- Much of D&D's Fifth
Edition books take place
in the the Forgotten Realms.
Now, if you're a new
player you might not know
what that means.
And, if you're an old school
player you might just be
surprised about what new
things may be discovered.
- So, the Forgotten Realms, as a setting,
it's an old medieval world.
So old that all of the
civilizations that we know exist
in the world today are
built upon the bones
of empires and
civilizations that the world
has forgotten about.
- It's this giant playground.
And, I think that gets us, like
with what we're dealing with
now it's sort of like how
do we put it to full use.
- Take, for example,
the city of Waterdeep.
It is a metropolitan, coastal
city on the Sword Coast.
It has hundreds of thousands
of people living in it.
But, what people don't
realize and what few people
in Waterdeep actually remember
is that it is built on top
of a dwarven city, which was built on top
of an elven city.
So, if you delve into
Waterdeep far and deep enough
you will discover these
forgotten realms underneath it.
And, that's sort of a
template that carries through
the entire setting.
You can look to pretty much
any place where civilization
resides now and say there was
something else there before.
What is that and what
mysteries does it contain?
And, that's sort of a
key theme of the setting.
- It also could harbor
things that are kind of like
canon from different
editions and all kinds
of things like that.
So, I think when we work
with it we just try to
like squeeze the best out of it.
But, it's so sprawling.
Like, it's just so big.
- I want to be like what
in there, there's something
that's sticking out of
the ground and that cannot
be explained and it's
not a part of any realm
you know of or you've
read about in the books.
It's something that is
completely forgotten
and you don't know what it is.
And, it's out of the
lore and what the heck
is that thing?
So, Richard and I, we talk
about this and we're like
we wanna put something
in the realms that is
truly forgotten, that
you don't know about.
And so, as I'm going along
to my D and D career here
I'm gonna get a chance to actually write
my own adventures and work with the team
and create these things.
And, I'm gonna put some
things in the Forgotten Realms
that you don't know about.
You've read all the books
and you've never heard
of this thing before and nobody has,
because I love that.
I think when something
is mysterious and unknown
it fires up the imagination.
And, it sparks, it's
makes it like as we do our
little fearful quest through the world
to make everything known is to like create
this sense of security.
But, when something is
completely unknown it's like,
"Whoa, where was that,
where did this come from?"
And, it's why I love
things like the pyramids.
Like, there is this thing
that actually exists
in the world that people don't know
how the hell it was done.
People theorize about it, but
it's still a giant mystery.
And, I love that.
I love that actually exists in reality.
- Now take for an
example the current story
Tomb of Annihilation which
takes place in Chult.
One of the key features
of the story is that
you discover a lost city in the jungle
that belonged to an
ancient Chulton Kingdom
that's never been described before.
We wanted to actually
play out this idea that
nobody knows anything about this place.
And so, it just heightens the mystery.
But, as you explore it
you learn, or you start to
sort of unravel clues
of how this place fell.
And, without giving away too
much this Chulton Kingdom
once worshiped a god called
Ubtao who abandoned them.
So, they took on, these
other gods came to sort of
fill the spiritual vacuum
and they turned out
to be trickster gods who kind of misled
this culture into sort of
a self destructive course.
I won't spoil anymore
than that, but I mean,
you can meet, you can
find the bones of one of
the old queens under the city.
And, that sort of illuminates
part of the story.
I think that what makes the
Forgotten Realms interesting
is the discovery of the ancient.
