Ed Greenwood | |
|---|---|
 Greenwood at Gen Con Indy 2012 | |
| Born | July 21, 1959 |
| Occupation | Writer, game designer |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Period | 1979–present |
| Genre | Role-playing games, fantasy |
Ed Greenwood (born July 21, 1959) is a Canadian fantasy writer and the original creator of the Forgotten Realms game world. He began writing articles about the Forgotten Realms for Dragon magazine beginning in 1979, and subsequently sold the rights to the setting to TSR, the creators of the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, in 1986. He has written many Forgotten Realms novels, as well as numerous articles and D&D game supplement books.
Greenwood grew up in the upscale Toronto suburb of Don Mills.[1] He began writing stories about the Forgotten Realms as a child, starting in the mid-1960s; they were his "dream space for swords and sorcery stories".[2] Greenwood conceived of the Forgotten Realms as one world in a "multiverse" of parallel worlds which includes the Earth. He imagined such worlds as being the source of humanity's myths and legends.[1]
Greenwood discovered the Dungeons & Dragons game in 1975 and soon became a regular player.[1] He used the Realms as a setting for his campaigns, which centred on the fictional locales of Waterdeep and Shadowdale, locations that would figure prominently in his later writing.[3] According to Greenwood, his players' thirst for detail pushed him to further develop the Forgotten Realms setting: "They want[ed] it to seem real, and work on 'honest jobs' and personal activities, until the whole thing [grew] into far more than a casual campaign."[1]
Beginning with the periodical's 30th issue in 1979, Greenwood published a series of articles set in the Realms in The Dragon magazine, the first of which was about a monster known as The Curst.[1][2][4]: 19 Greenwood's articles in The Dragon often featured the wizard Elminster describing magic items, monsters, and spells.[3]
In 1986, the American game publishing company TSR began looking for a new campaign setting for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game,[2] and assigned Jeff Grubb to find out more about the setting used by Greenwood in his articles for Dragon magazine.[3][4]: 19 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?"; he answered "yes" to both questions.[1] 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 for AD&D 2nd Edition.[1]
Greenwood agreed to work on the project, and began to prepare his Forgotten Realms material for official publication.[2] He sent TSR a few dozen cardboard boxes stuffed with pencil notes and maps, and sold all his rights to the Realms to TSR for a token fee—just $5,000 and a promise to publish Greenwood's novels.[1][5] The following year, Greenwood and coauthor Jeff Grubb wrote and published the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set (1987).[5]
The campaign setting was a major success, and Greenwood continued to be involved with the evolution of the Forgotten Realms over the next decades. He went on to write numerous Forgotten Realms novels. Many of these center around the wizard Elminster, whom Greenwood has frequently portrayed at conventions and gaming events.[citation needed]
When TSR was in dire financial difficulties in 1996–1997, Greenwood offered to write some material for them for free to help get them back on their feet. Nothing came of the offer, but after Wizards of the Coast purchased TSR in 1997 and stabilized its finances, CEO Peter Adkison personally called Greenwood at the library he was working at to encourage him to continue writing Realms material. Greenwood responded he was happy to continue writing for the Realms for as long as he could.[5]
Greenwood feels his work on the Realms that he likes best are "those products that impart some of the richness and color of the Realms, such as the novel I wrote with Jeff Grubb, Cormyr; the Volo's Guides; Seven Sisters; The Code of the Harpers; City of Splendors; and stuff that lots of gamers have found useful, such as Drow of the Underdark and Ruins of Undermountain."[1]
Greenwood has also been contributing editor and creative editor of Dragon magazine.[6]
Greenwood has published over two hundred articles in Dragon Magazine and Polyhedron Newszine, is a lifetime charter member of the Role Playing Game Association (RPGA) network, and has been a Gen Con Game Fair guest of honor many times.[7] Greenwood has written over thirty-five novels for TSR, and written, co-written, or contributed to over two hundred books and game products from other publishers.[8] Greenwood has also contributed to The Book of All Flesh (2001), an anthology based on All Flesh Must Be Eaten,[4]: 341 and written short stories based on the Silver Age Sentinels role-playing game.[4]: 337 Greenwood's Castlemourn fantasy setting was published by Margaret Weis Productions.[4]: 353 [9] He is co-creator (with fantasy novelist Lynn Abbey) of the Mornmist fantasy setting.[6]
He has also contributed to most Forgotten Realms gaming accessories, and authored many more—including the detailed Volo's Guide series—and continues to DM his own campaign. He writes regular Realmslore columns for the Wizards of the Coast website.
In addition to all these activities, Greenwood works as a library clerk (and sometimes as a librarian) and has edited over a dozen small press magazines.[7] When not appearing at conventions, he lives in an old farmhouse in the countryside of Ontario.[7]
As of 1998, Greenwood lived in applegrowing country on Lake Ontario, still working full-time at the North York Community Library, as he had since 1974, and continued to run his original Waterdeep campaign with the same core group he started with, albeit meeting only sporadically.[1]
Greenwood won "best player" at the 1984 Gen Con AD&D Open tournament and several Gamer's Choice Awards and Origins Awards for his game design.[6] He was inducted into the Gamer's Choice Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Academy of Adventure Gaming's Hall of Fame in 2003.[6] Order of Cramahe 2017.[10] He received the Port Hope Civic Awards Arts & Culture Award 2019.[11] He was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association Hall of Fame in 2022.[12]
