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Forgotten Realms

Forgotten Realms is a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy role-playing game. Commonly referred to by players and game designers as "The Realms", it was created by game designer Ed Greenwood around 1967 as a setting for his childhood stories. Several years later, it was published for the D&D game as a series of magazine articles, and the first Realms game products were released in 1987. Role-playing game products have been produced for the setting ever since, in addition to novels, role-playing video game adaptations (including the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game to use graphics), comic books, and the film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

Forgotten Realms is a fantasy world setting, described as a world of strange lands, dangerous creatures, and mighty deities, where magic and supernatural phenomena are quite real. The premise is that, long ago, planet Earth and the world of the Forgotten Realms were more closely connected. As time passed, the inhabitants of Earth had mostly forgotten about the existence of that other world – hence the name Forgotten Realms. The original Forgotten Realms logo, which was used until 2000, had small runic letters that read "Herein lie the lost lands" as an allusion to the connection between the two worlds.

Forgotten Realms is one of the most popular D&D settings, largely due to the success of novels by authors such as R. A. Salvatore and numerous role-playing video games, including Pool of Radiance (1988), Eye of the Beholder (1991), Icewind Dale (2000), and the Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate series.

Creative origins
Ed Greenwood began writing stories about the Forgotten Realms as a child, starting at the age of eight. He came up with the name from the notion of a multiverse of parallel worlds; Earth is one such world, and the Realms another. In Greenwood's original conception, the fantastic legends of Earth derive from a fantasy world that can no longer be accessed. Greenwood discovered the Dungeons & Dragons game in 1975, and became a serious role-playing enthusiast with the first Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) game releases in 1978. Greenwood brought his fantasy world into the new medium of role-playing games when a university student named September invited him to play AD&D with her. The setting became the home of Greenwood's personal campaign. Greenwood began a Realms campaign in the city of Waterdeep before creating a group known as the Knights of Myth Drannor in the Shadowdale region. Greenwood felt that his players' thirst for detail made the Realms what it is: "They want it to seem real, and work on 'honest jobs' and personal activities, until the whole thing grows into far more than a casual campaign. Roleplaying always governs over rules, and the adventures seem to develop themselves." Greenwood has stated that his own version of the Forgotten Realms, as run in his personal campaign, is much darker than published versions.

Starting in 1979, Greenwood published a series of articles that detailed the setting in The Dragon (now Dragon) magazine, the first of which was about a monster known as the curst. Greenwood wrote voluminous entries to Dragon, and used the Realms as a setting for his descriptions of magic items, monsters, and spells. When Gary Gygax "lost control of TSR in 1985, the company saw an opportunity to move beyond Greyhawk and introduce a new default setting". In 1986, TSR began looking for a new campaign setting for AD&D, and assigned Jeff Grubb to find out more about the setting used by Greenwood as portrayed in his articles in Dragon.

Greenwood states that Grubb asked him "Do you just make this stuff up as you go, or do you really have a huge campaign world?", and Greenwood answered "yes" to both questions. TSR felt that the Forgotten Realms would be a more open-ended setting than its epic fantasy counterpart Dragonlance, and chose the Realms as a ready-made campaign setting upon deciding to publish AD&D 2nd edition. Greenwood agreed to work on the project and began working to get Forgotten Realms officially published. He sent TSR a few dozen cardboard boxes stuffed with pencil notes and maps, and sold all rights to the setting for a token fee. He noted that TSR altered his original conception of the Realms being a place that could be accessed from Earth, as "[c]oncerns over possible lawsuits (kids getting hurt while trying to 'find a gate') led TSR to de-emphasize this meaning".

Jon Peterson, author of Dungeons and Dragons Art and Arcana: A Visual History, said that Greenwood "was that rare obsessive DM who just seemed to have more ideas and energy to pour into his world than even the folks at TSR did. Naturally when TSR was shopping for new campaign worlds as part of their cross-media strategy, they had to get the Forgotten Realms. R. A. Salvatore took Greenwood's world and created characters and stories for it that made him a bestselling author and sustained TSR as a major fantasy book publisher".

1985–1990
In 1985, the AD&D module Bloodstone Pass was released by TSR and is retroactively considered to be a part of the Forgotten Realms, although it was not until the module The Bloodstone Wars was released that it became the official setting for the module series. Douglas Niles had worked on a novel trilogy with a Celtic theme, which were then altered to become the first novels set in the Forgotten Realms, starting with Darkwalker on Moonshae (1987). It is the first book in The Moonshae Trilogy, which predates the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set by one month.

The Forgotten Realms Campaign Set was later released in 1987 as a boxed set of two source books (Cyclopedia of the Realms and DM's Sourcebook of the Realms) and four large color maps, designed by Greenwood in collaboration with Grubb. It sold ca. one hundred fifty thousand times in its first two years. The set introduced the campaign setting and explained how to use it, and reserved space on the map for SSI's Gold Box computer role-playing games set in the Forgotten Realms.

TSR began incorporating elements by other designers into the Forgotten Realms, including the Moonshae Isles by Douglas Niles, the "Desert of Desolation" by Tracy Hickman and Laura Hickman, and Kara-Tur by Zeb Cook. The setting also provided a new way for TSR to market its Battlesystem rules, which it had supported with the Bloodstone adventure sequence which started with Bloodstone Pass; the last two adventures in the series, The Bloodstone Wars (1987) and The Throne of Bloodstone (1988), were unambiguously set in the Forgotten Realms. Some characters from Egg of the Phoenix (1987) by Frank Mentzer were incorporated into The Savage Frontier (1988).

The compilation module Desert of Desolation reworked the previous adventures to fit as part of the Forgotten Realms. The module Under Illefarn published in 1987 is set in the Forgotten Realms, as is the module released in 1988, Swords of the Iron Legion.

R. A. Salvatore wrote his first novel for the Forgotten Realms, The Crystal Shard (1988), which was originally set in the Moonshae Islands before being moved to a new location and introduced the drow character Drizzt Do'Urden. Drizzt has since appeared in more than seventeen subsequent novels, many of which have appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list. In 1988, the first in a line of Forgotten Realms role-playing video games, Pool of Radiance, was released by Strategic Simulations, Inc. The game was popular and won the Origins Award for "Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game of 1988".

Several supplements to the original boxed set were released under the first edition rules, beginning with Waterdeep and the North, which was followed by Moonshae in 1987, and Empires of the Sands, The Magister, The Savage Frontier, Dreams of the Red Wizards, and Lords of Darkness in 1988. The City System boxed set was released in 1988, and it contained several maps of the city of Waterdeep. Ruins of Adventure, a module based on the computer game Pool of Radiance, was also released in 1988.

The boxed set Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms was released in 1988. It gives details of the lands of Kara-Tur, and was designed to be used with the 1986 book Oriental Adventures, which officially placed the book in the Forgotten Realms world.

In 1989, DC Comics began publishing a series of Forgotten Realms comics written by Grubb. Each issue contains twenty-six pages, illustrated primarily by Rags Morales and Dave Simons. Twenty-five issues were published in total, with the last being released in 1991. A fifty-six page annual Forgotten Realms Comic Annual #1: Waterdhavian Nights, illustrated by various artists, was released in 1990.

Curse of the Azure Bonds, a module based on the role-playing video game of the same name, was released in 1989.

1990–2000
To transition the Forgotten Realms from first edition AD&D to the ruleset's second edition, a story involving the gods being cast down was planned by TSR management from the top-down and started with Hall of Heroes (1989) and continued with a three-adventure Avatar series (1989) and a three-novel Avatar series (1989), and some stories in the comic book. TSR adjusted the timeline of the Forgotten Realms by advancing the calendar one year forward to 1358 DR, referring to the gap as the Time of Troubles.

In early 1990, the hardcover Forgotten Realms Adventures by Grubb and Greenwood was released, which introduced the setting to AD&D 2nd edition; the book also detailed how the Time of Troubles had changed the setting. The Ruins of Undermountain (1991) was one of the first published mega-dungeons. The Al-Qadim setting by Jeff Grubb was released in 1992, and the setting was added to the southern part of the Forgotten Realms. In July 1990, the RPGA Network's Polyhedron Newszine began publishing a monthly column by Greenwood entitled "The Everwinking Eye" detailing various locations and personalities in the Realms. The Network used the Forgotten Realms city of Ravens Bluff as the setting for their first living campaign. Official RPGA support for this product line included the Living City module series. A number of sub-settings of the Forgotten Realms were briefly supported in the early 1990s. Three more modules were produced for the Kara-Tur setting. The Horde boxed set, released in 1990, detailed the Hordelands, which featured a series of three modules. The Maztica Campaign Set, released in 1991, detailed the continent of Maztica.

The original gray boxed set was revised in 1993 to update it to AD&D 2nd edition, with the release of a new Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting boxed set containing three books (A Grand Tour of the Realms, Running the Realms, and Shadowdale) and various "monster supplements". Additional material for the setting was released steadily throughout the 1990s. Forgotten Realms novels, such as the Legacy of the Drow series, the first three books of The Elminster Series, and numerous anthologies were also released throughout the 1990s, which led to the setting being hailed as one of the most successful shared fantasy universes of the 1990s. By the first quarter of 1996, TSR had published sixty-four novels set in the Forgotten Realms out of the 242 novels set in AD&D worlds. These novels in turn sparked interest in role-playing by new gamers.

Numerous Forgotten Realms video games were released between 1990 and 2000. The Eye of the Beholder PC game was released in 1990, which was followed by two sequels: the first in 1991, and the second in 1992. All three games were re-released for DOS on a single disk in 1995. Another 1991 release was Neverwinter Nights on America Online, the first graphical massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). In 1998, Baldur's Gate, the first in a line of popular role-playing video games developed by BioWare and "considered by most pundits as the hands-down best PC roleplaying game ever", was released. The game was followed by a sequel, Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, in 2000 and Icewind Dale, a separate game that utilized the same game engine as Baldur's Gate. Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor was released in 2001. Several popular Forgotten Realms characters such as Drizzt Do'Urden and Elminster made minor appearances in these games.

