The original Forgotten Realms logo, which was used until 2000, had small runic letters that read "Herein lie the lost lands" as an allusion to the connection between the two worlds.

[citation needed] Forgotten Realms is one of the most popular D&D settings,[3][4] largely due to the success of novels by authors such as R. A. Salvatore and numerous role-playing video games, including Pool of Radiance (1988), Eye of the Beholder (1991), Icewind Dale (2000), the Neverwinter Nights and the Baldur's Gate series.

[6] Greenwood brought his fantasy world into the new medium of role-playing games when a university student named September invited him to play AD&D with her.

[7] Greenwood began a Realms campaign in the city of Waterdeep before creating a group known as the Knights of Myth Drannor in the Shadowdale region.

Greenwood felt that his players' thirst for detail made the Realms what it is: "They want it to seem real, and work on 'honest jobs' and personal activities, until the whole thing grows into far more than a casual campaign.

[5]: 72  Greenwood continued to write extensive articles for Dragon, in which he used the Forgotten Realms as the setting to detail magic items, monsters, and spells.

[6] Jon Peterson, author of Dungeons and Dragons Art and Arcana: A Visual History, said that Greenwood "was that rare obsessive DM who just seemed to have more ideas and energy to pour into his world than even the folks at TSR did.

R. A. Salvatore took Greenwood's world and created characters and stories for it that made him a bestselling author and sustained TSR as a major fantasy book publisher".

[15]: 103 R. A. Salvatore wrote his first novel for the Forgotten Realms, The Crystal Shard (1988), which was originally set in the Moonshae Islands before being moved to a new location and introduced the drow character Drizzt Do'Urden.

[22] Several supplements to the original boxed set were released under the first edition rules, beginning with Waterdeep and the North,[5]: 73  which was followed by Moonshae in 1987, and Empires of the Sands, The Magister, The Savage Frontier, Dreams of the Red Wizards, and Lords of Darkness in 1988.

[5]: 84  TSR adjusted the timeline of the Forgotten Realms by advancing the calendar one year forward to 1358 DR, referring to the gap as the Time of Troubles.

[5]: 95  In July 1990, the RPGA Network's Polyhedron Newszine began publishing a monthly column by Greenwood entitled "The Everwinking Eye" detailing various locations and personalities in the Realms.

[34]: 162  An official material update and a timeline advance were introduced to the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition in 2001 with the release of the hardcover book the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting,[35] which won the Origins Award for Best Role-Playing Game Supplement of 2001 in 2002.

A sequel using version 3.5 of the rules was produced by Obsidian Entertainment in 2006, and was followed by the expansion sets Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir.

[34]: 190  These books updated the Forgotten Realms to the newest rules system which altered the setting drastically to make it fit with the 4th edition concept of "Points of Light".

[34]: 190 The main lore change centered around an event called the Spellplague in 1385 DR.[9] This cataclysm was unleashed when the goddess of magic Mystra was killed, "transforming whole nations and altering creatures.

[38] Laura Tommervik, from the Wizards of the Coast marketing team, explained the approach: "We use Neverwinter as the connective tissue across multiple product categories.

In 2013, Wizards of the Coast announced a year-long event called the Sundering which acted as a multimedia project to transition the Forgotten Realms to the next edition of the game.

[39][40] This release included a weekly D&D Encounters in-store play event, a free-to-play mobile game Arena of War (2013), and a collaborative novel series: The Companions (2013) by R. A. Salvatore, The Godborn (2013) by Paul S. Kemp, The Adversary (2013) by Erin Evans, The Reaver (2014) by Richard Lee Byers, The Sentinel (2014) by Troy Denning, and The Herald (2014) by Ed Greenwood.

[53] The video game Sword Coast Legends (2015) published by Digital Extremes was also released in the same month as the tabletop campaign guide.

[52][54] 5th edition details on "the rest of Faerûn had been untouched until the Tomb of Annihilation (2017), an adventure that leaves the northern Sword Coast for the southern jungles of Chult".

[9]: 101  The official Dungeons & Dragons actual play web series Rivals of Waterdeep, which premiered in 2018, is set in the Forgotten Realms.

It has adapted adventure modules such as Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (2018), Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus (2019) and Candlekeep Mysteries (2021) which are also set in the Forgotten Realms.

The Forgotten Realms is part of the fictional world of Abeir-Toril (usually just called Toril[23]: 91 ), an Earth-like planet with many real-world influences and consists of several large continents.

[104] D&D chroniclers Michael Witwer et al., in the book Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana, noted that the "level of Tolkienesque history and detail that Greenwood had infused in his creation - and almost "real world" quality - granted the Realms an irresistible allure [...].

"[16] Aubrey Sitterson, for PC Magazine, included the Forgotten Realms in a 2015 roundup of the "11 Best Dungeons & Dragons Campaign Settings" and wrote that "for most people, Forgotten Realms is synonymous with Dungeons & Dragons, and with good reason: it's the setting that played home to the massively popular Baldur's Gate video game, as well as R. A. Salvatore's Drizzt books.

[107] In a retrospective on the legacy of Dungeons & Dragons, academic Daniel Heath Justice commented that the "Forgotten Realms was explicitly based on the civilized-versus-savage binary and leaned in hard on racial essentialism in its sadistic black-skinned drow led by vicious matriarchs and their terrible spider goddess, firmly melding anti-Blackness with misogyny, a once-civilized people gone feral under the debased rule of women".

[110] Shannon Appelcline, author of Designers & Dragons, wrote: [The 4th edition] Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide may be the most controversial D&D book ever produced by Wizards.

[109] R. A. Salvatore was also publicly unhappy with the 4th edition changes to the Forgotten Realms:[111] [B]asically, we authors were handed a document and told how things were going to be.

I will admit that the abrupt changes forced me into an uncomfortable place, and from that place came some of the better things I've written, but I very much preferred the way it was done this time, with 5th Edition and the changes, where we, the authors, were told what was happening to the game and asked how we could make the world and the lore live and breathe it.Christian Hoffer, for ComicBook.com, reported that Wizards of the Coast's 5th edition publishing strategy, which focuses on the Forgotten Realms and newer intellectual property for campaign settings, has created a rift in the fan base where some "feel that this push for new players has come at the cost of keeping the game's current players sated" by not updating campaign settings that "predate the Forgotten Realms".