Editing Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (section)

==Reception==
Despite being a creative and critical success, sales of the Campaign Setting in the 1980s and 1990s were not large in raw numbers.  This was partially due to how only a Dungeon Master might need to buy the setting for an entire playgroup, while all the players might own a ''Players' Handbook'', and anyone could buy the popular Forgotten Realms novels with no need to even participate in ''AD&D''.  The 1987 Campaign Set sold around 80,000 copies in its first year, and around 207,000 total sales before 1999; the 1990 ''Adventures'' supplement handbook sold around 82,000 in its first year, and 116,000 sales before 1999; and the 1993 2nd edition box set sold around 36,000 copies in its first year, and 107,000 copies by 1999.  These sales were worse than both ''[[Dragonlance Adventures]]'' and ''[[World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setting]]'' that had been published earlier, perhaps a sign of increasing competition in the role-playing game market compared to the early 1980s when ''Dungeons & Dragons'' was by far the pre-eminent role-playing game.<ref name="riggs" />

[[Lawrence Schick]], in his 1991 book ''Heroic Worlds'', describes the Forgotten Realms as a "fantasy world with a little bit of everything in it, the setting for most of TSR's ''AD&D'' scenarios from 1987 on. The world is designed to be flexible enough to act as a setting for a wide variety of campaigns."<ref name="HW"/>

The reviewer from ''[[Pyramid (magazine)|Pyramid]]'' noted that the third edition book covers "a vast land with knights, barbarians, horse archers, and just about any other type of fantasy archetype you can name".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.html?id=2272|title=Pyramid: Pyramid Pick: Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (for Dungeons & Dragons)|date=2001-06-01|website=www.sjgames.com|access-date=15 March 2018}}</ref>

Scott Taylor for ''[[Black Gate (magazine)|Black Gate]]'' in 2014 listed ''Forgotten Realms Boxed Set'' by [[Keith Parkinson]] as #6 in The Top 10 TSR Cover Paintings of All Time.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.blackgate.com/2014/09/17/art-of-the-genre-the-top-10-tsr-cover-paintings-of-all-time/ | title=Art of the Genre: The Top 10 TSR Cover Paintings of All Time – Black Gate | date=17 September 2014 }}</ref>

In his 2023 book ''Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground'', RPG historian Stu Horvath noted, "After the box is opened, the first thing that is apparent about ''Forgotten Realms'' is how massive the world is ... Large portions of the world are left for the GM to fill in with their own material, while the rest is detailed by Greenwood and company with an eye towards giving players and GMs a little bit of everything."<ref name=mahg>{{cite book| last = Horvath| first = Stu| title = Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground| publisher = MIT Press| date = 2023| location = Cambridge, Massachusetts| pages = 174–177| isbn =9780262048224 }}</ref>