Which campaign do you like better and why?
DRAGONLANCE...
Dragonlance is set on the world of Krynn. The majority of the novels take place in the various regions of Ansalon, a small continent, though some have taken place on the continent of Taladas, located northeast of Ansalon. The world's major gods are the High God and his children: good Paladine, neutral Gilean, and evil Takhisis. The gods are opposed by Chaos, who seeks to destroy Krynn. Depending on the time period, the evil chromatic and the good metallic dragons are rare or plentiful. Humans are Krynn's most common humanoid race, but elves, dwarves, kender, gnomes, and minotaurs occupy the world as well. Clerics derive magical powers from their gods, and wizards derive their power from the three moon gods, Solinari, Lunitari, and Nuitari. Hickman had previously preached as a Mormon missionary in Java for two years, and uses Indonesian in Dragonlance spells.During Krynn's various wars, armies of draconians are used as troops. Draconians are created by corrupting a dragon egg, thereby creating a reptilian humanoid. The eggs of good dragons create evil draconians, and vice versa.
FORGOTTON REALMS
The focus of the Forgotten Realms setting is the continent of Faerûn, part of the fictional world of Abeir-Toril, usually called simply Toril, an Earth-like planet with many real-world influences. Unlike Earth, the lands of the Forgotten Realms are not all ruled by the human race: the planet Abeir-Toril is shared by humans, dwarves, elves, goblins, orcs, and other peoples and creatures. Technologically, the world of the Forgotten Realms is not nearly as advanced as that of Earth; in this respect, it resembles the pre-industrial Earth of the 13th or 14th century. However, the presence of magic provides an additional element of power to the societies. There are several nation states and many independent cities, with loose alliances being formed for defense or conquest. Trade is performed by ship or horse-drawn vehicle, and manufacturing is based upon cottage industry.
Personally I lean towards forgotten realms. It's more because it's the setting I've been more exposed to through novels and roleplay. Dragon lance does have some appeal to me though as I've just started reading the Annotated chronicles that a friend loaned to be bloody ages ago so it's a new experience for me so I am still falling in love with it. So far I like the novels in that they are actually relaying a low level experience pretty well, whereas forgotten realms mostly showcases characters around levels 12-15 or higher.
Asta
PSY
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I love both but if I had to choose - Dragonlance. Growing up I read every DL book I could get my hands on so I am comfortable with the world, the cities, how to portray different types of elves...
I only read the first 10 or so book in the Drizzt series and I am not as comfortable with that world - it would require more research on my part.
dragonlance introduced kender and turned gnomes from forest dwelling illusions who liked badgers and gemstones into gadget crazed mad scientists lacking in common sense
and then there were the drunk and evil/ambitious PC's
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Dragonlance for the win. Everyone seemed heroic but on a 'human' scale in the books*, in the FR everyone was just shy of godhood.
Note that although I have read many books about FR, I only ever read books from Weis/Hickman regarding DL - any other author I was always worried would destroy DL canon for me. In DL I have, based on the books, characters I love and hate - in the FR books I have Elminister (who I vote as worse fantasy character ever) and Drizzit (who I vote most whinging character in fantasy - many a time I thought, please Drizzit just a little bit more angst, just enough more that you kill yourself). In the first 3 DL books I laughed and cried, in the FR books with Eliminster or Drizzit I mainly just cried.
S.
*Except Raistlin by the end of the 3rd book. But he cheated.
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The original Dragonlance novels (Weis/Hickman) were superior stories to the forgotten realms novels, although I have enjoyed many of the Forgotten Realms novels as well and do not mean to imply that some are not perfectly enjoyable.
However, perhaps because I loved the Dragonlance novels so much, I never really enjoyed playing in that world. I was hesitant to change things and our adventures did not live up to the stories. The Forgotten Realms, however, was for a long time my favorite campaign setting. It is rich, detailed and dynamic. So much is going on and constantly changing that I never felt the game group was infringing on someone elses creation. It felt more like someone had created a playground just for us.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts people. Interesting to see the results of such competitions, and it looks like Dragonlance is winning this battle so far. It actually seems the popularity of the Forgotton Realms has dropped some since 4th edition.
I enjoy running the Dragonlance Classics campaign modules. For a longer campaign that ends in epic levels, I prefer Forgotten Realms.
Since the OP posed the question in the RPG section of the forums (as opposed to the books/novels section), I'll ignore the novels in my answer except to note that their quality swung wildly in both settings (and sometimes even in one author's line). Also to be noted: YMMV.
