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Realmswatch
It's not a small
world So, for eight months, I've been talking with the game designers, emailing Ed Greenwood, devouring the rough versions of the manuscript (chapter by chapter as they're turned in), getting sneak peeks at the artwork, and writing these Realmswatch articles to give you small glimpses of what's coming in June. All along, I've thought I was doing a passably good job. I mean, I really can't imagine having much more enthusiasm for a project, and I pretend that the things we've been showing have been as interesting and exciting to you as they were to me. But, I know now that I've not even come vaguely close to giving you an idea of what you're going to experience when you take your first look at the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting when it hits the shelves next month. (Next MONTH, I say.) I know this because I've spent the past few hours trying as hard as I could to keep from drooling over the pages of the advance copy Rich Baker let me look through. (I'm pretty sure I returned it saliva-free, though Rich might let me know otherwise.) There are, I'm told, only two copies of the book in the building right now -- and I treasured every minute I had to look through the one I got to see. From cover to cover, it really is the most astonishing D&D product I've ever seen. Even the pages are cool -- you'll know what I mean when you see 'em. I'd attempt to describe all the cool things about book, but the English language fails me. Really. Pick up a dictionary and look up "gestalt." The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is virtually impossible to describe in pieces. Despite that, I'll get on with the reason I petitioned to see Rich's book today. I wanted to write this month's article based on the real thing.
May: The Geography of Faerûn It's chapter four, and it starts with this: "Seeing every kingdom, every city-state, every mountain range and forest and ruined castle of Faerûn would be the journey of a dozen human lifetimes." Those of you that've visited the Realms before will buy in to that statement. And if you've not yet had the pleasure, you'll understand just how true it is after you've taken a look at pages 98 through 231. (That's 133 pages for those of you who, like me, find that Math is Hard.) Of course when you've finished looking at the Geography chapter, you've still got the map to contend with. (Ah, wait 'til you see the map. And don't be surprised if you find yourself checking the phone book for framing shops afterward.) Taken all at once, the Realms is quite huge, even a bit daunting. It's like a hundred pound chocolate chip cookie -- you know every bit of it is going to be good, there's more than you can handle in one sitting, and figuring out where to start is going to be a happy problem. The thing is, even when you break that übercookie into smaller bits, each piece still going to be packed with chocolaty goodness. And that's the Forgotten Realms setting for you -- absolutely jam-packed with great stuff, from coast-to-coast. Just as an example, there's a wooded area called the Forest of Wyrms that's about 200 miles east/northeast of Baldur's Gate. Curiously enough, it's described as being home to a "multitude of green dragons." (There's a great picture that shows a couple of wayward adventurers, one of whom is looking at a map, and the other who is trying to alert him to the trio of chlorine gas-breathing nasties that are coming out of the woodwork.) Many a would-be dragon-slayer ventures into the Forest. Some of them even make it back out. The thing is, while a wooded territory controlled by dragons is a more than interesting reason for being, it's not the only thing going on in the Forest of Wyrms. Somewhere in its shaded depths lies a castle, known as Lyran's Hold, that was formerly occupied by a lich. And while the lich has long since been slain, newer occupants (the conquering heroes and their successors) seem to have slowly inherited the undead creature's evil nature. (Boy, just when you think you've cleared out a castle that you can turn into your swanky, new headquarters, something BAD happens.) Imagine, if you will, all the possibilities that lie in just those two aspects of a pair of short paragraphs that briefly describe a small forest -- there's literally months and months of potential adventuring derived just from that barely-scratching-the-surface information. I can actually imagine an intrepid DM creating an entire campaign based on those storylines and the resulting complexities that could come from intertwining the two. I honestly have no idea how the game designers have done this. There's just about too much going on in the Forgotten Realms setting to actually decide what to do first. You might want to skip the framing store and pick up a set of darts to help speed the decision-making process -- it's going to be tough. About the Author Mat Smith is a copywriter who's been here for just over six months now, but has been playing Dungeons & Dragons and waiting to get a job with the company that makes it for well over 18 years. Now, he gets to spend most of his days thinking about new ways to tell everyone in the world to play D&D, which is still the coolest thing ever. His 22nd-level, 1st-edition bard started kicking around the Forgotten Realms back in 1989 and is currently vacationing in the Murloch Vale of the Moonshae Islands. This month, he's planning on recovering from all the work he did over the past couple of months, which will all be worth it when it starts to show up in Dungeon Magazine and Dragon Magazine and all sorts of nifty comic books. And, since he finally tracked down his old DM, he's going to have to spend some time bringing him up-to-speed with all the great things that go along with this whole job at Wizards of the Coast thing.
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This
is the eighth one of these that I've done. 
