The Forgotten Realms: The Most Popular D&D Setting Ever Created
In 1967, an eight-year-old Canadian boy named Ed Greenwood began scribbling stories about a fantasy world he called the Forgotten Realms. That childhood act of imagination would eventually produce the most popular, most published, and most played campaign setting in the history of Dungeons & Dragons. From the Sword Coast to the jungles of Chult, from the towers of Waterdeep to the depths of Undermountain, the Forgotten Realms has served as the default backdrop for D&D adventures for the better part of four decades. It has spawned hundreds of novels, dozens of video games, and one very famous drow ranger. If you have played D&D at any point since the late 1980s, odds are excellent that you have adventured in Ed Greenwood's creation.
From a Child's Notebook to Dragon Magazine
Greenwood did not simply invent the Realms and hand them to TSR fully formed. The setting evolved over nearly two decades of private worldbuilding before it ever reached print. As a child in the 1960s, Greenwood wrote short stories set in the Realms, using them as what he later described as his "dream space for swords and sorcery stories." When he discovered Dungeons & Dragons in 1975, the Realms became his home campaign world, centered on the fictional locales of Waterdeep and Shadowdale.
Beginning with issue 30 in 1979, Greenwood published articles in The Dragon magazine that introduced fragments of the Realms to the wider gaming community. These pieces often featured the wizard Elminster Aumar as narrator — a character Greenwood had created alongside the setting itself, drawing inspiration more from the roguish Merlin of Arthurian legend than from Tolkien's stately Gandalf. Elminster described magic items, monsters, spells, and the customs of the Realms with the voice of someone who had lived there for centuries, which of course he had.
In 1986, Greenwood shipped several dozen boxes of handwritten notes and hand-drawn maps to TSR. The company purchased the Forgotten Realms outright, and in July 1987, the first edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Set was published, authored by Jeff Grubb, Karen S. Martin, and Greenwood himself. The setting was immediately adopted as the default world for AD&D, and it has held that position — with only a brief interruption by Greyhawk in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide — ever since.
The Geography of Faerun
The Forgotten Realms is set on the planet Toril, but most adventures take place on the continent of Faerun. The geography is vast and varied, but certain regions have earned outsized attention through decades of published adventures and novels.
The Sword Coast is the most heavily developed stretch of the Realms. Running along the western shore of Faerun beside the Sea of Swords, it stretches from the metropolis of Waterdeep in the north to the bustling city-state of Baldur's Gate in the south, with the library-fortress of Candlekeep perched on the coast's southern tip. The Sword Coast is a landscape of trade, piracy, and adventure — independent cities separated by expanses of wilderness crawling with bandits, monsters, and ruins of fallen civilizations. If you have ever run Lost Mine of Phandelver, you were on the Sword Coast.
Waterdeep, the City of Splendors, is arguably the most famous city in all of D&D. A cosmopolitan trading hub governed by masked Lords, it sits atop Undermountain, the largest dungeon in the Realms — a sprawling mega-dungeon created by the mad wizard Halaster Blackcloak. The Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Dungeon of the Mad Mage adventures brought the city to vivid life in fifth edition.
Baldur's Gate needs little introduction after Larian Studios' 2023 video game swept every Game of the Year award in sight. The city is a crowded, corrupt metropolis where the Flaming Fist mercenary company keeps an uneasy peace. Beyond its role in the video game trilogy, Baldur's Gate has been central to the Descent into Avernus adventure and countless novels.
Beyond the Sword Coast, Faerun holds entire sub-continents worth of adventuring territory. The frozen north contains the Ten Towns of Icewind Dale, made famous by R.A. Salvatore's novels. The Silver Marches host the elven and dwarven strongholds of Silverymoon and Mithral Hall. The southern lands include the merchant nation of Amn, the ancient Calimshan, and the jungle peninsula of Chult — the setting for Tomb of Annihilation. And in the Underdark beneath it all, the drow city of Menzoberranzan festers with intrigue. Your party might encounter a Mind Flayer down there, or stumble into the domain of a Beholder jealously guarding its territory.
