Actually I was an ADnD fan myself, quite on the elitist side, a campaign should be first of all drafted into a book,follow the settings details to boot and the DM should have at least 2 assistants ...needless to say even with much free time that teenagers get (or create for themselves:p) we didn't manage to play a lot, some of us turned into useless data-carrying devices heh. IIRC I must have 80-90% of all ADnD books (and even some from the 1st edition) published for the Forgotten Realms and Birthright at least up to 1998-99 - was thinking to sell them (surely worth over a 1000$ nowdays) but memories prevented me :)
I remember I liked Forgotten Realms due to the amazingly detailed universe it presented, with a mindblowing amount of interlinking tidbits, very thorough job those TSR fellows did.I think I got my first world history lessons from that setting; there was this campaign setting expansion back I got around 1996 called "The Horde", published in 1989, where it detailed the mongols' life very correctly and historical, while giving them ofc a different name (Tuigan, sp?). Birthright was nice as well, certainly has less than 10% of the material published for FR, but it was more strategy oriented, with nice basic plot line (Gorgon and the hunt for bloodlines if my memory doesn't fail me hehe).
I don't think overly exotic beasts and monsters would be very appropriate for a FR campaign as humanoids had the lion's share of plotting and military clashes,with only ther occassional "monster" working behind the scene.
(See? I haven't opened a ADnD book for more than 3 years and I m starting to have oppinions on this lol)