Editing Forgotten Realms (section)

===Forgotten Realms And Sex===
The current Forgotten Realms material is highly sanitized from Ed's original vision. In FR as created by Ed:

*Bi-sexuality is normal (and yes, this means the [[Elf|men]] as well as the [[Amazon|women]])
*Transgenderism is encouraged by several deities so that priests can experience life as the other sex
*"Revels" (some of which involve sex) are normal 
*"Festhalls" (many of which employ prostitutes as staff) are relatively common and visiting them is the normal way to spend evening.
*Prostitution is a core industry of Forgotten Realms; "sex workers" are all over and there are about 40 different names for different kinds of prostitutes.
*Incest is a normal way for noble families to "indulge feelings of mutual affection" (poor people don't as they can't afford the contraception)
*Pretty much all of the immortal NPCs in the Realms have come to believe that accepted sexual norms such as temperance are bullshit, so they flout them. Constantly.

All of this is confirmed by [[Ed Greenwood]] himself, from Ed's responses to fan queries on the Candlekeep forum.
[http://www.candlekeep.com/library/articles/sse/so_saith_ed.htm So Saith Ed here,] [https://pastebin.com/hEVadYsN here,] [https://pastebin.com/1MuQ6wFt and here.] It's also all completely, 100% canon thanks to Ed's ludicrously favorable contract. 

Of course, this isn't exactly out of place in certain historical periods and cultures (Per example the Greeks, the Etruscans, were particularly known for having frequent orgies, Canaanite religion frequently involved cross-dressing (which may be why the Bible forbids it) and the nobility of many cultures like Hawaiians and the Ptolemy Egyptians practiced sibling incest so as to avoid muddling the bloodline with peasant genome; Rome had all of the above at various points), so some individual cultures or nations with this going on probably wouldn't be off the mark, and notably, the post that included the stuff about incest also included that Ed himself is against incest... but when the whole damn world is into this stuff, it's not treated as a problem, no one questions it and there's no sign of things changing, then clearly the author has something on his mind. 

In short, the Forgotten Realms are [[Ed Greenwood]]'s [[magical realm]] cleaned up by [[TSR]] and later [[Hasbro]] for general consumption, and the Romantic Encounters mod for [[Baldur's_Gate_(Games)|Baldur's Gate]] is probably canon.

As of 5E, WoTC has decided to embrace the first bullet-point, there are random bits of homosexuality everywhere. Two men sharing a bed, a married pair of male porters and married pair of homesteaders, a gnome settlement with two kings, and a shopkeeper with nonbinary pronouns all appear in 5e adventures.  An attempt to [[Retcon]] the massively corrupt and crime-ridden city of Waterdeep into "Seattle during Pride" was actually met with significant backlash.

No regular orgies in every village yet, but [[Rime of the Frostmaiden]] does feature a completely inbred town.

{{D&D-Settings}}

[[Category:Forgotten Realms]]