In 1995, TSR was in trouble. Both Games Workshop (Warhammer) and Wizards of the Coast (Magic: The Gathering) were trouncing them in sales. With Dungeons & Dragons 2E bloated and stagnant, an effort was made to juice interest in the various campaign settings. To do that, they released…a series of conspectuses?

These were free and, in my experience, heaped in piles around game shops. Most of them fold out into big posters. All of them have the exciting look and feel of obscure marketing materials you might find in a courtesy bag at a trade show. All of them feature the eye-stabbing graphic design sense of the mid-90s. (They were also challenging to photograph, so apologies for the glare and relatively low quality)

This is the Forgotten Realms Conspectus (1996). Inside on the smaller panels are a confusing product tree (I guess meant to get folks hyped for new releases, but everything is so small that it just winds up being impossible to read and underscores all that bloat), a letter from the head of Candlekeep, a vague timeline of the history of the Realms, character profiles of Elminster, Drizzt, Khelben and the Simbul. The big poster is a map of Faerun punctuated by vignettes of cover paintings and ringed by tiny representations of the covers of what seems like millions of Forgotten Realms novels.

Strap in, this is only going to get worse.