

The design and development team for City of the Spider Queen made sure the adventure connected with the novels, but they chose to make that connection a lighter one - not the straight adaptations of past projects such as Dragonlance (1984-1986), Avatar (1989), and the early Prism Pentad (1991-1993) novels. City of the Spider Queen was one of the two cornerstones of the Year of the Drow event, alongside the War of the Spider Queen novels. Wizards would produce more multimedia events of this sort in the '10s, including "Rise of the Underdark" (2012), which appeared precisely 10 years later and once more posited the drow attacking the surface world. It returned to the crossovers of TSR's middle years, such as the Avatar crossover (1989), but moved them to a larger scale by embracing a thematic crossover rather than a specific event. The drow-related Set 4 releases seem to have been partially caught in the implosion, as they appear today in very small quantities on the secondary markets.īy modern standards, Year of the Drow was a loose, unfocused event that was also pretty short, mainly running through the summer of 2002. Wizards also released some drow blister packs over the course of the year, though the last few were canceled as Chainmail imploded, to be replaced by the D&D Miniatures Game (2003-2011). The real crossover came with Chainmail Set 4: Shadow of the Drow (2002) in July and Attack of the Drow: Kilsek Set 4 Faction Box (2002) in August, which together introduced the Kilsek drow of western Greyhawk. Wizards dated this crossover to Chainmail Set 2: Blood and Darkness, an Underdark-focused expansion that appeared in January, but it was likely another after-the-fact inclusion.

Wizards' short-lived Chainmail Miniatures Game (2001-2002) also participated in the event. Most of this online material also appeared late in the year, with "Test" being published on October 26th.
Forgotten realms city of the spider queen pdf full#
It ran the gamut from an article on "drow pets" to a full (short) adventure, "Test of the Demonweb" (2002). These publications were paired with roleplaying material on the website. Then Dungeon #94 (September/October 2002) finished things up with a final linked adventure.

A City of the Spider Queen Miniatures Boxed Set (2002) in September complemented the adventure. It was followed in September by City of the Spider Queen (2002) itself - the other major element of the event besides War. On the RPG side of things, Dragon #298 (August 2002) led the way with "Dark Elves Evil Unleashed", an issue full of drow material including a Living Greyhawk look at D3: "Vault of the Drow" (1978). Wizards also co-opted the newest Drizzt Do'Urden novel, The Thousand Orcs (2002), into the event, but it was likely a marriage of convenience. Most of the action took place late in the year, beginning with the six-book War of the Spider Queen (2002-2005) novel series, which debuted with Richard Lee Byers' Dissolution (2002) in July.

In 2002, Wizards of the Coast came up with an innovative idea: they initiated a multimedia event called the "Year of the Drow" based on the idea that the drow were "streaming out of the darkness at an alarming rate".
