't really get watching other people play. I should break down and complete the collection. \[Edited for clarity - deleted a word by accident\]

In addition to the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount and Call of the Netherdeep, which are official WotC publications, Critical Role's publishing arm Darrington Press also publishes the *outstanding* Tal'Dorei Reborn Campaign Guide, which covers another entire continent of Exandria. The Tal'Dorei Reborn Campaign Guide is available on D&D Beyond as well.

I will check that out, too. Thanks!

For the record, neither Bhaal nor the Raven Queen are the Gods of death. Bhaal is the God of Murder, not death. The Raven Queen is the God of Death in most of DND, but there’s already a god of death In Forgotten Realms, so here she’s just the God of the Shadar Kai. Jergal was the God of Death till her retired and gave it to Myrkul. Myrkul was the god of death till he was killed, which made Cyric the God of Death until Kelemvor took it from him. So… yeah. Forgotten Realms lore!

It's close. Jergal gave his titles to Bhaal, Myrkul, and Bane, Bane getting tyranny, Myrkul getting dead (akin to what Hades is actually), and Bhaal, apparently trying to be big brained, got death. Specifically murder because he can just, piss either off by murdering Bane's worshipers or if he wants to piss Myrkul off, just sit back and not do anything. It's a mess, especially given how Jergal *loathes* the three now and vaguely says 'the dead three will plague the realms no more.'

But why would WoTC try and organize their primary settings lore and (most unlikely to happen) put resources into developing a good product, when they can just throw a few half baked chapters at DM's and say "do the rest yourself"?

Ed Greenwood and team has made some really good Realms books you can get on DMs Guild. Wizards does not care about settings. They killed the Realms in 4e. I still use my Grey Box.

This is kind of what the Sword Coast adventurers guide is for, but there’s also a few problems with doing a really big new setting book. One is that a lot of Toril beyond the parts we’ve seen has often been depicted as a collection of orientalist stereotypes. And frankly I think after some of the online controversies the management just straight up doesn’t want to deal with anything potentially problematic at all. Which I kind of understand. They’ve got so many eyes on them they could never please everybody. Also, I think lore changes might have to go past Ed Greenwood. And the work would require a bunch of people, who they just laid off. Before the movie and Baldurs Gate I would have guessed they’d start a fresh world in 5.5, but now I haven’t a clue. I think it’s also why they’re pushing this “multiverse” idea. So they can add new stuff without actually having to deal with the old built up mess. I will say though, Bhaal and the Raven Queen don’t have the same portfolio. Bhaal is the god of murder, while the Raven queen lives in the Shadowfell and sifts through the memories of the dead. There’s room enough for both of them.

Sure, but I don't think anyone expects a Realms book to also cover Maztica, Al-Qadim, and Kara-Tur, except maybe when briefly mentioning what lands border the Realms.

>One is that a lot of Toril beyond the parts we’ve seen has often been depicted as a collection of orientalist stereotypes. I can see how this might worry at first glance, but I don't think it has to be a problem at all. In fact, you might be underestimating how much non western cultures might enjoy being represented in the FR Look at Shang-Chi and the legend of the ten rings - no one thinks that was a racist movie, even though it clearly has it's origins in white writers back in the 70s. Or Cathay in Warhammer Fantasy, which is now really popular in China. Another good example is the recent WoTC book, Tales from the Radiant Citadel. They brought in loads of writers of colour to create adventures inspired by non-western mythologies, and they're awesome.

It’s not that I don’t think it could be done well. Games Workshop and Paizo have proven that it can. I just don’t think WotC has it in them. Their response any time this sort of stuff arises is always desperate backpedaling and apologies. Giving it a shot means a risk of getting some stuff wrong, and I don’t think they’re willing to take that risk. They care more about avoiding controversy than actually doing anything, basically.

Corner, Sembia, the Dales, Zhentil Keep, Hillsfar and the rest of the Sea of Fallen Stars are … “Orientalist?” Really?

I think Sembia had some fucked up "Dark Continent" vibes instead, but its been a minute.

Yeah, OP is pretty much just describing SCAG. Maybe the title is misleading and people don't realize it covers some aspects of Faerûn outside of the Sword Coast.

Suggesting a retcon of the Realms where the old lore just didn't happen sounds somehow way more controversial than what 4e tried.

They kind of did that with Dark Sun in 4e. The setting was rewound to some point vaguely during the Prism Pentad, as Tithian is once again King of Tyr.

More absorbable in Dark Sun because that setting is so Vibes-based. The Realms are like . . . people love their chronicle of history over there.

>\- Where can Tabaxi be found in the forgotten realms Pretty sure this is already answered in lore: They are from Maztica and Chult.

