Forgotten Realms sourcebooks this week, starting with the first: FR1: Waterdeep and the North (1987). This is the third true FR book (after the campaign box and N5: Under Illefarn — all the other stuff at this point that had the Realms logo were retrofits). Waterdeep came first because that’s where Ed Greenwood’s initial campaign took place, so it was the most detailed region when TSR took the world on.

Despite the “and the North” in the title, this is really just a look at Waterdeep. Greenwood had too much stuff to tell people about the city! Like, for real, some of the type in this book is shockingly small. I wouldn’t call this a city book though, not in the same way as Lankhmar or even something later like Night City. This is more like a textbook for a class on Waterdeep, if that makes sense. There are attribute blocks for NPC and some maps and such, but there is not a lot here that moves, that you can play with. It’s a lecture.

Which is fine by me, I really like Ed Greenwood’s series of lectures on the Forgotten Realms, they tend to be my favorite parts of the massive body of Realms products. But this is sort of the first time TSR is trying to consciously put setting first in the design. If you look at other D&D “sourcebook” style material before this, you get…some wishy washy Greyhawk stuff, some Kara-Tur, Lankhmar and a brief dossier on Krynn in DL5. So any stiffness or dryness in the material is because this is such new ground for the company (though I believe Bruce Heard’s Gazeteers were coming out at the same time; go ahead and compare them to this and you’ll see what I mean about the lack of movability).

Excellent Keith Parkinson cover featuring everyone’s favorite beholder crimelord, Xanathar. It’s an off-beat depiction and I wish some of the weirdness of it continued to surface in the Realms, but I find that it doesn’t. This also has very nice interiors by Chris Miller, who I don’t really know. It’s…weird to have really nice interiors in an FR book.