Ed Greenwood

The Canadian writer who dreamed up the Realms as a boy.

Ed Greenwood is a Canadian fantasy writer, born on July 21, 1959, who created the Forgotten Realms. He wrote about the Realms in Dragon magazine from 1979, sold the setting to TSR in 1986, and has since written many Realms novels, articles and game supplements.

Quick Facts

Born: 21 July 1959
Occupation: Writer, game designer
Genre: Role-playing games, fantasy

Facts from the source article.

Background

Greenwood grew up in Don Mills, a suburb of Toronto, and started telling stories set in the Realms as a child in the mid-1960s. He pictured them as one world in a multiverse that also holds Earth, the source of our myths and legends. After discovering Dungeons & Dragons in 1975 he ran his campaigns there, centred on Waterdeep and Shadowdale, and his players' hunger for detail pushed the world to grow. His first Dragon article, in issue 30 in 1979, described a monster called the Curst, and many later ones had the wizard Elminster describing magic items, monsters and spells.

In 1986 TSR sent Jeff Grubb to ask whether he made it all up as he went or really had a huge world; Greenwood answered yes to both. He mailed TSR dozens of boxes of pencilled notes and maps and sold his rights for $5,000 and a promise to publish his novels, and with Grubb wrote the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set of 1987.