Ed Greenwood’s YT channel did more for me to appreciate Forgotten Realms as a setting than any book WotC put out, and he constantly revisits areas WotC has no interest in, like Sembia or Cormyr or Daelands.
What’s the appeal of the default dnd lore? It’s always seemed very generic to me and I’ve always rolled my own instead, or made so many changes it might as well be homebrew.
You should consider that Forgotten Realms wasn’t really the default setting before 5e.
In 4e it was Points of Laght/Dawn World/Netir Vale which was designed from bottom up to be easy to put in anything you want and it is credited for codifying on paper worldbuilding principles that are as wold as fantasy itsel (the poitns of light-style world). In 3e era it was Generic Setting, which was just Greyhawk without any words that would make them have to pay Gygax royalties. In TSR there was no default setting, they all just coexisted.
WotC turned Realms into a default setting by pretending any unique stuff doesn’t exist or trying to make it “the default” - look at Gnolls. The “hyenas turned into half-demons from eating Yeenoghu’s blood” thing could work for Realms (it’s a new lore invented for this edition), but WotC just HAD to try to force it on ever other world they own, goig so far to retcon two Gnoll bodyguards in Sinsiter Secret of Saltmarsh into Hobgoblins, just to keep the illusion Realms have nothing unique going for it.
The genericness makes it easy to grasp, which can be good for people who don’t or haven’t engaged much with fantasy. It also means the setting doesn’t matter much to people’s stories, allowing them to put whatever they really want in it. It’s just a whatever world for them to plonk adventures down in.
Wizards really doesn’t care about anything they’ve actually done well. Their mostly abandoned settings are by far their best, the forgotten realms (and the sword coast specifically) are barely even mid.
WotC never cared much about the novel and stories part of their IPs. You could tell from the MtG lore that it always was a distant second.
Forgotten Realms was amazing in the 80s and 90s, but that was when it wasn’t bought out by WotC and still a part of TSR. Now that it’s part of WitC (Hasbro), all of the lore is not cared much about in all their IPs.
I had no idea he had a YouTube channel! I’ve got a year of content to catch up on. I’m so excited.
