D&D General Best version of FR guides to the North and Waterdeep

[Malcolm Serabian]

Hey folks. I’ve been looking at the various guides to the FR north/sword coast, and I’m wondering what people’s options are of the various editions of guides...

1e Waterdeep and the North and The Savage Frontier
2e City of Splendors and The North plus Volos Guides to Waterdeep, The North, and Sword Coast
3e Waterdeep, City of Splendors and the Silver Marches
5e Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Sword Coast Adventurers Guide

which has the best lore? Which has the best hooks for adventures? Which conveys the flavor of the setting best?

 

[Demetrios1453]

Hey folks. I’ve been looking at the various guides to the FR north/sword coast, and I’m wondering what people’s options are of the various editions of guides...

1e Waterdeep and the North and The Savage Frontier
2e City of Splendors and The North plus Volos Guides to Waterdeep, The North, and Sword Coast
3e Waterdeep, City of Splendors and the Silver Marches
5e Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Sword Coast Adventurers Guide

which has the best lore? Which has the best hooks for adventures? Which conveys the flavor of the setting best?

The 2e stuff really went into the most detail, especially with the Volo's Guides. However, the 1e, 2e, and 3e sources will all pretty much be comparable lore-wise with each other as they are only a few years apart in terms of the setting (the big thing would be the creation of the Silver Marches during the period), while 4e and 5e are set much later.

You can also as Storm Kings Thunder as a 5e source as Chapter 3 covers the region in detail.

 

[Voadam]

There is also the 1e City System supplement which overlaps a lot with Waterdeep and the North.

 

[Laurefindel]

1ed North and savage frontier are the best to built upon if you feel FR suffers from "too much information" syndrome. It has a more old-school take on rangers and druids and barbarians that is kind of nice if you ask me.

2e Waterdeep and the North is the best of that area IMO. The Golden age of fluff.

3e is mostly a condensed rehash of 2e box sets with timeline updates. A few new things, like the Silver Marches themselves. They have better illustrations and a more "modern" production quality, and are easier to digest. They have a bit more depth, but not as much breath as 2e box sets. 3e stuff has a lot of crunch that is of little use for 5e.

5e has the most up-to-date info on setting timeline, obviously, and no need for conversion. They are the most narrowly focused but lack the "big picture" of previous editions.

 

[Voadam]

FR3 Waterdeep is mostly adventure but has a bit on the destruction in Waterdeep from the Avatars storyline change from 1e to 2e.

 

[Retreater]

I'll second the great Volo's Guides from 2nd edition. They're really edition neutral. I'm using the Waterdeep guide to add flavor to my Dragon Heist game. I wish more campaign guides were written this way.

 

[Marandahir]

While all the above resources are great (and probably better), there's also quite a few good 4e-era Dragon articles, Dungeon articles, and sourcebooks that also have pretty darn useful details for these regions of the Realms. Perhaps less useful in their specific geographies and histories given that the timeline has advanced since the Spellplague and the map reverted to pre-4e dynamics. That said, the politics are far closer to present events than even 3.5e sources…

 

[Malcolm Serabian]

Thanks for the advice guys... I like he 1e/2e timeframe best and I love lots of details and NPCs so i think I may go with hat stuff ad just use the 5e rules set... are there lots of adventure hooks (other than there are dungeons about) in these products?

 

[Weiley31]

For Lore with stuff, 2E and some 3E books are probably the best.

Playing Druids or need lore for Druids? The Complete Handbook of Druids has ya covered.

Need FR timelines and all that? I believe 3E has a legit book that goes over the Grand History of The Realms.

Need some Necromancer loving? The Complete Handbook of Necromancers has your back and goes over the concepts of White/Grey/Black(Good/Neutral/Evil) Necromancey that can be used for flavor for your Necromancer PC.

That's pretty much what I do.

 

[Marandahir]

Need FR timelines and all that? I believe 3E has a legit book that goes over the Grand History of The Realms.

The below wikia has the best FR timeline I know of. And it goes centuries further than Grand History of the Realms. Also, in general, useful resource for referencing obscure information about the Realms if you want to pepper it in. Wikis are organized better for that sort of thing than books, by definition (that's why DDB has been so successful!).

Forgotten Realms Wiki

forgottenrealms.fandom.com