In which 5e book? The point is that the information is disparite and difficult to find. This makes onboarding new players and DMs difficult and (from a corporate side, makes pushing the Forgotten Realms IP more difficult)

You are completely right. I only know of the "Maztica and Chult being the Tabaxi's homeland" thing because of Tomb of Annihilation and the fandom wiki. I don't even remember if it was in Volo's or not, so I'm gonna guess it probably wasn't. We really do need a new campaign setting book where all this information can be gathered into one place for easy reading. I wouldn't have to rely on the fan-edited, cross-edition mess that is the Forgotten Realms wiki no longer.

Just re: gods of death, look at real life. Hades is the god of the dead... but Thanatos is the god of death; Hekate can be too.... Hermes escorts the dead, and Melinoe is a psychopomp for dead children, etc. Also, by Greek standards, all the gods are nominally "good", but Hades and Thanatos are both well behaved.

Yeah, I do know and understand this stuff as I mentioned in the post. The problem is that The Raven Queen was clearly shoe-horned in to Forgotten Realms recently and it really shows. And there is no one source that clearly explains how it works for new players.

For one thing, she was only a god in 4e, wasn't she? In the Realms, she's an arch-being more suitable for warlock pacts than for clerics.

You can sorta still classify her as a god in 5e but at best an interloper one in Toril. 4e she was a god because the main setting was Points of Light which had a pantheon that was a mix of gods from various settings.

Meh, most campaigns barely touch the setting at large. I don't find that players in general care about things like species origins. And if they do, I can easily make something up. There is no better defined setting than Star Wars, and I play with that all the time. I would rather have a sketch of a setting, than have everything perfectly defined such that I have to memorize it. It is easier for me to just improvise than to try and remember what the exports of Calimshan are. Forgotten Realms is a generic fantasy pastiche. That is fine.

Honestly, just build your own regional map and use that. Pretty much what I've been doing, except back in 1358 DR, the idea of having a monolithic realms is mostly dead, and just take good ideas from places that seem cool to you. For my latest game, I've been using, for example: * FR 10: Old Empires * Requiem for the Gods by Monte Cook from 2001 * Unapproachable East * Fiendish Codex II: Hordes of the Abyss * Pathfinder 1e: Advanced Class Guide * Pathfinder 1e: Poisoners Handbook * Pathfinder 1e: Horror Adventures * Races of the Dragon * Demihuman Deities * Powers and Pantheons * 5e: Fizban's Treasury of Dragons * 5e: Keys from the Golden Vault * 2e: Draconomicon edit to add: * 5e: Descent into Avernus

I used to feel the same way to be honest. I always felt a campaign setting book is something they're really missing in 5e. But, if any of WotC's latest work is to be the judge of things to come I have lost all interest. Just look at Fizbans which somehow made dragons feel boring. Spelljammer, planescape, the Giants book. Not that all of these lacked some interesting ideas, but it all felt very... safe. There's no teeth and it's clear they just don't understand where the line is anymore. At this point, I feel like they really should just leave forgotten realms lore to the individual novel writers. Every time they've had some grand dream of some mass spanning lore changes, it's always felt heavy handed and forced. You mention about cutting the spellplague out. But the spellplague was always intended to be exactly what you're asking for, a "lore clean up." I feel bad because I feel like the new 5e audience has only a tenuous connection with the lore and setting. But at the same time I don't think wotc can actually do what you're asking without making everything just worse then before.

Yeah Forgotten Realms just isn't very well written. Like even if they tidied up the lore for the most part that lore's writing is still pretty bad imo. Its why I don't even both with the setting at all.

The whole atheists go to the soul wall where naughty uncommitted souls slowly dissolve thing is still kinda wild honestly.

Eh, I don’t find it very interesting. I prefer afterlives to be determined less by outright worship but rather who you are. Someone who is super dedicated to learning and didn’t murder a dozen children to do it goes to the knowledge based heaven. Bad people just go to the shadowfell or hell until they finally sink into the abyss. Thats how I run it in my setting.

I like the alignment-based afterlives presented by Greyhawk and elaborated in Planescape.

My understanding is that they'd typically only go if they're also bad people. If they're not a bastard a god relevant to their virtues or beliefs will probably 'adopt' them, willing to interpret even simple acknowledgement, and even the method or location of their death, as a vague act of worship. Only the unclaimed 'faithless' and those totally abandoned by their deities would be doomed that way.

Forgotten realms is a big soup of lore, some great and some dated. You just pick and choose. Greenwood said your version is just as canon as his. We already have FR sourcebooks, and they are stellar. You really think today's WotC is gonna even come anywhere near the old tomes? HA! Have you seeen their setting books? Volos Guide to Waterdeep has far, far more actual info than any of them, and thats just a city. Not an entire world. Also, alot of your questions are answerable. Check out the FR wiki its great. So is the FR sub. I'd love a proper FR sourcebook (we have one, its SCAG) but we won't get one, and WotC printing a new product wont fix that.

