Doomed Forgotten Realms is the darkest possible Dungeons & Dragons timeline

polygon.com:

Wizards of the Coast launched the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons in 2014 with the adventure Tyranny of Dragons, where players must stop a cult from summoning the evil dragon goddess Tiamat into the Forgotten Realms. Doomed Forgotten Realms: Sword Coast Gazetteer, a new setting book from Quill & Cauldron, imagines what D&D’s primary campaign location would look like if players of that adventure failed. Then they went even further, imagining failure for every other major adventure Wizards has released since. The result? The darkest of all possible D&D timelines.

In Doomed Forgotten Realms: Sword Coast Gazetteer the city of Baldur’s Gate has been plunged into the Nine Hells thanks to the events of Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus. At the same time, the land has been ravaged by the powerful evil elementals released in Princes of the Apocalypse, while demon lords occupy the subterranean realm of the Underdark after emerging from portals opened in Out of the Abyss. But the greatest threat comes from Vecna, the evil god of secrets, who Doomed Forgotten Realmsdesigner Matthew Whitby made the true mastermind behind the world’s downfall.

“I had the idea of all these events throughout all the hardcover books slowly going wrong, but it’s not until the final shoe drops that everyone can see that there has been someone pulling the strings from the background this entire time,” Whitby said. “Vecna’s such an iconic character. There’s not really any other evil character in the Realms who can quite reach that same pinnacle.”

Sword Coast Gazetteer is a companion to the Quill & Cauldron adventure Doomed Forgotten Realms: Rise of Vecna, which Whitby worked on alongside lead designer Scott McClintock. It imagines the god known as the