Ed Greenwood (born 1959) is a Canadian writer and editor who created the Forgotten Realms. He invented the Forgotten Realms as a child, as a fantasy world in which to set the stories he imagined, and later used this world as a campaign setting for his own personal Dungeons & Dragons playing group. He began writing articles about the Forgotten Realms for Dragon magazine beginning in 1979, and he sold the rights to the setting to TSR in 1986. Greenwood has written many more articles and D&D game supplement books for the setting, and has written Forgotten Realms novels as a freelance author.
Ed Greenwood grew up in the upscale Toronto suburb of Don Mills. He began writing stories about the Forgotten Realms as a child, starting around 1967; they were his "dream space for swords and sorcery stories". Greenwood came up with the "Forgotten Realms" name from the notion of a "multiverse" of parallel worlds; our Earth is one such world, and the Realms another. In Greenwood's original conception, the fantastic legends of our world derive from a fantasy world that we've now lost the way to. Greenwood discovered the Dungeons & Dragons game in 1975, and really got into role-playing with the first AD&D game releases in 1978. The setting became the home of Greenwood's own personal campaign. Greenwood began a Realms campaign in the city of Waterdeep, then started another group known as the Knights of Myth Drannor in Shadowdale. Greenwood felt that his players' thirst for detail made the Realms what it is: "They want it to seem real, and work on ‘honest jobs’ and personal activities, until the whole thing grows into far more than a casual campaign. Roleplaying always governs over rules, and the adventures seem to develop themselves."
