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

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I meant “divided by”. Pages per person who prefers the Basic setting.

I'm not sure you can do a math problem when one of the numbers is an unmeasurable quantity.

I don’t know anyone who prefers that setting

Check the various setting polls here over the years. A lot of people really like the Forgotten Realms setting.

I keep discovering more expansions to Mystara/Known World, like Thunder Rift. So much was published in the 2e era, even for the Basic setting.

Eh, Thunder Rift was short of shoehorned in after the fact, as I recall. (Ditto the Keep on the Borderlands.)

But yes, Mystara is generally pretty great. I think its best elements are among the best things TSR ever did, starting with Glantri City.

 

[haakon1]

Check the various setting polls here over the years. A lot of people really like the Forgotten Realms setting.

I was talking about the Basic setting, which was called Known World or Mystara, and had many sub settings.

We seem to be failing to communicate, so I’ll state it categorically: I’m neither ignorant of, nor disputing, FR’s absolute supremacy among D&D settings.

Eh, Thunder Rift was short of shoehorned in after the fact, as I recall. (Ditto the Keep on the Borderlands.)

But yes, Mystara is generally pretty great. I think its best elements are among the best things TSR ever did, starting with Glantri City.

I’m not sure about the quality. Most settings in the TSR era were a bit hit-and-miss. Some genius, some regrettable. Basic/Known World/Mystara had some of each. What’s really surprising to me is how much volume there was.

 

[M_Natas]

Hrm - what would be the word count ...
400 Novels a (lets say) 100.000 Words of forgotten realm novels is 40 million words.
Lets add another 10 million for all the RPG Works on the forgotten realm.
Thats 50 million words, that need to be beat.

Warhammer 40k has roughly 60 million words in novels (guestimate by Bing), lets add another 10 million for their RPG/Wargame-Stuff, up to 70 million.

Das Schwarze Auge (the dark eye) was already mentioned, Copilots guesses it 70 to 85 million Words for Novels and RPG Texts.

Oh, Copilot guesses for the Forgotten Realms:

Category	Estimated Words
Novels	40–50 million
RPG rulebooks & sourcebooks	60–90 million
Adventures & supplemental material	40–60 million
Total	≈ 150–200 million words

Star Wars Novels are also around 150-200 million words all together.


The biggest contender maybe again come from Germany with the Perry Rhodan-Universe. It is a weelky "novel" coming out since 1960, having now over 3300 issues, + Spin Offs getting the number of "novels" to over 5000.

But they are usually only about 100 to 200 pages long. That's around 20 to 40 000 words. Lets say 30.000 words per "Novel". Again ~150 million words, but adding on a steady rate 1,5 million words each year.

So now we have 6 behemoths:

Forgotten Realms, Star Wars, Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Perry Rhodan, Warhammer 40k, The Dark Eye.

 

[humble minion]

Forgotten Realms, Star Wars, Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Perry Rhodan, Warhammer 40k, The Dark Eye.

It'd be stretching the terms 'shared universe' and 'fantasy world' to breaking point and perhaps beyond, but I think that 'Regency Romancelandia' as portrayed in modern romance fiction (as opposed to the actually historically based stuff set in the Regency written by Austen and her contemporaries) would crush any of these in a wordcount battle in the same way that Godzilla would crush a blancmange.

The romance fiction fandom and market is biiiig. Like REAL big. Huuuuuge.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

400 Novels a (lets say) 100.000 Words of forgotten realm novels is 40 million words.

That seems to be too high by about 100 novels.

 

[Zardnaar]

Hrm - what would be the word count ...
400 Novels a (lets say) 100.000 Words of forgotten realm novels is 40 million words.
Lets add another 10 million for all the RPG Works on the forgotten realm.
Thats 50 million words, that need to be beat.

Warhammer 40k has roughly 60 million words in novels (guestimate by Bing), lets add another 10 million for their RPG/Wargame-Stuff, up to 70 million.

Das Schwarze Auge (the dark eye) was already mentioned, Copilots guesses it 70 to 85 million Words for Novels and RPG Texts.

Oh, Copilot guesses for the Forgotten Realms:

Category	Estimated Words
Novels	40–50 million
RPG rulebooks & sourcebooks	60–90 million
Adventures & supplemental material	40–60 million
Total	≈ 150–200 million words

Star Wars Novels are also around 150-200 million words all together.


