Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: When was the Forgotten Realms campaign of DND first introduced?
Forgotten Realms is a campaign setting for the "Dungeons & Dragons" ("D&D") fantasy role-playing game. Commonly referred to by players and game designers alike as "The Realms", it was created by game designer Ed Greenwood around 1967 as a setting for his childhood stories. Several years later, Greenwood brought the setting to the "D&D" game as a series of magazine articles, and the first Realms game products were released in 1987. Role-playing game products have been produced for the setting ever since, as have various licensed products including novels, role-playing video game adaptations (including the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game to use graphics), and comic books. The Forgotten Realms is one of the most popular "D&D" settings, largely due to the success of novels by authors such as R. A. Salvatore and numerous role-playing video games, including "Pool of Radiance" (1988), "Eye of the Beholder" (1991), "Baldur's Gate" (1998), "Icewind Dale" (2000) and "Neverwinter Nights" (2002).
On 1 March 2007, Funcom announced that the continuation of the story will be published under the title "Dreamfall Chapters". The numerous cliffhangers and apparent plot holes in "Dreamfall" have caused a great commotion among the players and were addressed by Ragnar Tørnquist on his blog. He stated that the game is, in fact, the first part of a duology and that all questions will be answered in the second installment. In November 2012, Ragnar Tørnquist's newly founded studio Red Thread Games began the pre-production of the sequel. Because Funcom's focus has shifted to online games, the company decided to license the rights to "The Longest Journey" IP to Tørnquist's development studio, who will fund and produce the game independently. A Kickstarter campaign to crowd-fund the game began in February 2013 and ended successfully raising $1.5 million in March. Tørnquist commented that the developers also considered the idea of making a film based on "The Longest Journey" or "Dreamfall" but found it too difficult to realize at the current stage.
Adventures are often political, military, or spiritual in nature, rather than dungeon crawls, and are often presented as taking place congruently with events from Arthurian legend. An important part of the game is the time between adventures, during which player characters manage their estates, get married, age, and have children. Typically, the characters will have one adventure per year, and campaigns often carry over across generations, with players retiring their character and taking the role of that character's heir. This is quite different from most role-playing games, where one set of characters is played fairly intensively, and there is typically little consideration made of what happens to their family or descendants. The influence of this idea can be seen in the "Ars Magica" RPG, which also encourages stories taking years or decades to unfold (and which is also set in medieval Europe).
World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the "Warcraft" fantasy universe. "World of Warcraft" takes place within the "Warcraft" world of Azeroth, approximately four years after the events at the conclusion of Blizzard's previous "Warcraft" release, "." The game was announced in 2001, and was released for the 10th anniversary of the "Warcraft" franchise on November 23, 2004. Since launch, "World of Warcraft" has had seven major expansion packs released for it: "", "", "", "", "", "", and "".
After "" was released in 1996, Blizzard originally began development of a point-and-click adventure game called "" which was supposed to tell the story after "Warcraft II". "Lord of the Clans" was canceled in favor of "Warcraft III" in 1998 which was presented to the public at the European Computer Trade Show in September 1999. The game's design and gameplay was significantly altered during development, with the final game sharing little similarities with the originally presented version. "Warcraft III" is set several years after the events of "Warcraft II" and its expansion and tells the story of the Burning Legion's attempt to conquer the fictional world of Azeroth with the help of an army of the Undead, led by fallen paladin Arthas Menethil. It also chronicles the combined efforts of the Human Alliance, Orcish Horde and Night Elves to stop them before they can corrupt the World Tree.
A campaign to crowd-fund the game on Kickstarter began on 8 February 2013, with a minimal goal of $850,000. Although game's intended full title has always been "Dreamfall Chapters", the developers had used the subtitle "The Longest Journey" during the Kickstarter campaign to improve brand recognition. They estimated the necessary budget for the project to be about $1 million (compared to the $5 million budget of "Dreamfall" and roughly $2–3 million of "TLJ") and planned to supplement the Kickstarter money with further grants and personal funds. Prior to starting the campaign, RTG spent months analyzing previous successful Kickstarter campaigns, particularly "Project Eternity" and "", to better plan their own project. "Dreamfall Сhapters" reached its minimal funding goal on 16 February, much quicker than the developers had anticipated, and concluded on 10 March with $1,538,425 raised, or 180% of the initial goal. Additionally, over $34,000 was raised via PayPal during the Kickstarter campaign, and Red Thread Games continued to collect funds through PayPal until 10 October 2014, when pre-orders for the game were opened.
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is the second expansion set for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) "World of Warcraft", following "". It launched on November 13, 2008 and sold 2.8 million copies within the first day, making it the fastest selling computer game of all time released at that point. The game added a substantial amount of new content into the game world, including the new continent of Northrend, home of the eponymous Lich King and his undead minions. In order to advance through Northrend, players are required to reach at least level 68 and the level cap for the expansion is 80. The first hero class was introduced, the Death Knight, that starts at level 55.
