Join me as I read every novel in the Forgotten Realms.
Early March of this year will mark the sixth anniversary for this blog. Thank you to any readers! As far as goals for 2025 are concerned, while I didn't quite meet my goal of two blog posts a month, I did at least have something here every month. I also had a reading goal, which I actually make in a range. The low end is 11 Forgotten Realms novels read, 24 or more is high, so 18 is the middle goal…
While there are several series in the Gold Box umbrella, only the Pool of Radiance series of games had fiction written and connected to them. Those that were left out of tie-in fiction were Unlimited Adventures by MicroMagic, the two Savage Frontiers games and 1991’s Neverwinter Nights from Stormfront Studios/Beyond Software. This latter developer with release a couple more Forgotten Realms games…
I am much behind on my reviews. I am studying for a post-graduate degree, work full time at a factory, and have a family. But I still am able to play D&D every so often, and I still read Forgotten Realms books . I actually finished this series in December 2024, having started it in February of the same year. I have previously reviewed Elfshadow , book 1, but otherwise I have not reviewed the…
Ed Greenwood has been a person I’ve written about much here. For good reason, he’s the creator of the Realms and still active in that creation and participating in the TTRPG community. I’ve purchased a few things from his merchandise store, like the Purple Dragon Might T-shirt . Unsupervised wizards are like the sorcerers of old sword & sorcery, they’re often the key villains in the Realms. Off…
“You should not give in to evils, but proceed ever more boldly against them.” Storm Silverhand, Bard of Shadowdale. 1996 Ed Greenwood Before Brandon Sanderson’s S tormlight Archive, there was a Forgotten Realms novel, number 14 in The Harpers, but truly a standalone, called Stormlight . The prologue introduces Lord Athlan Summerstar in Firefall Vale, looking at the sunset behind the Thunder Peaks…
I know last time it was another Greenwood short story, but they're fun. This one, How the Bridge Was Held is another Edtime Story, similar to The Madness of the Executioner , which I reviewed previously. This is in video format, essentially a story told around a fire. There seems to be a text version as well on Patreon . It was released in December 2023. The story focuses on Alustriel, who, with…
The Lady of the Mists is the fifth Spin the Yarn short story from the 2005 event, published in August 2006. I have previously reviewed the first four . As before, Ed Greenwood has taken random, absurd, and outrageous suggestions from a crowd and has written a short story set in the Forgotten Realms. You can read this one here . The story begins with a misty night in Dockward in Waterdeep, quite…
Recently on Twitter, leading up to Gen Con, I saw a post from Rhys Yorke . He mentioned that he has written a novel with Ed Greenwood: Souls for the Taking , book one in a series called The Return of Larloch . It looks as if it will be published through DMs Guild, but seeing as Ed--if not directly contradicted by WotC--is the arbiter of lore for the Forgotten Realms, this is very exciting and…
This is the series where I point out other creators that either have their material focused partially or completely on the Forgotten Realms. Today I want to mention another blog, this one found at Forgotten Realms Reader . I became aware of this one on accident! As you can see, my url is really similar. I wanted to have my domain as Reader, and not Reading, but I discovered it was already taken.…
The fourth Elminster novel, Elminster in Hell, was released in 2001. We are in contemporary Forgotten Realms this time, unlike the first three novels ( Making of a Mage , Elminster in Myth Drannor , and The Temptation of Elminster ). I read this March 2024. If you would like to listen to my thoughts, do so here . The year is 1372 DR, however, there are several flashbacks/memories intermixed with…
Dealing with Dragons is a novel set to be released on July 29, 2025. I surprisingly received it in advanced and here is my ever-honest review. Much of this review will echo my thoughts on the first book : this book is part of a shift in Forgotten Realms fiction, one that feels more like game fiction rather than fantasy fiction that also happened to be for a game. I posted the news of this novel…
If you have stuck around for awhile, you may remember I reviewed the first novel for Dungeons & Dragons , Quag Keep, some years ago. Before Quag Keep there was only one other story officially tied to D&D, The Gnome Cache by Garrison Ernst (a nom de plume for Gary Gygax). It was serialized in the first issues of The Dragon, and released to the point it was a novella. In reality, it was a complete…
