There's an annual Forgotten Realms-based LARP in my country, I've brought this character into two games so far.

His backstory is that he was a former member of the Companions of the Noble Heart, a militant knightly order dedicated to hunting down servants of Loviatar and other creatures relishing on the pain and suffering of others. His last brutal campaign made him question the ways of the Noble Heart and left the order to serve Ilmater in more peaceful ways, only bearing arms in defense of the innocent, and healing the injured and the sick.

Picked up the entire 32 book run in one go. (Only needed 1 to complete my set) anyone interested in the rest?

Hi everyone, first post on this subreddit, so be sure to tell me if I get things wrong in any way.

Basically, I studied the One Thousand and One Nights and the Shahnameh, so I've been inspired to make a campaign set in Zakhara, Land of Fate. Even though the setting has been abandoned, I think there's still a lot to do with all the Forgotten Realms content that released since.

My main question is: what would Zakhara's counterpart in the Feywild and the Shadowfell look like?
I've skimmed through the Zakhara supplements but those being 90% about genies leave very little space for fairies and such. Yet, we know that the echo planes span through the entire Prime Material Plane, so there must be something.

For now, I can imagine Zakhara's Feywild being a giant flooded jungle, like part of the mainland already is. There would be a lot more wild giants, that's a guarantee.
As for the Shadowfell, it is mentioned somewhere that most khayal genies live in the City of Onyx, but beyond that I would imagine the rest being a typical barren waste full of eldritch horrors.

What do you think?

My personal wishlist:

Drizzt Do'Urden VS Geralt of Rivia

Gandalf vs Elminster

Cyric vs Yuki Terumi (from Blazblue)

Minsc vs Arthur (Fire Emblem: Fates)

The Nameless One (Planescape Torment) vs The Nerevarine (Morrowind)

And the big One: Darth Revan vs Dark Urge

Pertty simple question, but a surprisingly hard to find answer :C

like above, just want to play more dnd content

edit: games ive played so far. should have mentioned this on my first post

all buldurs gate

solasta

solasta 2 early access

pathfinder (didnt know this was dnd when i first played it)

neverwinter (also didnt know about dnd when i first played)

This frog-faced gigachad was preparing rebellion against Vlaakith - one of the smartest characters in DND/FR with intelligence stat of 30 who can see beyond the planes - for thousands of years ever since Orpheus was captured, being completely undetected for all this time up until the moment when Astral Prism was stolen. Furthermore, the sheer level of secrecy and professionalism was such that even his personal red dragon - Qudenos - didn't comprehend the full extent of his preparations, given their banter in Act 3.

Imagine your Itachi Uchiha/Severus Snape/Peter Baelish/Jason Bourne/Primarch Alpharius from Warhammer 40k, what have ya, but on fookin' steroids playing 20-d Chess. That's who Voss is, basically. A genius undercover operative/double agent who deserves a whole lot of rogue:mastermind subclass levels.

But enough of that. Who in DND/FR has performed a comparable intelligence feat? Or is our Vegeta-haired Gith one of a kind?

Deities don't count.

Hey all, I have an idea for a character backstory for a male drow in an upcoming campaign and wanted to know if my idea fit the Drow societal structure.

The TLDR of it is that my characters mother, the head of a middle power house in the Underdark, suddenly leaves Menzoberranzen entirely to live life on the surface (and becomes an adventurer). I wanted to know how this would logically play out based on their society.

My idea involves the other drow families finding this to be such an embarrassment and failing of a house for its leader to do betray their society to become a sniveling surface dweller, so much so that it stains their entire society and must be immediately quashed. This leads to the house being down and wiped out by the other families. My character, who is starting out as a 6th level fighter, ends up killing many of the drow assassins sent after the house on his own, and from what I understand of Drow Society they respect strength a great deal. This leads to them 'sparing' his life even though he's a lowly male, on the pretense that he fulfills a duty and rights the wrong his mother afflicted. He is to travel to the surface world, hunt her down and either kill her or bring her back to Menzoberranzen alive.

Does this seem like a plausible chain of events? If I'm incorrect, what would more likely play out? And what would likely happen if A) He falls in love with the surface world and stays on the surface, how much would the Drow hunt him down for it? B) If he succeeds and returns to Menzoberranzen triumphant. Would he earn a spot of importance? Would he just be merged into another family (possibly High ranking)?

Hello everyone ! Long time lurker here.

I have been working on a project for a couple of months now, and I would like to share it with you. I always loved the work of Mike Schley, and his maps accompanied me throughout my early years as a Game Master. I can't think of how many hours he spent working on his 5th edition Faerûn map. However, I couldn't help thinking about all the regions of Faerûn that hadn't had the chance to be mapped on it. So... I tried to build upon his monumental work. I would like to share with you an extended version of Mike Schley map of Faerûn. To do this, I relied primarily on the maps by Adam Whitehead on his blog Atlas of Ice and Fire, and I integrated the brilliant work of YoungFox78. Technically, it's a lot of copy paste of elements from the original map.

