Editing Forgotten Realms (section)

==The Appeal of Forgotten Realms==
In 1975 Sony released the Betamax video cassette system as a system of playing recorded TV shows and similar on your TV. A year later, JVC released the first VHS system and there was a competition between these two formats. Both of these systems had their pros and cons comparatively with Betamax having among other benefits higher image quality. But ultimately VHS won the competition, mostly because it was more accessible to consumers and movie studios and as such established itself as the standard. Everyone had a VHS VCR, so everyone was buying VHS tapes and since everyone was buying VHS tapes people bought VHS VCRs and similar until DVDs and Blu Rays showed up.

Similarly, Dungeons and Dragons have become the standard for what people think of when someone brings up a tabletop RPG and Forgotten Realms has become that for the DnD setting. People may not have read the lore books 100% through but nowadays most people could imagine the broad strokes of the setting going in. Parties of Human Bards and Paladins, Dwarf Warriors, High Elven Mages, Wood Elven Archers and Halfling Rogues and Bards wandering the countryside and delving dungeons dealing with orcs, kobolds, bandits, beholders, skellingtons, necromancers, and various monsters leading up to the many flavors of dragons. When you see someone doing a tabletop campaign in fiction, it's usually based on Forgotten Realms more often than not. For better or worse, Forgotten Realms is the Archetype. As it's the thing that most people are familiar with and as such is something that is easy for a tabletop group to get into. You may think the whole Tolkien Knockoff world thing is overdone. You may desire something with fresh ideas in a novel setting built largely from the ground up. Fully valid positions to hold which encourage creativity. But the ability to get into a familiar setting without having to look through a whole bunch of homework is convenient and lets you shake things up if you want to using that common framework.