‘The origins of the Forgotten Realms’ an interview with Ed Greenwood and Jeff Grubb!

[Music]

hello everybody

and give me a second let me mute this

computer here we go

hi everybody welcome to the first

episode of the newbie dm

show uh it’s a new show for me first of

all i want to thank you all for joining

me

those of you watching live and those of

you who are watching on vod in the

future

thank you for joining me on the show

this is a special show for me i’ve been

thinking a lot

about what to do on video where do i

want to take

this whole video thing and i thought

maybe doing a show where i interview

people

would be an interesting thing i like

talking to people so why not and

you’re only your show is only as good as

your first

guest right and so i figured i’d start

with

two of the best uh not two good shows

out in one

uh joining me tonight on this debut of

the newbie dm show

are two legends in the d d industry the

rpg industry in general

mr ed greenwood and mr jeff grubb ed

jeff thank you for joining me how are

you guys doing tonight

we’re doing real well yeah thank you for

having us on uh

this is great for me i’m geeking out

because you guys are you know i’m a big

fan of you guys i’m big fans of your

work from

uh you know from from days gone by so

i just for me i’m geeking out here and

and um

i want to thank you for joining me and

i’m going to get straight to it i’m not

going to i don’t want to spend a lot of

time saying hi to each other we did that

for half an hour before we started the

show

so ed greenwood creator of the forgotten

realms

uh you designed the world uh the world

is still being

played today it’s a world that’s

retained its popularity for

40 years or so we know how it started

we’ve all heard the stories you started

writing articles for dragon magazine

and a gentleman by the name of jeff

grubb was sent

a big box of material and they told him

here we’re going to publish this turn it

into a world

uh want to give me a little bit of him

give us a little bit of insights into

how this went down ed

and jeff you jump in whenever you feel

you need to

oh boy well okay

so your dragon magazine ten years

oh start there okay yeah because the

realm started ten years earlier when i

was ago

all right i’m gonna interrupt

i know you started with dragon magazine

issue number

30. so let’s talk about that how do we

get there

okay okay so to get there

um i start uh

reading dragon with issue

seven in the local toronto gaming store

and um i am by then

reintroduced to dnd for the second time

um

and uh we’re starting to play d d we’re

also playing other

things like a box set game from tsr

called divine right

which came out about um in those days

and uh

it had two things wrong with it an

unfinished rule that stopped in

mid-sentence

and a different number of counters for

one country

on the punch-out sheet than in the rules

so i wrote

errata or fixits for how we played it

and and they they and i sent them off to

dragon and they saved it for a theme

issue

which was dragon 34 and dragon

and then they i noticed in the they had

restarted

featured creature as a thing called

dragon’s mastery which

at the bottom said hey you get paid 25

25 dollars for

every monster here and everything on

these pages is as official as anything

published to the monster manual

so i wrote up a monster the cursed

for dragon 30 and sent it off

and they published it if i remember i

wrote the second one the crawling

yeah crawling claw for dragon 32 right i

sent i mailed it off this is how long

ago this is

snail mail there’s no internet i mailed

it off 16 days later

my copy of dragon came to me with my

monster in it

and i said they’re desperate and i

sat down at my father’s old underwood

and i banged out

monsters monsters monsters and sent them

off

and the i also wrote something that was

near and dear to my heart the gates

article

uh which um was editorially titled

from the city of brass to dead or pass

in one small step

i just called it gates in d d and

i sent it off and that got me

a phone call

from kim mohan to the library where i

work saying

are you coming to gen con this year and

i said

uh i am now

and he said good i want to talk to you

and

he offered me a post of contributing

editor

and i said what does that mean what do i

get paid

he goes that’s the contributing part um

and it was he had been impressed with

his background in journalism

that he’d received an article the first

dragon article that had footnotes in it

this might have been an error in

judgment on his part but it

um he made me a contributing editor and

i think he was delighted because it

meant that he could assign stuff

like he could be a an editor like in

journalism

where if you have a piece of art or you

have a theme or you have a topic and you

need something of a certain length

written in a hurry

because the issue would grow or

shrink by eight pages depending on the

the ads coming in for that issue

um he had finally had somebody he could

like

sort of contact to do stuff more or less

to order

and that’s how the wizards 3 articles

started they were

like the ecology the ecology of

series that that actually came from a

defunct magazine called dragon lords

and they had about six of them and he

said hey

you want to do this and here are the

monsters we’d like you to start with

so that’s how i started and because i

was a shy retiring canadian i know it’s

hard to believe shy and retiring um

i felt it was incredibly gauche to start

an article saying hi my name is ed

greenwood you never heard of me but

here’s a better way of rolling dyson

you’ve ever thought of you schmucks

i just thought that was not a good

authorial voice

so and i also didn’t i knew that every

player read

every issue of the magazine as well as

dungeon masters if they could get their

hands on it

so i didn’t want to say in the second

room of the ruined castle there are

eight orcs and their hit points are

xyz you know i wanted to say

it’s rumored that there are orcs you

know as i wanted an unreliable narrator

so

elminster stepped into the pages of my

articles and i would say it’s rumored

and and i would mention the realms

because i could use it as a

way of illustration an example and

jeff grubb noticed this well there’s

a bit of a story behind that over to

jeff uh

literally we had started building worlds

with dragon lance

um and believe it or not at the end of

the first after the first year came out

was becoming very successful

and our company was saying okay what

next i mean we have a story we have an

epic but what happens after that

you know do we have anything else that

we want to want to do and

uh i’m the poor poor schmuck who

basically said

uh you know ed’s been writing all these

articles

and mentioning all the stuff about you

know this this area called the forgotten

realms maybe does he have

anything there and as a result they said

you say you call him up see if he can

see if he’s willing to sell it to us

and i go okay and i call him up and

he got the library and uh basically say

we were interested in in buying your

world and basically you know we you’ve

been running you you have a campaign

have you been writing stuff down is

there is there material oh yes i’ve been

running a campaign for some

quite some time and it’s just you know

it’s the adventures it’s the

company of crazed venturers it’s golden

fields

there’s uh activity in waterdeep and in

court in

shadowdale uh but then we’ve generated

some materials that’s great

we’d like to like to buy it from you and

we’d like to develop it further

and he said well you know since you’ve

published a lot of this

in dragon magazine i thought you already

owned it

and my response was i’m not going to

tell anybody you said that

we’d like to buy it from you and we

we purchased it for a small amount of

money um

a computer without a hard drive we gave

you a hard drive the second

uh in the second year

uh i promised you probably i’ll give you

a sack of flour

for your world

yes i’ve got these magic trees

yeah let me ask my questions and promise

so let me ask you a question ed so you

get this call from

from jeff grubb right and you’re i’m

going to assume you’re about 30 years

old back then your 30 year old dungeon

master

um running games in your world and

and the company that publishes dungeons

and dragons calls you and tells you

we want to buy your world do you

suddenly feel like the king of the nerds

are you like wow i’m the king of the

dungeon masters

they want to buy my world uh no no

no no why i just i just felt

oh good i’m gonna get color maps that

don’t have pencil crayon marks in them

yes yes yes yes

no i i wasn’t thinking of king of

anything i was just thinking oh

this is going to be wonderful

ed how long was your campaign going

before we before we bought it

how long were you playing dmd with your

gang

i i started playing d d in 75 okay

and we said this is cool but it’s just

going to devolve into an argument

at that point there were just the three

booklets grey hawk and and

black moore and eldridge wizard he

hadn’t come out yet right so

there was no thief there was no you know

it was like this is a cool storytelling

idea it’s just going to devolve into an

argument

okay but at the time the player’s

handbook was brand new and published

so jack vance’s magic system made it to

the monster manual that had already come

out

i said okay i’m changing everything in

the realms which was a

story world up until then i was writing

stories from this is going to be my

hidden armature my network of bones

to keep me honest as an author and make

everything hang together because

they’ve done it for me and we started

playing d d

steadily the the the home realm campaign

in 1978 and it’s continued ever since

wow how do you gain these days it’s like

once a year

how did your gaming group react to the

fact that tsr was going to publish the

world that we’re playing in that must

have been mind blowing for them as

players you know

um are we going to get paid for this

[Laughter]

