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Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, 4th Edition | 
 enlarge | Authors: Bruce R. Cordell, Ed Greenwood, Chris Sims, Philip Athans
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Category: Book
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $13.32
You Save: $26.63 (67%)
New (22) Used (7) from $13.32
Avg. Customer Rating:  30 reviews
Sales Rank: 805
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 4th
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.3
Dimensions (in): 10.9 x 8.5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0786949244
Dewey Decimal Number: 793
EAN: 9780786949243
ASIN: 0786949244
Publication Date: August 19, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. Delivery is usually 5 - 8 working days from order, International is by Royal Mail Airmail
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Product Description
Dark perils and great deeds await!
Welcome to Faerun, a land of amazing magic, terrifying monsters, ancient ruins, and hidden wonders. The world has changed since the Spellplague, and from this arcane crucible have emerged shining kingdoms, tyrannical empires, mighty heroes, and monster-infested dungeons. The Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide presents a world of untold adventure; a land of a thousand stories shaped by the deeds of adventurers the likes of which Faerun has never seen before.
This book includes everything a Dungeon Master needs to run a D&D campaign in the Forgotten Realms setting, as well as elements that DMs can incorporate into their own D&D campaigns. The book provides background information on the lands of Faerun, a fully detailed town in which to start a campaign, adventure seeds, new monsters, ready-to-play non-player characters, and a full-color poster map of Faerun.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 25 more reviews...
 A return to adventure August 28, 2008
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
This book reminds me of nothing so much as the original, much beloved "gray box" that was the first introduction to Ed Greenwood's marvelous fantasy world for tens of thousands of readers two decades ago. Here again, at long last, is literally untold danger and mystery and excitement. Here's an invitation to join in a fresh creative enterprise with other players and game masters, readers and writers--an invitation composed of stories, legends, and sometimes, threats.
Over the years, the Realms setting has been enriched by the contributions of hundreds of writers, designers, artists, editors, and coders. But that enrichment came at the price of codification. For some, it seemed that every corner was mapped, every character measured, by what came to be competing, overlapping, and sometimes contradictory rules sets. The bewildering amount of accumulated material threatened to collapse the Realms under their own weight.
Now, the clarion call of the new fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons has been sounded in the Realms, and the Realms are reborn. Now is the time for new adventures and adventurers, new stories and storytellers, new legends.
 Empty. Soulless, Forgotten August 28, 2008
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
First of all let me say this review is written from the point of view of a gamer who has used the Forgotten Realms as his primary game world for a little over 18 years but is willing to embrace a new system when it works such as the transition between 2nd and 3rd ed.
I had already felt like D&D had been destroyed by the 4th ed. I hated the video game approach to the game and laughed at the explanation that they are taking the game back to "role playing". As I have said elsewhere regarding this subject, If you need a new system to inject role playing into a game, you're doing it wrong. I also laughed when I read that the reason the Realms has changed so much is to better reflect the new system. This baffled me, it still does. They didn't need to tear apart the Realms when the 3rd edition came out.
"That's OK though" I thought. "Forgotten Realms has always been about the lore and substance of the world, I can still use the 4th ed Realms books for their information rather that their implemented rules" (I still have many 1st and 2nd edition books that serve this purpose admirably). With growing incredulity I watched the writers gloss over almost everything of any interest.
Things that are major issues to fans receive little or, more often, no explanation. For example (SPOILER ALERT) the entry on The Silver Marches (Now called Luruar for no explained reason) casually states "Before she passed away, High Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon founded a mutual defense league in the region." That's the soul mention of Alustriel in the entire book. No how, when or why. Just "passed away". This would mean nothing to the casual reader but to myself and countless other fans of the Realms it requires a little more than that. To put it into broader terms, this would be like reading and loving the Sherlock Holmes stories and then picking up a book one day and reading "Before he died, Watson was a close friend and confidante to Holmes" with no further explanation or insight as to why or how this major character was tossed aside without rime or reason.
