Rating: 
Summary: money well spent
Review: great campaign book that i find hard to complain about.it could have been a little more forthcoming(if i have to be picky)with info regarding religion,geography and world history(which is covered in other books such as"faiths and pantheons" anyway)but i felt it gave me more than enough info on the above to fill in the gaps with my imagination,inspiring
Rating:
Summary: It's not all bad
Review: Now, see, i'm young. Yeah, i've only been playing D&D for about a decade now. People everywhere are complaining about how overrated this book is and how much valuable space the god-like character sheets take up, and they're absolutely right. Much of the cosmology within the book is superfluous, and i can't imagine anyone ever thinking of going off and fighting against or alongside Elminster, and a lot of the more important things are sparse. i've played for about as long as i've had relatively coherent thought, and this book, while flashy and filled with well-done art (lockwood is good, admit it), it's nothing new. So why the five stars? Very simple. See, i've wasted incredible amounts of irretrievable time and money on D&D. It's consumed days i should realistically be spending outside, working off my considerable paunch. i pretend i'm different people and occasionally i sit down and torment between three and five utterly fictional characters. It's escapist improvisation, i'll likely never need anything i learn or do in D&D in real life or anywhere else and that is the genius of it. To me, D&D, despite its avid (and intensely serious) followers, is an unspeakably huge joke. Like Frank Miller's work. It strikes me as a massive, tongue-in-cheek method of pretending you're something you're not and never will be and the beauty is it's getting into its second or third decade and the joke never gets old! People still tell it, someone always laughs and a lot of people gat together on a weekly basis to hear the joke again. it's GREAT! And FR, which i've liked from the very begining, has upgraded extremely well with the rest of it. The art is gorgeous, it gives a whole new array of wonderful things you and your fake counterparts can do and, best of all, if you don't takr it too seriously, you might wish you could give it six or seven stars. It's fun. That's what's important. You can just sit down and immerse yourself in it and it's one hell of a lot of fun. it's possible Gary Gygax (who i like, so shut up) or someone will read this, be hugely offended and show up at our next session to launch "bigby's tactical nuke" at my poor character, but hey. i'm just saying; don't take this or any of the rest of it too seriously, and it's ecstacy. Or maybe that's just me. Well, anyway, i enjoy it, i think it's a lot of fun to do (if the feel of the campaign is right) and that it's undeserving of one-star ratings because it's no different from any of the other books. And the art is better.
Rating:
Summary: Excellence in RPG crafting
Review: This is simply THE landmark by which all RPG setting books should be judge. This is the best execution I have seen in over 23 of gaming. Excellent writing, editing and layout. You may not be a fan of the Realms but this book has more inspiration in it page for penny than any other setting book on the market. This book is an RPG masterpiece!
Rating:
Summary: Very complete
Review: It has everything you need to run a smooth campaign in Ed Greenwood's world, the new skills, feats and prestige classes are very good too.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic and Fun
Review: This book is extremely well put together and easily worth the money. It is useful as both a reference and just for fun browsing. It really gets into the details of the world, even small things that make everything more salient. The only thing that I found a little gratuitous was the character sheets for the more famous individuals. That space could have been used better I think, although I can understand the motivation for their inclusion. From casual to diehard roleplayers, I think most cannot go wrong with this book.
Rating:
Summary: This is an invaluable book!
Review: I love this book! I saw this earlier report saying, "Who plays Forgotten Realms anyway." To them I say, I wouldn't play anything else! I always had a loathing for the stereotypical Greyhawk campaign setting, but had trouble coming up with my own - this book is the solution. It presents a wonderfully fleshed-out view of an interesting and engaging realm, with information on NPCs, adventure ideas, and historical information. The book is laid out in an easy-to-understand format, and covers many new races and spells. The addition of the "Region" section allows characters from different areas to vary totally! It's extremely useful, and I have used for every campaign I have run in 3rd edition, and most in 2nd. If you're a DM, and want an interesting place for your campaign to take place, Forgotten Realms is it.