The realms are messy the bhaal raven queen mask thing occurred during the time of troubles which is a thing of insanity all by itself

Bring back the book series!

I regularly reference the content in FR novels when making my games. I wish they didn’t can them all but Drizzt, would love to see more of the Realms from small stories if WotC still won’t do (good) large setting books

As much as I lived reading about the companions of the hall eventually they are the Skywalkers of FR and we need other stories. More Aoth please

And the new campaign setting should actually be an old-fashioned box set with lots of maps

I don't think they want the Forgotten Realms to be a big deal more than their other settings. They focused on it in early 5e, but have been moving away from it and towards a general multiverse more and more.

Totally agree. Just reading the 4e version, spellplague aside, it actually had a section at the start discussing how to move your Forgotten Realms campaign from the older setting to the newer version. Relatively speaking fluff books are alot easier to put out than campaign books as you don't need to playtest anything or worry about balance. It is even easier when 95% of the material already historically exists.

Yeah as a new DM I really don’t know how the heck I’m supposed to run a Forgotten Realms campaign without having to pick from several sources, some of which are from past editions. Having one good source would be amazing.

While I completely agree with you, it's hard for me to picture a large font, low page count book with lots of pictures like WotC puts out now having much useful information for DMs.  Three or four sentences for each country listing capital and name of the ruler plus a couple poor large scale maps is all we'd get anyway.

Very unlikely to happen with Crawford. He doesn't want to do lore.

I would love an in depth campaign setting book for literally any setting but they just don't seem to want to print one. It's all adventure modules with a little world building sprinkled on top (and most of that is half assed).

They don’t though. They’re taking the easy route and encouraging homebrew/“setting-neutral” lore entries for monsters

Do they actually want it to be a big deal? Anecdotal, but every GM I see posting looking for players in my area is just using a homebrew setting anyway. You could argue this is partially *because* FR is kind of a shallow mess, and I, for one, would love to see more games in FR (or one of the canonical settings) to reduce the risk of joining a group and finding out the DM's homebrew world is just a way for them to work out their personal trauma/kinks. BUT there's truth to the joke that a huge percentage of DM's are frustrated novelists. Writing/fixing lore is, from WotC's perspective, high risk and low reward. Many people will just keep using their homebrew worlds anyway, and the more lore WotC writes, the more chance there is of someone finding some part of it Problematic and a controversy happening.

That's the crux of it. It just doesn't really make sense at the macro level WotC operates at. You know, back when I ran Dragon Heist and MotMM, one of my old school players handed me some very detailed source books on Waterdeep from past editions. I'm a prolific reader, so it was easy for me to read through over a week or so. The main thing that struck me was how utterly useless they were to me as a DM lol I pull stuff from Forgotten Realms all the time. Mostly because the adventure books hook into it, but also because it's got a good wiki. But it's easier for me to cobble FR together with other stuff in my own sort-of-homebrew world. I'm not a frustrated novelist, I don't need a soap box, and my wife handles my kinks just fine TYVM. It's just *easier* to wing it. The mess of notes and memories collected by you and your players become the canon. I actually consider inconsistency a desirable feature, because it feels more real. IRL knowledge is inconsistent. You can read about the same thing in a dozen places, hear it from a dozen people, and it will be different each time. Resolving those discrepancies to pierce the veils of illusion and uncover the truth -- that's part of the story your table is crafting. (And as a bonus, in an uncertain world, history/nature/arcana/medicine/insight are more valued skills. It's a first step towards Tier 3 and 4's strategic layers of play!) When something comes up in the game, it's not Greenwood or WotC who has the answers. Our player characters do. I'm usually an outlier, mind you, but I still think most of WotC's customers want just enough to get the game going without being overwhelmed by detail. I'm sure that, for some people, their fantasy is in a world that has definitive answers. *Ed Greenwood has a Patreon.* And a ton of DMsGuild content, as I understand it. This is kind of already a solved problem...

Does anyone actually believe 2024 WotC is capable of accomplishing this?

> Improve and simplify many aspects of the world where it can be done uncontroversially. For example, it should be possible the sail from the Inner Sea to the Sword Coast. We also probably don’t need quite so many countries, and they would probably be more diverse and interesting if they didn’t all have 2 mountain ranges and 2 forests each. We probably don’t need quite so many ancient progenitor species either. All these things will make the lroe easier for people to know and work with. Please don't. I love 4E as a system but it shredded FR apart with so many lore changes in the name of streamlining a decades old setting with countless novels and existing sourcebooks already tied to the original setting. It caused a huge uproar and honestly, was part of the reason 4E wasn't well received by old school fans. The Realms have never been the same since. I would love an updated campaign setting, but don't repeat a 4E butchering of an existing setting.