yeah yeah you get you have to sign this

release form and you get paid one

one american dollar and if you don’t

agree to that we don’t use your

character

oh okay um so that i

they signed all the release forms and i

just threw them in one of the fedex

packages

um they never got the dollar from qsr

they got it from i don’t remember the

dollars so that’s how i have these

american dollars

yeah i’ll send them out so i covered it

it’s all right

okay no no it’s okay give me give me a

purchase order i can basically reimburse

but

i’ll buy a pizza so please talk about

the process oh

cool i i from the point you send your

material to tsr and jeff you you get all

this material and you start building

oh no no no no no no it’s not a big box

no it’s it was weekly

fedex packages and this is the days

before the

internet everything was fedex

it was fedex to make sure it gets from

canada

to wisconsin because you know shipping

things by uh

post uh parcel posts and everything

would have a tendency to maybe hang up

at the border

for quite some time we both have stories

of that so federal express was our

mechanism

he’s still on the way yeah and he would

basically

pull together his notes and what he’s

what he’s written on and this was stuff

that was type written

this was not stuff that was you know

basically in any and well

it you did put it into uh computer files

eventually

and i would get this incredibly this

large package federal express

that was you know filled with with paper

that uh basically was like wrapped 17

times so it would be like uh it’d be in

the package and then there you open it

up and there would be some some brown

paper and you open it up and there’d be

some

of this heavy canadian cellophane that

basically you could use to insulate your

windows and open that up

and then there’d be foil and then you

open that up and there’d be another

layer of paper i mean you keep digging

it down

cardboard and i would i would be just

i’d spend like five minutes ripping

across and one of the editors on the

other side of the cube wall saying

another package from ed oh yeah

and then when he said discs those would

be wrapped in foil

and then wrapped in cellophane and then

wrapped in paper i mean he’d make sure

this stuff was

uh just as intact as possible

and early material oh my goodness

um one thing i mentioned is that at one

point he was using a typewriter that the

t

key didn’t work so he drew in

all the little keys after he finished a

page and

it was like a little graveyard and we

had

you know and you would like have one

eighth of an inch margins

and right from the very top of the page

to the bottom of the page and if he

didn’t like something he would sometimes

cut it out and reassemble it that was

literally physical cut and paste so

this was like very rough

notes area and this became the

foundation

for uh for the realms

he sent us his original photocopies of

his original maps

which were he put them on i think 24

eight and a half by 11 sheets of paper

and then we assembled them

in the office you know and is that that

thing were those the original maps

so it is ed sending you packages through

fedex

because he’s inventing the as he’s

going along

because he sold his world and now he’s

got to deliver or is this there’s so

much content

that has got to send it out in waves

yes yes he’s sending me his content he’s

sending me the material now

in the gray box which was our first game

product

you you will see that a lot of the

write-ups have like some information

and then elminster’s notes and the elle

minister’s notes are

just about what he had sent us

in that material so we’ll have some

areas that have a lot of information

uh like um oh

i have a blog what’s the one on the east

with the uh with the uh

uh no problem um

symbiote was the place where evil

merchants came from that the player

characters could defraud

but further uh one world that you were

keeping open for the rpga

yeah oh that was that was ravens bluff

and

the eastern side of the vast yeah that

was that was raven’s bluff for that and

in the further

east there was an area with the snow

witches

there we go and you had a large section

on rashman so there was a large section

of rashman in the original box

because we used what was there available

sembia we originally held out to be an

area that we’re not going to go into go

play with that and you know we’re not

going to mess with it

and that lasted about three years uh

so but that was an area that because

primarily we had nothing on sembia

we had a lot on cormier we had a lot on

shadowdale we had a lot on

uh waterdeep we had a lot of baldur’s

gate

and basically fitting all the pieces

together working through the maps

and and i i have to admit this we re

we redrew parts of his map uh

doug niles had a half finished

novel that he was writing with tsr uk it

was going to do the british dragon lance

and then they cancelled the project and

he had a half written novel

and we said ooh we can take that and so

we redrew the moon chase

which were originally uh more mica

archipelago more like earthy you always

mentioned

um and we uh basically just

dropped it right into the realm so that

was the nature of the realms as we could

just because it was such

uh d d so d and d based

that we could basically put things in

there that had been orphaned

that didn’t have a place otherwise uh

desert of desolation

uh the h series uh ten towns

um all of those were areas that got

added as we continue to develop the

world

was there anything you had to leave out

because ed

there’s no way we’re putting this in

this product

was there anything like that that you

could give us a little hint about

no yes i don’t think so yes

i think i think jeff was doing the

censoring

my my adult language

but i don’t think there were any

geographical areas that we left out no

there were no geographical areas that we

basically put

well that we that we didn’t redrew

redraw but yes um

that’s the fest hall story um we had

and had done all these maps of all of

these

uh towns of shadowdale and of arabelle

and of waterdeep all these seth house

and

he has the map key and basically okay

this is great we can just you know type

everything in and we

we were ready to go but a lot of some of

the buildings

were brothels bordellos

uh i think it was a cirglio or two you

know okay

i’m afraid we can’t do that so my choice

is

either re-key the entire map

or find something else to call these

places

and that’s where we came up with the

idea of fest halls which are

much like the way you portray them is

a place of enjoyment of their of of

stating various

desires food wine song

you know company and

as a result that has now entered into

the language

as you know as a you know a fest hall