2000–2008
When Wizards of the Coast took over publication of Dungeons & Dragons after purchasing TSR in 1997, they trimmed production down from six campaign settings to Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance, and completed AD&D 2nd edition production sometime between 1998 and 1999. They later hired Rob Heinsoo as a member of the D&D Worlds team to focus on Forgotten Realms in the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons. An official material update and a timeline advance were introduced to the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition in 2001 with the release of the hardcover book the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, which won the Origins Award for Best Role-Playing Game Supplement of 2001 in 2002. The timeline was officially advanced from 1358 DR to 1372 DR. The adventure City of the Spider Queen (2002) did not meet its projected sales targets, so Wizards of the Coast cut back on production of new adventures.

In 2002, BioWare released Neverwinter Nights, set in the northern reaches of Faerûn and operating on the revised 3.0 rules for D&D. It was followed by two expansion packs: Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark. A sequel using version 3.5 of the rules was produced by Obsidian Entertainment in 2006, and was followed by the expansion sets Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir. The Forgotten Realms Deluxe Edition compilation was released in 2006, containing the Baldur's Gate series (excluding the Dark Alliance games), Icewind Dale series, and all Neverwinter Nights games before Neverwinter Nights 2.

2008–2014
With the release of Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition in 2008, Wizards opted for a publishing plan featuring a series of six books per year – consisting of three core rulebooks as well as three setting books – beginning with the Forgotten Realms. The company started the cycle with the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide (2008), the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide (2008), and Scepter Tower of Spellgard. These books updated the Forgotten Realms to the newest rules system which altered the setting drastically to make it fit with the 4th edition concept of "Points of Light".

The main lore change centered around an event called the Spellplague in 1385 DR. This cataclysm was unleashed when the goddess of magic Mystra was killed, "transforming whole nations and altering creatures. In addition, parts of Toril have fused with its long-lost twin world Abeir, whisking away some countries and adding new ones. The Underdark is more open to the surface. Thay has become a nightmare land of death and the Elves, sensing the newfound connection to the Feywild, have returned to Faerûn in force". The event moved the fictional world's timeline 94 years into the future to 1479 DR. The Spellplague acted as "a narrative justification for design changes".

In 2008, the Forgotten Realms also became the setting for the RPGA's sole living campaign, Living Forgotten Realms, replacing Living Greyhawk.

In 2011, the Neverwinter Campaign Setting was released which launched the 4th edition's first major multimedia release. The Forgotten Realms city setting spawned four novels by R. A. Salvatore called the Neverwinter Saga, a comic book, and a board game called The Legend of Drizzt, as well as two video games – the Facebook game Heroes of Neverwinter (2011–2012) and a MMORPG called Neverwinter (2013). Laura Tommervik, from the Wizards of the Coast marketing team, explained the approach: "We use Neverwinter as the connective tissue across multiple product categories. The transmedia campaign is an opportunity for fans to experience the brand however they choose to".

In 2013, Wizards of the Coast announced a year-long event called the Sundering which acted as a multimedia project to transition the Forgotten Realms to the next edition of the game. This release included a weekly D&D Encounters in-store play event, a free-to-play mobile game Arena of War (2013), and a collaborative novel series: The Companions (2013) by R. A. Salvatore, The Godborn (2013) by Paul S. Kemp, The Adversary (2013) by Erin Evans, The Reaver (2014) by Richard Lee Byers, The Sentinel (2014) by Troy Denning, and The Herald (2014) by Ed Greenwood. Liz Schuh, Head of Publishing and Licensing for Dungeons & Dragons, said: "The Sundering is the last of a series of ground-shaking events. It really affects the whole world of the Forgotten Realms in a major way. You may remember when the Spell Plagues began, the two worlds of the Forgotten Realms, Abeir and Toril, crashed together. That created both geographic changes (the map of the Forgotten Realms and Faerûn actually changed due to that collision), and also changed the way magic works. It changed the pantheon of the gods. The Sundering is all about those two worlds separating—coming apart—and the process of that separation is really the story that we're telling over the next year. At the end of this story arc, Abeir and Toril will be separate again, and many of the things that happened when they crashed together will go back to the way they were before. So magic will be much like it was before the Spell Plague. Markings that marked spell-plagued people and animals will fade and go away. It's really about moving the Forgotten Realms forward, but also about bringing it around to the most beloved and most fondly remembered Forgotten Realms." The result of The Second Sundering, in game terms, was the transition from 4th edition rules to 5th edition rules of Dungeons & Dragons, published in 2014.

2014–present
When D&D 5th edition was published in 2014, Wizards of the Coast announced that the Forgotten Realms would continue to serve as the official campaign setting for its upcoming published adventure materials. The village of Phandalin in the Forgotten Realms acted as the primary setting for the new 5th edition Starter Set (2014) which was published before the release of three new core rulebooks. "Tyranny of Dragons" was the first multimedia storyline for the new edition and included two adventure modules, Hoard of the Dragon Queen (2014) and The Rise of Tiamat (2014), and an update to the Neverwinter (2013) video game. The next two storylines, "Elemental Evil" which included Princes of the Apocalypse (2015) and "Rage of Demons" which included Out of the Abyss (2015), were also set in the Forgotten Realms.

The first campaign guide for the new edition, the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide (2015), was released on November 3, 2015, and only covered a fraction of the Forgotten Realms. It describes the 2013 Sundering event, referred to as the Second Sundering in the book, and its consequences in game terms and lore. The video game Sword Coast Legends (2015) published by Digital Extremes was also released in the same month as the tabletop campaign guide.

5th edition details on "the rest of Faerûn had been untouched until the Tomb of Annihilation (2017), an adventure that leaves the northern Sword Coast for the southern jungles of Chult". The official Dungeons & Dragons actual play web series Rivals of Waterdeep, which premiered in 2018, is set in the Forgotten Realms. It has adapted adventure modules such as Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (2018), Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus (2019) and Candlekeep Mysteries (2021) which are also set in the Forgotten Realms.

Fictional setting
The focus of the Forgotten Realms setting is the continent of Faerûn, the western part of a continent that was roughly modeled after the Eurasian continent on Earth. The lands of the Forgotten Realms are not all ruled by the human race, with populations of many humanoid races and creatures ubiquitous in fantasy fiction works such as dwarves, elves, goblins, and orcs. Technologically, the world of the Forgotten Realms resembles the pre-industrial Earth in the 13th or 14th century. However, the presence of magic provides an additional element of power to the societies. There are several nation states and many independent cities, with loose alliances being formed for defense or conquest. Trade is performed by ship or horse-drawn vehicle, and manufacturing is based upon cottage industry.

Geography
The Forgotten Realms is part of the fictional world of Abeir-Toril (usually just called Toril ), an Earth-like planet with many real-world influences and consists of several large continents. It was first detailed in the original Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, published in 1987 by TSR. The other continents of Toril include Kara-Tur, Zakhara, Maztica, and other yet unspecified landmasses. Kara-Tur, roughly corresponding to ancient East Asia, was later the focus of its own source book Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms, published in 1988. There is also a vast subterranean world called the Underdark beneath the surface.

In early editions of the setting, The Realms shared a unified cosmology with various other campaign settings called the Great Wheel. In this way each of the Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings were linked together to form one interwoven world connected by various planes of existence. With the release of the 2001 Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, the setting was given its own distinct and separate cosmological arrangement, with unique planes not explicitly connected to those of the other settings.

Religion
Religion plays a large part in the Forgotten Realms, with deities and their followers being an integral part of the world. Deities interact directly in mortal affairs, answer prayers, and have their own personal agendas. All deities must have worshipers to survive, and all mortals must worship a patron deity to secure a good afterlife. A huge number of diverse deities exist within several polytheistic pantheons; a large number of supplements have documented many of them, some in more detail than others. Greenwood created a pantheon of gods for his home Dungeons & Dragons game, in his Forgotten Realms world, which were introduced in his article "Down-to-earth divinity" from Dragon #54 (October 1981).

When the Forgotten Realms was published as a setting in 1987, the pantheon added Waukeen, the goddess of trade, money, and wealth, who was created by one of Jeff Grubb's players, and added to the Forgotten Realms by Grubb. Tyche was replaced with Tymora, and the elemental lords from Melniboné were replaced by Akadi, Grumbar, Istishia, and Kossuth.

Much of the history of the Forgotten Realms detailed in novels and source books concerns the actions of various deities and The Chosen (mortal representatives with a portion of their deities' power) such as Elminster, Fzoul Chembryl, Midnight (who later became the new embodiment of the goddess of magic, Mystra ), and the Seven Sisters. Above all other deities is Ao, the Overlord, who does not sanction worshipers and distances himself from mortals. He is single-handedly responsible for the Time of Troubles, or Godswar, as seen in The Avatar Trilogy.

