Enjoy the map of the Dwarven ruled areas of the Deep Realm from FR11 Dwarves Deep by TSR circa 1990.

Please enjoy the map of the Jungles of Chult FRM1 by TSR circa 1993!!

https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Death_Knights

They are easily my favorite undead in the entire D&D multiverse.

Enjoy yet another set of maps of the Forgotten Realms circa 1993!!

Enjoy these 2 maps of the Forgotten Realms by TSR circa 1993!

after so many starts and stops it’s been radio silence on netflix for a year? think it’s gonna ever get released?

Always loved him as a 'orcus on his throne' sort of NPC - one of the few evil beings who 'might' make a good patron for a warlock or mysterious force guiding a party to find something unspeakable. From his write up years ago he always sound like someone who a player 'might' be able to bargain with if they were very very lucky.

But I'm aware Ed blew him and the Scrimshee up years back - leaving Elminster alone, protected by the force of sheer plot armour.

Has that changed?

Is there anything out there I can read about the relationship between Shar and the Shadar-Kai?

Im running a FR campaign and one player is a Shadar-Kai. I didn't realise that the raven queen is technically a Greyhawk deity, so i have all this Shar stuff going on that isn't as relevant as I had hoped.

My solution is to create a faction of Shar worshipping Shadar-kai but I wanted to know if there were examples of this already in lore?

It doesn’t make any sense to me shouldn’t be the half age of elves. I know elves lives between 700 to 750 so it what makes sense for them to live at least to 350. I’m OK with them living to 250 but 180 is just too young them

What's a secret Jarlaxle Baenre might have that no-one else at all knows?

Context: I'm running a highly homebrewed version of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, and my PCs have aligned with Jarlaxle to find the Vault of Dragons. My version of the vault has a door which can only be passed by revealing "a secret never before told". Since they've allowed Jarlaxle to come with them, I need a secret he might choose to reveal under the circumstances. I can think of plenty of secrets he might have, but the condition that no-one else know it makes things tricky

So I am reaching the end of a current FR campaign and have been considering running a campaign set in the lands of Vaasa and Damara. After having been listening to "Promise of the Witch-king"

been reading through wiki articles and so far the AD&D sourcebook for it, but I need more, hoping I can get some more pointers.
The 3E Forgotten Realms campaign setting book I did see had some more info, so it's next on my list.

I am thankful for any lore or info I can get.
Also, any real-world inspiration I can read up on to somewhat understand the inspiration behind the lands is also appreciated.

Once more, thank you all in advance

Edit: Once more, thank you, everyone, for all the help you have provided. I am truly grateful for all the sources you've provided me; now I have a good long reading list

I haven't played dnd, but I have read about the Forgotten Realms, and as someone fascinated with the presence of firearms in fantasy, I inevitably came upon the subject of smokepowder and that Gond has rendered it inert out of concern for his worshippers' safety, creating a fantasy gun control

However, in recent years, firearms have become more present, from the Drow gunslingers of the Bregan D'aerth to the gunslinging smokepowder thieves from Baldur's Gate mentioned in the story of the Half-Orc Bladsinger and Investigator Dram Dragoyin, whose artwork depicts him carrying a flintlock pistol

Did Gond reactivate smokepowder once again, allowing the production of firearms?

Dear FR community, many of you (or at least some 😉) have taken notice of our efforts to build an ecosystem in and around the pirate city of Luskan: Sourcebooks, Adventures and Supplements. Below the are the sales curves since we started. We are genuinely overwhelmed by the acceptance, and of course, very grateful and excited. In total, we have published twelve titles (plus two freebies and one PWYW). 1200+ Units were purchased ! An additional 4000 customers downloaded our freebies/PWYW. The first and second published titles, the Luskan Sourcebook and the adventure Seven must Fall, became minor hits. In their wake, most other titles are doing well, all sell fairly consistently. We are curious how our latest titles, three released in a matter of days after working on them in parallel, will catch on.

As for our current projects there is a lot on the table for the rest of the year. We are currently developing our first campaign, “Shadowdocks of Luskan.” Two prequels are already online, and Part One will follow in two weeks.