so okay that’s that that’s our

contribution to english so how much time

passed between

i recall go ahead

i’m just going to say i recall jim jim

matkis

at an early gen con explaining oh fest

halls

it’s like that that hall that you rent

in town for weddings funerals and bar

mitzvahs yes

and somebody said oh okay and walked

away it’s like the horticulture

hall in lake geneva where the first gen

con was it’s

a public space so so how much time

passes yeah

how much time passes between the fedex

packages and

1987 when the gray box is released

how much development time when did we

first

start working was it 86 or 85

i think it’s the a6 june of 86

june of 86 is my first package okay

um to you guys and

the foldout freebie map

in dragon comes out i think

in the very early fall you know the one

that stapled into the middle

right and then doug nile’s novel is the

first realms release

right and i think there’s about six

months

yeah yeah i feel like all right we first

met once

and then physically at that gen con at

the

at the gym but literally we’re

assembling the tsr

booth and i’m not like one end of a beam

and he’s at the other end of a beam and

oh by the way i’m i’m jeff grubb and he

says

oh really i’m ed greenwood we’ve been

working together for the past three

months

okay do you have any input in that

doug niles novel yes

um no in the novel directly no

just just to say yes that’s fine if you

sink my moon chase

um and then

then i see the finished novel you know

when it comes out like a gamer you know

oh gosh i think the only herb that was

always a problem

getting him stuff mm-hmm yeah

because i i do know that um

when when bob salvatore sent his first

novel

the crystal shard i actually got

a typescript manuscript and i don’t mean

typeset

i mean just as a a photocopy of what

came off bob’s

typewriter it certainly looked like a

typewriter not a computer

and the question was is it okay if we

use all these wizards

and the i said please don’t use grimwall

because i know that one of my players is

working on

her that we will run at a gen con and

i’m sure

that they’ll be they’ll will build in an

inconsistency

because bauble says one thing about

grimwald and

another thing will be said in the

adventure but aside from that and and i

just threw another couple wizard names

he could use instead

and as far as that i know that was the

only early editorial thing

um any other fiction for the uh

dark walker on moonshae we basically uh

took the uh

shantia we took ball we basically took a

lot of your gods and said and these are

the gods of this operation so that was

operating at a very high level

but as far as you know robin and the

rest of the characters those came out of

uh

doug’s head actually interesting story

crystal shard was not uh when bob

first uh applied for uh

basically once i want to write a novel

for you and basically he wrote

uh the first 50 pages of a sequel to the

crystal

a two uh dark walker on moonshade and

you know i reviewed it i said i meant

ran into doug and i said doug i read

your first uh first draft and you know

it’s a little different and but you know

it’s pretty good and he just looked at

me says i’m not writing a sequel

yet okay so i had to track down and find

out

no this came from from a young man named

bob salvatore

and yeah basically and we went back and

said you know we you the realm is this

big you can you know cr

take your own territory you can

basically you know create for a

different area i can do that yes

yes you can do that and that’s where of

course crystal shard and brunor and

dritz and all the rest of the

that that area just sort of like evolved

out of

so second edition d d comes out and

obviously the realms has to

evolve with it so this book comes out

forgotten realms adventures both of you

worked on this book this happens to be

one of my favorite books by the way

i love this book one of the things i

love about this book

is what you had to do to the assassin

character class

and if you don’t remember i’ll remind

you they basically all drop

dead into fiction yes the assassins in

the world

can you talk a little bit about either

how awesome that sounds

or how ridiculous it sounds

got another bob story and bob tells his

story too so i feel very comfortable

with this

basically god yes they decided we’re

gonna go over to

over to uh um uh second edition we’re

making some major changes we’re not

gonna talk about cavaliers anymore we’re

gonna basically you know change up all

the spells and everything

and we’ve got um and we’re getting rid

of assassins when we got this great

moment

in the novel that they were planning of

where all the assassins erupted

and bob he’s got a major character

that’s an assassin

well okay you have to call bob and tell

him

that you know he has to he has to get

rid of that character

and you know but he can kill him and he

can get rid of any way he wants we’re

giving him the freedom of choice there

but you jeff get the call so i call it

bob and i

i tell bob you okay here’s the situation

we’re getting rid of assassins we’re

going to do it in a very

very epic way do you want to get kill

your assassin

first let me call you back and you know

he hangs up and then there’s i

expect there are some forward phone

calls between him in the book department

between this and he calls back

he says jeff that character is not an

assassin oh really

he just kills people for money

okay

and that’s how we kept the character so

you know i i felt very good about that

it felt like a very very logical

solution and i

i think that was brilliant so uh so

yes the world did change as we went from

first edition

to second edition and we did it through

the time of troubles i was writing the

comic book at the time

and we broke that into the comic book as

well um

so that was actually the i consider that

book to be sort of like

my my endpoint um i was i’ve worked on a

lot of stuff for tsr over the years and

i had

like a lot of people who have been

excellent editors and designers who have

picked up the tasks

but that was sort of my last major um

uh project and so that sort of like

closes the arc

of that first couple years that starts

with doc walker and moon shaffer

ends with the uh uh avatar trilogy

yeah because i notice you’re not you’re

not a part of the third edition for gun

realms

but it but at this point you’re still

with wizards of the coast

well so

i had worked for a tsr i left and went

freelance worked for some other

companies including margaret weiss’s

group uh and then rejoined everybody out

in seattle

at wizards of the coast but not to work

on a road i think rich baker was you

know basically running that one so

got it but not working in the realms i

was working star wars

i was working d20 modern um