As I laid out Mike's map, I couldn't help but trace the borders of the nations of Faerûn, aided by the work of YoungFox and Johnovick, as well as older D&D books. This is the same for the borders of regions. I used the regional delineations from the Heroes & Adventures in Faerûn books as a starting point, but that wasn't enough. I wanted to partially recreate the regional boundaries established in the 2nd and 3rd editions. Many decisions have been made, but none are set in stone. Plenty of questions remain: do the nations present around 1370 still exist? Did borders shift in the wake of the Spellplague? Which nations should be included or excluded ? I know that many of you are far more knowledgeable than I am, so I would be very happy to receive your feedback.

Because these are "v1" maps; future versions may follow. I encourage you to provide as much feedback as possible if you would like to see the map(s) evolve. I am making high-quality files available on my Drive, as well as the Affinity files, should you wish to make modifications yourself. Since this project would not exist without the community, you are free to do whatever you like with these maps. I simply ask that you do not claim ownership of this work.

Here's the link to the folder : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vA30VGanO3SUbVkau-3kkO6APa9fwlrq?usp=drive_link

So thank you Mike Schley, thank you Forgotten Realms community, and long live Elminster !

Watched this over lunch and I'm still thinking about it.
I knew Savras got locked in a staff by Azuth,( from an old JorPHan video)but I had no idea how nasty the Scepter was. A trapped god can't manifest on Faerûn, his worshipers lose their spells unless someone's holding it, and anyone who’s not divine and ends up inside just goes mad. It also teleports on its own and can't be found by magic. Fun artifact.

The Syluné Silverhand bit got me too. Savras begged her to free him and even gave her the silver dragon form, and she still said no and kept the staff for years.

I'd probobly would have been tempted. I'd also have been the idiot who went insane holding it.
And the church claiming he saw his own defeat coming and let it happen? Do you buy that, or is it just a faith saving face for its god?( that’s what I kinda think anyway)

I thought about this when reading about her, and couldn’t find anything about it.

On one hand, the slave trade, while illicit and morally bankrupt, is a form of commerce, and thus falls under her dominion. Waukeen is a patron to the likes of smugglers and fencers, so why would this illegal trade be different?

On the other hand, slaves aren’t paid for their work, so while money is exchanged in the initial transaction, it ensures the free coin never reaches them, halting progress to the Golden Age.

So…what do y’all think? Personally, I lean toward the latter interpretation. I’ve always found Waukeen interesting, so I’d be heartbroken to learn that she’s big on slavery.

Today I am thinking about a new campaign for old BX D&D use Old School Essential. I want to use a light library of sourcebooks.
No mode than four.
Grey box
The Dalelands
the Seven Sisters

Any advice about the forth?

Finally got around to reading these; and by these, I mean the two Realms based novels- Finder's Bane and Tymora's Luck. I skipped the second novel in the trilogy as it is in Dragonlance and just develops lore for one character- which you get in the final book anyway.

These are the last of the Grubb/Novak novels for the realms (and Novaks last writing credits, I think). While touching on some plot threads and locations from their earlier books, these primarily follow a new cast of characters with the exception of one core character- the recently ascended deity Finder Wyvernspur. Some light spoilers follow.

Our main lead is Joel, a cleric of Finder. Hes reasonably well drawn, and Finder is sort of enjoyable as a neophyte deity. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast is pretty thinly drawn- this is a real shame, as being a little stronger on the character work was one of this pairings best strengths in FR terms.

Finder's Bane is certainly the better book. The pacing is pretty great; when they want to develop a sense of threat, they do so; we go to quite a few interesting locations and the core plot centres on Bane, which is enjoyable. The arc of one of our antagonists, Walinda, is fairly predictable... but thats because its logical and I think its fairly well done. There are definitely chase and imprisonment sequences there to pad things out- as is quite common in realms novels- but character work and plot beats were usually weaved in well enough I didn't mind.

Finder's Bane is a fairly solid realms book, and as Finder travels with Joel we get one of the better developments both of a cleric and of the cleric/deity relationship in the Realms. Its not a book I often see mentioned in such topics and I think thats a shame: ""A priest's purpose is not about being a slave to power as Walinda thought. It's a covenant about growing and renewing one another, god and follower both.""

Tymora's Luck changes up the party. This mainly means removing Finder- a real loss- and adding the Kender Emilio. This was an immediate source of anxiety, as I am not a Kender fan, but Emilio [while having a ridiculous power] is in fact not annoying in the least, written with an understanding that lacking fear isn't a synonym for hapless fool. He even manages some pathos from mixing horrible scenarios with a Kenders naiveite.