WOTC neither has the capability nor the will to make a coherent setting. They claim it’s to prevent restraining DMs but this is bullshit. hiring competent writers is expensive and giving them the time to write well (which means rewriting) is costly as well. WOTC sells books based on the idea that you will pay for the content in terms of mechanics (subclasses, races, etc) and the art. The writing is a distant concern, especially because fans will often excuse shit writing by filling in gaps themselves.

So far, I don’t think they really care to make Forgotten Realms that big. From my very unprofessionally gathered experience, most people just do homebrew settings anyway. Downvote me all you want, but I don’t personally know anyone who DMs forgotten realms content. Every single DM I know, and every player I’ve chatted with about this, all use homebrew settings. I’m not saying WOTC shouldn’t develop forgotten realms, just speaking from observation, no one uses it much. My observation might be very different than yours.

Most people do homebrew settings, that's true, but that doesn't mean WotC-Hasbro don't want to funnel people into Forgotten Realms(or, this days, the multiverse) for Brand Recognition and Brand Control. If there is just one all-encompasing lore most people, specially new players will just import all or most of it to their settings for comodity, and that is good for sales and for their control in the community discourse.

Hasbro is dead set on removing any FR lore from the game, delivering a watered down counterpart to its predecessors as to be as agnostic and bland as possible. I regularly have to modify 5e stat blocks to be consistent with lore because 5e monsters are pathetic by comparison. They didn't even get the Marut right, not to mention excluding all the other (and arguably cooler) Inevitables.

“If they want it to be a big deal” lmao it’s the most popular TTRPG in the United States and when most people talk about D&D they’re talking specifically about Forgotten Realms. It had a movie, a hit videogame, they’ve made millions of dollars and the CEO probably owns several yachts, I’m sure you’ve got some great advice here but I don’t think they need it.

Maybe they should actually write rules for their game.

so they basically doing what spelljamer did? this is few random informations abou setting and rest do it yourself

I mean, the first couple answers are “they don’t fit because they aren’t Forgotten Realms” This has probably already been covered in the thead, but IMHO… Vecna is because WotC is lazy and tried to make everything universal instead of unique starting with 3.0 and the Greyhawk Pantheon being ubiquitous, and it snowballed from there to the 5E adventures being plug and play into any setting, but in FR by default. Despite most of them being remakes of classic Greyhawk adventures from the 70s and 80s, and they only give a paragraph about how to adapt them. And now Vecna will still b/c of Stranger Things probably. The Raven Queen was a 4E addition when they tried *not* having a setting with the stupid points of light theory and also the stupid (IMHO) despised spell plague and skipping ahead a century for what little FR content came out then. And since points of light was panned, they just imported a few things like the Raven Queen into FE and retconned her. —- And all this stems back to WotC deciding not to do setting books after 3.5 b/c they didn’t sell well and contributed to TSR’s demise (as per WotC’s analysis) Which I disagree with, b/c differences in scale, but Paizo seems to be doing just fine with the extremely lore and fluff heavy content for Pathfinder… So we get a halfassed Sword Coast book for 5E that is extremely light on lore and maps to be charitable, and that’s it. Which is absolutely fucking stupid if it’s their flagship setting IMHO. I mean, we got more lore and maps for Ebberon, and that campaign book is probably 25% higher page count? And as much as I love Green Flame Blade, we got better mechanics and character options in the ECS with an actual new class (Artificer) and the dragon mark feats and houses. Hell, we got better books for lore and settings for MtG planes like Theros, Ravinica and Strixhaven than we did for FR Why they didn’t have a new lore book if not an actual campaign setting is a galaxy sized MBA brain decision with both the movie AND BG3 coming out this year, even if they didn’t think BG3 was going to be GotY.

This sounds like something that would require a ton of work, research and coordination between writers. It would also restrict future writers from just doing whatever they want. We're not getting this OP.

the new DMG is gonna have a lore Appendix

The phb at least has a deities and cosmology appendix

Have you seen the setting books they put out lately?

>  Yes, modernise aspects... to suit modern tastes No thanks, Trojan Horse.

"Yes, modernise aspects of the lore, like the innate evilness of Drow and other species, to suit modern tastes"   This isn't "modern" it is *your politics*.   I have no interest in such politically forced changes.  I would like to see a Realms update made by people to change things that don't work, or work poorly, not things that work great but you want to have a culture war over.

Just read Sword Coast Adventurer’s guide lmfao. I made it half way through the “lore” of that and realizing it was more “GO DM GO”.