i did an adventure tied in with the d d

movie which is a scary thing

yeah diablo diablo i did a diablo box

set yeah

so i was kind of versatile so did you

think

d20 which is a cool thing one of the

great things about

i’m going to go off topic real quick

quick question did you think d20 was a

good fit for star wars

yeah yes i do um they picked up the

system for

knights of the old republic as far as uh

uh the mechanics

for it for the for the computer game and

uh i liked actually basically taking

that and adapting it

to the star wars universe um the guy in

charge

of us bill slavisek was actually one of

the designers

at west end on star wars material he was

the guy who created you know

who named a lot of alien races like the

authorians

yeah uh so we we so you know basically i

think the sense of continuity there

really helped as well

because that game had a lot of big

shoots to fill following the west end

games d6 game

it did it did the west end game was

excellent

so my wife still plays it so do i

so ed second edition d

for gun realms um what’s your favorite

story of that era

what’s your favorite forgotten realm

story

not a book but your favorite story like

something that happened or a funny

anecdote

oh about working on the realms

well that second edition is when i

ruined two bed spreads

okay i had these um in the room i’m

speaking into you now

which is now part of my office

but in those days was a spare room with

two single beds

with those icky poplin bedspreads you

know where they have little tufts

in a pattern it’s like a piece of cloth

there’s a bedspread with little tufts

here and there

like so many little tumbleweeds known as

poplin

okay well i i ruined one set doing

the maps for forgotten realms adventures

that tome you held up earlier

i did those maps in two weeks the city

maps and i was commuting 100 miles to

work

yeah all the city maps every single city

map

with a staedtler pen drawing tiny little

square boxes yeah all of those

um and those took that took me two weeks

which is probably why i needed glasses

and and then along came the menzo box

set

and i ruined the other bedspread because

i was drawing it on 17 by 35

sheets of paper which were plastic

coated on

the reverse side and i thought oh good

this will protect the bed spread i don’t

have to worry

little did i know and and you see the

thing is when you’re drawing

stalagmites you can draw them by hand

or you can try and save time shove a

clipboard underneath it get out one of

those

templates that has little round holes of

different sizes in it

for your geometry class in school and

do stalagmites at top speed in little

clusters to fill in

um all the areas in menzo in a heck of a

hurry

so i did that and that went the other

bed spread so

there you go i think that’s my favorite

story because

i don’t have to name any names i don’t

have to throw any people under the bus

there were

hilarious colorful stories about last

minute rescues

for products and and writing an entire

product in a weekend

because something had gone wrong or

the the ever popular edit dragon

editorial thing

see this piece of art ed yeah i can just

see it when i peer into the email could

you possibly send

a slightly larger jpeg oh okay we’ll

send you a larger jpeg in a couple hours

but you better start writing now because

we need the text that goes with that

by thursday it’s wednesday night yes

that’s what i said by thursday we know

you can do it there was lots of that

only that we didn’t do that when you

think of these great class

departments yeah

no no it’s mainly books and it was

making periodicals checking

okay games department did the other

thing

the saint valentine’s day massacre thing

the products that went away yeah

you see they would that’s true everybody

would do their dream products under be

this sort of

the first version of the catalog every

year would have everybody’s dream

products in it

and then upper management would meet and

decide

we only have this much budget this much

press time and this much paper

we can’t do all of these things and it

became known

as the saint valentine’s day massacre

because they would put products up

against the wall and shoot them and

because of the time of year when this

generally happened

you put the two of those together and

you put designers who understand

cultural references

and bing and year after year products

would fall off the end

uh right the elves have ever meet was it

that first fell off the end i think

three years ago three years

i think it wasn’t and actually i i was a

i was a participant in that because

since i was one of the only people to

know how to use

page maker on a macintosh jim ward and i

would retreat to the corner where we had

a mac 2

and we’d start moving things around on

the schedule

and this is what caused the massacre

often was the case of

we can’t have four boxes all releasing

in july you know we have to you know

spread it out

and so that created a lot of that okay

we’re going to do this we’re going to

move it back we’re going to

do this we’re going to move this one

back and some of them moved back to

oblivion

and some of them moved back elves if

ever meet eventually saw the light of

day

so jeff you just done it more more

eyes bigger than our stomachs i guess

you mentioned it briefly

i wanted to ask you about the forgotten

realms comic book um

how did that come about how how much

influence did dc have on it versus how

much influence did you guys at tsr

have on it and and what was the general

i guess my question is was that meant to

help promote dnd

or help promote dc or both what’s the

story behind that comic

it’s a both sort of thing but it was a

license

to uh dc i don’t know how we ended up

with it

i think in part somebody reminded me

that i originally i

also designed a marvel superheroes game

based on marvel comics and i think that

took us

into the world of uh with

other comic book companies and dc was

aware of us

and you know do you want to do a license

we’d love to do a license and we started

talking about it

uh the first books were things like

where a d and d which was

set in the forgotten realms uh dragon

lance

and one called gamma rotters which was

a gamma world kind of spin-off with

giant

kaiju you know uh creatures

like you know a giant hamster and

everything

it was it was kind of fun um and they

basically did some did some comics based

on those and the a d and d book did very

well

um mike fleischer did the first four

issues

uh oh gosh i can’t remember who’s

the second one anything carrie i and i

auditioned for four issues in the issues

nine through

twelve for my issues and on the basis of

that

they uh hired me as a uh

free freelance author to uh basically

write