The biggest contender maybe again come from Germany with the Perry Rhodan-Universe. It is a weelky "novel" coming out since 1960, having now over 3300 issues, + Spin Offs getting the number of "novels" to over 5000.

But they are usually only about 100 to 200 pages long. That's around 20 to 40 000 words. Lets say 30.000 words per "Novel". Again ~150 million words, but adding on a steady rate 1,5 million words each year.

So now we have 6 behemoths:

Forgotten Realms, Star Wars, Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Perry Rhodan, Warhammer 40k, The Dark Eye.

Same metric those are multiverses. That means you would count Dragonlance as well and the rest.

D&D is the biggest i knew that. FR by itself not sure.

 

[GreyLord]

Same metric those are multiverses. That means you would fount Dragonlance as well and the rest.

D&D is the biggest i knew that. FR by itself not sure.

If we exclude Marvel and DC (who beat everything else by a long Kilometer/mile), I'd say D&D (Which includes all of FR and Dragonlance) would probably be the most written fantasy world (s) ever.

Some things here are stretching what they include quite a bit (The Dark Eye...well, if some of what people are including is included with FR, FR itself would include all forum writings, fan fictions, game run throughs, etc...which would also favor FR in my opinion).

The Videogames themselves for the Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape (and that doesn't include Neverwinter Nights, which if we also include the fan made modules start's getting almost incalculable for how much was written in them) probably add 7 - 10 million words just on their own (not including other D&D related games in there such as Pool of Radiance, Dark Alliance, Daggerdale, Demonstone, Heroes, etc).

Perry Rhodan...now that's an interesting one for someone to toss into the mix. I have just started with the first novels (and don't imagine I'll ever be able to catch up). Most seem to be a little more than 100 pages in length and I assume around 30K words. With a little over 3,300 in the main series that's probably around 33 million words. Neo-Rhodan which is the newer series for the new generation would add a few million as well. I'd like to think Rhodan as a competitor for the most written, but I think it is far behind others.

 

[Tigris]

Some things here are stretching what they include quite a bit (The Dark Eye...well, if some of what people are including is included with FR, FR itself would include all forum writings, fan fictions, game run throughs, etc...which would also favor FR in my opinion).

Well not really, since what we include in the dark eye is what is canon.

If the players doing these official play by posts, broke the finger of a statue in their adventure, then this statue has no longer that finger, and the next time that location comes up in an official adventure, then the statue there will miss the finger.


In FR its kind of the opposite. Pretty much most of 4E FR is no longer canon and not part of it. Even several other FR novels can hardly considered canon. (And there is the multiverse etc.)


Where in the dark eye everything written about it is building 1 consistent world, consisting mostly of just 1 continent.

 

[Zardnaar]

Well not really, since what we include in the dark eye is what is canon.

If the players doing these official play by posts, broke the finger of a statue in their adventure, then this statue has no longer that finger, and the next time that location comes up in an official adventure, then the statue there will miss the finger.


In FR its kind of the opposite. Pretty much most of 4E FR is no longer canon and not part of it. Even several other FR novels can hardly considered canon. (And there is the multiverse etc.)


Where in the dark eye everything written about it is building 1 consistent world, consisting mostly of just 1 continent.

4E stuff is still canon. It got soft retconned away but the events still happened.

DR fans may ignore it. Shades came back then the second sundering happened right?

 

[Voadam]

I was talking about the Basic setting, which was called Known World or Mystara, and had many sub settings.

Thunder Rift is sort of a Schroedinger's setting in the Known World. It is a mini setting for the then-new Black Box basic set and the accompanying modules and the author apparently intended it to be for the Known World but it is explicitly world setting agnostic and it does not reference Mystara specific stuff.

From the Thunder Rift book itself on page 2:

Thunder Rift is not specific to any particular world, which means that it can be placed in any campaign setting that the DM chooses. Whether it is placed into a Known World or one designed especially by the DM, Thunder Rift can be located anywhere there are mountains.

From the commentary on the Thunder Rift PDF:

McComb's directives from Heard were simple: Thunder Rift was to be "accessible" and "droppable anywhere". In addition, there had to be room for "lots of adventures". Based on the name and these demands, McComb decided to create a setting bounded by impassable mountains.

Exploring Mystara. Though Thunder Rift was made to be dropped into any setting, both editor Andrew Steven Harris and author Colin McComb say that it was always intended to be part of the world of Mystara. Harris envisions it as lying on some other continent, while McComb sees it as being somewhere closer to home, perhaps in the mountains of Karameikos.