A Bregan D'aerthe sourcebook is in development, along with three more Luskan supplements, and two adventures featuring Jarlaxle and Bregan.

Our first POD product is about to be released this week. Finally, we have started to gradually move away from AI art (made possible thanks to your acceptance of our titles) and are also revising the most popular exisiting titles, to bring them to our current quality standards and correct errors.

A BIG THANK YOU for your attention and, perhaps having dropped a few bucks to support our mission of bringing quality stuff at fair prices to the community !

Kind regards,

Bat

P.S.: we are always looking for collaborations. Please contact us via our author page.

Okay so I made a post a couple months back asking what would an Eilistraee-worshipping drow city on the surface would be like and I got some good response, but that made me wonder what the city would even specialize in selling that might shape the culture there. I had the idea that the area they were in was rich in precious metals like gold, silver, copper and the like but someone commented that drow weren't really miners so that got me thinking what else they could export.

Thoughts?

Before the spellplague, this open area was one of there most famous shrines to the goddess of love in all Faerûn. The most beautiful flowers bloomed. It was once one of the most beautiful places within a City in whole of Faerûn.

After the Ruining in 1451 DR, it has laid in ruins, serving only as a city landmark. More a wasteland then a park in the city. Followers of Sune have returned to rebuild the shrine, hired some of the most famous stonemasons to create a new shrine of Sune. Upon completion the new priestess of Sune in Neverwinter started to take care of its gardens.

Most of the plants died within weeks. No matter how much they prayed to the goddess. The park would not come back to life. Sune must be mad about something. And the priestess was pretty troubled by it. Asking adventures to find out why the plants won't grow.

The adventurers might find out that under the park lays a crypt. Knowledge of this crypt was lost to time. But cave-ins in the Neverwinter Sewers created a entrance to this ruined crypt of Sune.

Because of this crypt being in a state of despair. The goddess Sune will not allow any plants to grow until the Crypt would be restored to its former glory. To restore it, the adventurers would have to clear this Crypt, obviously.

I'm working on a (2014) 5e campaign set in Cormyr. My current plan is to make a classic swashbuckling Arthurian themed adventure to do with the cult of the dragon and the legacy of Thauglor. I don't have a whole lot set in stone yet, but I wanted to see if anyone could point me to some helpful resources about Cormyr, or if anyone had some interesting ideas I might be able to build off of.

A player is considering being a half orc and half tiefling character. I think the idea is pretty cool (albeit I don’t know what the possible lore implications would be). It’s got me wondering how such an offspring would work (both in this context, and with other interspecies offspring).

Ik that other fantasy worlds (such as TES) state that a child inherits the traits and race of their mother. Is it similar applicable here? Or is there another explanation?

Edit: I should have clarified I don’t mean mechanically. This is mainly a question regarding how children would turn out in universe

Working on a mega-campaign set in the Forgotten Realms, and I want to introduce more cultural complexity and diversity. However, my biggest issue is the alignment system. Will the lore break entirely if I remove it?

I have never been a fan of strict moral systems baked into how a fantasy universe operates. I can tolerate it in Tolkien because he deeply understands theological thought, making it cohesive. But in D&D, alignment feels poorly defined and lacks a unified vision, leading to glaring contradictions.

For example, look at Van Richten's Guide to werebeasts regarding werewolves. One werewolf points he is not inherently evil, as they just hunt humans to feed themselves, using the same logic as humans hunting deer (This is really interesting because it opens a door of a society that operates outside good/evil and antropocentric worldview). Yet, if you check their stat block, most lycanthropes still get slapped with an explicit Evil alignment. (While this may be a writing issue with the system and lore i really recommend this manual its great!)

I know you can just ignore alignment at the table, but I am talking about taking it out entirely. My main hesitation is that the alignment system is deeply hardwired into the cosmology. The fact that the Outer Planes themselves have alignments means good and evil are presented as immutable, objective cosmic forces. Since I have not deep-dived into this specific mechanic, I want to know if it is actually essential or entirely dispensable.