the new forgotten realms series so we

took the character out of the a d and d

line agravar and we basically set that

in

the forgotten realms in the forgotten

realms comic and that was

uh like a great opportunity and it

worked out very well because

i would show all the strips to

uh jim ward our boss uh

before i sent them out so the scripts

went scripts became pre-approved

so there was much less of a chance of

sending something back

and tsr saying oh we don’t like this so

that had a great advantage as far as dc

was concerned and we got to talk about

bits of the realms

we got to talk about you know areas that

brought in a character that we had

my wife and i created alias of westgate

from our azure

bonds novel and we ran over uh

uh what the elven gods were doing during

uh the time of troubles

and so we got it gave us a lot of

chances to

explore the realms as we went forward so

and we went

like 25 issues

behind that ed have any input into that

um

i don’t think i don’t think i don’t

think i sent you anything for approval

did i no

i appear in it yes

you at the end no but i appear into

driving a forklift

yes uh there’s a lot

issue 24 show up early on

yes issue 24 everyone wants to rule the

realms this was a behind the scenes at

the realms that had a huge amount of

in-jokes in it

including elminster me and james

louder on mulholland pottery and the

difference between the 13th and 14th

dynasties you know

but yes ed was there sniff with the

forklift with all of his notes

so i i

um my question to you

my question for you would be was

dwalimar omen a stand-in

for elminster because you couldn’t use

elminster was there maybe some politics

behind

using one of the main npcs in that way

no

no because because later on we have them

drinking together

um omen was a original character

for the comic the head of the realms

master

um so but he was uh just

an original character we created rags

morales

was the artist for those for those early

issues

uh like about the first 16 20

and he did a fantastic job i really

liked omen’s look

um i loved all the characters so i

thought i thought you did just

that’s great there’s no point in doing

new realms

products if you don’t add something to

the settings so we’re always adding new

characters

spells new magic items new places new

little wrinkles because

and and that’s the thing every new

design team

that that gets on the realms

it’s being like being handed the keys to

the vet you want to drive the car

you you want it your chance to take it

for a spin so why not

that’s the that’s the fun of this so

we’re always adding stuff

so jeff i wanted to ask you something

not realms related

because for those of you who may not

know your background you know maybe some

new fans of d d um

you were involved in a ton of products

for dnd and i’m going to put a graphic

up here you won’t be able to see it but

the viewers will

um of all your a lot of your work you

you

you wrote the manual of the plains first

edition for a d

and d you wrote the alcademe setting for

dmd

you wrote spell jammer you wrote the

marvel face rip game

you wrote a few novels um one of these

games that

that’s making sort of a comeback it’s

become a meme on twitter almost

is spell jammer um people seem to have a

real fondness for spell jammers oh yes

and and this sort of victorian space

adventures

uh wrapped around a d d setting

i guess my question to you is regarding

spell jammer

what were you guys smoking in in lake

geneva back then and

can i have some of that

spells number confirmed i yes

i i think that wants to just taunts

people with that you know

um yeah you’ve always asked that

question about manual the planes too and

the

the answer is uh no no really i’m just

that crazy

um spell chamber came out of a pitch

meeting we all went to lunch

at a local bar restaurant

uh called auggies um in lake geneva

and this one and this was jim ward was

in charge warren spector was his second

in command

we were all pitching ideas and i pitched

an idea of you’ve got a guy

in full armor you know a fighter he’s

standing on the deck of a ship

in space and he’s not floating off and

he’s not gonna breathe and basically

have space adventures

and jim loved that idea and that started

us down the path

that became spell jammer and so it

really did come

out of the aether as far as and it was

interesting because

um one thing i always bothered me was

you know people would say

oh no d that’s your generic fantasy

stuff so we’re like hey we’re giving you

a

space then we’re getting your crystal

spheres and we’re giving you

all sorts of stuff and now yeah the

indian space is now just your standard

fantasy

as well so okay fine and we push the

borders back and that’s where the

borders are

so but it was a it was a great it was a

great little setting and

i love there’s the new baldur’s gate

that’s coming out as a computer game and

i just

the opening cinematic for that has a

nautiloid that basically is flying and

gets yankee

on red dragons just you know okay this

is cool stuff

you know well there’s some of the fifth

edition adventures actually have little

easter eggs to spell jammer uh sprinkled

throughout them

so spell jammer is very much still a

thing in the fiction the gift shows up

yeah and i i think they basically you

know

make reference to it every so often i

don’t i don’t know if they’re ever going

to do a

spell jammer setting or a hardback no

one talks to me

but you know i but every time they do

the the fandom

basically says ooh spell jammer they’ve

been confirming spell jammer for the

past six

years yes

i know for the past six years i i i

believe mike merles just likes winding

them up

so what was your favorite d d product to

work on

if you have to pick one you have to pick

one book i really liked al hadin

alkadin i would say al-khadim was

actually was excellent arabian

adventures

andrea heyday was my editor and also

wrote a section of that

and i thought that it was just a really

perfect

change of channels for dungeons and

dragons again pushing it pushing the

borders back

and basically making it true to a

different culture

that’s not western european so

i would go with that i’m gonna say ed

what’s your favorite i i have three

different answers because

okay three different things the favorite

one in terms of what we have in the

product

is the third edition baseline product

because we managed

to try to do the same thing that

uh steve did with d and d you know

crammed the court into the pipe pot so

we managed to get the most coverage into

it

you also managed to cram the map of the

fergana realms into a different sized

paper

and you actually have to shrink the

continent to make it fit this

yes that’s a little bit of an easter egg

yeah i don’t know yes