One of the primary features of "Cataclysm" is the redesign of the continents of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor introduced with the launch of "World of Warcraft" in 2004. While the initial game design did not allow for the use of flying mounts in 'old-world' zones, those zones have been completely redesigned with flight in mind for "Cataclysm". Flight is still unavailable for Burning Crusade starting zones for the blood elves and the draenei.
The Seven Sisters—fictional characters of the "Forgotten Realms" campaign setting of the "Dungeons & Dragons" Role Playing Game. The sisters are epic level characters (characters possessing nearly super-human levels of skill and power) of differing abilities, most of which involve some form of spellcasting and use of magic. Created by Ed Greenwood, they have been featured in multiple novels, games, and officially created scenarios by an equally large number of authors/game-designers.
Group C
"Dreamfall Chapters" was initially announced as an episodic video game, but this idea was scrapped in favor of a full-length game when the pre-production started in 2012, because the developers felt that extended breaks between chapters would have negatively affected the story flow and pacing. However, faced with mounting production costs, RTG decided in June 2014 to return to the episodic format, and the first "book", subtitled "Reborn", was released on 21 October 2014. The subtitle of Book Two was announced on 26 November 2014. The subtitle of Book Three was announced on 22 May 2015, and its release date, one month later. Book Four's subtitle was announced via Twitter and Facebook in late September, and its release date, on 30 November 2015. The subtitle and the release date of the fifth and final Book was announced via Kickstarter on 6 April and 9 June 2016, respectively.
World of Warcraft: Rise of the Horde is a novel by Christie Golden set in the Warcraft Universe. It was published in December 2006. Golden also has a commitment with Blizzard Entertainment and Simon & Schuster to write a StarCraft trilogy. Originally presumed to be the sequel to her previous 2001 book, , it depicts the draenei's escape from Argus and the rise of the Horde, following their shift from a shamanic race to a warmongering one. The book features major Warcraft characters, such as Durotan, Ner'zhul, Gul'dan, Orgrim Doomhammer, Kil'jaeden, and Velen. The story tells of how the orc clans and the noble draenei slowly become enemies due to deception and arrogance, and shows the downward spiral into which the orcs are thrown, and explores the role that demonic forces play in the Horde. It also expands on the origin of the Burning Legion, and the events preceding the first game of the Warcraft series.
Group D
Fury was a player versus player (PvP) competitive online role-playing game and massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Auran. The game was published by Gamecock Media Group on October 16, 2007, and was the first game they published. Less than two months later, the developer announced it had laid off all employees. The game switched to a free-to-play model, but in October 2008 Auran shutdown the game servers meaning the game would no longer be playable.
Dragon Quest is the first role-playing video game (RPG) in the "Dragon Quest" media franchise. It was developed by Chunsoft for the Family Computer (or Famicom for short) and published by Enix in Japan in 1986 as "Dragon Quest" and by Nintendo in 1989 in North America for the Nintendo Entertainment System (or NES) as Dragon Warrior. "Dragon Quest" has been ported and remade for several video game platforms, including the MSX, PC-9801, Super Famicom, Game Boy Color, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation 4 and mobile phones. In play, players control a hero character who is charged with saving the Kingdom of Alefgard and rescuing its princess from the evil Dragonlord. "Dragon Warrior"s story became the second part in a trilogy. Several more anime and manga series, which revolved around this overarching plot were created.
"World of Warcraft" was first announced by Blizzard at the ECTS trade show in September 2001. Released in 2004, development of the game took roughly 4–5 years, including extensive testing. The 3D graphics in "World of Warcraft" use elements of the proprietary graphics engine originally used in "Warcraft III". The game was designed to be an open environment where players are allowed to do what they please. Quests are optional and were designed to help guide players, allow character development, and to spread characters across different zones to try to avoid what developers called "player collision". The game interface allows players to customize appearance and controls, and to install add-ons and other modifications.
The original "Dragon Slayer", released for the PC-88 in 1984, is considered to be the first action-RPG. In contrast to earlier turn-based roguelikes, "Dragon Slayer" was a dungeon crawl RPG that was entirely real-time with action-oriented combat. "Dragon Slayer" also featured an in-game map to help with the dungeon-crawling, required item management due to the inventory being limited to one item at a time, and introduced the use of item-based puzzles which later influenced "The Legend of Zelda". "Dragon Slayer" was a major success in Japan, where its overhead action-RPG formula was used in many later games. The game's MSX port was also one of the first titles to be published by Square.
Dreamfall Chapters () is an episodic 3D adventure game with emphasis on character interaction, exploration of the game world, and puzzle solving. It is a sequel to the adventure games "The Longest Journey" and "". The game was released for PC in five episodes between 21 October 2014 and 17 June 2016. The updated "Final Cut" version was released on physical media for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on 5 May 2017, and the Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux versions on 21 July 2017.
