I hadn't looked up the numbers so I didn't even realize how not close it is. Based on all internet searches for sales figures of bits of identifiable lore.
Salvatore books sold worldwide approximately 30 million over his entire catalog of 50 or so titles.
"Insane" sales figures for opening week of BG3 early access, over 1M units sold.
Meanwhile CR YouTube looks like it shows over 1M views (ranging as high as 16 million) for almost every episode of both campaigns (over 250 3-7 hour long) episodes. This likely includes some duplicate and/or partial views but it doesn't include Twitch viewership or podcast listening.
Yep. And that’s all without the direct backing of a megacorp. FR seems bigger than it is when you’re a D&D nerd who knows other D&D nerds.
Hell, I would posit that at least a 3rd, if not a majority, of D&D players only know what they picked up reading the bits of the phb they had to read to make a character, about FR. I’d be willing to bet, if we could actually test it, that among D&D players under 40 (which is the solid majority of players), more players know a decent amount about CR than about FR.
Do you seriously think that Critical Role, a quite popular Youtube program that's, what, five, six years old, is on the same level as Forgotten Realms, a setting with literally hundreds of authors, thousands of books, published in multiple languages, that features on best seller lists pretty regularly, has spawned numerous video games, comic books, and who knows what else?
Yes. Critical Role is comparable in popularity to
D&D. Like, as a whole. Millions of views per episode, widely credited with helping make 5e as successful as it is. Big enough that Colbert did a game with the DM for charity. Pervasive in D&D circles to the point where people whine about “the Mercer Effect”. I work autoparts in a large hick town, and I regularly see people with CR merch, CR stickers on their truck, and have dozens of times seen someone with a CR tattoo. Their comics are bestsellers. Their D&D book is one of the best selling books in the edition, last I checked.
Seriously? Like I said, I can walk into my small town library here in Japan and find Forgotten Realms books in Japanese. How many Critical Role things do you think I could find here?
In the library? No idea. Their first novel hasn’t been published yet, books obviously not being their primary medium.
But Japan certainly has critters, and I’m sure you could find CR merch pretty easily anywhere it’s easy to find fandom merch.
But, CR doesn't have about 50% of D&D players playing in it. Forgotten Realms does.
No numbers I’ve ever seen suggest that even close to half of all D&D players play in the forgotten realms.
Meanwhile, every single critter know Exandria. You can’t watch the show and be unfamiliar with the world.