Dragonlance:
As a RPG'er, my main impression of DL was that the setting imposed even more restrictions than the regular 1e/2e rules did. This did not sit well with me. Dragons have never interested me that much. Deities who had just upped and left for longer periods of time (and for plot device purposes) - that makes no sense to me as it just destroys the value of an important class. A steel-based economy?!? I hate the idea of kender (instant disruptive characters), but tinker gnomes seem alright to me (just one more variation on what gnomes are like). In short, I would never run DL and I would have be most eloquently persuaded before playing in a DL campaign setting.
Forgotten Realms:
The following comments apply to 1e/2e/3.x FR. (As far as I'm concerned, the preparations for and actual 4e version of FR is just a nightmare that someone had.)
This setting seems a whole lot more open to me. I enjoy the multitude of pantheons, as that is something also found in the real world's history. Although the actual portfolio-holders sometimes changed in FR, the deities never just left completely en masse. No level restrictions, only some high level NPCs to police PCs who become too unruly. (And the presence of high-level NPCS has never bothered me. Who says that they have to be at home if the DM doesn't want them involved in the PCs' doings? Also, the PCs in my campaigns just have to live with the fact that they are not unique snowflakes power-wise, nor are they the centre of the world's attention.) There is a multitude of recognizable cultures and geographic regions - granted, not always adapted well/interestingly to a fantasy game world. (The Great Glacier? Yawn. On the other hand, I love Al'Qadim and Kara-Tur.) I love the long history of the FR, from the Creator races and onwards. In general, FR was the first setting that I felt comfortable enough with to homebrew my own variation on it.
Which isn't to say that I liked some of the irritating retcons made in the 3e FRCS. For example, the "boutique cosmology" (I like 2e's Planescape! Even some parts of 2e Spelljammer were interesting.), and the sudden addition of humans to the list of Creator races for no good reason (too humano-centric). Also, later reliance on novels to drive the current events of the setting became irritating, as I had given up on reading those books by then.
Never read any Forgotten Realms novels or Dragonlance novels. (Only setting novels I've read are Pathfinder Tales in Golarion.)
I came to D&D from Neverwinter Nights after playing Baldur's Gate as well, so I learned the game setting before I learned the game rules, and for me the game setting was always Faerun.
I played Neverwinter Nights from the time it came out (2002) until the time my current favorite persistent-world-server went down "temporarily" (back in November 2011) and has failed to come back up. My first D&D book was Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting 3e, and my second was Faiths and Pantheons (the 3e gods book for FR). After that I bought the 3.5e Core Rulebooks when they were released, and, after getting a chance to play, and finding I really liked it, I picked up a number of other books as well. I think of 2003 as "the year I played Neverwinter Nights," and I still have memories of in-game events with my characters from back then. That persistent-world-server closed in early 2004 though, and I didn't start playing again until late 2005.
I loved Faerun, and hated what happened to it with the build-up to 4e. I've since adopted Golarion, and adopted it as I adopted Faerun before it. Now I can still run (pre-spellplague) Faerun/Forgotten Realms plots, and get into my FR characters, but when I do I often wish I were in Golarion instead. (I have a Calishite Lathanderite cleric I created in 2005 that I think Sarenrae would suit better as patron, for example.)
My setting preferences:
01. Golarion (Ustalav)
02. Ravenloft: Masque of the Red Death (Gothic Earth)
03. Ravenloft
04. Golarion (elsewhere in Golarion, less horror, more high-fantasy)
05. Forgotten Realms/Faerun (preferably Dalelands or westward)
06. Ghostwalk (technically written for Greyhawk?)
07. Monte Cook's World of Darkness (no real connection to oWoD or nWoD)
08. d20 Modern Urban Arcana (has ties to Greyhawk)
09. Eberron (Deathless appeal to me, as does some of the other weirdness)
10. Greyhawk
11. Sidewinder d20
12. Almost anything else before Dragonlance.
13. Dragonlance, maybe? Dragons aren't really my cup of tea.
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts people. Interesting to see the results of such competitions, and it looks like Dragonlance is winning this battle so far. It actually seems the popularity of the Forgotton Realms has dropped some since 4th edition.
Dropped off "some"? Nah, 4e pretty much alienated most of the older FR fans.
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Out of the two I prefer FR more than DL.