actually yes at one point rich richard

baker you know who

did design work on that basically

brought the realms map to me in shreds

and said what do you think

it’s interesting you know because that’s

what we’re going to do

that got a lot of a lot of pushback so

yeah

okay anyway that was your favorite one

you had the most fun on

um i think the one okay the one i had

the most fun on

personally would probably be

seven sisters or code of the harpers

because i got to delve into a lot of the

lore

the one that i had the most fun with the

end product but it was

doing it at frantic speed was the

forgotten realms adventures tone

right and it’s the most fun of the end

product because we covered

stuff that i thought was burningly

essential like

city maps to bring all those cities to

life okay now they’re no longer places

you have to

detour around on the map because we

haven’t we haven’t detailed them for the

dungeon master

you can go anywhere and the one i think

was the most frustrating

good sorry no i was just gonna say the

one that was always the most frustrating

was the volos guides and water deep

because i had to leave so much out word

count was never my friend

yes and mouse type and you better tell

the most type story because

fr1 the first module that we were

writing

uh source book that we were writing was

on water deep and the north

and we basically had said so much about

water deep we had like two pages for the

north

and then we wanted to add all the guilds

so we shrunk all the type

into this little tiny mouse type for uh

for all the guild stuff and that was

like the last page of it

yeah oh boy but one thing i liked about

forgotten realms adventures was

those cities because i got a two i

basically worked out a two-day two-page

spread

the idea of yes uh basically just have

both pages facing that’s something

that’s sort of a

holy grail type thing as far as you know

far as game designers were concerned we

wanted to have everything on two pages

and we’ve tried it a number of times and

here it worked because we basically had

all the information

that hopefully you need where do you go

where do you stay

who’s in charge who’s really in charge

uh and in one

nice little place at big at the

as well um the most frustrating project

for me and you were not a part of this

was uh the curse of the azure bonds

uh adventure

um azure bonds was a novel my wife and i

wrote

we took it and we adapted its

setting and some of the characters for

an ssi computer game

goldbox and we were going to release a

adventure 128 pages for that as well and

i was

behind with other projects and so a

number of friends we all had to dog pile

on it

and you know i’m i’m writing during the

day and reviewing at night

and just getting everything together in

one place

in order to you know basically make the

turnover and you know that’s happened

every so often to every designer i know

and that’s where it happened to me

so you’ll see if you look at the forgot

the curse the azure bonds

reddit you’ll notice there’s a lot of

names in there so

all right so there’s a lot of questions

in the chat and i’m gonna take the last

few minutes of the show and and go

through them and see what he is

let’s see what you guys can say all

right so here we go

um i’m gonna read them verbatim

s martin is listed as both the editor

and one of the authors of the original

admd for gun realms campaign set

alongside jeff and ed

how does she shape and influence the

forgotten realms in that book like what

parts did she write

anybody want to take that go ahead

oh you’re going to give it to me yeah

karen

karen asked boom garden uh currently

karen conlon

she has her own uh website she’s still

doing freelance editing

uh but she was oh gosh

so responsible for keeping my sanity

when we were basically putting all that

together because it was a

it was a book it was a box set with more

texts that we had done before

and getting everything correct and i

think this is why you know our editors

are the secret heroes of the ts early

tsr era era

when we’re putting out all this ones and

karen is you know

at the top ed here’s a question for you

best way to

view an editor is to think that you’ve

got two crazy idea guys saying oh we

gotta have this in the box we gotta have

this in the box

and the editor makes the trains run on

time and not run into each other

he was the grown-up in the room yeah so

that that’ll lead me to this question

that somebody had in the chat what

darlings from those original texts

did you um did you have to leave

out and have yet to make it into the

realm so maybe they’ll edit it out

darlings yeah like any yeah any

favorites i just haven’t made it in yet

because of whatever reason

oh there’s tons of stuff from the realms

that hasn’t made it into the published

realms

but not a lot of stuff from the original

turnover packages

the problem there was everything was

they did not want a new product line to

be a bottleneck

of slowly squeezed out products they

wanted

to have a world that they were standing

behind and bringing a lot of stuff out

so there was no time to say oh um

we’ll get to that in you know it’s like

no what do we got okay we have to turn

this into a product okay what else can

we spin off what else can we develop in

a hurry

so that there is a line a product line

here so

stuff that there was a time at which

both jeff and karen said okay no more

we got what we need for that we’ll just

chop all these other bits off and do

other products from them

right so there was therefore there was

not stuff left out from what i

originally turned over

they stopped me turning over stuff did

they ever

publish the collective nouns for

creatures

no no yeah

what you call a group of ropers did that

ever show up in any product

yeah no um and they cut

the there were some monsters and oh the

recipes

they thought the recipes offended

against the code of conduct

dragon soup and so on because you had

intelligent creatures and creatures yeah

yeah and it was like um okay well in

real life you do this all the time so

uh oh never mind no and

and that yeah and oh the one thing that

did offend against the code of conduct

and got written got taken out all the

way across

anything to do with human blood like

human blood as a as a material component

for a spell

uh there there was a bowl of blood magic

item

uh there was things you could do with

blood using

sword magic if you had a magic sword and

you managed to draw blood with it there

was a spell you could cast

all of that went away because it was

using human blood right and it was

presumably that so that to stop

somebody in real life doing something

tragic

uh what we had the uh i had a code of

conduct that was the

comics code of the era and you know that