In June of 2024, I read the 1991 novel The Verdant Passage by Troy Denning. I have read many of his novels set in the Forgotten Realms, but this was my first time reading anything in the Dark Sun campaign setting. Over the years I have explored these other D&D settings, such as Dragonlance and Greyhawk . Dark Sun is different from these, and the Forgotten Realms, for (as the name implies) the…
I was not in love with the 2023 D&D movie when I saw it early in theaters. But I love it now, while my complaints still stand, it’s a remarkable movie. One thing that I adore is how much it brings the world of the Forgotten Realms to life. This included in some props using the made-up script/alphabet that we have looked at before , Thorass. This is very popular, like the Latin is in our world. I…
This is an item I’ve had for a handful of years now. I was wearing when I spoke with Ed in 2022. It is a lot more worn now, I’ve thought about buying another from Red Bubble, which is where I got it. It’s a favorite for a couple reasons. First, it is the Sigil of Elminster. He is a character dear to my heart. Second, it is obscure. Most people don’t recognize it as a D&D shirt. -- You can track my…
Read Act 1 and Act 2 recap and session 1 recap. The first watch goes to Whitehead. Piper is largely unresponsive and ill looking. Feek dreams of a pleasant scene with the family, except it is not his, it is Proster Obarskyr's, now long dead. Hjalmar dreams of Clangeddin wrapped in a tentacle. Feek takes the second watch and spends the time talking to Nana Opal, who has rested only a little. She…
Eye of the Beholder released in 1991. Developed by Westwood Associates and published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. for MS-DOS. It was later released on other systems and also spawned two sequels. The first, The Legacy of Darkmoon released in 1991 and developed and published by the same companies as the first. The third game, Assault on Myth Drannor , released in 1993 and was developed in-house by…
I didn’t start with Dungeons & Dragons . I want that to be clear. I became exposed to the Realms via video games first and then novels and then I played Lost Mines of Phandelver beginning in March 2018. But I had already been playing TTRPGs for years at that point. One, really, though I had tried one other. Let's go back to the Summer of 2013. I was visiting Illinois for the first time since I had…
On February 2, 2025, my group kicked off act 3 of our campaign in Cormyr. You can see recaps for acts 1 and 2 if you want. Only two characters from act 2 remained: Hjalmar the Red from the Earthfast Mountains, a cleric of Clangeddin; and Faelivrin, a half-elf servant (Castles & Crusades pacer class) of House Huntcrown that goes by the name of Stardust. We also had three new characters. First is…
“The Innkeeper’s Secret” is a tie-in to Beyond the High Road , book 2 in the Cormyr Trilogy . it can be found in Dragon Magazine issue #266, on pages 56-65. It was released in December 1999. This was the first fiction I had read in the magazine since reading Odom’s “ Dark Legacy ” in 2023. story art by Carl Critchlow The story opens with Princess Tanalasta Obarskyr and Vangerdahast entering a…
I have played very little MUDs, unless you consider graphical ones like RuneScape. About the time I first played EverQuest, late 2012 or so, I played a MUD set in Middle-earth, Two Towers Mud , or T2T. When I was browsing a post at The Ancient Gaming Noob , a blog I've followed for years, I saw a reference to a game new to me, TorilMUD . Toril was immediately recognizable to me as the name of the…
In the year 2000, Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, the novel by Philip Athans, was released. While the first novel was released half a year after the first game, this one released with the second game. Listen to my review here . Like in the first novel, our protagonist is Abdel Adrian. Characters such as Jaheira reappear, while Minsc and Yoshiro are new to the novel story but familiar to game…
It is a slushy day in Mirtul. At Battlerise, a company of 200 Purple Dragons, arrayed in purple, fought the black clad cultists numbering 300 and headed by a black dragon from the ruins of Battlegate Castle. The dragon was slain and the cultists slain or scattered. While gathering requisitions a group of select individuals were selected by the high knights to save a Huntcrown noble woman,…
Last week, while I was out of town at a conference, the news dropped about a D&D tv show, specifically a Forgotten Realms one. I have been hearing rumors of such for years, but now we have some confirmation and some solid looking plans that will likely come to fruition. An article from Deadline tells us Netflix is looking to produce a live-action tv show. This is headed by Shawn Levy, known for…
This is a post I have avoided for some time. Neverwinter, an MMORPG based around 4e Neverwinter in the Forgotten Realms, released in 2013. In early 2015 it went into beta on the Xbox One and released later that same year on the console. While I’ve played a tiny amount on the PC, the Xbox One beta is where I began my journey. I was immediately gripped by a couple things. At the time I had enjoyed…