I had the absolute HONOR of meeting the man who created the world that I have had innumerable and incredible adventures in, both while playing D&D and Baldur’s Gate 3. Ed Greenwood is the creator of the Forgotten Realms, which contains the city of Baldur’s Gate, and an incredibly deep and beautiful setting of magic, monsters, and fun.
He and I sat down for an interview at Dragon Con 2024 this year and had an absolutely delightful chat.
Me: Do you feel like you’ve had more people coming and finding you as the as the originator of the Forgotten Realms and Baldur’s Gate as a result of the success of Baldur’s Gate 3?
Ed Greenwood: Yeah! More young people, certainly. I’ve been sort of insulated from the whole thing in Canada. I don’t normally walk the city streets and get mobbed and all that stuff.
Me: I watched your panel – 50 Years of D&D – yesterday. That was really fun! What did you take away from that panel?
Ed Greenwood: We could have spent three or four hours just telling old war stories, and we hadn’t even told any of the juicy ones. […] It was a completely different world [50 years ago], D&D or anything that used your imagination was completely different. It was your like, if you lived in in Lower East Kansas your only way out of that setting was usually the local library or the local convenience store, if you had one and could buy comics there, where you could see something that was different. People in spandex, flying in the star… So, I mean, when you open one of these things is just shaped squiggles of ink on paper. Our brains do all of that going, Oh, I see a lady with a sword. She’s running away from me. The castle is falling apart all around her. What’s going on, you know?
Me: What are you currently working on?
Ed Greenwood: I am currently working on a whole pile of stuff I can’t talk about. Okay, well, there are some Kickstarters that I finished. Surviving Strangehollow. There is a British artist called Emily Hare. You can find her work out on the internet. For years, she’s been drawing and painting cute monsters, really cute monsters, but they’re somehow disturbing, and she decided they all came from a misty place called Strangehollow. So along comes a gaming company to do a fifth edition game version. Shawn Merwin is our product lead. Elisa Teague is one of the designers. We all did stories or journal excerpts or D&D monster write ups for the monsters. And I did the story. I’m three and a half years into it, and it’s going to take me probably another year and a half minimum. A friend of mine, Andrew Valkauskas, who publishes at Pendelhaven, has written a Viking RPG. Called Fate of the Norns. And you don’t roll dice – weird runes in the game – that’s the mechanic. It is incredibly detailed. And one of the things that happens in Ragnarok is, of course, Ragnarok. The world is coming to an end. The Two Wolves have eaten the Sun and Moon. The world is dark and cold. Crops have failed. […] We’re doing a fantasy version of it.
Me: You have a live game with Luke Gygax, Keith Baker, Elisa Teague, and more later today. Tell me about it!
Ed Greenwood: Yes, Tommy Gofton is running it. He is Lohol(?) Lynnvander, the time Paladin. Devin Wilson is his dungeon master and will be here, I confidently assume. I play Elminster. Keith Baker plays Merricks Decaneth, who is this ninth level artificer, and he’s head of a house of business on Eberron. Elise plays the bride of Victor Von Frankenstein, which has been turned into Victorina Mortenhein in Ravenloft. She has the unbreakable heart, which is this glowing thing that keeps her alive. She is obviously undead. So we all play, and this is the thing we came up with a year ago. […] The plot in Vecna is quite similar, except they’re going after the rod of seven parts, we are going through the multiverse, visiting all the D&D worlds.
I just want to give an extra huge thank you to Ed Greenwood for the gift of his time and enthusiasm in this interview, AND for spending another 20 minutes just hanging out and chatting while I was getting stood up for the interview I had scheduled immediately after his. Highlight of my Dragon Con weekend!
Were you at Dragon Con? Did you go to any panels that Ed Greenwood was on? If so, what are your thoughts? Feel free to leave a comment below or chat with us on Twitter/X at @TheConCollectve, Threads at @theconventioncollective, or Bluesky at @theconcollective.bsky.social
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