Characters
The setting is home to several noteworthy recurring characters that have gained wider reception, including:
 * The Companions of the Hall, a group of adventurers that were created by R. A. Salvatore and introduced in The Crystal Shard (1988).  Each of these characters "fit into an RPG archetype". They include:
 * Drizzt Do'Urden, a drow, or dark elf, ranger who is the main character of 34 novels. Drizzt is noted for his commitment to friendship and peace, which is contrary to the stereotype of his people. Drizzt as a character is often used to represent issues of racial prejudice, particularly in The Dark Elf Trilogy. Drizzt is also troubled by the lifespan discrepancy between himself and his human romantic interest Catti-Brie.
 * Wulfgar, a massive human barbarian; in The Crystal Shard, Wulfgar's combat prowess is significant enough that along with Drizzt and his magic panther Guenhwyvar, they manage to "beat 25 giants by themselves". As a character, Wulfgar exemplifies "the strong, honest, hot-headed young warrior hero type common to adventure stories and similar to Howard's creation Conan".
 * Bruenor Battlehammer, a dwarven fighter who retakes Mithral Hall with the help of the other Companions and becomes its king.  He was one of the first friends Drizzt made upon leaving the Underdark and both Catti-Brie and Wulfgar are his adopted children. Rob Bricken for io9 highlighted Bruenor as "a dwarf that hits pretty much every fantasy stereotype, including his desire to reclaim an ancestral home that his people were chased out of after they dug too far and awakened a monster".
 * Catti-brie, a human archer who would later develop abilities as a spellcaster; in The Crystal Shard, Drizzt referred to her as his soulmate. Catti-Brie is favored by Mielikki, a goddess associated with forests and nature spirits, and she bears the deity's mark. Bricken argued that her characterization in The Icewind Dale Trilogy is limited, while Aidan-Paul Canavan maintained that she becomes a "hero" only in later novels.
 * Regis, a halfling member of the Companions, who behaves in the stereotypical manner of J.R.R. Tolkien's hobbits. Bricken noted that Regis is a rogue who "set himself apart a bit by carrying a crystal pendant he can use to charm people", though he is sometimes forced into dangerous situations and "ends up saving the day, Bilbo-style", such as in the final battle of The Crystal Shard.
 * Elminster, a wizard also known as the Sage of Shadowdale; he is "a founding member of the Harpers and one of the oldest surviving and most powerful Chosen of Mystra". The Harpers are a semi-secret organization; Jonathan Palmer, for Arcane magazine, called them "Laudable" and commented that they are "fighters for freedom and justice". Bricken described Elminster as "the most powerful, important, and smartest wizard in the Forgotten Realms, and one of the setting's most important characters [...] more Merlin than Gandalf, which makes him less enigmatic and prone to tomfoolery than other major fantasy wizards, which I count as a good thing".
 * Volothamp Geddarm, a human adventurer who is famed within the setting Faerûn for the number of guidebooks he writes about the various regions within the Realms. The character's name is often attributed in real-world D&D publications as the in-universe narrator of said works. Paul Pettengale from Arcane described him as "one of those characters that everyone's heard about, and one that just about every Dungeon Master must have been tempted to introduce to their campaign at some point or another".
 * Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun, developed by Greenwood and game designer Steven Schend, is a character noted for his appearances in several novels set in the Forgotten Realms, as well as the 2004 video game Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone. A powerful wizard renowned for his namesake staff, in earlier editions he is the Archmage of Waterdeep, leading member of the Harpers, and one of Mystra's Chosen. Prior to his death, Khelben passes the Blackstaff to his apprentice Tsarra, who takes up residence at Blackstaff Tower in Waterdeep and inherits his memories and legacy. Writer Aubrey Sherman said he is an example for the importance of a wand or staff behind the conception of a wizard archetype and listed the character among D&D's notable wizards.
 * Jarlaxle, also a character by R. A. Salvatore, was introduced in the 1990 novel Exile. He also appears in Promise of the Witch King, Road of the Patriarch and The Pirate King, as well as The Sellswords and the Paths of Darkness trilogies. Described by Christian Hoffer from Comicbook.com as a popular and intriguing supporting character, Jarlaxle is the charismatic and opportunistic drow leader of the mercenary band Bregan D'aerthe. Anglistics scholar Caroline de Launay characterized Jarlaxle as an independent character inclined to "subtle manoeuvres", while Hoffer explained that he is an amoral villain who has "plenty of contingencies and secret plots". When comparing the plot of The Dark Elf Trilogy to a game of chess, de Launay assigned Jarlaxle the role of the knight. Theo Kogod, for CBR, wrote that Jarlaxle is "in many ways [...] a dark reflection of the heroic and honorable Drizzt. He used lies, manipulation and cunning to rise as high as a male Drow could within his culture, but in the end, he also left his home behind. [...] In Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, Jarlaxle is trying to leverage himself to become accepted as a legitimate member of the Lords' Alliance. He is one of four possible main villains in the campaign".
 * Artemis Entreri, a human assassin described by Bricken as "cold-blooded" and Drizzt's "equal in fighting and opposite in morality", a mirror image of how Drizzt would have ended up if he had remained part of the universally evil drow society instead of forsaking it.
 * Gromph Baenre is Archmage of the city of Menzoberranzan, the City of Spiders. Gromph is a rival in power to the other archmages of the Forgotten Realms, such as Elminster and Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun. In a review of the 1995 novel Daughter of the Drow, Gideon Kibblewhite for Arcane, called Gromph the "only interesting character" in the book, describing him as "the bitter and twisted archmage", and lamented that "he rarely makes an appearance after the opening".
 * Liriel Baenre is the daughter of Gromph Baenre; she originally belonged to House Vandree before her talent for arcane spellcasting was discovered by Gromph. After being sent away to hone her magical talent rather than study as a priestess, Liriel uses a book given by her father to travel to the surface lands, where she encounters followers of the goddess Eilistraee, the Dark Maiden of benevolent drow, comes to possess the magical artifact known as the Windwalker, and eventually settle down on the surface world permanently. Liriel was created by Elaine Cunningham for Daughter of the Drow, and is described by Trenton Webb of Arcane as "the oddest Drow" due to her lack of traits deemed as stereotypical of her people.
 * Erevis Cale, first introduced in the short story "Another Name For Dawn" published in issue 277 of Dragon magazine, is a pivotal character in novels by Paul S. Kemp, including The Halls of Stormweather, Shadows Witness, the Erevis Cale Trilogy, and The Twilight War trilogy. Originally a normal human, he accepts the gift of the Fane of Shadows in Twilight Falling and becomes a shade; being imbued with the essence of matter integral to the Plane of Shadow brings about drastic changes to his appearance and physiology. Don D'Ammassa described Erevis Cale as "a man tormented by questions of right and wrong".
 * Alustriel Silverhand is the ruler of the city of Silverymoon in "The North" of the setting. Writing in 2000, Envoyer magazine reviewer Stylo counted her among the most prominent Forgotten Realms characters thanks to R.A. Salvatore's novels.
 * Szass Tam is a lich and leader of the Red Wizards of Thay.

Reception
In his book The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible, Sean Patrick Fannon describes the Forgotten Realms as being "the most ambitious fantasy game setting published since Tekumel", and that it "may be the most widely played-in game setting in RPG history". Similarly, in literature, the novels written in the Forgotten Realms setting have formed one of "the industry's leading fantasy series". Over time these novels have gained "unprecedented popularity", which led, as Marc Oxoby noted in his book, The 1990s, to the novels having an "extraordinary shelf life", remaining in print for many years. This popular reception has also been reflected in public libraries; for example, Joyce Saricks states in The Readers' Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction that the novels have been among the most requested books by fans of the fantasy genre. D&D chroniclers Michael Witwer et al., in the book Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana, noted that the "level of Tolkienesque history and detail that Greenwood had infused in his creation - and almost "real world" quality - granted the Realms an irresistible allure [...]. While at its core the Forgotten Realms is a familiar, almost traditional, medieval-styled fantasy setting, it boasted unprecedented scope". "It is, quite simply, Dungeons & Dragons at its very core."

Aubrey Sitterson, for PC Magazine, included the Forgotten Realms in a 2015 roundup of the "11 Best Dungeons & Dragons Campaign Settings" and wrote that "for most people, Forgotten Realms is synonymous with Dungeons & Dragons, and with good reason: it's the setting that played home to the massively popular Baldur's Gate video game, as well as R. A. Salvatore's Drizzt books. Currently, it's the only campaign setting actively supported by D&D makers Wizards of the Coast, which would be restrictive if Forgotten Realms wasn't such an incredibly diverse place, housing classic European middle ages tropes, as well as a heroic fantasy take on African, Middle Eastern, and other real-world cultures". Brian Silliman, for SYFY Wire in 2017, described the Forgotten Realms as "a classic fantasy backdrop" and highlighted that "at one time in our history, our world and this one were connected, but over time this magical realm was, well, forgotten. It is an ideal place for any D&D adventure, inspiring limitless possibilities for any smirking dungeon master". In 2019, academic Philip J. Clements called the "highly popular" Forgotten Realms "an unusually well-developed D&D setting" and "more-or-less the flagship setting for D&D". He also noted that it has received the greatest number of supplements.

In a retrospective on the legacy of Dungeons & Dragons, academic Daniel Heath Justice commented that the "Forgotten Realms was explicitly based on the civilized-versus-savage binary and leaned in hard on racial essentialism in its sadistic black-skinned drow led by vicious matriarchs and their terrible spider goddess, firmly melding anti-Blackness with misogyny, a once-civilized people gone feral under the debased rule of women".

Edition updates
The 4th edition update to the Forgotten Realms brought massive lore changes which were "tied to a number of other design philosophies" and the Forgotten Realms "simultaneously had become a grittier setting, on the edge of collapse, while also becoming a more fantastic one, full of wonder and mystery". Jason Wilson, for VentureBeat, highlighted that unlike the Time of Troubles cataclysm, the 4th edition Spellplague cataclysm was "one players never embraced in the same manner as the earlier disaster". Shannon Appelcline, author of Designers & Dragons, wrote:

"[The 4th edition] Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide may be the most controversial D&D book ever produced by Wizards. That's entirely due to the large-scale destruction of the Realms. Similar updates have been tried by other companies — to reinvigorate settings, to make them more accessible to new players, or to make them more adventuresome. [...] It never seems to go well, because old fans feel left behind. With that said, some folks did love the changes, because the setting was now more playable, more accessible, more fantastic, and more PC centered. [...] Meanwhile, a series of adventures and novels called The Sundering (2013–2014) reversed many of the 4e changes to the Realms, but without rebooting the timeline. Instead, the Realms continues to evolve and advance, as it has since its earlier days."

