The Realms presented in the first Gray Box, released in 1987, are radically different from the Realms of the 2e to 3e era (to say nothing of what's happened to the setting since 4e came out...). Now that I have Pendragon and Dragon Warriors to tap my long-held desire for a fantasy setting that hews closer to folklore and faerie tales, and in light of my realization last year that I'll always be a Silver/Bronze Age DM despite my dabbling in OSR tropes over the past couple years, I've been giving some thought to establishing a de-facto game world for vanilla D&D.
For some years, I was hoping the Wilderlands would be that setting, but alas it is not to be. As much as I love the setting, I've found myself unable to fully engage with it as a DM. Nor has it been a great success with my players, who likewise find the setting a bit too old school in their sensibilities. I've tinkered with the idea of remaking the Wilderlands into something that works better for our collective interests, but I realized I'd end up rewriting most of the setting if I did so.
It was at this point that my mind starting turning back to the Realms. I haven't done any gaming in that setting in well over 10 years, but if I was going to be tinkering with and rewriting a setting, maybe they would suit my needs more closely. Perhaps it was time to give it a fresh look? One eBay auction later, I was in possession of the Gray Box, the first public version of the Realms. It was the first version of the Realms I experienced as well, and it seemed a good place to return. Yet I'm under no illusions that my old issues with the Realms have magically gone away. There will be much tinkering, oh yes...
And so was born this new series: the Gray Box Project. In the mold of Sham's D&D Cover to Cover or Jeff's similar Arduin Grimoire project, I intend to devote a series of posts to a very close and literal reading of the Forgotten Realms Gray Box. In so doing, my intention is to unlearn all of the non-Gray Box setting detail that's accumulated since its release, thereby forming a baseline for my own interpretation of the Realms. I will be looking for what is unsaid or implied as much as what is stated directly.
As I engage in the close reading, I will also use the posts as a sounding board for ideas on how to make the Realms my own. Nothing about the setting will be held sacred or canonical and everything's on the table for potential changes. By the end of the series, I hope to have both a more in-depth understanding of and appreciation for the Forgotten Realms as originally envisioned as well as a highly personalized version of the Realms for me to use as my D&D sandbox setting.
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Are you going to read Darkwalker on Moonshae? I think it came out before the Gray Box. At least, I recall that book being enough to motivate me to get the box set.
ReplyDeleteI have always enjoyed the Forgotten Realms mostly based on a love of the books when I was a teen. That being said I have never had a character played in the realms and never run an in depth campaign there either. I have many of the setting guides and supplements and use them mostly the same way I use the Glorantha maps, as a stepping stone for my own campaigns. The one time I used Waterdeep it got sucked into the Mists of Ravenloft and the players went on a tour of the surrounding area which resembled nothing to canon of Waterdeep environs. I started a campaign on one of the isles south west of Waterdeep, the only thing that stayed the same was the map and some of the flora.
ReplyDeleteI never used the heroes from the books or time lines, it was too much to keep track of for me. It made a great resource in overcoming writers block though. It is still one of my favorite settings more for the idea of it than the reality.
This inspired me to write me latest post.
ReplyDeleteI hope there's some non-inside-baseball in there for those of us who know fuck-all about the Realms, I'm interested to hear how A lead to B in your own games or could have or what else could be done or...well I'm interested to know just how people use settings.
Good luck, I'll be interested to read this series. We used to use the gray box as well, and I often consider a return to it. Back in the day we looked through the books and then made up what we wanted with the campaign set as a loose guideline (mostly the maps.) It worked well, giving us a grounding in "a world" but allowing room to put in whatever we wanted too.
ReplyDeleteHope to read more of your FR posts, soon. But before you start to read too deep into the Monnshae novels remember that they were not written for the Realms. They were transfered to the Realms so that some novels were finished when the boxed set came out and the whole Moonshea was a made up by their author.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who really never got into the published settings, I do enjoy reading from people that know their shit about them. Looking forward to reading this!
ReplyDeleteI will be following this series closely. For my money, the 3.5 FR book was a gold standard for campaign guides, while the 4E book is everything a campaign guide should *not* be. I never owned the gray box, so I cannot judge it, however. I have fond memories of the settings.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear folks are looking forward to the series!
ReplyDeleteAs for reading any of the books, I'm going to skip that. Gaming/genre fiction, as a general rule, does absolutely nothing for me, and frankly represents the precise kind of setting-related canonization I'm trying to get away from.
Zak: Most of the series will be non-inside-baseball, as I'm hardly a Realms expert myself. Like I say, I've read precisely 0.15 Realms novels and even in my heyday of playing in the setting owned maybe a half-dozen sourcebooks max. And I'll be sure to incorporate what you address in your post into my own musings, because I couldn't agree more with your analysis of how setting books are generally written.
This should be a fun read and I'm on board.
ReplyDeleteRather than reading novels I would recommend looking through old pre-publication copies of Ed Greenwood's articles in The Dragon, as there are a lot of cool things mentioned in them that don't necessarily tie in with the boxed versions as published. There are some glimpses in there that are the reason a lot of people were so excited when this thing first came out.
I'm currently running a 1983 Greyhawk Box Set campaign for Pathfinder that I call "Legends of Old Greyhawk". Its nothing but what's in the box and whatever I wish to include, no Greyhawk Wars, no Living Greyhawk just evil creeping in from all sides.
ReplyDeleteHere's a great post that might prove useful in your own campaigns set in the Gray Box Era:
ReplyDeletehttp://underthekyak.blogspot.com/2010/04/rewriting-historysort-of.html
Hope This Helps,
Flynn