Running a 5th edition campaign in the 1st edition Forgotten Realms

[Yora]

I've long been quite fascinated by the Forgotten Realms how they were presented back in the days of 1st edition. Obviously being much more sparse on details and without any of the metaplot that was published over the following decade, but it's also a world that comes across as being much more wilderness with smaller civilization and a stronger leaning towards medieval influences. Which I think does actually contrast noticably against the renfair style of 2nd edition and whatever you want to call what it gradually morphed into throughout 3rd edition.
One very notable feature that stands out to me is how very much human focused the setting is at that stage of its development. The elves are gone. Evereska really is the last elven realm in Faerûn. Any other elves are the last few remaining stragglers and outcasts. The dwarves are only a shadow of their former selves, having largely retreated inside their few remaining mountain homes on the very northernmost edges of the known world. Even orcs and goblins are barely mentioned at all, and again mostly as living in the most remote parts of the continent, not really factoring in current affairs. The North really is one of the few outstanding exception by having dwarves and orcs being somewhat common and there still being a few small communities of elves around. And then there's of course the cool gods like Bhaal, Myrkul, Leira, and oldschool Mystra still being around, with Cyric and Kelemvor not being introduced yet.

Now AD&D is a game I could never figure out, and of all the options 5th edtion really seems like the best choice for running a campaign in this setting. Not having played it terribly much though, I am wondering what kind of tweaking might be useful to get something that is somewhat more reflective of the world and adventures of Forgotten Realms in 1st edition material.

The most obvious thing would be of course to limit the range of classes and races. Dark elf, dragonborn, forest gnome, and tiefling all aren't PC options in this world. With classes, I think sorcerer and warlock would be out completely, and monks restricted to Open Hand and paladins restricted to Devotion.
Making some restrictions to classes for races is also an option. I wouldn't make it quite as strict as it was in AD&D, but having no dwarf wizards, bards, druids, and rangers; no elf, halfling, or gnome barbarians; and limiting paladins to humans and half-elves is something that I think is quite baked into the setting.

Where things get more vague and subjective is in using magic items. From the way magic items are mentioned in regards to NPC in several places of the old 1st edition material, I am getting a strong impression of magic items being assumed to be quite rare. In 5th edition, characters already come with a great number of special abilities just from their class features. So I think an approach of being quite stingy with magic items and making each of them special and significant could work quite well. Perhaps holding back on most common magic items and starting right away with uncommon ones when the players get their first magical treasures. With all the bonuses and modifiers characters have in 5th edition, a +1 weapon does make much less of a difference than it would have made to a 1st edition character. Perhaps have the players to get their hands on a +2 weapon after they have found only two +1 weapons before, instead of everyone already having one more +1 weapons and some having been sold off before +2 weapons show up for the first time. Quality over quantity.

Any other suggestions on this issue?

[Keravath]

I think you could run a fun campaign using an earlier version of the Realms as a basis for it. However, I would be a bit leery of recreating all the character restrictions of AD&D in a 5e setting. There are several good reasons that some of those restrictions were removed. On the other hand, limiting some of the class choices by race could add to the flavor.

On your question about magic items ... it is important to remember that 5e is based on the concept of bounded accuracy. Weapons in AD&D could go up to +5 and characters might have these before level 10 since many folks didn't play the game past level 11-12 because of how many save or die abilities started to crop up at the higher levels (it was demoralizing when a favorite character was disintegrated due to a failed save - and disintegrate was just one of many ways character could die). In addition, higher level play was even more weighted towards the power of high level spell casters than is the case in 5e. So, a +1 sword in 5e likely has more significance to the character than an equivalent level character in 1e.

However, 5e appears to be generally built around the idea of fewer, rarer magic items (5e discourages the concept of magic item shops since magic items are supposed to be so rare and valuable that there isn't that much of a market since they would cost so much - few if any could afford to purchase them).

On the other hand, AD&D campaigns could often turn characters into glowing collections of magic items because the character classes themselves weren't as fleshed out or came with as many abilities that were class based instead of item based. In addition, the 5e attunement mechanic really does force the character to choose which magic items they will use, rather than using them all as often occurred in earlier editions. I think running a low magic campaign would work much better for a 5e campaign rather than a 1e one.

1e races included elves, gnomes, halflings, humans, dwarves, half-orcs and half-elves. Looking at the FR 1e campaign book entries for these races makes it pretty clear that (at least in the 1e lore) these races were not lacking from the Realms though some of them kept to themselves (Elves - some in the forests near the Dalelands and elsewhere for example, Halflings - apparently they had settlements near many large growing cities and some smaller ones "Halflings are the smallest of the major races, and to see their communities outside some major (and minor) cities, the most numerous (and growing).")

So basically, the 1e FR lore appears to be flexible enough to support players reasonably choosing characters of many races.

