Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting

The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is a role-playing game sourcebook, first published in 1987. It details the Forgotten Realms setting and contains information on characters, locations and history, and sets specific rules for the Dungeons & Dragons (often abbreviated as D&D) role-playing game. The latest edition was published in 2008 by Wizards of the Coast, for use with the 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons rules.

The Dungeon Master's Sourcebook of the Realms describes how to set up and run a campaign in the Forgotten Realms. A pair of miniscenarios is included, and information is provided on wilderness terrain and movement, important personalities, rumors, and significant and magical books. Written from the perspective of Elminster the sage, the book introduces the campaign setting, explains how to use it, and offers adventure resources. Large areas were set aside to be developed for house campaigns, and no published materials were intended to be printed to exploit those areas, while one area detailed in this package was intended to have no subsequent publications use that area. The package covers only the western half of a single continent, with the eastern half reserved for future publication of Kara-Tur. Two complete dungeon-style adventures are provided: "Halls of the Beast-Tamers", a dungeon with many unconventional problem-solving exercises, and "Lashan's Fall", a dungeon with a mystery and an opportunity to parley with a monster. The "Books of the Forgotten Realms" section is a treatment of several magical tomes that suggests a variety of adventures, with a description of the appearance, history, and contents of each book.

The Cyclopedia of the Realms provides background information on and details maps of the locations in the accompanying maps of the Forgotten Realms. It begins with an explanation of the Realms' treatment of time, names, language, and currency, and its gods and religion. The remaining 75 pages of the book is an encyclopedic and alphabetic listing of important places, races, nations, cultures, character classes, and organizations of the Realms.

The set includes four full-color, 34" x 22" maps, two of which combine to form a large-scale (1" = 90 miles) map of the western half of the vast Realms continent, while the other two provide a more detailed (1" = 30 miles) map of the regions featured in this campaign pack.

The Forgotten Realms Campaign Set was written by Ed Greenwood, with Jeff Grubb and Karen Martin, and illustrated by Keith Parkinson, Jeff Easley, Clyde Caldwell, and Tim Conrad. Greenwood and Grubb did the design, while Grubb was responsible for the development, and Karen Martin did the editing. It was published in 1987, as a boxed set which included two 96-page books (the "DM's Sourcebook of the Realms" and the "Cyclopedia of the Realms"), four large color maps, and two clear plastic hex-gridded overlays.

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