New Game, New World

I am gearing up for my new game.  I posted about it already a couple days back.  Since then I have picked up another new player.

What I have been considering for this game is moving it away from my normal world of Mystoerth to something new. Or at least new for me. I am considering, very seriously, the Forgotten Realms.

I talked about this a while back. I picked up the Player's Guide then, and just got the Campaign Guide.
I own some Realms books as PDFs. They were one of the things I grabbed in the mad dash before DriveThru took them all down.

I mentioned before that I was never a fan of the Realms. I considered it to be a pretender to Greyhawk and not a very worthy one at that.  In fact one of the first examples of my own Nerd Rage was how Anti-Realms I used to be because it took the spotlight away from my beloved Greyhawk.

I picked up the 3.0 Realms Guide when it came out and I admit I liked it. I felt it was a good book and all it really was missing was monsters. The new 4e campaign books are a good model too. Though this time I feel I have enough monsters.

But what I like the most about the 4e Realms book is how completely gonzo it is. Smash two planets together to get one world! I love that! Spell plagues? Bring it on!  Races from Abeir now showing up? Fantastic!

I will be honest.  I know next to nothing about the Realms.  Nada. Zip.
Never read the novels, never played in the Realms EVER.

In fact most of what I know comes not from books or games, but from Wikipedia and the Forgotten Realms Wiki.

Normally I think this would be an issue. But since I am using the 4e material and it is about 100 years after all the events in 3e, not to mention world-changing events at that, that it is ok if that the players know nothing.  All I need to worry about is their local part of the world.
The iconic NPCs are never going to show up, nor in fact will my sons' characters from our 3.x game.
I want this story to be about these characters right now.

I am also still planning to use the HPE modules for these characters to fight Orcus.   Since it is the Realms I am going to add some of the materials from the old H-series, The Bloodstone Wars.

So here are my questions to those of you far more familiar with the Realms than me.

• Should I read over any of the older material?
• Where is a good place to start the characters?  IE.  What is "The Village of Hommlet" for the Realms?
• Anything I should about running the Realms say as opposed to running Greyhawk?

Thanks!  
I am feeling really excited about this and want it to work out well.

Posted in: 4e,kids,world building