R. A. Salvatore was also publicly unhappy with the 4th edition changes to the Forgotten Realms: "[B]asically, we authors were handed a document and told how things were going to be. We were asked our opinions, but they mattered very little – the changes were being driven from a different direction. [...] To have characters that have built such a strong history, then have that upset on the orders of someone else was very disconcerting. I will admit that the abrupt changes forced me into an uncomfortable place, and from that place came some of the better things I've written, but I very much preferred the way it was done this time, with 5th Edition and the changes, where we, the authors, were told what was happening to the game and asked how we could make the world and the lore live and breathe it."Christian Hoffer, for ComicBook.com, reported that Wizards of the Coast's 5th edition publishing strategy, which focuses on the Forgotten Realms and newer intellectual property for campaign settings, has created a rift in the fan base where some "feel that this push for new players has come at the cost of keeping the game's current players sated" by not updating campaign settings that "predate the Forgotten Realms". Hoffer highlighted that Wizards of the Coast has a much slower publication schedule than with previous editions with a focus on quality and profit and "the D&D teams knows that they have plenty of great campaign settings in their back pocket and are either actively developing more settings or have ideas for them further down the line".

title: Forgotten Realms


text:
Ravenloft

Ravenloft is a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. It is an alternate time-space existence known as a pocket dimension or demiplane, called the Demiplane of Dread, which consists of a collection of land pieces called "domains", brought together by a mysterious force known only as the Dark Powers. Each domain is tailored to and mystically ruled by a being called a Darklord who is forever trapped and surrounded by magical mists surrounding the domain. Strahd von Zarovich, a vampire in the original AD&D Ravenloft I6 module released in 1983, became the first Darklord, both ruler and prisoner of his own personal domain of Barovia. The story of how Count von Zarovich became Darklord of Barovia was detailed in the 1993 novel I, Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire. As originally established in the Ravenloft: Realm of Terror boxed set known as "the Black Box" released in 1990, the Ravenloft campaign setting was located in the Ethereal Plane. As a physical manifestation of that plane, lands, monsters and even people were created out of the mysterious mists, and the realm acted as a prison where one could enter or be transported, but means of escape were few. Other Ravenloft Domains and Darklords were eventually added in various AD&D 2nd edition (and then later in 3rd edition) products establishing a core continent attached around Barovia which could be traveled to by others if their respective lords allowed entering or leaving their borders; while some Domains remained isolated in the mists and were referred to as Islands.

Creative origins
In 1978, Tracy and Laura Hickman wrote adventures that would eventually be published as the Dungeon & Dragons modules Pharaoh and Ravenloft. Strahd von Zarovich was created by the Hickmans "after Tracy returned home from a disappointing session of D&D. Back in First Edition, the game was less of a storytelling game. [...] It didn't make sense to [Tracy] why a creature like a vampire was just sitting around in a random dungeon with oozes, goblins, and zombies. So he and his wife set out to create a vampire villain with fleshed-out motivations and history". When the Hickmans began work on Ravenloft, they felt the vampire archetype had become overused, trite, and mundane, and decided to create a frightening version of the creature for the module. They play-tested it with a group of players every Halloween for five years on their own game system with the adventure titled Vampyr. However, the Hickmans kept being asked about their "Ravenloft game", and so the Ravenloft name stuck. The duo eventually caught the attention of D&D's original publishers. They were hired to adapt it into the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and it was released as Module I6: Ravenloft in 1983 by TSR.

1st edition
The first appearance of the setting was in Ravenloft, a stand-alone Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventure module, published in 1983. In 1984, it won the Strategists' Club Award for Outstanding Play Aid. It was popular enough to spawn a 1986 sequel, Ravenloft II: The House on Gryphon Hill, and an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Gamebooks novel, Master of Ravenloft, the same year.

2nd edition
Ravenloft was launched as a full-fledged campaign setting, for AD&D 2nd Edition, in 1990, with the Realm of Terror boxed set, popularly known as the "Black Box", and winner of the Origins Award in 1991 for "Best Graphic Presentation of a Roleplaying Game, Adventure, or Supplement of 1990".

The campaign setting was revised twice during AD&D 2nd Edition: first as the Ravenloft Campaign Setting or "Red Box", then as the Domains of Dread hardback.

In 1994, Ravenloft spun off into a sub-setting called Masque of the Red Death, set on Gothic Earth, an Edgar Allan Poe-influenced alternative Earth of the 1890s, where fantasy creatures and magic exist in the shadows of civilization.

TSR also published a series of novels set in Ravenloft. Each was typically focused on one of the Darklords that inhabited the Ravenloft world, with several focusing on the figure of Count Strahd von Zarovich. Many of these early novels were by authors who would later receive wider fame as horror/dark fantasy authors. These authors have included Elaine Bergstrom, P. N. Elrod, Christie Golden, and Laurell K. Hamilton.

3rd and 3.5 edition
A major revision of Dungeons & Dragons was released in 2000, the first edition published by Wizards of the Coast (which had acquired TSR in 1997). In the same year, Wizards of the Coast licensed the Ravenloft brand to White Wolf Publishing. Under its Sword & Sorcery Studios (and later Arthaus imprints), White Wolf Publishing released the 3rd Edition d20 System Ravenloft Campaign Setting (2001) and the 3.5 Edition Ravenloft Player's Handbook (2003).

The campaign settings published by White Wolf introduced a number of alterations, many due to conflicts with existing Wizards of the Coast intellectual property. Specific references to D&D-specific deities were replaced with new names in the White Wolf Ravenloft settings (for example, Bane was changed to the Lawgiver). The license to the Ravenloft trademark reverted to Wizards of the Coast on August 15, 2005, but White Wolf retained the right to continue to sell its back stock until June 2006. The timing of this reversion meant that the Ravenloft supplement Van Richten's Guide to the Mists did not see print. Instead, it was released by White Wolf as a free download in late September 2005. The majority of the Van Richten's Guide series had already been published by TSR in the 1990s, before White Wolf's involvement.

In October 2006, Wizards of the Coast released Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, a hardcover version of the original 1st Ed. adventure, updated for the Dungeons & Dragons v.3.5 rule set. This version includes maps from the original Ravenloft adventure, and new character-generation options. Expedition to Castle Ravenloft is a stand-alone supplement set for any D&D worlds, and only requires the three core books for usage. This book's setting is distinct from the Ravenloft of the White Wolf product line. Shannon Appelcline, author of Designers & Dragons, highlighted that by 2006 people were beginning to wonder if Wizards of the Coast might be preparing a fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons and stated that "the release of Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (2006) might just have offered another clue to the changing winds that lay ahead. First, it was a new line for 3.5e, suggesting that their original series of 3.5e books was coming to an end. Second, it was a fond look back at one of the most notable adventures from the AD&D days, just the sort of thing that Wizards published in the waning days of 2e". Appelcline later noted that, once fourth edition was officially announced, "the Expedition books that had begun publication in 2006 were revealed to indeed be part of Wizard's slow slide into 4e".

4th edition
In 2007, Wizards of the Coast announced the printing of two new Ravenloft novels for 2008, Black Crusade and The Sleep of Reason, fueling more speculation. A short story by Ari Marmell, "Before I Wake", based on the realms of Darkon, Lamordia, and Bluetspur was released on October 31, 2007, on the Wizards of the Coast website as a special for Halloween; it featured characters inspired by H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.

In 2008, Ravenloft was revealed to be re-introduced to 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, as was depicted in the October issue of the Dragon online magazine. The Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition supplement Manual of the Planes (2008) established that in the retconned cosmology, the Domains of Dread (and by extension the Ravenloft setting) were now located within the Shadowfell, a mirror-plane of death and gloom lying adjacent to the mortal realm. While a 4th edition update to the Ravenloft setting was announced at Gen Con 2010, the product was never released.

In 2010, Ravenloft was the setting for the Castle Ravenloft Board Game. Ravenloft also appeared in official magazine articles, such as, Dungeon #207 "Fair Barovia" (October 2012) and Dragon #416 "History Check: Strahd and Van Richten" (October 2012).

5th edition
In 2016, Barovia (one of the main locations within Ravenloft) was the main setting for adventure module Curse of Strahd which acts as an adaptation of the original Ravenloft module for the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons. The adventure states: "The lands of Barovia are from a forgotten world in the D&D multiverse [...]. In time, cursed Barovia was torn from its home world by the Dark Powers and bound in mist as one of the Domains of Dread in the Shadowfell". The module was developed in-house by the Wizards of the Coast team, led by Christopher Perkins, with story contributions by original creators Tracy and Laura Hickman. Charlie Hall, for Polygon, explained that "instead of reinventing the wheel, principle [sic] designer Chris Perkins brought in the module's original writers — the husband and wife team of Tracy and Laura Hickman — to create the very best version of the famous module yet. [...] Tracy and Laura have been hosting nearly annual sessions of the original Ravenloft at their home, for friends and family, over the course of decades. When Perkins asked for their input, they flew out to meet with the team. The result was a torrent of ideas for new locations, characters and encounters".

Wizards of the Coast released a new edition of the Curse of Strahd module, entitled Curse of Strahd: Revamped, on October 20, 2020. This module is the first released with the publisher's new focus on diversity and inclusion. Wizards of the Coast stated that "the adventure includes the latest errata and a revised depiction of the Vistani" who are based on stereotypes about the Romani people.

Wizards of the Coast released a new Ravenloft campaign sourcebook, Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021), which introduces other Domains of Dread to the edition. It was published on May 18, 2021.

Fictional setting
Ravenloft is primarily a Gothic horror setting. Dungeon Masters are encouraged to use scenes that build apprehension and fear, culminating in the eventual face-to-face meeting with the nameless evil. Characters have a much greater significance attached to their acts, especially if they are morally impure, as they risk coming under the influence of the Dark Powers (through the game process called "dark powers checks") and gradually transforming themselves into figures of evil.

The magical mists of Ravenloft could appear anywhere in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, drawing evil-doers (or player characters) into the Ravenloft setting. One exception is the phlogiston of the Spelljammer setting. The phlogiston blocks all planar travel, but the Ravenloft mists can appear in deep space inside crystal shells, according to the Complete Spacefarer's Handbook.