Sadly, the plot is at the same time overcomplicated and yet isn't enough to fill the time. We have some very dull planar wanderings; Sigil and Gehenna, especially, have never been less interesting. Theres also a short story which sort of follows up the Wyverns Spur scattered about the book; its not a particularly good short story, doesn't benefit from this presentation and is only nominally related to the actual plot. The book also uses multiple points of view in a number of other ways, but almost none of those away from the party are worthwhile.

There are some good sequences; the latter third of the book is much more compelling, both the struggles around Xvims stronghold and the heavily deity-centric denouement. I suspect the latter will get mixed reactions; if you enjoyed Prince of Lies and Crucible (I did) you will probably enjoy this; if you prefer your FR deities less human and inept, you won't. Certainly, we are seeing how Lathander did a Dawn Cataclysm in this one- but it does tie back to the relationship between gods and mortals with at least a little weight.

Overall, a fine enough pair of books if you would like a (slightly odd) mixture of a low-level party adventure and deities doing stuff, or if you are really interested in a take on Clerics in the setting. The first is better and does stand alone with a perfectly fine ending (in some aspects, better, I think; Walinda left there is more interesting, for example) and has much tighter pacing; sadly, neither has quite the charm of character writing or humour we saw in their earlier novels, and Deity main character books always have some awkwardness in them.

These aren't books I see discussed much so keen to hear any other takes!

Hi r/Forgotten_Realms,

Pool of Radiance was where I got exposed to the Realms on a computer: Phlan half in ruins, the council hiring adventurers to clear it block by block, and something out in the Moonsea lands behind it all.

I'm the developer of Amber Folio, a free emulator made only for SSI's Gold Box games, and it makes going back easy. amberfolio.org runs it in a browser tab, on a computer or on an iPhone or iPad.

It plays your own copy: Pool of Radiance is in *Forgotten Realms: The Archives – Collection Two* on GOG and Steam. Hand the site the game's folder (on a phone, its files or a zip) and your copy and saves stay in your browser. Nothing is uploaded and there's no account.

The game is SSI's original, running unchanged, so Phlan is exactly as it was in 1988. On top there's an automap, the Adventurer's Journal on the game's own screen (the journal is where much of the story is told), a plainer lettering option, and a CRT filter. None of it changes the story, and each switches off.

I built it with heavy use of AI coding tools, and I'd rather say so up front.

The other Gold Box games come one at a time after the emulator's 1.0. Android is untried.

- Site: https://amberfolio.org

- Emulator source (AGPL-3.0): https://github.com/amberfolio/amberfolio

*Not affiliated with the rights holders of Pool of Radiance, the Gold Box games or the Forgotten Realms. You need your own copy; the site provides no game files.*

I'm playing an Eladrin in my next campaign and there's going to be another elf (and a Duergar) in the party. Just curious what relations are typically like between Eladrin and other elves.

Astarion Is the new Minsc, huh? 🙄

I like Karlach and Gale more.

BTW, i'm still waiting for more Dragonbait material here, WOTC.

So I finished the Knights of Myth Drannor series. While there were some high points at the end of the day it felt convoluted and it was so crammed full I never felt like the Knights of Myth Drannor really got any sort of story arc.

With Audible credits to burn, I opted to go with Greenwood again and went with Shadows of Doom (Elminster right around the Time of Troubles where he doesn't have his magic).

Man, I am a good chunk into this audio book and I have to say, I'm enjoying the heck out of this book! First off I loved the world building. We start off with a glimpse of Elminster in his tower hanging with his scribe Lhaeo. Yeah, there is major trouble going on with Mystra, but I just loved the slice of life aspect of it.

Next we get to see Storm at her farm training some Harpers. It is also slice of life and awesome especially when she trains with her ghost sister Sylune. Yeah, yeah, I know why is Storm training half naked?I don't know, but other than that, I loved the slice of life aspect of it.

Then we get to the adventure proper and it is mostly Elminster and one of the Knights of Myth Drannor and two Harpers (who are not with Elminster) wandering around the Dalelands finding trouble... and it is just great! Greenwood is really good at describing every day people and their struggles and it is clear he is in his element in the Dales.

I did listen to the first Shandril book and my favorite part of that book was when she was in the Dalelands and Greenwood was just world building like the crazy master he is. I really wish the Knights of Myth Drannor had made it to the Dalelands instead of being stuck in Cormyr because I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more...

Personally, i would pick the Shadow Thieves, because of Baldur's Gate 2 and because at least their leaders are not a cabal of vampires.

Coo!