Dragonlance I liked that you had 3 order of mages and that the background was in some ways more interesting then FR. I also like the Solmanic order and find that they make more interesting Paladin replacements Unfortunatrly all the cool stuff imo happened during the 3E version of the game. Not to mention some of the lows of the setting imo. Gully Dwarves, Mad Gnomes and Kender (one of the worst played races I haver seen). And was almost ruined by one of the novels. spoiler=Dragons of summer Flame]Where the god leave Krynn. Magic of any kind no longer works so what you have left is a meoval version opf earth. All so that they could write a "return of the magic and gods sga" in the novels [/spoiler]
Forgotten Realms one o ym favorite settings any edition of D&D.
I liked the rich histroy of the background. The fact that you could have and include many kinds of races. Next to Galrion a perfect kitchen sink setting. What I don't like was that you have too many good that were too similar in portfolios. And while I had no trouble that much wiht high level npcs I think the fact that many of them were statted out in supplements kind of made you wonder why when they were included in a story they would have so much trouble with the whatever enemy thery were fighting.
A lack of any real progression in terms of background. It's like it was pulling teeth to get Ed Greenwood to remove certain factions. Gilgeam gets killed by Tiamat in one of the worst written fight scenes ever. How does she beat him she does a spinning drop kick. Yes you heard me. You can't make that up. Follwed by an invasion from an overwhelming Mulhorandi army Unther somehow survives despite the general population despising the Gileam clergy by the intervention of Thayan magic gun runners um yeah sure. Also a loss of the unknown. With 1E FR you still had unexplored areas of FR by 3E it was pretty much almsot all explored.
That being said I'm not a fan of all they did with 4E Fr yet for the tie being if I ever run a 4E game again it;s going to be with the 4E FR.
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In your opinion. Not all of us hated what they did with the 4E version.
Dropped off "some"? Nah, 4e pretty much alienated most of the older FR fans.
I said "most". And, seeing that the number one site for FR (Candlekeep) is pretty much a wasteland unless they're talking Golarion any more, I'd say a lot of the old timers agree. Look on that site. If the topic is 4e, the thread (err, scroll) hardly makes it to page two.
Yeah, that's one site, but for FR fandom, that was THE site. Ed posted there a lot.
Furthermore, when you have Chris Perkins saying, on video, that a lot of the changes were made because they didn't want to learn a ton of Realms lore (Like, you know, Abeir isn't actually a separate planet, where in the hell did that come from? The name of the planet Faerun occupied was called Abeir-Toril), and they shuffled Ed out to tinker with stuff that didn't exist before 4e, a lot of fans shook their heads.
Again, sorry, but my opinions are based on observable phenomenon. I'm not pulling this stuff out of my ass.
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Still 4E FR has its fans as well as those who dislike it. Unless you got the numbers to backup your claim that most FR players hate it well it just opinion. I can say that the fanbase hates Golarion yet if I don't have the numbers to back that up it's just an opinion. That being said I think we will have to agree to disagree because were not going to see eye to eye on the subject.
As for the Candlekeep site well I just went to it a few minutes ago and imo seems pretty much anything but a wasteland. A link: http://forum.candlekeep.com/ I don't know about anybody else yet imo seems like an active forum.
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I said fans of the Realms before 4e mostly dislike the Spellplague realms.
If you bothered to actually look at the site, 4e Relams gets very little play at all. They talk about old realms, Golarion, just about anything but 4e Realms. And, seriously, if you're not familiar with that site pre-4e, you have no idea how much it has slowed down since 2008.
I think the only person who ever posts regularly about the 4e realm sis Diffan, and his threads average five posts per.
4e realms has a lot of fans that didn't care for the prior edition realms, and that's who the 4e realms were written for. The peeps at WotC flat out said they couldn't be bothered to keep up with Realms lore. This is documented.
My only hope is that they do NOT publish any FR products for 5e so Ed can get the rights back.
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Not publishing any 5E Fr products is just not going to happen. first Fr is very popular and would be dumb not to do ot for 5E. Second I'm sure Wotc gave Ed Greenwood a large sum of money so that they had exclusive rights to FR. To get those rights back I'm assuming he would have to give the money back.
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Actually, they got the rights when they bought TSR. And his agreement made when he allowed TSR to publish is still in effect, he never revised it.
That agreement basically says if they stop publishing FR materials, the rights revert back to him. That's one thing Hasbro cannot shelve and keep.
And, if they don't reverse Spellplague, FR isn't going to be what it was. The fan base is much smaller for FR products right now than it was in '08 and before.