It didn't take too long to sadly see that the Realms no longer existed. Now I'm not talking about "The Realms you knew no longer exist due to a great calamity" kind of no longer existed, I'm talking about the kind of "no longer existing" that involves throwing out every single piece of what makes something appealing, intriguing and deep, and replacing it with something else that calls itself by the same name but is simply a shadow of it's predecessor. I can only describe it as...well, empty. This word kept coming back to me as I turned page after soulless page. Empty. The heart of the Realms has been ripped out and replaced by a clockwork replica that tries to do the job but is so distant from the original it might as well be something else entirely.
WOTC could almost have released this as a new campaign setting and got away with it. Change the names, countries etc and voila, new money making scheme. This is to the Realms what the Highlander, Robocop and The Crow sequels were to their original incarnations. An Insult. They took a wonderful, creative concept that fans embraced and loved and then decided to ignore everything that came before it and turn it into an empty shell of it's former self.
The only people I can see enjoying this game are the people who were introduced to D&D via 4th ed and have never heard of the Forgotten Realms before and good luck to them. It just saddens me that they missed out on such a good thing.
I always liked to remain relatively faithful to official Realms canon for simplicities sake. That way, when new books or source material came out that is specific to events or history, I don't have to twist things around too much to make use of it. With all the little details and events taken care of in the official lore, I could concentrate on merging my game/story into that world and use the wealth of information as a foundation to build upon. I have now abandoned official Realms at this point and will do as I damn well please because I no longer care what WOTC do with it because I won't be buying it. (I know I could have done this anyway as any game world is the DM's to do with as he/she pleases but I explained why I didn't). I;ll start by fully embracing the Pathfinder system by Paizo Publishing, currently available as a free beta PDF, which both streamlines and expands upon the 3.5 core rules under the open game license. Wow, that sounded like an infomercial, I swear it wasn't. I just like 3.5 and would rather give my money to a company who is going to do something with it when the 500+ page final release comes out next year.
 The Formerly Well Known Forgotten Realms...no more August 28, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
I would like to preface by stating that I have been an avid fan of D&D, most of its campaign worlds (including FR) and the fun the game brings to the table. That said, let's take a look at the new FR 4.0 Campaign Guide.
Without reiterating much of what has already been pointed out in other reviews regarding the format and editing job in the book (who opens a campaign guide with an adventure instead of information about the campaign world and its residents first?) to the true heart of the book: the history of the realms, or lack there of.
We are told that a powerful spell plague came upon the realms and destroyed many of the gods and territories of the realms, even driving other gods away (in case there is a strong demand to bring them back I would think) and we are supposed to start playing in a new realm 100 years after this horrific set of events (a.k.a. the spellplague). After looking at the "new" realms and the beautiful map that accompanied the book, I did like the feel of the geographical changes, 'it was cool' but after a closer examination it felt like I was just looking at a different version of Azeroth. Flying earthmotes and Netheril reawakened = Nax. Chult now resembles Un'goro Crater with a smoking volcano in the midst as well. There are other references as well. I just feel as if Wizards' approach to 4th edition was fostered in a need to compete with the growing MMO community (i.e. WoW) and have often times just replicated the game on several levels rather than building on the masterpiece they created in 3.5 and solidifying it. There was no need to kill the Realms.
I think they could have done a better job with this book and with several aspects of the game but there is always hope things could change for the better and we could end up seeing a blend of the best of 3.5 and 4th in the future.
-L
This a Great New Realms Setting! August 27, 2008
2 out of 8 found this review helpful
Forget the nay-sayers. This is a great New Realms for 4th Edition. If you dont like 4th Edition, Use the 3.5 rules and play in the 3.5 Realms! You have a hundred year gap for goodness sake. This is a really good product! Index does suck, Wizards has a hard time with these unfortunatley. MAP also need work, an easy web enhancement though can correct this!
 Not bad, for 4th edition August 27, 2008
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
Having read through the campaign guide and what a lot of people are saying, I think this is a good book for Dungeons and Dragon's 4th edition. 4th edition is a very different game from 3.0 or 3.5, and I think the transition and 100 year jump is handled in-game very well.
People haven't liked the book because it "lacks depth" and "focuses only on the PCs", but that's what 4.0 does. The PCs are the most important part of 4.0 (unlike previous editions) so this makes sense. Otherwise the book would be out of place.
That being said, I don't think that the book focuses too much on the PCs; while I would enjoy more fluff and flavour instead of grand sample encounters, overall the book is decent.
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