that

created all sort of like scratched off

comics and wrote in games

and so that created all sorts of

challenges that we would have but yes

but that but primarily it was because

you know we’re trying to you know

uh move it into a mass market and uh be

more accommodating for it

well yes what happened to the idea i

know that the original idea was sort of

this

this concept that the realms were

forgotten but once upon a time we were

all connected through these portals and

these doors and whatnot

and that over time sort of faded away

into

into not really being kind of touched on

too much

uh am i right there that it kind of sort

of faded away into the background it

wasn’t really a

main part of the realms as the game

developed

why was that

you mean in fact we don’t have people

visiting from our world

into the realms well i know we had the

wizards three columns in dragon and

that’s

that’s that’s something that they did

for fun and dragon man but but i mean

like there was this idea

those were powerful wizards so you know

but it was this idea that there were

these portals that connected everybody

and and that sort of just

like kind of went away i’m not sure if

maybe i’m wrong about that but just

that’s part of the feeling i get okay i

i was never on staff at tsr

so this is me reading the tea leaves

from one afar

i think a little bit of it was the let’s

not have any steam tunnels

stuff from what was happening in you

know and let’s just not go there

and the second thing was portal fantasy

can be its own

game setting and sure enough basically

playing skateboarder whatever but i mean

um so therefore and and there was an

attempt early on to separate

the realms worlds uh sorry the tsr

worlds for instance we didn’t publish

much of my heraldry in the realms

because heraldry was greyhawk

right we didn’t have uh

riders of aerial beast with lances

in the realms even though i had them in

the realms in in the center him

were writing followings and he was like

no that’s dragon lance

so let let’s let’s differentiate the

worlds and so therefore

i think some i think the portal fantasy

which was in my gates article back in

dragon 37 and i was

exploring all that you know the the idea

and then

that the very first fantasy novels are

william morris

because he he sort of originates the

novel format

and one of them is the wood between the

worlds which is

right a portal fantasy you know so it’s

been around since the beginning but i

think i

i think that they de-emphasize that for

those dual reasons

i’m going to say not so much for the

dual reasons i don’t remember us

ever you know saying ah we can’t have

them writing foul followings because of

uh

uh dragon lands and i believe we did put

some heraldry into was it in the

first or second edition uh oh regardless

of adventures yeah forgotten but you’re

right about grey hawk you know basically

the original gray hawk portfolio

showing all of the heraldry of all of

the different nations of greyhawk

so and plus the one difference between

grey hawk and

realms was greyhawk had more borders you

know

realms we’ve got you know shadowdale

we’ve got cormier

and over here we’ve got waterdeep and

we’ve got this sort of

nebulous spot with some city-states in

it along the

main road between them and that’s about

it so it’s not like it’s not like a

world where

you see every everything has been

claimed

interesting uh let me see what other

questions we have you know there’s a

fergana realms magic the gathering card

set coming out

and i’m not a magic the gathering place

i don’t really know much about it

but the buzz seems to be that elminster

did not make it onto the card set

what’s up with that he’s not unlisted on

the spoilers actually

yesterday i went looking up the spoiler

list and

and uh the biggie did not make it so

morden

made it came to me well i presume

elminster wouldn’t sit still for the

photo op well

that’s a good point yeah you know

i mean the artist has to paint him and

he probably says i do have better things

to do

than watch paint dry all right

i’m getting close to wrapping up i’m

getting close

no no go ahead go ahead finish finish

your thought

okay looking behind the scenes i looked

a lot of it are some

characters and figures and situations

which have been appeared

recently in uh d d

uh products like xanathar’s on the list

uh volo is on the list uh he is volo

comma guide to monsters

um so so so basically we’re seeing some

some of the ones that are more recent in

nature as opposed to some of the older

guard

so here’s the question i have two of the

designers of you know jeff i consider

you one of

one of the designers of the fergana

realms at least the classic realms as

much as that

here’s a question for you guys you guys

are

um tasked with producing

uh a futuristic version of the fergana

realms where is faroon in

1500 years

i always said the mindset of the realms

wasn’t medieval so much as it was

um early industrial in other words we

have

magic that is doing a lot of things

um i thought always that’s doing a lot

of things that we would you know

communication

transportation etc uh even something as

simple as a light spell

can transform a society uh one of the

pieces that i think

would change everything is and and you

can give

a voicing on this as well is being able

to

mass produce magical books a magical

printing press

and that would happen over the next 1500

years and that would transform it i

would say

the world would look a lot more like

arua

which is you know a highly magical

nation

down to the south so what do you think

because you’ve got mystra

pushing that mr is pushing that as her

goal

a magically literate populace and to

have a magically literate populace

they have to be literate so it’s going

to change everything it’s going to be

very much an equalizer true in terms of

the the lower class and the middle class

it’s going to become

a society where the the bottom

the people at the bottom have more and

participate more and the people at the

top can’t oppress as much

do you think we’ll still have kings

anybody can push back

um i think the obama line is still in

the world

i would think we would but i think

they’d be more like a british

constitutional monarchy the king

or queen is a figurehead there’s a

ruling council

things are decided and then

the monarch puts the the trappings on it

the

the pomp and circumstance and we have

that a bit in one monarch

yeah yes yeah can you imagine a water

deep

filled with skyscrapers

it already is from their point of view

yeah

and and you already have buildings in

waterdeep

that are have a flying buttress a flying

bridge to another tall building

so they can both go higher without

falling down

so uh assuming you don’t have any