Elminster and the Icons of the Realms
Every great setting needs great characters, and the Forgotten Realms has produced some of fantasy gaming's most enduring icons. Elminster Aumar, the Sage of Shadowdale, is the setting's signature figure — a Chosen of Mystra, the goddess of magic, who has been meddling in the affairs of Faerun for over a thousand years. Ed Greenwood has written more than a dozen Elminster novels, and the character appears as an NPC in multiple published adventures.
Then there is Drizzt Do'Urden, the dark elf ranger who rejected the evil ways of his people and fled to the surface world. Created by R.A. Salvatore for the 1988 novel The Crystal Shard, Drizzt became one of the best-selling fantasy characters of the 1990s and 2000s. His companion Guenhwyvar, his twin scimitars Twinkle and Icingdeath, and his ongoing struggle against prejudice made him a gateway character for an entire generation of D&D players.
The Realms are also populated by organizations that drive adventure: the Harpers, a semi-secret society of good-aligned agents; the Zhentarim, a mercenary network with shadowy ambitions; the Lords' Alliance, a coalition of rulers; the Emerald Enclave, nature's guardians; and the Order of the Gauntlet, militant crusaders against evil. These factions were formalized in fifth edition's Adventurers League organized play and appear throughout published modules.
Cataclysms and Edition Changes
One of the Forgotten Realms' most distinctive features — and, depending on whom you ask, one of its most frustrating — is that major edition changes have historically been accompanied by world-shaking cataclysms.
The Time of Troubles in 1358 DR (the Realms' in-world calendar) coincided with the transition from first to second edition AD&D. The gods of Faerun were cast down to walk the world in mortal form, and several major deities died while a handful of mortals ascended to godhood. The event reshaped the divine landscape and provided a narrative explanation for rules changes between editions.
The Spellplague of 1385 DR accompanied the shift to fourth edition. When the goddess Mystra was murdered by Cyric and Shar, arcane magic across the world went haywire. The very geography of Toril was transformed, continents shifted, and the rules of magic fundamentally changed. This was the most controversial of the Realms' cataclysms — many longtime fans felt it had changed too much of what they loved.
The Second Sundering in the 1480s DR was Wizards of the Coast's narrative mechanism for transitioning to fifth edition, and it functionally reversed much of the Spellplague's damage. By the time the Sundering concluded, Faerun looked and felt much as it had in earlier editions — a deliberate choice to welcome back fans who had felt alienated by fourth edition's changes.
The Realms in Fifth Edition and Beyond
The Forgotten Realms has been the backbone of fifth edition D&D. Nearly every published adventure — from Hoard of the Dragon Queen to Storm King's Thunder, from Tomb of Annihilation to Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden — is set in the Realms. The setting's depth provides DMs with an enormous amount of existing lore to draw upon, while its breadth ensures that virtually any type of adventure can find a home somewhere in Faerun.
The cultural impact reached new heights in 2023 when Baldur's Gate 3 won Game of the Year at The Game Awards, claiming six awards total including Best RPG and Best Multiplayer. Larian Studios' adaptation brought the Forgotten Realms to millions of players who had never rolled a d20, and it demonstrated that the setting's combination of high fantasy, political intrigue, and personal drama could captivate audiences far beyond the tabletop.
For DMs running campaigns in the Forgotten Realms, Lorekeeper's compendium is a natural companion. The Realms are home to nearly every creature in the Monster Manual, from the Beholder lairs beneath Waterdeep to the Dragon Turtle lurking in the Sea of Swords. Spells like Magic Missile and Fireball see constant use in a world where arcane magic is woven into the fabric of civilization. The Forgotten Realms is, in many ways, the platonic ideal of what a D&D campaign setting can be — vast enough to explore for a lifetime, familiar enough to feel like home from session one.
Whether Ed Greenwood knew in 1967 what his childhood stories would become is anyone's guess. But nearly six decades later, the Forgotten Realms remains the setting against which all others are measured. It is D&D's hometown, and it shows no signs of ceding that title any time soon.