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps the best D&D Book TSR has Produced
Review: In my 18 years of role-playing, I have to say that this is the finest TSR book that has been produced. I understand others criticism that the book doesn't focus on any particular geographical area, but that is not its intent. This book takes hundreds of dollars worth of material, and synthesises and consolidates it down to one very long, small-print rulebook with many superb illustrations, maps, etc. A DM could get thousands upon thousands of hours of role-playing out of its source material. What this book does extraordinarily well, and as a DM, what I find invaluable, is that it gives the best 360 degree look at the Realms I have seen. There are pages discussing the seasons, weather, holdidays, races, cultures, languages, etc, along with over a hundred pages discussing every part of the Realms. While no section is overly deep, I think it is 80% of the depth of any of the previous materials. Combine that 80% of the functionality with about 700% of the breadth, along with 100% consistency between the materials and their timing, and you have a fantastic value. If you are either a player or a DM in the realms, this is a must-have book on the order of the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: A great product with much information about nearly everything. Prestige classes are the real values of the book, overall information is much more than a beginner will need. A veteran Realms player and/or DM such as me, will not find the information enough. We know that we should buy other books for further information. The thing that troubles me about this edition is lack of maps. Old gray Box and 2nd ed Box sets included much more maps than this one. Only a full scale Faerun map is attached to the book, hinting about new regional sourcebooks to come. The book does not focus in detail on a specific area to give the beginners enough information for a place (such as Dalelands) to begin their campaigns. The two adventures are good, but are not spiced with enough background information about their setting. Aside from these, the new FR Campaign Setting is a valuable companion to the dedicated role-player/
Rating: 
Summary: Does anyone ever actually PLAY Forgotten Realms?
Review: The Realms, while the most lauded and highly praised setting ever devised for D&D, amounts to so much generic drivel. It is a seamless mish-mash of generic 80's fantasy, the flavor-of-the-month in gaming circles (drow anyone?), and power-gaming mayhem. The ideas posited in this volume would reduce all gaming to die-rolling and number-crunching. Why is a 45th-level NPC needed? Much less the dozens of proactive high level characters? The best setting ever made for D&D is either Dragonlance or Ravenloft. You see, they have these funny things most FR players aren't familiar with, it's called a "background." With a background, the stories told in the setting make sense in relation to each other and have some sort of context to the rest of the game world. That's why you don't see a drow wielding two scimitars thundering across the landscape slaying orcs by the droves in these settings, thats why you don't see a 45th-level NPC standing around twiddling his thumbs, doing nothing with his immense power, so that your PC's can have all the fun of adventuring. Unfortunately, most of the good material for 3E will be published under the FR label because that's what power-gamers want to buy. Lords of Darkness was a great idea- but it needed to be published for the core D&D line first, and detail truly villainous organizations like the Scarlet Brotherhood. It seems that the average FR player is a 15-year-old that has been fed on the Final Fantasy/video game RPG culture, and so it makes sense to such minds to have endless processions of beasts form a line underneath your sword so that you can loot their bodies for treasure. Am I mistaken here? Some of the 1E FR was actually good ( I cite particularly the Throne of Bloodstone here, the only truly good epic-level adventure ever pulished), but it has degraded into lists of monsters and spells, and excuses for violence that are thinly disguised as plots. But if people want the video game, anime-style RPG with huge swords and flashy spells, that's what WotC will produce. It's a big disappointment, because this once-proud product line has been ruined by spiky-haired teenagers and the older folks who should have matured in their tastes long ago (say, about 1991 or so).
Rating: 
Summary: Good Buy for Forgotten Realms Fans
Review: I was already a Forgotten Realms fan before I got this book and I wanted access to the rules for 3rd edition D&D. If your new to FR, this book probably isn't for you. First of all, the book is aesthetically pleasing. The layout is great and the artwork is pretty good. Secondly, the content of the book is somewhat lacking. For example, although the chapter on geography is the largest one in the book, it's still seems rushed. Very few details are given about regions, cities, nations, etc. For the price Wizards is charging for this book, they could have put a lot more effort into it. Then there's the information concerning deities. Each god and deim-god is given there own little block of information consisting of about half a page or more. The statistics for the gods aren't even given! You have to spend more money on another book just to get the stats. Thirdly, Wizards did a decent job on the famous and infamous NPCs of the Realms. A picture for each was given along with the stats and background. Still, all the space that was taken up by NPC drawings and descriptions could have been used to flesh out the rest of book, i.e., geography, deities, etc. All in all, if your already and avid fan of FR and you want rules for 3E, then buy the book. If your new to the Realms, I'd suggest that you not force yourself to take interest in this product and look elsewhere...I hear Kingdoms of Kalamar is really good.
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