cataclysms

or the dragon wards don’t fail and a

dragon decides it’s going to have fun

knocking down buildings

in an afternoon i would say it’s just

going to keep going up and up and up

because

the real estate is getting more and more

valuable and people don’t want to go to

the

pro the expense of building

at great expense outside so you have a

longer travel time when you can build up

where you already are

same thing that happens in our real

world so we see water deep is more of a

manhattan

yeah density is going up in places that

have good natural

solid ground to build on and places that

have

good harbors and or water supplies or

both

i you’re not going to have um the

brazilians of this world where they

artificially decide we’re going to put a

huge city here in the middle of nowhere

and there’s not a particularly

compelling reason to supply it

except political decision i think i

don’t think we’re going to reach that

point

i think they’re going to develop what

they have already and places that don’t

have a logical development like baldur’s

gate is

expanding because more and more people

want to be there right but

we’re now moving into substandard land

so

and therefore you’re not going to get

resistance from people who are farming

that land

because it’s not good farmland that sort

of thing um

and and climate’s gonna have the

question then comes

that do we have any major climate shift

does that affect things

because people like ten towns are

hanging on

if it gets really colder or warms up a

lot it’s going to change

things well we also have magic and

control weather as a spell

so that therefore you know we can

actually do

the magical equivalent of say the thames

floodgates

that basically at the mouth of the

thames basically protect it from storm

surges

we can basically create that magically

either through

golems that can you know basically move

things but also through spells i can see

us

creating spell towers that basically

will guarantee

a temperate environment even you know

around now that becomes a question of

how it’s owned who can afford it that

sort of thing

here we go and that’s where your next

wars are

yeah it’s warring weather control spells

and yeah because you’re setting

something up you made everybody if

if you set that up in cormier you may be

screwing up what’s going across the uh

sea of dragons yeah okay yep sorry this

is

this we we do this all the time so

conflict will always be with us

yeah yeah that it it’s always dynamic

it never ends all right so there’s

always going to be conflicts and there’s

always going to be change

i promised you i wouldn’t take up too

much of your time this is going to be my

last thing and i have to ask only

because well it’s not really a question

but i have to mention it because

because i have both of you here and i’m

a huge nerd and i’m going to geek out

for a moment

my current fifth edition campaign is a

direct sequel to the comic book the

the party is the crew of the realms

master

the crew is the new uh the party is the

new crew of the realms master

and dwalimar omen lives inside the astro

lab of nimrod as a disembodied soul

and he is still on his quest to gather

the most dangerous artifacts okay

realms um the

the golem minder is still on the ship

watching over the astrolab

she doesn’t move she doesn’t speak she’s

just sort of a an entity looming over

the astrolabe

making sure that dwalamar is safe my

question to you jeff

is in the current era of the forgotten

realms where would a guy like foxy the

the halfling be if i want to introduce

him into my game

where could i find him

you know i have only we i joked with

that about

how a lot of the characters from uh the

early realms have managed to survive

into the current realms

they all have and you know a dragon bait

made a

made a recurrence you know and then it’s

just i would say

foxy foxy at this point

would probably have his own setup i

think he has a lot he has a large family

okay you know he basically has he’s made

it

he’s semi-retired uh he’s basically

the the family uh a patriarch

and you know it but it just feels that

whole you know day-to-day dealing with

his family getting under his nerves

and this would be an opportunity for him

to go out for one last hurrah

for one last great great adventure

that’s just just what i i would throw

out

you know the other option is taking into

account the time thing

is it could be his descendants there

could be you know a group of

card locks of which fox salon is held as

the family hero

you know because he went off and and did

all this so both of those are options

one of my players actually has a

halfling book of jokes

that belonged to foxy that he found on

the ship

on a crate or something that he has as a

item uh as a little tie back to the

comic book but yeah so i just so i have

a question for you

where is the moon penguin of boof in

your campaign

that’s from one of the that’s from one

of the a d and d comic books correct

that’s not from the forgotten realms

comic book it’s from an annual

but it was a team up it was a team up

between the fog forgotten yes team

and the uh uh ad and d team the dwarf

and the centaur

from the add comics and the fergana

realms

team i have not introduced it to my

campaign but now i’m going to look into

it and do it it was a crowd and realms

team

and okay the

moon penguin of boo yes

i think i think with the moon penguin

i’m going to wrap it up here guys

i i want to thank you so much for the

last tonight

the last time it was in saloni’s hand so

it might still be there

well thank you for having us it’s been

really good it’s

fun thank you i had a great time i wish

i could talk

you know another two hours but i’m going

to be respectful of your times

and um hopefully we’ll do this again

soon

and to everybody to everybody watching i

want to thank you for joining us

um you know i’m going to try to do this

often and i i can’t promise you that i’m

going to do this weekly

but i’m going gonna try to do this as

often as i can bring someone on

someone hopefully you know as great as

my two first guests

tonight that that made this debut a

fantastic show

so again thank you guys thank you to our

viewers and

stand by for the next show we’ll see all

right bye everybody

thank you bye take care
Go check out some of the highlights of my chat with Ed Greenwood and Jeff Grubb. I had a great time with them. Spelljammer confirmed! https://t.co/0dP4P2VNQz

You can also find the full interview on youtube https://t.co/0fiXcKKopX, and on apple podcasts (The NewbieDM Show). #dnd

— NewbieDM (@newbiedm) July 8, 2021

Subscribed!
Was a very funny interview
GRAZIE to you, @TheEdVerse and @GrubbsTweet !!!! 👏

…another one please!

— Zoltar SageAdvice 🔮🐲🎲 (@SageAdviceDnD) July 8, 2021