Looking for DM advice relating to the forgotten realms

[questionmark693]

I have been DM'ing for a while, but I almost exclusively do prewritten quests. I want to start writing my own adventures, and I want to take this opportunity to start learning about faerun. I have all the books available...which is more daunting than helpful.
So I guess my question is this-where should I start my players if we start at level one so that I can effectively learn about the realms and have suitable opportunities for adventures?

[Scheming Wizard]

I don't know if you have the Dungeon Masters guide 2, but in it is a town called Salt Marsh that is fully fleshed out and comes with directions on where you can stick it in Faerun. It has a lot of Npcs and adventure hooks already fleshed out and really cuts down on the work for trying to build a good starting town.

Alternatively take Waterdeep, Neverwinter, or Cormyr (which are pretty stereotypical fantasy kingdoms) and plop your characters down in them. It is kind of fun if you know you are going to have a long campaign for the pcs to start out guarding a caravan of the royal wine casks (or some other menial task) and then later on when they are higher level be drinking wine with the king himself. It shows how much they have moved up in the world. The Zhentarim and the Red Wizards make great evil organizations for the PCs to fight especially since the upper level villains have stats already in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. At higher levels the underdark makes a great location, because the pcs are cut off from most sources of help like city guards of good churches and there are plenty of dangerous monsters roaming around like the drow, aboleths, etc.

If you want to get into the setting the Neverwinter nights video games are good (except Storms of Zehir). It is kind of fun to walk around in Neverwinter and Waterdeep. The Elminster series by Ed Greenwood is also good especially for the politics and characters of Cormyr. Alternatively Drizzt has a ton of books devoted to his journeys. Faerun is huge and you can run a whole campaign out of Waterdeep without using the rest of it. Don't feel like you need to cram everything into one campaign.

[Crake]

Have you thought about making your own world? I know that can be something of a daunting task in it's own right, but I find that it meshes together really well with making your own adventures. You don't need to worry about how it fits into the world, because you can make it fit in. Think about it this way: at the rate you need to learn things about Faerun to satisfy your player's curiosity, you can instead come up with for your own world as necessary. Obviously there are a few bits that require it be more involved, a map for starters. Regional is typically fine to start with, then perhaps expand to global at a later point.

I dunno, I suppose I've always just preferred to work in a world I'm familiar with, and one will be intimately familiar with a world they built themselves. Plus, that means that the first few games will be world-building games that give your players the chance to influence the world in big ways, and make characters that will become legends in that game world. Kinda like the characters in the Circle of Eight in greyhawk, how they were all actually PCs at one point, and became a legacy in the setting. Nothing leaves a player more satisfied when they know that they've actually changed something and made a lasting impression on the setting. You'll find that hard to achieve in an established setting, especially one with timelines, where the world's events are pre-determined, and the players just feel like a miniscule spoke in some larger machine.

I've just always found something more wondrous and fun about playing in a new setting where everything is mutable, and you never know what might be around the next corner, because the story hasn't been written yet.

[Saintheart]

If you want to just get immersed into the feel of the Forgotten Realms and you're prepared to deal with elderly technology, I cannot recommend more picking up a copy of Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn and playing through it. Can't speak for anyone else, but few other games I've ever played have just caught me and sent me into the world at hand.

As to learning about Faerun by setting or campaign sourcebooks: first thing to remember is that while Faerun is huge and appears complicated, it can be cynically compartmentalised. Basically the south is an Arabic/Jungle pastiche; Mulrohand et. al. is basically an Egyptian pastiche; Amn/Tethyr are basically a medieval Spain/Portgual pastiche; Icewind Dale is a Viking pastiche; and most everywhere else in between is in essence a Lord of the Rings pastiche. There's a metric dung-ton of history and prior editions sandwiched into the setting, and if one were to be really cynical about it, it would seem that there's a level 20 character running every hamlet north of the Sea of Fallen Stars.

You're not going to cover all of these geographical areas in one campaign, and nor should you. Look instead for a geographical region or nation or conflict that interests you and then just head over there. Waterdeep is the most obvious place to start -- it being the biggest freaking city in the setting -- but I actually favour the idea of starting on a frontier somewhere (Damara, maybe), starting simple, and eventually moving to Waterdeep. The main thing to remember is: it's just a setting and background. It's basically hard for a single bunch of adventurers to go and break the setting because there's so many high-levelled do-gooders wandering around keeping the plates spinning. And above all remember there is no grand Continuity Council that will come and confiscate your sourcebooks if you accidentally put Drizzt Do'Urden in Thay instead of in Icewind Dale. The setting might be intricate, but it's also very flexible.

At the risk of sending you back to pre-written adventures, have you considered Sons of Gruumsh? It's for low-level adventurers and it's set smack bang in the Realms, which might be a handy way to absorb the flavour.

[questionmark693]

Ok, thanks for the advice guys. One of my eventual goals has always been to create my own planet all my campaigns take place on. I think I'm going to start by learning about faerun, and using what I like, and changing what I don't. Then I kind of know how to create a world, and I can populate other continents over time. And I don't have to be controlled by the existing timeline. Thanks for the resources to look into, I'll be checking them out too.