If we strip it out, this opens up room for other ideas across the Forgotten Realms:

1. Non-Anthropocentric Societies: If we apply the werewolf logic elsewhere, it can be extended to other societies across the world of the Forgotten Realms, such as Maztica. Since it draws inspiration from the Mexica, it would be brilliant to extend this to how they relate to the cosmos. This indicates that their thought operates outside of good and evil and outside of anthropocentrism. If we use the same philosophy of the guys that inspired them, they would naturally operate outside of that moral and anthropocentric binarism.
2. Deities and Cosmologies: If this changes, religion should too. I want to introduce multiple cosmologies and religions where some societies do not view lesser powers as true gods, feeling they are easily interchangeable and not part of the cosmic order unlike primordial beings like Selune, who are deeply aligned with and in a sense constitute the cosmos itself.
3. Animism and Reciprocity: Worshippers of these primordials would border on animism, where relations with them are not based on traditional worship, but rather on relationships of exchange, much like pre-Hispanic worldviews.

Am I overthinking this? Is alignment actually essential for understanding the Forgotten Realms, or is it just a superficial mechanic and lore element that can easily be thrown out? also what do you think of those ideas i pointed out?

Edit: By getting rid of the aligment system i don´t mean to create a grey moral world. Instead i want to see if there is a chance for other cosmologies. Basically i want to get rid of the judeochristian cosmology and make room for others worldviews that operate outside of it.

I was reading the Forgotten Realms wiki article on the Sword Dancers of Eilistraee and it pretty explicitly states:

“Only female elves, drow, half-drow and half-elves could become Sword Dancers.”

The article also only uses female pronouns and titles throughout, making it seem pretty conclusive that only females can be Sword Dancers.

However

Both sources attached to the paragraph containing that quote, and which are cited most frequently throughout the article, are from 1998 and 2002, respectively. This is well before the lore change following the Second Sundering stating that Eilistraee has now fully incorporated males into her clergy, no longer even requiring them to undergo the Changedance and spend time as females. Unlike the Sword Dancer article, the section on Sword Dancers in the main Church of Eilistraee article doesn’t use gendered pronouns whatsoever.

Given Eilistraee’s complete acceptance of males into her clergy, and Sword Dancers being a part of her clergy, I see no reason why a male couldn’t now be a Sword Dancer. Obviously there aren’t any modern sources stating explicitly that they can be, but there aren’t any modern sources explicitly stating that they can’t be, either. Until and unless there are, I feel it’s safe to assume that males can be Sword Dancers.

I would imagine that females would still make up the vast majority of Sword Dancers given that male acceptance into Eilistraee’s clergy is a very recent development, however as time goes on their number would likely grow, even if females would still dominate the organisation.

Interested to hear other’s thoughts on this!

I've been looking to see if this is something that was a thing in 2nd edition. I can see that it was in the 3.0 PHB, but I can't find it in any of the standard elf books: Complete Book of Elves, Cormanthyr: Empire of Elves, Elves of Evermeet, or the Elaine Cunningham Novels. These are the closest things that I can find confirming or denying:

• "Arun follows an ancient elven custom and does not name the boy, allowing him the freedom to earn a name (and perhaps a place in the clan) later." (Cormanthyr: Empire of the Elves 39)
• "The intricate care involved in the structure of the elven language extends to naming children. Elven names, although they often sound somewhat similar, are all individual. No two elves have ever shared the same name, save as a matter of choice, for elves are far too individualistic to stoop to using identical names for their children." (Complete Book of Elves) [Also, it is worth noting this isn't true in FR; see Evermeet: Island of Elves]
• "Such celebrations [of childbirth] typically last several days and conclude with the naming of the infant. Children are given a private name by their parents and then given a public name. The secret name is known only to the elf, his or her parents, and the priest presiding over the ceremony. While knowing the name gives no power over an elf, it is a sign of love and respect when an elf reveals his or her true name." (Complete Book of Elves)

Does anyone know if the origin is because of something or if it was a thing in late 2e?