In your opinion. Not all of us hated what they did with the 4E version.
Dropped off "some"? Nah, 4e pretty much alienated most of the older FR fans.I said "most". And, seeing that the number one site for FR (Candlekeep) is pretty much a wasteland unless they're talking Golarion any more, I'd say a lot of the old timers agree. Look on that site. If the topic is 4e, the thread (err, scroll) hardly makes it to page two.
Yeah, that's one site, but for FR fandom, that was THE site. Ed posted there a lot.
Furthermore, when you have Chris Perkins saying, on video, that a lot of the changes were made because they didn't want to learn a ton of Realms lore (Like, you know, Abeir isn't actually a separate planet, where in the hell did that come from? The name of the planet Faerun occupied was called Abeir-Toril), and they shuffled Ed out to tinker with stuff that didn't exist before 4e, a lot of fans shook their heads.
Again, sorry, but my opinions are based on observable phenomenon. I'm not pulling this stuff out of my ass.
Jesus Christ. I hate the realms(save for a few novels/trilogies), but I didn't realize things were THAT bad behind the scenes. FR fans have my sympathies.
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Actually, they got the rights when they bought TSR. And his agreement made when he allowed TSR to publish is still in effect, he never revised it.
That agreement basically says if they stop publishing FR materials, the rights revert back to him. That's one thing Hasbro cannot shelve and keep.
And, if they don't reverse Spellplague, FR isn't going to be what it was. The fan base is much smaller for FR products right now than it was in '08 and before.
You seem to be assuming the worst and 5E is still not out yet. They will probaby reverse the Spellplague yet I hope they don't remove it all. I like the number of gods post-spellplague. While they should cater to FR fanst o a certain extent neither should Wotc bend over backwards to accomodate them either. The post-spellplague fans have to have some share of the pie too. Once again unless you have the numbers to show us you don't know the number of FR fans post or even pre-spellplague. Unless you have the data you can yell "Trust me i know" all you want I'm still not going to take you at your word for it.
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Memorax, dude. I can only say this one more time. There is a reason they're leaving 4e. And there's probably a reason they started planning 5e shortly after the 4gotten Realms book was released. Apparently, FR fans make up a big portion of the fan base, and if they're not happy, books aren't sold.
And the 4e realms rejected way too much canon for a lot of people who follow the realms. And the whole story behind Mystra's death, the Spellplague, and not knowing that there is no planet called Abeir really ticked off a lot of that fan base. Kind of like how the whole Dragonborn thing ticked off some Eberron fans.
And, I hope 5e is a good game and goes back to some of the roots that a lot of D&D fans like. And I hope they correct a lot of the Spellplague stuff, bring Ed back in and let him do something more consistent with how he sees the Realms.
And, really, it doesn't matter what I think. WotC thinks there aren't enough 4e fans, and probably not enough FR fans (the novels apparently aren't selling quite as well, either) to sustain their goals.
Bottom line, and I really don't want to come off that way here, but 4e, while a good, solid game, alienated too many people for WotC to ignore. And a big chunk of that was, I think, because of the way they did FR. 5e wouldn't be coming out so soon, and wouldn't have been in the works a mere two years after 4e's release, otherwise.
Soo, if the off-topic about the 3rd to 4th edition transition in FR...
I prefer Dragonlance novels over Forgotten Realm novels (mostly because I liked chronicles and legends series, while read no FR novel that I would really like) but as a game setting Faerun tramples Krynn into the ground for me. I prefer FR cultures, races, cosmology and gods. Especially gods (i.e. pre-spellplague - when I read 4th edition setting for the first time I thought that either authors of 4th edition considered players too stupid to handle more than a pathetic handful of deities or could not handle them themselves... *cough* ok, no returning to that, at least here, unspoilered).
I would say that your spoilers are the only good things to happen in the setting in recent years. I'm still a fan of the Brotherhood of the Griffon series.
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I'd pick DL. It is one of my two favorate settings. I also have a burning distate bordering on hatred for FR, (except for the 4E version I actually like). In my opinion, FR is far to campy. It contains too much, and Golarion is goin gthat same route. It has too much parallels with real world and no inovation whatsoever. There sin't really anything unique or interesting, no points of note about the realms, and way, way, way too much "epic" failure characters. FR has an inborn superheroishness to it, but at the same time, you will never be as cool as the Realms's iconincs, which are nothing but hatible.