Luis Javier Flores Arvizu named the continuous presence of supernatural beings as one of the factors that made Ravenloft a very well received role-playing game setting during the 33 years of its existence.

The Dark Powers
The Dark Powers are a malevolent force who control the Demiplane of Dread. Their exact nature and number are deliberately kept vague, allowing for plot development in accordance with the Gothic tradition of storytelling – where the heroes are frequently outclassed and outnumbered by unknowable evil forces beyond their control.

The Dark Powers most frequently serve as a plot device for Ravenloft, especially concerning the Darklords, the de facto visible rulers of the Ravenloft Demiplane. Where the player characters are often tormented and opposed by the Darklords, the Darklords are themselves tormented and opposed by the Dark Powers. The difference lies in order of power—while many D&D adventures focus on allowing a band of heroes to prevail over a Darklord (much as in the spirit of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula), no such victory over the Dark Powers seems possible, or even conceivable, for the Darklords. Vecna and Lord Soth "escaped" Ravenloft, but are the only two Darklords known to have done so; Vecna by attaining the status of Greater God (and thus becoming too powerful for the Dark Powers to contain) and Lord Soth by ignoring his domain and punishment, causing the Dark Powers to lose interest in imprisoning him, and agents of his former curse on the world of Krynn coming to collect him.

Most frequently, the Dark Powers make their wishes and intentions known through subtle manipulations of fate. Thus, Barovia's vampire lord Strahd von Zarovich's many attempts to win back his love, Tatyana, are doomed to failure, but the Dark Powers arrange such that he never truly loses hope. Each time, for example, Strahd's own actions may be partially culpable for his failure, and as such he may go through crippling self-recrimination, rather than cursing the gods solely and giving up. Most other Darklords have similar tales of frustration, kept all the more unbearable because the flicker of the possibility of success is never truly extinguished.

Not all Darklords acknowledge the Dark Powers directly, however. Strahd, for example, in his own memoirs, speaks only of a force known as Death, who mocks him with the voices of his family and former colleagues throughout his life. Vlad Drakov, the Darklord of Falkovnia whose military expeditions are doomed to constant failure, seems even to be totally oblivious to any non-mortal factors in his repeated defeats.

The Dark Powers also seem capable of non-evil manipulations. Although their machinations are often directly responsible for the misery of many of Ravenloft's inhabitants, they also appear to play a role as dispensers of justice. Some tales of innocents who have escaped Ravenloft for happier environs are attributed to the Dark Powers, who have judged a being worthy of reward and release from their misty domain.

Domains of Dread
There are many Domains of Dread that makeup the landscape of Ravenloft. The Domains are surrounded by strange mists that can ensnare both people and places in Prime Material Plane and pull them into the Domains. Each Domain is ruled by a Darklord, but each Darklord was imprisoned in their Domain by the Dark Powers. The Dark Powers "are believed to have been responsible for the overall creation of the Dread Domains". The concept of Domains and locations in Ravenloft besides Barovia and Mordent was introduced in the 2nd Edition campaign setting book Ravenloft: Realm of Terror (1990). This book outlined that the size of Ravenloft is "40,000 square miles [spanning] 26 different domains, including Barovia and Mordent. All of the core domains are overviewed in Ravenloft, as are eight 'islands'". The revised 2nd Edition boxset Ravenloft Campaign Setting (1994) is an update to Realm of Terror, but it removes Domains that were destroyed in the Grand Conjunction adventure series and adds new Domains. The metaplot of the adventure series was used to update the setting: "David Wise, leader of the 'Kargat' of Ravenloft designers at TSR, has said there were a few reasons for the changes. Some domains were changed or removed because they didn't fit into Ravenloft ecologically [...]. Some domains were removed or merged because their lords were too similar, and finally some islands of terror were kicked to the curb just because they were 'less exciting'. [...] A few domains that had appeared since the publication of Ravenloft: Realm of Terror were notably missing [...]. All told, Ravenloft Campaign Setting covers 20 core domains and nine islands". The 5th Edition campaign guide Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021) includes an overview of 39 Domains and many Domains are given a "wholesale revision" while "other Domains keep their original lore but are advanced in other ways". Rob Wieland, writing for Forbes, explained that in this book "many of the domains have new Darklords that reflect their original character but have details changed to better fit the type of horror the domain is supposed to represent".

Some of the more notable Domains include:
 * Barovia: the first Domain introduced and home of Strahd von Zarovich. This domain was "inspired by Bram Stoker's Dracula".
 * Carnival: this domain "wanders the mists" itself, "populated by wild performers and a powerful, living sword".
 * Darkon: this domain is "a broken land [...] whose central castle is frozen mid-explosion, its disparate rooms desperately trying to reassemble the whole in mid-air", and "Darkon is now a Domain in decline after the disappearance of the iconic lich Azalin".
 * Falkovnia: in its original incarnation, this domain's "Darklord was a fairly basic analog for Vlad the Impaler [...] and it had few defining characteristics beyond being a land ruled by a brutal warlord with a penchant for ultraviolence". In Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, "Falkovnia has been reimagined as a nightmarish Groundhog's Day-style loop, where a struggling nation—which happens to be ruled by a brutal warlord—is endlessly besieged by massive hordes of the walking dead, who just so happen to look like everyone this warlord has ever killed". The Darklord Vladeska "Drakov's ruthless efficiency and relentless perfectionism has turned her into a tyrant. Rather than retreat and save the lives of citizens and soldiers alike, every day she rebuilds the barricades that keep death at bay. Those same walls keep her trapped within".
 * Hazlan: this domain is a magocracy ruled by the Red Wizard Hazlik who treats the domain as a "vast magical laboratory". Wes Schneider, lead designer of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, highlighted that "Hazlan's a great example of a Ravenloft domain where the 'technology' behind its horror concept has improved since its origin. [...] Since the '90s, our collective imaginations have expanded on what an evil magic dystopia might look like. [...] Hazlan is a domain where anything wizards could do they've done to the extreme, and they're still doing it, all in the name of magical discovery and with the effects scarring the realm's people and land. This makes it the domain for all manner of weird monsters, amoral experiments, magical contagions, unnatural weather, collapsing reality, meteor showers, mutations, disasters, and so much more".
 * Lamordia: this domain "paid homage" to Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. In its original incarnation, Lamordia was a coastal domain with two small settlements and was ruled by Adam, a flesh golem-like creature created by Doctor Victor Mordenheim. In Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, the region is now ruled by Viktra Mordenheim, a mad scientist tormented by her inability to replicate the Unbreakable Heart device that keeps her reborn lover Elise alive, even as Elise flees from her at every turn.

Darklords
Darklord is the title used to refer to the mystically imprisoned and cursed ruler of a domain. A Darklord was originally an individual who had committed a truly horrific crime, which drew the attention of the enigmatic Dark Powers. The Dark Powers then proceeded to craft a personal kingdom around the Darklord. This crafted domain serves both as a kingdom and a prison: the Darklord gains incredible powers whilst within its borders but can never leave it, although most Darklords can seal their domain borders with a thought. Within their domains, the Darklords are forever tormented by the objects of their desires, which are often the objects for which they committed their crimes.

Vistani
The Vistani are a nomadic ethnic group. They are based on depictions of the Romani people. Since their introduction in the original Ravenloft module (1983) as fortune-tellers, they became a unifying element in the Ravenloft and the Masque of the Red Death campaign settings, which offer Gothic horror scenarios. In a Ravenloft adventure, the Vistani have some control of the Mists of Ravenloft, which divide realms, while the players are generally confined to a region from which they must escape by solving one or more problems. Players generally need help from the Vistani to travel reliably from one open realm to another.

The Vistani people were "described as superstitious" and had "abilities to curse and hypnotize players or cast spells like Evil Eye". They were also originally stereotyped "as 'uncivilized' and heavy drinkers", but this portrayal was removed in the adventure module Curse of Strahd Revamped (2020). Their portrayal was further retconned in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021); the Vistani people are no longer considered superstitious but instead focused on their traditional practices and their abilities are grounded in the forms of magic found in Dungeons & Dragons.

The fictional character Rudolph van Richten, a famous Monster Hunter in Ravenloft and author of a series of guides to hunting and slaying various monsters, had a great enmity for the Vistani for most of his monster-hunting career, but his opinion improved during his penning of Van Richten's Guide To The Vistani, during which he befriended a mortu (a Vistani outcast).

Official products
Ravenloft has acted as the official campaign setting for multiple Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying adventure modules, sourcebooks and accessories. It has also been the main setting for novels and video games.

Video games

 * Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession PC game (1994)
 * Ravenloft: Stone Prophet PC game (1995)
 * Iron & Blood: Warriors of Ravenloft PlayStation 1 game (1996)
 * Dungeons & Dragons Online PC game expansion "Mists of Ravenloft" (2017)
 * Neverwinter (video game) expansion module Ravenloft; Windows, Xbox One, PS4 (June 26, 2018)

Reception
Game designer Rick Swan commented in 1994 that when the Ravenloft setting first came out, it "just didn't seem special, a Forgotten Realms variant with a few more bats", but after supplements like Forbidden Lore, The Created, and the Van Richten's Guide series, Swan felt that "the Ravenloft campaign has proven to be a credible adventure alternative for players interested in the dark side of the AD&D game. Though it lacks the flamboyance of Call of Cthulhu and the, er, bite of Vampire, the Ravenloft setting remains the hobby's most enduring fusion of horror and fantasy".

Darker Days Radio declared Ravenloft the "greatest D&D campaign setting", citing the unique gothic horror elements and classic villains such as Azalin Rex.

In the Io9 series revisiting older Dungeons & Dragons novels, Rob Bricken highlighted that Vampire of the Mists "isn't scary, per se, but Strahd wreaks enough horror and carnage to drive home that Ravenloft is much, much more sinister than the Forgotten Realms. [...] Ravenloft (and I guess Forgotten Realms) vampires have all the tropes: They can turn into bats, wolves, and mists, and they don't cast reflections. They can control animals and enthrall people, to a degree. They can't cross running water, and they have to be invited into a home to enter. Unless they're an extremely powerful vampire like Strahd, natch".

