For me the Forgotten Realms are Dungeons and Dragons. I grew up with Novels by R. A. Salvatore about Drizztand Ed Greenwood Elminster in Hell remains one of my favorite fantasy books. Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting from 3e is one of my most prized possessions. I played Baldur's Gate 2 more times than I care to admit. I like and appreciate the other settings, but you can imagine the expectations I had for them. Adventures in Faerun And Heroes of Faeruntwo books that will be released on November 11th, but are already available to Master-level D&D Beyond subscribers.
Having spent some time with the books, I can say that there is a lot of good stuff in there, but the overall result is hampered by some general design flaws that are, at least in part, common to D&D products that have come out recently.
Let's start with an important statement: both books theoretically have different goals (dungeon masters and players), but you will have to buy both. Adventures in Faerun is a great resource for DMs looking to run a Forgotten Realms campaign, as you'll find detailed descriptions of five regions: the Dales, Icewind Dale, Calmishan, the Moonshae Isles, and Baldur's Gate. However, Heroes of Faerun describes the rest of the continent – in less detail, but still providing plenty of ideas and information – plus the major gods and factions of Faerûn.
As a Dungeon Master and Realms fanatic, I'd love to have something similar to 3e. Forgotten Realms Campaign Settingan atlas of a fantasy world that contains all the necessary information in one place. Instead, you have to bounce between two books, and the quantity and quality of lore is limited by the presence of other things, such as rules, that we don't really need (more on that later).
That's what makes Realms so exciting to me: no other D&D setting has such a huge world and so much detail. You can point your finger at a random point on the map and be sure that there is anything What's going on there: a town to solve, ancient ruins begging to be explored, NPCs with their own agendas and agendas, and so on. Recreating this in 5e in one book was an ambitious project, but Wizards of the Coast also had 11 years to complete it.
I didn't mind 5e's approach of moving away from traditional campaign books (which try to present the entire world in all its complexity) and instead publishing campaigns focused on a specific location or region. This gave us the best views we've seen in years of places like Barovia, Waterdeep, Icewind Dale, and the Deepholm. Going back to the traditional route and trying to fit all of Faerûn into one book was a risk, and I'm glad Wizards went for it despite the problems with the product.
Again, there are a lot of things here that make me happy and excited about running a Forgotten Realms campaign. Adventures in Faerun allows you to take a deep dive into some of my favorite regions of the continent. In each chapter you will find a general description of the area, its inhabitants, environment and dangers, and what campaigns are best suited, as well as points of interest and current events that can serve as hooks for adventure. There is also a “Conflicts” section at the end of each regional chapter, which provides additional inspiration for developing storylines during the campaign.
All this is supported by an abundance of maps drawn in the classic Forgotten Realms style. There's even a great Myth of Drannor map that will allow you to venture into Faerun's most famous megadungeon without having to buy a copy of 2e AD&D. Ruins of the mythical Drannor since 1993.
However, regional offices are not equal in quality. Icewind Dale is a fantasy that provides a treasure trove of information not found in Frost of the Ice Maiden. More importantly, it shows that the world has moved forward since the events of this campaign. There are new villains, and new plots, and new locations, and events. Frost has had a tangible impact on the world, and that's a nice feeling to experience if you've played the campaign.
The Valelands and Baldur's Gate are also good, but Calimshan and the Moonshae Isles, on the other hand, don't get the same level of attention since they aren't based on existing 5e material. There's still a lot of new stuff here – the latest Calimshan books are out in 2e! — but the Icewind Dale chapter is on another level.
To learn about any other place in Faerûn other than these five, you'll have to turn to Chapter 2 of the book. Heroes of Faerun. Don't expect to find the same level of detail in these 48 pages as in the book's five regional chapters. Adventures in Faerunand it's a shame because places like Cormyr, Sembia, Amn and Damara have been waiting decades to get some love. There are still enough creative Dungeon Masters here to get a spark of inspiration and expand on what they find in the book – which, after all, was always the goal of setting up a campaign.
Besides, Heroes there's also a whole chapter for the Faerunian pantheon, which is nice to see, and one for the factions of the world. We've already seen this in detail in many other products, so it seems a little redundant, but I think it's still good to have Red Wizards and Dragon Cultists in one place.
It would be much better to collect all this in one book, especially considering that Adventures in Faerun spends its entire first chapter making frankly unnecessary suggestions about how to “run the Realms”, including something called “Epic Destinies”. After correctly acknowledging that the peculiarity of the Forgotten Realms setting is that everything there seems epic, the book explains how a DM can essentially define a storyline for each of his players that will develop over the course of the campaign through stages, and lead them to an “epic destiny” such as claiming the crown or inheriting the archmage's tower.
There are two things that confuse me about this issue. First of all, it doesn't really add anything in terms of rules. The rewards that players receive at certain stages are anything that their characters would have already received, such as skills at the appropriate level or magic items. As such, the sole purpose of this section is to steer the campaign's narrative in a particular direction, rather than allowing the story to develop organically through how the characters interact with the world. This is a terrible example of DMing in my opinion, and I bet it will be the most discussed and criticized part of the book, even though it's only a couple of pages long.
There are already endless debates regarding the balance of power between DMs and players. Some DMs believe that “it's their world” and the characters just live in it (an idea I don't agree with), while others try to involve the players in the story as much as possible. It's a choice made at every table, and we didn't have to bend the rules to do it. Their only goal seems to be to pander to the players, which is a sad trend in recent D&D products.
Adventures in FaerunThe first chapter also includes 32 pages of adventure, which again feels like wasted space. They follow the pattern introduced in 2024. Dungeon Master's Guideconsisting of one page each, with a “situation” and a “hook” describing the problem and how to involve the players in it, followed by a series of encounters and a map. The small format means that these adventures are simply a sequence of fights or basic quests (mostly “fetch”) that would be better placed in a spin-off product. Locations and NPCs are disposable, which is the opposite of what I want in a campaign setting. At least the cards are good and easy to reuse.
Generally, Forgotten Realms The Bundle still exhibits some of the design flaws that became noticeable in D&D 2024. Instead of providing the most detailed world possible and telling us to “go out and play in it,” these books sometimes try to guide players and DMs too much. I would have preferred to have all the information about the world contained in one book, with the other being dedicated to new rules, class options, items, etc.
However, I applaud the attempt to give us something similar to the settings of the last Forgotten Realms campaign. If you're a DM looking to run a campaign in Faerûn, you'll find a lot of information here, but what you're really looking for is inspiration. Look at the world in these pages as an incomplete puzzle that you need to piece together, and you'll have a lot of fun.