DL on the otherhand, has changed the game from the get go. It harkens back to a realistic sense of fantasy. A classic sense. Dragonlance intruduced Prestigue Classes and Archtypes, and alternate class featrues way back in the day, as well as adding a little twist on monsters or breaking the rules, in a good way, for story. Dragonalce was the first "AP" and also (opinion) hand down the best novel line attached to a ny setting. Ravenloft and White Wolf are fairly close. Dragonlacne takes the point of view that players can alter anything, but tey have to work at it, and it isn't their gear or their level that matters, but their ideas and their effort.
FR takes the point of view that you are absolutely unimportant in the scheme of things. Nothing you will have do will actually change the world. FR, in my opinion, is also a very immature, less serious setting, while DL is more an adult (not in the porn sense), serious one.
FR, pre-4e/Spellplague nonsense.
Love the diversity, and generally like the feel that Ed Greenwood has given the Realms. It's well-detailed (a blessing for this busy DM) yet still has space to insert loads of things (like *ahem* APs).
Very much dislike DL. Bleh.
I gotta go with the Forgotten Realms, Pre- AND post-Spellplague and for different reasons. For one, I think it's a lot Bigger. There seems to be more to do thats not all interconnected with everthing else on the planet. I also like how magic works on Faerûn vs. Ansalon(sp?).
Though I admit the Dragonlance novels got me into playing D&D and I thought it was pretty awesome up until Takhisis took the planet to a new cosmos and all that. So pretty much anything post 2nd Generation....I sotra got bored with.
FR will always be my #1 setting, hells I even like it more now with the Spellplague than I did before!
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FR is bigger at the expense of everyone knowing everyting about the planet and all cultures sort of being generic. DL is bigger in the sense that there are entire other continents out there no one knows about, and 2 we do. Well 1 and maybe a 2nd. Talidos and the island the original Knights of Takhisis used. DL is open for you to do whatever you want and explore it just like how the fog of war was lifted in the novels. FR is much more like trying to dig through RL years of atlas and dictionary articles so no one else can tell you the truth.
FR is bigger at the expense of everyone knowing everyting about the planet and all cultures sort of being generic. DL is bigger in the sense that there are entire other continents out there no one knows about, and 2 we do. Well 1 and maybe a 2nd. Talidos and the island the original Knights of Takhisis used. DL is open for you to do whatever you want and explore it just like how the fog of war was lifted in the novels. FR is much more like trying to dig through RL years of atlas and dictionary articles so no one else can tell you the truth.
You do realize that Abier-Toril (the name of the planet) does have wholly uncharted continents as well? As well as Maztica (pre-Spellplague) and Returned Abier (post-Spellplague) in addition to the continents we do know.
As for all the content and lore, no one expects a DM or player to read through ALL of that to run viable campaigns in the Realms. If you do, that's awesome, but really unnecessary. Personaly, I like my events to stay local, not having continent-reaching impacts like it seems to be in Dragonlance.
I prefer the world of Krynn to Tobril. The whole notion of romantic fantasy is really great and I have read most of, if not all of the DL novels. I think that the best version of the game was 3.5, but like many fans I still love the Age of Despair and the original setting. The War of Souls, in my opinion, was a great move to try to reconcile what happened after Dragons of Summer Flame and the Age of Mortals trilogy.
I still am a great fan of the OHS.
What is the spellplague?
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They finally offed the goddess of magic, and found out the entire Weave thing was a lie (wait, wouldn't that make all Mystra's a CE, selfish, lying tyrrant the entire time, . . . ). Magic and everything tied to it kind of went boom boom, and a lot of random, magic related things went crazy world wide (again).
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You do realize that Abier-Toril (the name of the planet) does have wholly uncharted continents as well? As well as Maztica (pre-Spellplague) and Returned Abier (post-Spellplague) in addition to the continents we do know.
I do realize that Toril is the planet, (the same as Krynn is the name of the planet, too, and Ansalon being the main coninent). In game, Maztica and a few other places are "uncharted", but there are thousands of books and articles giving every last detail of every last square cm in FR. The opposite is true with DL, where there are entire areas that the only thing we know about them are their name because it's written on a map, (purpossfully so that any DM can do what they want).
They finally offed the goddess of magic, and found out the entire Weave thing was a lie (wait, wouldn't that make all Mystra's a CE, selfish, lying tyrrant the entire time, . . . ). Magic and everything tied to it kind of went boom boom, and a lot of random, magic related things went crazy world wide (again).
