I have started a new campaign with the release of 5th edition and in keeping with the return of the rules to its legendary roots I decided to do the campaign in The Forgotten Realms. I love Faerun and all the history and iconic feel of The Forgotten Realms. I also love the TON of source material available for running a campaign in this world. Maybe that makes me one of those “lazy” DM’s I hear about online, but that’s not how I see it. I STILL have lots of work to do to place the characters in the world and flesh out locations and NPC’s.

One of the things I decided to do as we began exploring Faerun was to provide the players with bits of information from the campaign book to give them the background, the feel, and the history of Faerun. I have been doing a series of emails with quotes taken directly from the campaign book.

This is the first one I sent out:

“The Forgotten Realms: The Land of Faerun‏

From the bitter, windswept steppes of the Endless Waste to the storm lashed cliffs of the Sword Coast stretches a wide, wild land of shining kingdoms and primal wilderness. Faerun is only one continent of the world known as Toril. Other lands lie in distant corners of the world, but Faerun is the center of it all, the crossroads and crux upon which all else turns. Dozens of nations, hundreds of city-states, and countless tribes, villages, and settlements dot its expanse.

The continent of Faerun measures more than 3500 miles east to west and 2500 miles from north to south. It includes sun-blasted deserts, vast forest deeps, forbidding mountains, and gleaming inland seas. Across this vast expanse travel minstrels and peddlers, caravan merchants and guards, soldiers, sailors, and steel-hearted adventurers carrying tales of strange, glorious, faraway places. Good maps and clear trails can take even an inexperienced youth with dreams of glory far accross Faerun. Thousands of restless young would-be heroes from backcountry farmsteads and sleepy villages arrive in Waterdeep and the other great cities every year in search of wealth and renown.

Known roads may be well traveled, but they are not necessarily safe. Fell magic, deadly monsters, and cruel local rulers are all perils that you face when you fare abroad in Faerun. Away from the main roads and the great cities, the countryside is far wilder than the city folk remember. Even farms and freeholds within a day’s walk of Waterdeep itself may fall prey to monsters, and no place in Faerun is safe from the sudden wrath of a dragon.”