Shelly Jones, in the journal Analog Game Studies: Volume IV, highlighted the Tarokka Deck mechanic used in both the original Ravenloft (1983) module and the 5th edition Curse of Strahd (2016) module to add randomization to the game and increase replayability. Jones wrote: "The Tarokka Deck incorporates an inconsistency in the game play that reflects fragmented traumatic memory and reifies the inconsistency present within an abusive relationship". Jones also highlighted that "without sunshine as a key time-tracking element, players are forced to rely upon other means to signal the passage of time within Barovia. Further adding to that disorientation is the knowledge that the players have been abandoned from anything familiar or real. [...] This alienating effect, based upon the physical environment as well as the psychological manifestations, traumatizes characters".

The Ravenloft setting has been criticized "for reinforcing harmful stereotypes through its portrayal of the Vistani, an in-fiction analogue for the Roma people". In 2020, Wizards of the Coast announced "in the editorial process for Strahd's reprint, as well as two upcoming products, Wizards worked with a Romani consultant to present the Vistani without using reductive tropes". On this update, Jon Ryan, for IGN, wrote that "it's worth noting that the book's illustrations of the Vistani still evoke Romani culture, and some players may still associate certain abilities [...] with outdated cultural stereotypes". Julie Muncy, for Io9, criticized the "granular changes" to the Vistani people as not very extensive and that "while there's a real opportunity here to do better work—the aforementioned diversity pledge also mentioned future works that will feature the Vistani people and aim to complicate their depictions—starting that work with a fancy collector's edition feels less like a promise to do better and more like a victory lap". Muncy also highlighted that the unrevised parts, such as the art and specific magical abilities, still lean "into tropes that suggest the Romani have mystical, dangerous powers, tropes that have been used in the past to target Romani for persecution".

Christian Hoffer, for ComicBook.com, highlighted that in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021) the Domains of Dread "all now function as originally intended: prisons meant to torture specific souls. Many of the original Ravenloft domains featured strange punishments that didn't necessarily fit the crime of the Darklord. The revised domains are usually a better utilization of the ironic intent that flavors the immortal prisons of Ravenloft. The domains also now include a variety of different horror genres rather than a fixation on gothic horror. Finally, much of the misogynistic, colonialist, or racist elements have been purged out of this new iteration of Ravenloft. Although these changes will likely be the most talked about part of the book in some circles, these changes seem to have occurred naturally during the course of updating Ravenloft to reflect more diverse horror genres and to make the domains conform to Ravenloft's internal laws".

In his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, RPG historian Stu Horvath noted, "In many ways, Strahd is a vessel for the audience's relationship with an ever-changing and evolving vampire legend. While a character in his own right, he is broadly drawn, so every group of players can make him their own. There are many Strahds, each defined by the tastes of the people at the table."

In other media

 * In 2016, Wizards of the Coast added an additional license option to their 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons open game license. It allows individuals and third party publishers to create and sell content based on specific Wizards of the Coast intellectual property, if the content is sold through the Dungeon Masters Guild storefront. Multiple third party supplements and adventures set in Ravenloft have since been released through this program.
 * Tales From the Mists (2019–2020) was an official actual play streaming series broadcast on the Dungeons & Dragons Twitch and YouTube channels. TK Johnson was the show's Dungeon Master with a "cast of four players (Lysa Chen, Kayla Cline, Hadeel Al-Massari, and Ashley Warren) plus two rotating party slots filled by new players every four episodes". The first season was set in the city of Harmonia in the Kartakass Domain of Dread; each character is from a different domain of Ravenloft. Christian Hoffer, for ComicBook, wrote: "One of Tales from the Mists' greatest strengths is that it feels very much like a gothic horror story, with an emphasis on death, the macabre, and terror lurking right around the corner. [...] While Dungeons & Dragons is perhaps best known for its combat encounters, Tales from the Mists seems to take its gothic horror roots seriously. [...] This might be an adjustment from how some people think of Dungeons & Dragons, but Tales from the Mists is a masterclass on how to run a horror campaign using mood and environment to set the tone instead of a constant parade of scary monsters".
 * The Black Dice Society is an official actual play streaming series broadcast on the Dungeons & Dragons channels which premiered on April 1, 2021, and is set across multiple Domains of Dread in Ravenloft. B. Dave Walters is the show's Dungeon Master with a cast of six players: Tanya DePass, Noura Ibrahim, Deejay Knight, Mark Meer, Saige Ryan and Becca Scott.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Ravenloft


text:
Mystara

Mystara is a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role playing game. It was the default setting for the "Basic" version of the game throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Most adventures published for the "Basic" edition of D&D take place in "The Known World", a central continent that includes a varied patchwork of both human and non-human realms. The human realms are based on various real-world historical cultures. In addition, unlike other D&D settings, Mystara had ascended immortal beings instead of gods.

The Mystara planet also has sub-settings. The older Blackmoor setting was retconned to exist in Mystara's distant past. The Hollow World refers to the inner surface contained within the world of Mystara, similar to the real world legends of the Hollow Earth, while some adventures take place on the Savage Coast, a 2,000 mile long frontier coastline about 2,000 miles to the west of the Known World.

By the mid-1990s, gamers' attention started to shift towards the second edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and its official campaigns. Some Mystara adventures for AD&D were published between 1994 and 1996. Eventually, official support of the Mystara setting was transitioned to the Official Fan Site system wherein the Vaults of Pandius fansite was selected to become the official site for the future 3rd edition of Mystara, and Wizards of the Coast support was discontinued by the time the game's third edition was released in 2000.

Development
Mystara originated as a fantasy world developed by Lawrence Schick and Tom Moldvay for their own Dungeons & Dragons game sessions from 1974 to 1976. Their original setting consisted of a large continent with fictionalized nations that were based on real-world historical cultures. Inspired by author H. P. Lovecraft and his work in creating a fiction shared universe, Schick and Moldvay named their setting as the "Known World" so it could be expanded upon by other players. Schick then went to work at TSR Hobbies as a designer for D&D and other games. After being promoted to director of the Design Department he brought Moldvay in to join the company as a game designer, around the time when the D&D Expert Set was under development. After being told that they could not use the existing Greyhawk setting, as it was being reserved for only Advanced Dungeons & Dragons products, Schick and Moldvay got approval to instead use their "Known World" as the standard D&D campaign setting.

Schick and Moldvay's "Known World" was used as a semi-generic setting in early adventure modules, first mentioned in Module X1, The Isle of Dread. It was then expanded upon in various D&D modules and sources, particularly a series of Gazetteers, many of which originally referred to the setting as "The D&D Game World". The first published use of the name "Mystara" came in 1991 from Bruce Heard in the Letters section of his Voyage of the Princess Ark series in Dragon magazine. While the name was used in official publications after this, it was not until the conversion to AD&D 2nd Edition in 1994 that products were produced under the Mystara title with the official Mystara logo.

Each part of the D&D Gazetteer series treats one nation or empire and has three basic elements: cultural and geographic background, features, and adventures. The cultural and geographic campaign background section offers a brief history and timeline for each nation; basic geography, climate, and ecology; and, fundamental social and political concepts of the region. Each Gazetteer also offers a list of scenario ideas appropriate to the campaign setting.

Trenton Webb for the British Arcane RPG magazine described Mystara as "a traditional Tolkienesque world".

Planet of Mystara
Three principal land masses are described on Mystara's outer surface: the continent of Brun, the continent of Skothar, the continent of Davania, and the island continent of Alphatia (up to AC 1010). In the officially published material, the Known World concentrated on the eastern portion of Brun and the lands of the Sea of Dawn. The continents of Mystara were designed to be similar in appearance to the continents of Laurasia and Gondwana on Earth approximately 135 million years ago.

In addition to human races, several archetypal fantasy races were included on Mystara: these include elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs, and dragons.

Nations created for the world of Mystara include the Thyatian Empire, the Grand Duchy of Karameikos, the Principalities of Glantri, the merchant-run Republic of Darokin, the Emirates of Ylaruam, the Dwarven nation of Rockhome, the Elven Kingdom of Alfheim, Halfling lands of the Five Shires, and the chaotic Alphatian Empire.

The continent of Brun
The most commonly known land mass on Mystara's outer surface is only a tiny portion of Brun. In the officially published material, the Known World concentrated on the eastern portion of Brun along with the islands of the Sea of Dawn.

The Known World
Nations of the Known World display a great range of government types. Some countries are populated entirely by demihumans and/or humanoids. By standard convention, the boundaries of the "Known World" are those covered in the world map as initially published in the module X1, "The Isle of Dread," plus Norwold, the Isle of Dawn, and (pre Wrath of the Immortals) Alphatia.

As the name implies, the "Known World" covers the most notable nations of Mystara, the ones most commonly used in Mystara-based campaigns and featured in fiction. It includes the Thyatian Empire, which could be compared to the Byzantine Empire; the Grand Duchy of Karameikos (which includes the town of Threshold, the default setting of many classic D&D adventures); the Principalities of Glantri, ruled by wizard-princes; the Ethengar Khanate, a Mongol-like society; the merchant-run Republic of Darokin, which is based loosely on the mercantile states of medieval Italy; the Emirates of Ylaruam; the Heldannic Territories, ruled by an order of religious knights similar to the Teutonic Order devoted to the Immortal Vanya; the Atruaghin Clans, which have an Amerindian feel; the nation of Sind, based on the Mughal Empire; the Northern Reaches Kingdoms of Ostland, Vestland, and the Soderfjord Jarldoms, based on Scandinavia at various periods of history; the Dwarven nation of Rockhome; the elven Kingdom of Alfheim; the Halfling lands of the Five Shires; and the Alphatian Empire, ruled by wizards and other spellcasters.

