Forgotten Realms Player's Guide


The Forgotten Realms Player's Guide is a supplement to the 4th edition of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.

Contents

The Forgotten Realms Player's Guide presents the changed Forgotten Realms setting from the point of view of the adventurers exploring it. This product includes everything a player needs to create a character for a D&D campaign in the 4th edition Forgotten Realms setting, including new feats, new character powers, new paragon paths and epic destinies, and even the brand-new swordmage character class.

Publication history

The Forgotten Realms Player's Guide was written by Greg Bilsland, Logan Bonner, Eric L. Boyd, Rob Heinsoo, and Robert J. Schwalb, and published in 2008. The book features art by Matt Cavotta, Miguel Coimbra, Brian "Chippy" Dugan, Jesper Ejsing, Wayne England, Lucio Giordani, Soe Hemmi, Goran Josic, Rob Lazzaretti, Howard Lyon, Warren Mahy, Breanne Miller, William O'Connor, Ryan Sansaver, Mike Sass, Mike Schley, Emi Tanji, Francis Tsai, and Eva Widermann.
Shannon Appelcline commented that with Fourth Edition Dungeons & Dragons, Wizards planned to publish just three books for each setting, and after that they would start on a new setting in the next year: "The Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide and FR1: Scepter Tower of Spellgard kicked off the cycle… and were some of Wizards' worst-received supplements ever. This was largely because Wizards had decided to destroy the old Forgotten Realms to make it fit into their ideas of a 'points of light' setting. Old gods and NPCs were gone, kingdoms had fallen, the timeline was dramatically advanced and the Realms lay in ruins. From the scathing reviews that the new setting books got, it seems likely that they did as much to alienate existing fans from fourth-edition play as the core rulebooks had."

Reception