What year does the game take place (within the Forgotten Realms)?

chochlord

I haven't read the old, classic Forgotten Realms books in years. The game has to take place after DR 1384 because Helm is dead, but prior to the newer stuff.

pterias

Yeah, this game starts out nearly a century later than that. In 1385 DR, an event called "The Spellplague" happened that really tore the hamster out of everything, rearranged the planes, changed the nature of magic, and a bunch of gods died. The Realms in 4E D&D starts nearly a century after that in 1479 and runs until 1487. (As a side note, this whole thing was rather unpopular with a lot of FR fans.) Sometime during this period is where this game was originally set, probably early/mid 1480s.

As the beginning of 5E D&D, in 1487 was another event called "The Sundering" that undid a lot of the Spellplague changes and brought back a lot of dead gods like Helm. Neverwinter totally glossed over this event (so they didn't have to completely redesign spellcasting, for starters ), but it probably took place around the same time as the Icewind Dale campaign. Then the Tyranny of Dragons campaign took place around 1489, Elemental Evil was around 1491, but then it gets a little fuzzy after that. Underdark and Storm King's Thunder probably took place during the same period, but Tomb of Annihilation clearly takes place after all of the others. That leaves us currently somewhere in the early/mid 1490s.

I haven't thought about it before, but we've been adventuring in Neverwinter for a decade or so, in game time. We've come a long way since washing up on the shore.

chochlord

pterias said:

Yeah, this game starts out nearly a century later than that. In 1385 DR, an event called "The Spellplague" happened that really tore the hamster out of everything, rearranged the planes, changed the nature of magic, and a bunch of gods died. The Realms in 4E D&D starts nearly a century after that in 1479 and runs until 1487. (As a side note, this whole thing was rather unpopular with a lot of FR fans.) Sometime during this period is where this game was originally set, probably early/mid 1480s.

As the beginning of 5E D&D, in 1487 was another event called "The Sundering" that undid a lot of the Spellplague changes and brought back a lot of dead gods like Helm. Neverwinter totally glossed over this event (so they didn't have to completely redesign spellcasting, for starters ), but it probably took place around the same time as the Icewind Dale campaign. Then the Tyranny of Dragons campaign took place around 1489, Elemental Evil was around 1491, but then it gets a little fuzzy after that. Underdark and Storm King's Thunder probably took place during the same period, but Tomb of Annihilation clearly takes place after all of the others. That leaves us currently somewhere in the early/mid 1490s.

I haven't thought about it before, but we've been adventuring in Neverwinter for a decade or so, in game time. We've come a long way since washing up on the shore.

Thanks, that all makes sense. I kind of dropped out of the lore after the Second Sundering, though I did read about it in a few (only mentioned in passing if I recall). The stuff I was into was up through the Time of Troubles and into Cyric's antics with Mystra / Midnight and Kelemvor. Everything from that time frame.

iandarksword

According to multiple sources, the Forgotten Realms Sundering events were in 1489. Wikipedia mentions the setting was in the year 1491 during our year 2015. It's safe to say we might currently be in 1493 or 1494 as far as in-game is concerned.

greywynd

I'm not sure about currently, but it used to be officially that every year in reality was 2 years in the Realms.