Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;621910I guess the only other official FR product I would use would be the intro module Under Illefarn. And everything else I would extrapolate/houserule from the box.

Quote from: DestroyYouAlot;621921This, and then also FR1 Waterdeep and The North and FR5 The Savage Frontier, for a great sandbox campaign.

Yes, this is the winning combination for great FR gaming!

Quote from: Reckall;621912To put things in context, my campaign is currently set in Waterdeep in 1356 D.R. The timeline says that at this point the war against Dragonspear Castle is at its peak. This leads to a lessened presence of the City Guard, severe shortages of goods coming from the south (due to the interruption of the Luskan - Amn trade route), increased piratery and economic depression. On this tapestry I weave my plots in the city.

Worth quoting.  The "current clack" rumors section in the grey box is a brilliant source of hooks throughout 1356-1357.  N5 Under Illefarn is stated to occur in the aftermath of the first Dragonspear War, and the town's weakened state (requiring heroic action from the PC militiamen) stems from this.  For an interesting bookend, consider FRQ2 Hordes of Dragonspear.  

**mild spoilers, nothing shocking**

In FRQ2, the PCs are called upon to provide leadership in the second Dragonspear War.  The assumed levels are 10-ish (right around name level, where the PCs will likely have followers of their own), and the module is framed as a series of Battlesystem scenarios, with a high-level dungeon crawl to decide the outcome of the final battle.  This module needs work (the dungeon section, especially, is weak, and does Dragonspear Castle no justice when compared to the tentpole dungeon it could be).  And, of course, there are the requisite 2e-era railroad prods (lots of BUT THOU MUST!), easily ignored by a competent DM.  (Besides, what PCs with newly-gained troupes of followers could resist the opportunity to give them a road test?)  The overall structure is solid, however - and for PCs that started in Daggerford with N5, it's the perfect transition to the "armies and domains" phase of their career.

I would also recommend Forgotten Realms Adventures.  It was sorta promoted as a "convert your campaign to 2e" thing, but it's got a lot to use in a 1e campaign.  There are several city maps/writeups that are not included in any other product.  The treasure/objects d'art table at the back is solid gold, good for any campaign (FR or no).  There are Realms-specific spells in there if you're partial to that sort of thing (I run 1e, but I use a greatly expanded spell list for the Realms).  And then there's the specialty priests.  (An innovation that started with Gary's Greyhawk cleric writeups, lest we forget.    )  I use'em for 1e, works a treat.

1e wins it for me, though 3e would take a solid second place.

RPGPundit

Voted 1e. Boxed set was my first boxed set. It was a thing of beauty. The parchment pages. Not over the top. Just magical at a magical time in my life.

Quote from: 1989;622379Voted 1e. Boxed set was my first boxed set. It was a thing of beauty. The parchment pages. Not over the top. Just magical at a magical time in my life.

This is a very good point: it was a stunningly pretty boxed set for its time; when you compare it, for example, to the earlier Greyhawk boxed set.

RPGPundit

Forgotten Realms was always the weaksauce D&D campaign.  It was where you played when your DM had no ideas of their own. We suffered through lots of FR 1e and 2e, but I fortunately avoided 3e. The Spellplague of 4e made the setting a bit more interesting, but nothing compared to Dark Sun, Ravenloft or Planescape.

The Neverwinter book for 4e is pretty good city campaign though. If my 4e players really wanted a FR campaign, Neverwinter is the only one I would run.

First Ed., no questions.  However, I would use any of the Second and Third ed suppliments (mostly second) where I had them for maps and other basic information.  Any of the 2nd/3rd ed rules and other fluff and crud can be easily overlooked.

Quote from: jeff37923;621881I'm sorry, but the Forgotten Realms just has got too many GMPC Mary Sue's in any version of it to make me interested in running for a group.

Out of curiosity, you feel forced to use them... Why?

In my campaign some, like The Seven Sisters, are part of the background, while others do not exist. When my character were Harpers I used Elminster as a FR version of Hitler in those Youtube Hitler parodies, and that was it.