To the distant Northwest of the "Known World", across the Great Waste, lies the mysterious lands of Hule, ruled by Hosadus, also known as "The Master". Also on the periphery of the Known World are the Kingdoms of Wendar and Denagoth, the first an elven-dominated nation and the latter a mountainous and dark realm of evil, with ill-intentions towards Wendar. The Adri Varma lies between Sind, Wendar, the Great Waste, and The Black Mountains, forming the northern border of Glantri and defining the northwestern limits of the region.

The Savage Coast
Mystara includes the Savage Coast, a coastal area located in the south-central part of the Brun continent, to the south and west of Hule. The area is a 2000-mile frontier coastline about 2000 miles west of the Known World.

This part of Mystara is affected by the Red Curse. This sinister enchantment eventually kills its inhabitants through mutation unless the (fictional) metal cinnabryl is worn in contact with the body. The specifics of the "Red Curse" include mutilation of the body and extreme degeneration of physical and mental health. It also imprisons the region's inhabitants, as debilitating effects result if they leave the cursed area.

Atmosphere
Savage Coast's swashbuckling flavor is very different from that of the Known World, closer in atmosphere to that of the Age of Discovery than the fantasy middle-ages/renaissance tone of the Known World. The Savage Coast is complete with gunpowder ("smokepowder") weaponry.

Publication history
The first published information on the area was the module X9 The Savage Coast for Dungeons & Dragons Expert Set. The region was later expanded in Dungeon magazine issues #6 and 7 (1987) with the adventure "Tortles of the Purple Sage".

Two series in Dragon Magazine, "The Princess Ark" and the "Known World Grimoire", described the Savage Coast in more detail. These articles were partially reprinted in the D&D game accessory Champions of Mystara (1993).

The Savage Coast in 1994 was spun off into a campaign setting for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (2nd Edition). This area was published in its own boxed set entitled Red Steel, and later republished online as the Savage Coast. An expansion, Savage Baronies, was released the following year. These supplements were for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition, as all the previous material had been for the "Classic" version of D&D.

In 1996, the setting was revised and re-released under the AD&D: Odyssey line as three fully online products available for free download. This range included the base Savage Coast Campaign Book by Tim Beach and Bruce Heard, a supplement Savage Coast: Orc's Head, and a Monstrous Compendium Appendix.

The continent of Davania
Even though most of the Known World civilizations historically originated from this part of the planet, it did not see much development while the Mystara product line was still in production. The only major appearance of the continent was in Dragon magazine, where parts of it were sketched out during the Voyage of the Princess Ark series, by Known World Product Manager Bruce Heard.

Many Mystara fans have been turning their attention to Davania with fan-made material in recent years.

The continent of Skothar
Very little was officially developed for this part of Mystara. Since the Mystara product line was discontinued, fans have created their material for this part of Mystara.

The Hollow World
Mystara is a hollow planet, with a habitable surface on its interior called the Hollow World. This world is lit by an eternal red sun at the center of Mystara, and serves as a "cultural museum", preserving the societies that have become extinct in the outer world. The existence of the Hollow World is not, in general, known to the inhabitants of the outer world. The poles are actually huge, subtly curving holes that allow passage between the outer and inner world, although it is a long, hard trek through a cold, unlit, stormy and anti-magic area. The curvature of the holes is so subtle that explorers from either surface do not notice the transition until after it is already made, causing quite a shock for most.

Moons
Two moons orbit the planet. Matera is a moon much like our own, whose phases govern lycanthropy (werewolves, werebears, etc.). Only the Immortals inhabit Matera. They live in a city, Pandius, where they can meet and watch over Mystara. Patera, or Myoshima to its inhabitants, is an invisible moon that cannot be seen from Mystara. Patera's inhabitants have a culture similar to that of medieval Japan.

Blackmoor
Mystara (like Greyhawk) incorporated the Blackmoor setting by placing it in the world's distant past. Blackmoor evolved from a feudal kingdom into a highly advanced civilization, using more and more powerful – and destructive – technology. It ended itself in an apocalyptic explosion so devastating that it changed the climate and geography of the entire planet.

Mystara video games
Five video games were set in Mystara, spanning three different genres. Dungeons & Dragons: Order of the Griffon (TurboGrafx-16, 1992) and Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun (Sega Genesis, 1992) are role-playing video games. Fantasy Empires (PC, 1993) is a strategy game. The plots and development teams of these games are unrelated.

Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom (1993) and its sequel Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara (1996) are two arcade beat 'em up with minimal role-playing elements. These two games are among the few D&D video games developed by a Japanese company, in this case by Capcom.

Novels

 * Timothy Brown (October 1995), Dark Knight of Karameikos (ISBN 0-7869-0307-4)
 * Morris Simon (August 1996), The Black Vessel (ISBN 0-7869-0507-7)

First Quest

 * J. Robert King (February 1995), Rogues to Riches (ISBN 1-56076-825-8)
 * Dixie Lee McKeone (May 1995), Son of Dawn (ISBN 1-56076-884-3)
 * Elaine Cunningham (1995), The Unicorn Hunt

Dragonlord Chronicles

 * Thorarinn Gunnarsson (July 1994), Dragonlord of Mystara (ISBN 1-56076-906-8)
 * Thorarinn Gunnarsson (July 1995), Dragonking of Mystara (ISBN 0-7869-0153-5)
 * Thorarinn Gunnarsson (April 1996), Dragonmage of Mystara (ISBN 0-7869-0488-7)

Penhaligon Trilogy

 * D. J. Heinrich (October 1992), The Tainted Sword (ISBN 1-56076-395-7)
 * D. J. Heinrich (April 1993), The Dragon's Tomb (ISBN 1-56076-592-5)
 * D. J. Heinrich (October 1993), The Fall of Magic (ISBN 1-56076-663-8)

Dungeons & Dragons BECMI rules
These rulebooks are designed for the BECMI edition of Basic D&D by Frank Mentzer.

title: Mystara


text:
Planescape

Planescape is a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, designed by Zeb Cook, and published in 1994. It crosses numerous planes of existence, encompassing an entire cosmology called the Great Wheel, as developed previously in the 1987 Manual of the Planes by Jeff Grubb. This includes many of the other Dungeons & Dragons worlds, linking them via inter-dimensional magical portals.

Development
Planescape is an expansion of ideas presented in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide (First Edition) and the original Manual of the Planes. When Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition was published, a decision was made not to include angelic or demonic creatures, and so the cosmology was largely ignored. However, fan demand for a 2nd Edition Manual of the Planes was strong enough to justify its expansion into a full-fledged campaign setting, and so in 1994 Planescape was released.

David "Zeb" Cook developed Planescape when he was assigned to create "a complete campaign world (not just a place to visit), survivable by low-level characters, as compatible with the old Manual of the Planes as possible, filled with a feeling of vastness without overwhelming the referee, distinct from all other TSR campaigns, free of the words 'demon' and 'devil' and explainable to Marketing in 25 words or less". For inspiration, Cook listened to Pere Ubu, Philip Glass and Alexander Nevsky, read The Dictionary of the Khazars, Einstein's Dreams, and The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and for fun at "Bad Movie Nights", watched such films as Naked Lunch and Wolf Devil Woman.

Cook came up with the idea that all of the activity in Sigil would revolve around factions, each of which would be built upon ideas taken to their extreme. He also felt that Sigil was necessary as a crossroads for the planes and a campaign center which could be both an adventure location itself and somewhere to hide out, which characters could quickly get to and from. Cook decided to adapt the Manual of the Planes because the older material made survival on the planes too difficult or complex, so he ignored anything that made gameplay more complicated, which left the "descriptions of twisted and strange creations".

Cook conceived of the look for the setting from images such as "the gloomy prisons of Piranesi's Le Carceri etchings, and Brian Froud's illustrations and surrealist art", and Dana Knutson was assigned to draw whatever Cook wanted to see. According to Cook, "before any of us knew it, [Knutson] drew the Lady of Pain. I'm very fond of the Lady of Pain; she really locks up the Planescape look. We all liked her so much that she became our logo".

2nd edition
The Planescape Campaign Setting was released, for AD&D 2nd Edition, in April 1994. The campaign setting was followed by a series of expansions detailing the Planes of Chaos (by Wolfgang Baur and Lester W. Smith), the Planes of Law (by Colin McComb and Baur), and the Planes of Conflict (by McComb and Dale Donovan). From 1994 to 1998, "Planescape was a major setting" for Dungeons & Dragons.

The setting also had a small number of novels.

Later editions
Upon the release of 3rd Edition, Planescape, along with most other settings, were discontinued, although fan sites such as planewalker.com were allowed to continue to use the material and update it to the new edition. The 3rd Edition Manual of the Planes (2001), the 3.5 Edition Dungeon Master's Guide (2003), and the Planar Handbook (2004) also used the general layout of the planes and some of the details from the setting, including Sigil, but these are not part of the Planescape line.

Sigil is described in the 4th edition Manual of the Planes (2008) and expanded upon in Dungeon Master's Guide 2 (2009). Shannon Appelcline, author of Designers & Dragons, commented that while Sigil "had been largely ignored during the 3e era", it "was faring better in 4e, despite the large-scale restructuring of D&D's cosmology" due to small inclusions in the Dungeon Master's Guide (2008) and Manual of the Planes.

Appelcline highlighted that it was the 4th Edition Dungeon Master's Guide 2 which "saw the return of the fan-favorite setting of Sigil" which "was laid out as a full paragon-level setting. There's not much new here for old-time fans of Planescape, but there was one big change as a result of Faction War (1998). The factions that caused much of the conflict in Planescape are now gone. [...] The Dungeon Master's Guide 2 also contains 'A Conspiracy of Doors', the first Sigil adventure to see print in many years".

The 5th Edition Player's Handbook (2014) also contains a section explaining the planes and briefly mentions Sigil. There is also some information on Sigil in the 5th Edition Dungeon Master's Guide (2014). In July 2022, Unearthed Arcana: Wonders of the Multiverse was released as part of the Unearthed Arcana public playtest series for the 5th Edition. Both Polygon and ComicBook.com highlighted that the new character race – the Glitchling – and other references to the Planescape setting might indicate a reboot of the setting for 5th Edition. Charlie Hall, for Polygon, commented that "this wouldn't be the first time that Wizards used playtest materials to tease a reboot of a classic setting".