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King, known in the PAL regions as Dragon Quest: The Journey of the Cursed King, is a role-playing video game developed by Level-5 and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 2. It was first released in Japan in 2004, and was later released in North America in 2005 and PAL regions in 2006, making it the first main series installment released in the PAL region. It is the eighth installment of the popular "Dragon Quest" series and it is the first English version of a "Dragon Quest" game to drop the "Dragon Warrior" title. A version of the game for Android and iOS was released in Japan in December 2013, and worldwide in May 2014.
In conjunction with the release of the "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" film in 2009, the organisation launched a "What Would Dumbledore Do" campaign, asking fans to tweet about the lessons they learned from Harry Potter's headmaster Albus Dumbledore using #dumbledore, attend the film release wearing a nametag with one thing Dumbledore taught them, and apply those lessons in their lives.
In 2004, Blizzard Entertainment moved the series away from the real-time strategy genre and released "World of Warcraft", a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Requiring a subscription fee to be paid to play, it also introduced regular additional content to the series in the form of patches. "World of Warcraft" gained popularity worldwide, becoming the world's largest subscription-based MMORPG in 2008. The game reached a peak 12 million subscribers worldwide in October 2010. "World of Warcraft" has had seven expansions as of 2018. During the production of "", Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce stated that "If there's a team that's passionate about doing another "Warcraft" [real-time strategy], then that's definitely something we would consider. It's nothing that we're working on right now, we have development teams working on "", "", "Diablo III", and when those teams are all off the projects they're working on, they'll be intimately involved in the discussions about what's next".
Numerous Forgotten Realms video games were released Between 1990 and 2000. The "Eye of the Beholder" PC game was released in 1990. This game was later followed by two sequels, the first in 1991, and the second in 1992. All three games were re-released for DOS on a single disk in 1995. Another 1991 release was "Neverwinter Nights" on America Online, the first graphical Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG). In 1998, "Baldur's Gate" was released, the first in a line of popular role-playing video games developed by BioWare and "considered by most pundits as the hands-down best PC roleplaying game ever". The game was followed by a sequel, "" in 2000 as well as "Icewind Dale", a separate game that utilized the same game engine as "Baldur's Gate". "" was released in 2001. Several popular Forgotten Realms characters such as Drizzt Do'Urden and Elminster made minor appearances in these games.
With the release of the 3rd edition "Dungeons & Dragons" rules system in 2000 by Wizards of the Coast, the "Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting" was released as a hardcover, in 2001, updating the official material and advancing the timeline of the game world. In 2002, the "Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting" won the Origins Award for "Best Role-Playing Game Supplement of 2001".
Beginning with the periodical's 30th issue in 1979, Greenwood published a series of short articles that detailed the setting in "The Dragon" magazine, the first of which was about a monster known as the "curst". Greenwood wrote voluminous entries to "Dragon" magazine, using the Realms as a setting for his descriptions of magic items, monsters, and spells. In 1986, the American game publishing company TSR began looking for a new campaign setting for the "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" game, and assigned Jeff Grubb to find out more about the setting used by Greenwood as portrayed in his articles in "Dragon". According to Greenwood, Grubb asked him "Do you just make this stuff up as you go, or do you really have a huge campaign world?"; Greenwood answered "yes" to both questions. TSR felt that the Forgotten Realms would be a more open-ended setting than the epic Dragonlance setting, and chose the Realms as a ready-made campaign setting upon deciding to publish "AD&D" 2nd Edition. Greenwood agreed to work on the project, and began working to get the Forgotten Realms officially published. Greenwood sent TSR a few dozen cardboard boxes stuffed with pencil notes and maps, and sold all rights to the Realms for a token fee. Greenwood noted that TSR altered his original conception of the Realms being a place that we could travel to from our world, "Concerns over possible lawsuits (kids getting hurt while trying to 'find a gate') led TSR to de-emphasize this meaning".
An eponymous module, based on the role-playing video game "Curse of the Azure Bonds", was released in 1989, as was "The Avatar Trilogy" series of novels, consisting of "Shadowdale", "Tantras", and "Waterdeep" that detailed the storyline which became known as the "Time of Troubles". A series of module adaptations for these novels ("Shadowdale", "Tantras", and "Waterdeep") were released in the same year, along with the "Hall of Heroes" accessory, detailing many of the major characters appearing in "Forgotten Realms" novels published up through that time. In early 1990, the hardcover "Forgotten Realms Adventures" by Jeff Grubb and Ed Greenwood was released, which introduced the Realms setting to the second edition of the "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" game and detailed how the Time of Troubles had changed the setting. The RPGA used the Forgotten Realms city of Ravens Bluff as the setting for their first living campaign. Official RPGA support for this product line included the "Living City" modules series. A number of sub-settings of the Forgotten Realms were briefly supported in the early 1990s. Three more modules were produced for the Kara-Tur setting. "The Horde: Barbarian Campaign Setting", released in 1990, detailed The Hordelands, which also featured a series of three modules. The "Maztica Campaign Set", released in 1991, detailed the continent of Maztica.