Review: ‘Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerûn’ Feels Like A Special Kind Of Alchemy

Welcome to the table,

As someone who spent a lot of time recovering from surgeries, dealing with a disability, hiding from perception, and rotting in bed as a kid, I practically grew up in Faerûn. Between Dungeons & Dragons gaming manuals, adventure modules, and novels, I escaped to the various storied landscapes of the Forgotten Realms time and time again, sinking into stories of crumbling kingdoms, fungal forests, and the heroes who defended and explored them, learning about themselves and others with each turn of the page.

Because the landscape and those who inhabit it feel so near and dear to me, I was incredibly curious what my pals over at Wizards of the Coast were planning when they announced their upcoming book, Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerûn. 

They were kind enough to send me an advanced copy, and I have a lot of thoughts, but I think first we need to determine exactly what this offering in the TTRPG space is and how you can use it.

Let’s get into it…

Forgotten Realms: Adventures in Faerûn is an expansion on the 2024 rules presented in the most recent D&D Players Handbook. More than that, it feels like it opens up the landscape of play and provides insight into not only the culture and entities that inhabit Faerûn, but also how a player can fit into that space.

Forgotten Realms: Adventures in Faerûn contains 8 new subclasses to enhance your player characters, customizing them to fit more flush with the already established lore of the realm. The book also has new spells, feats, and backgrounds to round out your player characters even more. There is also solid insight on the gods of the realm and the factions who could be potential friends or foes to players as they explore the storied landscape.

The book kicks off with a fairly impressive passage that carries a ton of weight to it, not only for long-time fans but those who may be coming to D&D thanks to the smash hit video game Baldur’s Gate 3.

The passage reads…

Welcome to Faerûn

The world of Faerûn is filled with countless heroes who have undertaken amazing adventures — Drizzt Do’Urden, his wife Cattie-brie, and their daughter, Briennelle; Alustriel Silverhand and the rest of the Seven Sisters; Karlach Cliffgate, Astarion, and Shadowheart; and many more. Now, the world has new heroes: the ones you and your fellow players create.

When I reached this on page, I actually stopped and smiled like some made-for-TV-movie moment where the young professional catches a glimpse of themselves as a kid in an old social media post or some picture on the fridge and remembers days gone by.

Drizzt Do’Urden and Cattie-brie, along with Bruenor Battlehammer, Wulfgar, Regis, and the shadow panther Guenhwyvar, make up the Companions of the Hall, an iconic party of adventurers that I followed as a kid through the webwork of novels written by R.A. Salvatore. Evoking those names, I would imagine, is akin to evoking the names of powerful saints or well-respected baseball men like Mr. Willie Mays or Mr. Shoeless Joe Jackson.

Those names carry a weight to them that immediately made me invested in the book. That is not to say I was not already in. I love D&D. I spent an hour explaining to someone what the Rod of Seven Parts was, so I could explain why WizKids Miska the Wolf-Spider miniature meant the new Vecan: Eve of Ruin book was going to be phenomenal, and I was not wrong. It’s a rad adventure and captures the joy I was hoping it would contain.

Where the passage shifted my gears from a nostalgic memory of heroes I had stayed up late reading about by the light of a garage light that poured through a small bedroom window was when the names Karlach Cliffgate, Astarion, and Shadowheart were mentioned.

I’ve played Baldur’s Gate 3, and I have a full set of the WizKids minatures. I have spent easily 100 hours or more just messing around in the game outside of the main quest. I know the world. Those three can be members of your party or your player character within the game, and while the fusion of a world where novels of youth and video games of now makes total sense and I knew was coming, seeing it on the page created this powerful moment for me akin to the first time I saw a D&D book for sale on the shelf of a department store.

This did not happen when there was a Rick and Morty book. The Rick & Morty D&D book is the only offering from Fifth Edition I did not pick up. Not because I do not like the show. It’s fine. It just felt a little too off base for me. I will gladly buy the mint container that looks like a D20 and the pocket dungeon. I own the Raise Your Own Beholder kit and a slew of other products that the iconic ampersand is on, but when it came to Rick & Morty, it just did not speak to me.

This… this combination of characters from a well-received and seemingly universally loved video game with the avatars of adventure from my youth hit like a ton of bricks. I own the video games with these characters in them. All of those characters, but this feels different and new in a way that singing animated characters sing about. This feels special.

I think it sank in how far we had come as I read the introduction to the book once again. There are hundreds of novels set in the Forgotten Realms, there is this massive video game set on the Sword Coast, a well-documented part of Faerûn, and there is this magical motion picture known as Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves that takes place in Neverwinter and Icewind Dale, both locations in Faerûn.

Please permit me a brief aside that will come full circle. As a kid, my party trick was to have friends say, “What about Bilbo?” or “What about Captain Hook?” or “What about Will from Illusion of Gaia?” or “What about Robo from Chrono Trigger?” and I would set to work building out these Pop-Culture characters in whatever version of D&D we were playing at the time with a swiftness that tended to match how quick I could down half a slice of pizza at the hole in the wall pizza place we hung out in across from the comic shop.

Now, D&D is popular culture, and Wizards of the Coast is putting out books that contain these well-known and recognized entities with game mechanics on items and spells that let you craft characters to adventure right alongside them. The weird “skill” I had to amuse friends in the shadowy corner of a pizza restaurant has become mainstream and celebrated across the majority of media platforms we consume as a civilization. And frankly … I’m here for it!

There is a ton to explore in Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerûn. It has this special kind of Alchemy where it takes aspects from across generations of D&D lore and blends them together into something special that can be enjoyed by anyone, regardless of their previous knowledge of the setting, creating this beautifully inviting and fun tor da force of the well-loved landscape known as Faerûn.

My 10 out of 10 is probably due to nostalgia, beautiful art, fun new sub-classes, amazing items, and a slew of other delightful material this book contains. It may shift, as things are wont to do, but right now, there is a feeling in the air akin to how things feel right before it snows. It’s exciting, it feels fresh, and at the same time, nostalgic. It’s like new episodes of a show you loved as a kid that don’t suck.

There are other fun things in this book, and I, for one, can’t wait to show you more. For now, though, we shall take a break. If you want a copy for yourself, you can pre-order at this link. There are bundles that get you all sorts of extra bells and whistles, and over the next few weeks, we are going to dig into those and more!

Until next time, and there will be a next time, dear friends, I will leave you with a bit of a preview of something that has me absolutely excited…