Christian Hoffer, for ComicBook.com, wrote that "while described as a collection of material from around the Multiverse, many Dungeons & Dragons fans noticed that it contained multiple references to Mechanus, Sigil, the Outlands, and other areas explored in the popular Planescape setting. [...] Based on the last handful of public playtests, it appears that Dungeons & Dragons is gearing up for some sort of multiversal book in the near future. Whether this is a true Planescape re-launch or just a book that uses the D&D cosmology remains to be seen".

A three-volume box set titled Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse was released in October 2023 for 5th Edition.

Reception
The Planescape Campaign Setting boxed set won the 1994 Origins Award (for Best Graphic Presentation of a Roleplaying Game, Adventure, or Supplement) and has received critical acclaim for its unique visual aspects, especially the work of artists Tony DiTerlizzi, Robh Ruppel, and Dana Knutson. Pyramid magazine reviewer Scott Haring said Planescape is "the finest game world ever produced for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons". Haring described the writing as "wonderful", also saying that it "has got one of the most distinctive graphic looks I've seen in any game product" and that the "unusual drawings remind [him] a little of Dr. Seuss".

Trenton Webb of British RPG magazine Arcane called Planescape "the premier AD&D world", noting its hallmark as "a bizarre juxtaposition of legend and nightmare". Game designer Rick Swan said that the original Manual of the Planes had in a sense been "reincarnated as the Planescape setting ... TSR's most ambitious campaign world to date. Abandoning the straightforward but dry approach of the Manual, the Planescape set reads less like a textbook and more like a story. Characters take precedence over game systems, high adventure supplants the physics lessons".

Curtis D. Carbonell, in the book Dread Trident: Tabletop Role-Playing Games and the Modern Fantastic, wrote: "Planescape's sophistication marked it as D&D's answer to its own simplistic medieval-European-inspired fantasy settings, [...]. Planescape channeled the Weird before China Miéville brought the 'new weird' genre into focus [...]. With Planescape, we have an attempt by an AD&D game setting to add layers of intellectual complexity to a game often driven by much more simplistic mechanism. The greatest commerce isn't loot, treasure, magic items, etc.; it is belief so strong it can shape reality".

In a review of The Great Modron March, Backstab magazine contributor Philippe Tessier called the presentation of Planescape products superb in general.

Cosmology
The Dungeons & Dragons cosmology as reflected in Planescape consists of a number of planes, which can be divided into the following regions:
 * The Inner Planes (representing planes of elemental nature, such as Water, Earth, Fire, and Air, as well as the Positive and Negative energy planes)
 * The Ethereal Plane
 * The Prime Material Plane
 * The Astral Plane
 * The Outer Planes (representing alignments and the primary domains of the various deities, where their petitioners spend their afterlives)

Planescape "solidified the Great Wheel cosmology that began in 1e and would later be reinstated in 5e as the dominant of three theoretical models".

Outer Planes
The Outer Planes consist of: the Abyss, Acheron, Arborea, Arcadia, Baator, Beastlands, Bytopia, Carceri, Elysium, Gehenna, Gray Waste of Hades, Limbo, Mechanus, Mount Celestia, the Outlands, Pandemonium, and Ysgard.

Sigil
Sigil, the "City of Doors", is located atop the Spire in the Outlands. It has the shape of a torus, and the city itself is located on the inner surface of the ring. There is no sky, simply an all-pervasive light that waxes and wanes to create day and night. Sigil cannot be entered or exited save via portals. Although this makes it quite safe from any would-be invader, it also makes it a prison of sorts for those not possessing a portal key. Thus, many call Sigil "The Bird Cage" or "The Cage". Though Sigil is commonly held to be located "at the center of the planes" (where it is positioned atop the infinitely tall Spire), some argue that this is impossible since the planes are infinite in all dimensions, and therefore there can never truly be a center to any or all of them. Curiously, from the Outlands, one can see Sigil atop the supposedly infinite Spire.

Factions
Within Sigil there are philosophy-derived factions. Before the event known as the Faction War, the groups controlled the political climate of Sigil. Each of these factions is based on one particular belief system; one faction's beliefs make them enemies while others make them allies. There are fifteen factions in total.

The Faction War
In 1998, TSR published Faction War, an adventure that effectively closed the book on Planescape, as it was then ending the product line. The culmination of several adventures leading up to that point, the Faction War brought an end to the factions' control of the city. Instigated by the power-hungry Duke Rowan Darkwood, factol of the Fated, in a bid to dethrone the Lady and rule Sigil himself, the war spread throughout the city before the Lady of Pain, with the aid of a group of adventurers (the players' characters), intervened.

Sects
Sects are in many ways identical to the Factions, differing in that they are not based in Sigil. Sects are often highly specific to the particular planes they originate from, though historically many of the Factions were once Sects and some Sects were once Factions.

Rules
There are three principles (or heuristics) governing the world of Planescape: the Rule-of-Three, the Unity of Rings, and the Center of the Multiverse.

Rule-of-Three
The first principle, the Rule-of-Three, says simply that things tend to happen in threes. The principles which govern the planes are themselves subject to this rule.

Unity of Rings
The second principle is the Unity of Rings, and notes that many things on the planes are circular, coming back around to where they started.

Center of All
The third principle (fitting neatly into the Rule-of-Three above) is the Center of All, and states that there is a center of everything—or, rather, wherever a person happens to be is the center of the multiverse... From their own perspective, at least. As most planes are functionally infinite, disproving anyone's centricity would be impossible. In Planescape, this is meant philosophically just as much as it is meant in terms of multiversal geography.

The fact that anywhere could be the center of the multiverse in this view also implies that nowhere can be said to be the only absolute true center. This sparks a lot of arguments and violence since some people believe the City of Doors to be the center due to its uncommon number of portals to other planes and position in the Outlands and some factions also claim different centers, each with their own significance.

Boxed sets

 * 2600 Planescape Campaign Setting
 * 2603 Planes of Chaos
 * 2607 Planes of Law
 * 2610 A Player's Primer to the Outlands
 * 2615 Planes of Conflict
 * 2621 Hellbound: The Blood War

Miniatures

 * 10–519 "Planescape Miniatures" – box includes ten miniatures (Duke Rowan, Factol Hashkar, Factol Sarin, Factol Pentar, Lord Graz'zt, Lady of Pain, Erin Montgomery, Lord Pazrael, Factol Rhys, and Karris the Indep) and a Lady of Pain badge (made from the same metal material as the miniatures, but with a pin and backing like a "tie tac" so it can be worn as a "badge").
 * 10–520 Planescape Miniatures "Powers of Chaos" – box includes eight miniatures (Baphomet, Bast, Corellon Larethian, Gorellik, Lolth, Loki, Ygorl, and Faerie Queen of Air and Darkness).
 * 10–521 Planescape Miniatures "Powers of Law" – box includes eight miniatures (Clangeddin Silverbeard, Hecate, Set, Tyr, Maglubiyet, Horus, Gruumsch, and Moradin).
 * 10–522 Planescape Miniatures "Powers of Conflict" – box includes eight miniatures (Cronus the Titan, Garl Glittergold, Tefnut, Hades, Cat Lord, Hel, Skerrit, and Arawn).

Accessories

 * Planescape Conspectus
 * 2609 In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil
 * 2611 The Factol's Manifesto
 * 2620 The Planewalker's Handbook
 * 2623 On Hallowed Ground
 * 2624 Uncaged: Faces of Sigil
 * 2625 A Guide to the Astral Plane
 * 2630 Faces of Evil: The Fiends
 * 2633 A Guide to the Ethereal Plane
 * 2634 The Inner Planes
 * 2602 Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix
 * 2613 Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix II
 * 2635 Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix III
 * The Planescape Sketchbook

Adventures

 * 2601 The Eternal Boundary
 * 2604 Well of Worlds
 * 2605 In the Abyss
 * 2606 The Deva Spark
 * 2608 Fires of Dis
 * 2614 Harbinger House
 * 2619 Something Wild
 * 2626 Doors to the Unknown
 * 2628 The Great Modron March
 * 2629 Faction War
 * 2631 Dead Gods
 * 2632 Tales From the Infinite Staircase

Video game
The setting was featured in the computer game Planescape: Torment, which portrayed the Planescape world (specifically Sigil, the Outlands, Baator, Carceri, and the Negative Energy Plane). It is now a cult game and was out of print until its DVD re-release as a budget title in 2009. It was released as a download on GOG.com in 2010 and soon became the "second most wanted game" on the site. An enhanced edition by Beamdog was released on April 11, 2017.

Marketed as a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, Torment: Tides of Numenera was released in February 2017. The game takes inspiration from the previous game but is not itself based in the Planescape setting.

Collectible card game
TSR published a collectible card game based on the Planescape setting called Blood Wars. The game featured major locations, personalities, and features of the Planescape setting and also introduced new creatures that were added to the role playing game setting as part of subsequent products.

Novels

 * Fire and Dust (1996), by James Alan Gardner, a rejected title that the author has since published as a free online manuscript.
 * Pages of Pain (December 1997), by Troy Denning, (ISBN 0-7869-0508-5)
 * Torment (October 1999), by Ray Vallese and Valerie Vallese, (ISBN 0-7869-1527-7)
 * Torment is based on an early script of Planescape: Torment.

Blood Wars Trilogy

 * Blood Hostages (January 1996), by J. Robert King, (ISBN 0-7869-0473-9)
 * Abyssal Warriors (June 1996), by J. Robert King, (ISBN 0-7869-0501-8)
 * Planar Powers (August 1997), by J. Robert King, (ISBN 0-7869-0532-8)
 * Planar Powers won the Origins Awards for Best Game-Related Novel of 1997.

title: Planescape