The class limitations, however, were baked into 1e. PHB 1e p14. However, 1e also had maximum level limitations, multiclassing limits and included the dual class capability only for humans). Several of these were dropped in later editions, likely because many people playing 1e ignored them (or their games didn't last long enough for the limits to come into play). Personally, I would not impose the level limits in a 5e game modeled on 1e FR though having some of the class limitations might be interesting but the cost is a significant reduction in player choice.

Finally, if you really want to recreate a 1e FR type experience, you'd need to decide whether you want to go with the 5e healing and resource recovery mechanics or use some variation of the gritty realism rules. The biggest difference between 1e and 5e is the "video game" like feeling of how fast characters restore resources and how quickly they level up.

[LibraryOgre]

Been there, done that.

It can work pretty well, whether you allow the breadth of 5e or not. If you have someone wanting something unusual (dwarf wizard), make it so they're pretty much the only one they'll encounter... they exist, of course, but are rare. Warlocks? They were usually taken as a kind of cleric or wizard; normal people didn't know. Sorcerers? At the very least Spellfire is a thing, and you can have all sorts of people with natural magical talents (qv descendants of the Seven Sisters, or of Elminster). If they want something racially unusual (dragonborn, tiefling, etc.), let them, but with the same idea. What IS the dragonborn, if they're not common.

You can guide and suggest some things, or let them know of problems not listed in the PH (i.e. "No one knows what the heck a Dragonborn is, and they're not common. You will be noticed and remembered, which can be good or bad."), but the game is pretty solid at that end.

[Yora]

On your question about magic items ... it is important to remember that 5e is based on the concept of bounded accuracy. Weapons in AD&D could go up to +5 and characters might have these before level 10 since many folks didn't play the game past level 11-12 because of how many save or die abilities started to crop up at the higher levels (it was demoralizing when a favorite character was disintegrated due to a failed save - and disintegrate was just one of many ways character could die). In addition, higher level play was even more weighted towards the power of high level spell casters than is the case in 5e. So, a +1 sword in 5e likely has more significance to the character than an equivalent level character in 1e.

I concede that perhaps the two lines of though cancel each other out and magic weapons are equally special in both cases. :smallbiggrin:

Going with short rest per night in the wilderness and long rest per full day in a settlement or keep was something I had already planned. And I guess limiting cantrips to a number of uses per short rest in some way.

[Keravath]

I concede that perhaps the two lines of though cancel each other out and magic weapons are equally special in both cases. :smallbiggrin:

Going with short rest per night in the wilderness and long rest per full day in a settlement or keep was something I had already planned. And I guess limiting cantrips to a number of uses per short rest in some way.

Limiting cantrips would be a significant balance shift and change for 5e. Most casting classes in 5e resort to cantrips at least half the time because spell slots are valuable and concentration limits the number of spells they can have up at one time. The 1e wizard had their one or two spells then reverted to using their dagger/sling or standing at the back of the party twiddling their thumbs - playing a low level wizard was never a fun experience unless you did it for laughs and didn't mind doing nothing a lot of the time.

If I wanted to make such substantial changes to 5e - I'd just go back and play 1e. However, I find 5e so much better than 1e ever was mechanically (despite all of the nostalgic memories :) ), that I don't think I'd ever do that.

If I wanted some of the flavor then I would probably go with a version of gritty realism, maybe limit classes to some extent based on race, limit the races to those present in 1e, and call it a day. I would have to think carefully about multiclassing but would likely allow the combinations presented in 1e if I wanted the flavor and allow humans to multiclass as they wish. I'd probably also remove variant human and boost the baseline human to something more comparable to the other races - maybe give them skilled or prodigy feat as a baseline (without a stat boost). The +1 to all stats generally leaves several of these increases doing very little. I might change that to +2 to one stat and +1 to three other stats to make it a bit better.

I don't think I'd go much beyond that though since I wouldn't want to change the overall 5e balance too substantially.

[Jervis]

On your question about magic items ... it is important to remember that 5e is based on the concept of bounded accuracy. Weapons in AD&D could go up to +5 and characters might have these before level 10 since many folks didn't play the game past level 11-12 because of how many save or die abilities started to crop up at the higher levels (it was demoralizing when a favorite character was disintegrated due to a failed save - and disintegrate was just one of many ways character could die). In addition, higher level play was even more weighted towards the power of high level spell casters than is the case in 5e. So, a +1 sword in 5e likely has more significance to the character than an equivalent level character in 1e.

However, 5e appears to be generally built around the idea of fewer, rarer magic items (5e discourages the concept of magic item shops since magic items are supposed to be so rare and valuable that there isn't that much of a market since they would cost so much - few if any could afford to purchase them).


As a side note about FR and other settings. I always head canon it that the official plotline that shifted FR into 4 and eventually 5e is the reason magic items are rare. Like in 3.5 you could make them no problem but since then the magic item creation rules are more or less gone so making them is a pain now.