Barring some specific supplements (mostly 2E) like Hall of Heroes, which were designded to bring the novel's heroes in the game for those who wanted to use them, I frankly fail to see WHERE in the FR line "Mary Sues" are forced down your throat.

I'll say I have owned every version of the Realms in print... and never run a single game there.  Of all the incarnations of the Realms, there are two that I find awesome enough to merit my attention these days -

1e definitely, for all the reasons already stated.  The parchment pages and overall presentation, the parts of the world left undescribed, the evocative cover art says it all.  I liked it the way it was originally presented before the Time of Troubles like so many others have noted.

My second choice would be the Neverwinter campaign book for 4e.  The idea of forays into a ruined and undead-infested city that was once one of the great metropoli of the fantasy world to which it belongs is really inspiring to my GM brain, and I came very close to using it for the one and only 4e home campaign I ever ran.  I much prefer D&D Basic and AD&D - although I will say my players and I are very much enjoying the tactical nature of 4e, it's just not the D&D I grew up with...

  Dammit.  Now I'm going to have to pull my FR books off my shelf and re-read them.

Quote from: Spinachcat;622768Forgotten Realms was always the weaksauce D&D campaign.  It was where you played when your DM had no ideas of their own.

Perhaps there is a grain of truth to this statement.

I mainly used Forgotten Realms (or any other "boxed" settings), for the reason that I don't have the time and patience anymore to design my own setting completely from scratch.

When I was younger, I had all the time in the world and enthusiasm to design most of my own stuff from scratch.  Not so much as I got older.

All of them are fine for my purposes - as long as the kindling is good and dry, any ol' piece of wadded up paper will do to get a fire going.

I'm with Reckall on this. I thought 3e Forgotten Realms was the best version of all. This and Eberron are the only TSR/WOTC D&D campaign settings that I own.

I didn't pickup the 3e Campaign Guide because I needed a campaign setting, I picked it up because I was playing in a 3e Forgotten Realms campaign with a truly remarkable GM who spun everything up so good, you couldn't even tell there were metaplots to be founds. It was a memorable campaign that rocked, that ran in 2001 and 2002.

The books themselves are top quality, as is the huge tear-out map. They have just enough detail, and backstory, to make running a mini-campaign easy. Mostly we ignored all the Superpowered NPCs when we played, so that was never a factor in our games as well. It's loose enough to include homebrew stuff, and tight enough so that anyone could tell what campaign setting was being played, just by walking by the table.

It was Ed's favorite version too, at least as far as I could tell. He really enjoyed doing that, and let us know in the early days of 3e, by running FR games every year he was invited to PentaCon (our local Northern Indiana Con). I never played in any of the those games, but sat in and watched the play on a few. That is is also where I met him, and got the chance to thank him for putting together such an interesting campaign, as well as for his earlier works (Notably the early Dragon D&D articles, and of course all the great Traveller stuff he did).

My favorite for Greyhawk was the original boxed setting, but the Forgotten Realms Grey Box was just.... meh.

2e. More breadth of material, which I can ignore if I like (and I do; my Realms is less magic-heavy and has far fewer high level npc's) but it's nice to know all that extra material is there when I don't feel like making it all up myself.

1e would be my second pick. My friend turned me against 3rd edition Realms with his endless Drow obsession and the 4e Realms can sit and spin.

Quote from: GameDaddy;622798

The books themselves are top quality, as is the huge tear-out map. They have just enough detail, and backstory, to make running a mini-campaign easy. Mostly we ignored all the Superpowered NPCs when we played, so that was never a factor in our games as well. It's loose enough to include homebrew stuff, and tight enough so that anyone could tell what campaign setting was being played, just by walking by the table.

The bolded part reminded me of why I really didn't like 3rd edition very much - everything was books with the tear out maps (though I will agree that the books were of very good quality and the maps looked nice.  But 1st and 2nd edition both had those great boxed sets loaded with maps in just about every product (multiple maps in a number of cases).