D&D General Did you realize The Forgotten Realms is the most written fantasy world ever?

Misanthrope Prime · Wednesday at 5:18 PM

This is the reason I have such a love-hate relationship with it. Individually, I think most FR products are horrid-to-mediocre and I can name only a few dozen I would hold up as "good art." But even the MANY examples of bad art form a cohesive whole that is impressive in its size and relative integrity.

No other fantasy world can I put my finger on a random town on the map and be able to reasonably determine its economic history, for instance.

bedir than · Wednesday at 9:15 PM

zakael19 said:
ok if we're bringing AO3 into this...

if AO3 counts so does every organized and disorganize play of the Realms in D&D

Koloth · Wednesday at 10:38 PM

While not fantasy, the amount of system info on the Traveller Map site: The Traveller Map
is rather astounding. Many of the thousands of dots on that map link to wiki entries with a description of that dot's system. Add in the many versions of the game published since the original little black book set and can make an argument that the amount of game material is right up there with the Forgotten Realms. Where the FR wins hands down is published fiction. Traveller has no where near as many fiction titles.

Kichwas · Wednesday at 11:29 PM

Hmmm...

Hundreds of novels? Probably a few dozen at best.

And books on it? Seems like they just republish a revision to the core manual every 5-10 years and nothing else. There's very little detail out there beyond that.

Not too many adventures either.

The setting for 'Champions' probably has more put out for it and it's not much.

Kingdoms of Kalimar most likely easily beats it if we're going for 'official D&D setting' only.

If we open up to other sources, Runequest, Traveler, Pathfinder - all have more, though some haven't put out much in decades.

Marc17 · 2026-03-26T00:19:23+0000

Kichwas said:
Hmmm...

Hundreds of novels? Probably a few dozen at best.

As per the Wikipedia list of FR Novels I made a quick count of 351 but some of the anthologies might have been counted twice. Then you have game books.

ETA: I went the similar page for WH 40k and stopped after I was past 200 and not even to the halfway point yet (and didn't count audio dramas).

Whizbang Dustyboots · 2026-03-26T00:22:53+0000

Definitely have to narrowly define "fantasy world" to box out DC and Marvel Comics, who can easily crush this.

SableWyvern · 2026-03-26T00:29:24+0000

Misanthrope Prime said:
This is the reason I have such a love-hate relationship with it. Individually, I think most FR products are horrid-to-mediocre and I can name only a few dozen I would hold up as "good art." But even the MANY examples of bad art form a cohesive whole that is impressive in its size and relative integrity.

No other fantasy world can I put my finger on a random town on the map and be able to reasonably determine its economic history, for instance.

Yeah, I have to admit that, even as someone with a pretty low opinion of the modern FR, I have found the various wikis extremely helpful for kickstarting ideas while running a 1e-era Savage Frontier game. I may disregard a lot of it, but having all that history available if I want or need it is extremely handy at times -- and even the stuff I don't use as such can help trigger other ideas of my own.