LOL! Isn't this what killed some of the characters from the Drizzt books or Cadderly?
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FR is bigger at the expense of everyone knowing everyting about the planet and all cultures sort of being generic. DL is bigger in the sense that there are entire other continents out there no one knows about, and 2 we do. Well 1 and maybe a 2nd. Talidos and the island the original Knights of Takhisis used. DL is open for you to do whatever you want and explore it just like how the fog of war was lifted in the novels. FR is much more like trying to dig through RL years of atlas and dictionary articles so no one else can tell you the truth.You do realize that Abier-Toril (the name of the planet) does have wholly uncharted continents as well? As well as Maztica (pre-Spellplague) and Returned Abier (post-Spellplague) in addition to the continents we do know.
As for all the content and lore, no one expects a DM or player to read through ALL of that to run viable campaigns in the Realms. If you do, that's awesome, but really unnecessary. Personaly, I like my events to stay local, not having continent-reaching impacts like it seems to be in Dragonlance.
Apparently the 4e devs didn't know the name of the planet was Abeir-Toil, since they made one a completely separate planet that crashed into the other. Details like that are what make old school FR fans cringe.
@ Houstonderek: Abeir- was added as a prefix to the planet's name so that it would be the first entry in the alphabetical encyclopedia of terms included in the set. So really, not that much to go on. If this was the entire reason why it's name was added to Jeff Grubb's planet (Toril), then I see no reason not to delve further into more lore for this. Yes, technically it's a retcon but only because it's inclusion in the first place was a bit shotty.
@ Devil's Advocate and Shalafi2412: The way to think of magic on Abeir-Toril (and Faerûn) is to look at magic like water, and the weave like a big ol' bucket. Spellcasters can tap into the bucket to draw water and someone above you hold the bucket and makes sure it flows evenly. Perhaps someone is drawing too much and the holder of the bucket (ie. Mystra) can tamper down on how much you control (thus the reason for the difficulty of Epic Spells). When you kill the person holding the bucket, if falls and splashes water everywhere. People now have to obtain that water another way such as sucking it up from pools on the ground, digging into the ground, etc. (ie. cast spells differently). At least, that's the way I alwasy saw magic on the world.
@ Beckett: I hear ya, and it's a main reason 4E Realms went with a more....subtle approach to the setting. Give people enough information and lore to fullfill the richness of a particular area but let the heroes do the exploring. All the old 3E and previous editions material is still there to use if you wish, but it's not a prerequisite to delve into that to make a game viable. But the thing is, it's never been a requirment to make Realms games viable, regardless of edition or era.
It's funny but it took 4E's broader approach to make me realize that 1.) I don't nor should adhere 100% to Canon and 2.) use Canon like a tasty Buffet. Really, when I do a Realms game, I look at things that might help my campaign, change or tweak what I need, use what NPCs I feel are appropriate, and make the rest up as I go along (or use current information from a sourcebook of the Realms or Eberron or Dark Sun). I don't think anyone 'NEEDS' the lore and descriptions to run a game there, but it's there if you like that sort of thing.
I prefer Forgotten Realms (pre-spellplague) over Dragonlance, though I've never read any of the Dragonlance novels. The scope and variety of Forgotten Realms is what keeps me interested in it as a game setting.
Besides the original there is an amazing new version of Forgotten Realms that hasn't been created yet. It may be Ed Greenwood's version, it may not be. But I have had a blast there personally, a magical old time. I have alway liked the setting, and hope 5th edition or somebody makes a new campaign book that bursts with awesomeness! Dragonlance too, Krynn is a dangerously fun place. -SS
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Abeir- was added as a prefix to the planet's name so that it would be the first entry in the alphabetical encyclopedia of terms included in the set.
This comes from the "Forgotten Realms Mailing List Archive":
Faerun was the name of the continent Ed's original campaign was set on, but Ed had no name for the planet itself. I looted the name Toril from my own campaign for the world. When we did the original grey box, we did all the entries in alphabetical order. It made sense to put something about the world itself FIRST, so I tacked on the Abeir title before it so it world fall at the beginning of the catalog.I remember mentioning elsewhere that the Abeir-Toril title means "cradle of life" in an archaic tongue. While I never stated which was which, I always assumed that "toril" was the word for life and "abeir" was the word for originator, cradle, or home.
Finally, as a note, Toril was not my original name for my campaign back in '75 - it was Toricandra, influenced by CS Lewis. Toril quickly became the shorthand I used, and eventually took over entirely.