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Originally posted by tangelo1023

During the quarantine, I basically took every FR novel and short story and chronologically spliced them together into a gigantic multi-volume ebook. I've been reading through these volumes and it's such an amazing experience. Way more immersive than just reading one particular series and stopping there. It's like you're following the history of this massive world. You see all these little corners of the setting. You have big epic stuff followed by really intimate stories. You see someone from a minor short story 1000 pages ago lead a full novel. My favorite part was reading these little snippets following fan favorite characters like Artemis, years before they take a central role. Another good part is "discovering" stories by relatively unknown authors that are just as good as the more popular stuff. I thought this would be a good way to get into the Realms before BG3's release and it's really made the setting into a interconnected, living world.

Has anyone else tried this? What was your favorite part? Did you stumble across an obscure story that was actually amazing?

For reference, I used a combination of the Mythbank list and Ed Greenwood's official list from 2000.

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Originally posted by mnb128

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Originally posted by tangelo1023

During the quarantine, I basically took every FR novel and short story and chronologically spliced them together into a gigantic multi-volume ebook. I've been reading through these volumes and it's such an amazing experience. Way more immersive than just reading one particular series and stopping there. It's like you're following the history of this massive world. You see all these little corners of the setting. You have big epic stuff followed by really intimate stories. You see someone from a minor short story 1000 pages ago lead a full novel. My favorite part was reading these little snippets following fan favorite characters like Artemis, years before they take a central role. Another good part is "discovering" stories by relatively unknown authors that are just as good as the more popular stuff. I thought this would be a good way to get into the Realms before BG3's release and it's really made the setting into a interconnected, living world.

Has anyone else tried this? What was your favorite part? Did you stumble across an obscure story that was actually amazing?

For reference, I used a combination of the Mythbank list and Ed Greenwood's official list from 2000.

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Really impressive work. I know how much time must've gone into this since I did it myself several years ago. I'm really a nerd about reading things in chronological order, unless authors strongly advise against it.

I thought it was a neat experience, reading through everything chronologically. It was fun piecing together different things that were going on all around the realms at the same time. For example, you've got the beginning of Alias's story going on at the same time as Shandril's Saga and The Halfling's Gem. Then Liriel Baenre is travelling all across The Realms while Cadderly is fighting his battles in The Cleric Quintet. I found it to be truly immersive.

My list is a simple, old-fashioned Word Doc that's 24 pages long. I've got a link below to the Google Drive file for anyone who wants to use it. It's as comprehensive as I think you'll find anywhere.

I've got a few things in my timeline that aren't in yours.

Several, very small, short stories from "The Grand History of the Realms" that I thought were pretty neat little insights into the lore

The Spelljammer novels, as there are two of them that have segments of the story that take place in The Realms

Several short stories that aren't formally published, some released directly from the authors and some that were never offered anywhere but the now defunct D&D archives on Wizards.com, including several of Ed Greenwood's Spin a Yarn stories.

I'm pretty sure some of these aren't canon, but I've never really cared about canon or not. I just care about the stories.

There's also an unpublished book called "Rise of the Blade" that the author claimed was meant to be part of The Harpers series. Based on some information from Elaine Cunningham that you can find here on Candlekeep, it's unlikely that was actually the case. However, it's still on my list. I would treat it as nothing more than fanfic if anyone chooses to read it.

I've got all of The Abyssal Plague novels in there as some of them take place in The Realms. The non-Realms books are in red font.

I didn't include the video games, but I did include a few canon short stories that can only be found in some obscure video game instruction manuals.

Some short stories don't have a concrete date, but I plugged them in where they seemed to make sense, usually because of connections to dated novels. Others are just tacked onto the end, either pre or post Spellplague.

I didn't include graphic novels and comics in my lists. For some reason, they've never interested me, but having them in your overall timeline does make sense.

There's no "Fistandantilus Reborn" or "Murder in Tarsis" in my list since they are both, technically, Dragonlance novels.

Anything in my file that appears in quotes and is highlighted in gray is a short story. If it has an asterisk in front of it, it's because it actually takes place, and should be read (in my opinion) between chapters within a novel. "Elminster: The Making of a Mage" has 5 such short stories, for example.

Every short story (except for 2, explained below) has a hyperlink, either to Amazon where the appropriate anthology can be found, or to a web location where the story can be read directly on the page or downloaded, some of which rely on Wayback Machine. The PC Game Manuals need to be downloaded before reading.

There are also many more FR short stories that can be found in Dragon Magazine and Dragon+ that aren't currently on your list. As far as I can find, I've got them all in my timeline, as well, but it's always possible that I may have missed something.

Some of my dates conflict with yours, probably due to some guesswork on both our parts, but not by more than a year as far as I can tell.

There are two non-canon short stories on my list that were once released by Erik Scott de Bie, "
Really Don't do That" and "The Shadows Gather." I can no longer find links to these short stories anywhere online, but somebody else may have better luck.

Below is a great resource for identifying all canon FR short stories to date.

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_short_stories

Here is my timeline. Feel free to use, rewrite, debate, and critique as you see fit.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i1osMQRZdHK2P_SG_xgtBAfA8-L3vZ_y/view?usp=sharing

Happy delving.

Matt

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