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

M_Natas said:

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.

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When I counted them (in depth) last year, there were 208 Forgotten Realms RPG products totalling 25,240 pages and 302 Forgotten Realms novels totalling 98,013 pages.

Echohawk said:

When I counted them (in depth) last year, there were 208 Forgotten Realms RPG products totalling 25,240 pages and 302 Forgotten Realms novels totalling 98,013 pages.

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The Warhammer 40k folder on my kindle right now contains 488 items. Now, a small number of them will be short stories rather than full-on novels, but I do know that there's many, many more that I don't own or have deleted for space. I'd be surprised if there was less than 100 more on top of the 488.

That would need to be checked. My guess is that 40k and Star Wars are both contenders, with hundreds of novels, comics, and other media as well.

Omega Probe said:

That would need to be checked. My guess is that 40k and Star Wars are both contenders, with hundreds of novels, comics, and other media as well.

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I’d put those more into scifi or scifi/fantasy as opposed to just the fantasy genre

Voadam said:

The 90s TSR had a lot of setting volume going on.

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They sure did. I wonder if Forgotten Realms is more than all the other settings put together? I suspect with novels, it was, but without the novels, all that proliferation of “other settings” May sum to more than FR?

Regardless, it was a prolific era. It would likely take longer than a decade to read that decade’s output, and overproduction competing with itself is of course why TSR collapsed in 1997.

DarkCrisis said:

I’d put those more into scifi or scifi/fantasy as opposed to just the fantasy genre

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I wouldn't consider either as sci-fi. They're not speculative fiction at all, which is genre-defining, and science or scientific advancement is not central to the stories.

Both are, imo, solidly within the fantasy genre: imaginary worlds, monsters, magic, and so on. They're "futuristic", as opposed to "medieval", but they're both "fantasy".

haakon1 said:

They sure did. I wonder if Forgotten Realms is more than all the other settings put together? I suspect with novels, it was, but without the novels, all that proliferation of “other settings” May sum to more than FR?

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No. Forgotten Realms novels account for 45% of the total page count of D&D novels, while Forgotten Realms RPG products account for 18% of the total page count for D&D RPG products (across all editions). Other settings account for 33% of the total page count for RPG products with 49% being setting neutral.

humble minion said:

Agreed. There seemed to be a deliberate effort in the 4th ed FR material to obsolete as much of the prior material as possible. Not to say there's stuff you can't mine, especially since the 5th ed soft reset, but that egg can never truly be unscrambled.

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I agree it had to be deliberate. I’ve been thinking about why. Some theories.

1) The existing material was overwhelming. They wanted to par it down for new players who had never heard of Volo.

2) The existing material was overwhelming even for them. Without a good “series bible” and pre-LLM, checking for contradictions was too time consuming and expensive. Easier to rewrite than check.

3) Churn was the business model. New editions meant a chance to sell the same books again. Why not setting books too?

4) Compatibility with the new editions was a key goal. Gotta shoehorn in some Dragonborn Warlocks, new spells, etc., so a reset to pretend they were always there - instead of a new book about their arrival in the setting - was deemed preferable.

haakon1 said:

I agree it had to be deliberate. I’ve been thinking about why. Some theories.

1) The existing material was overwhelming. They wanted to par it down for new players who had never heard of Volo.

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That was explicitly a thing WotC was saying, that the volume of lore and existing detail was a deterrent to new players getting into the Forgotten Realms and for DMs to choose to run the setting. A 100 year time advancement, a world shakeup, and a three big RPG books and done publishing plan for the setting (player's book, DM setting guide, and a big module), meant it was easy to get into.

haakon1 said:

2) The existing material was overwhelming even for them. Without a good “series bible” and pre-LLM, checking for contradictions was too time consuming and expensive. Easier to rewrite than check.

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Not everyone can be Eric Boyd.

haakon1 said:

3) Churn was the business model. New editions meant a chance to sell the same books again. Why not setting books too?

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That had been a thing already. 1e had its big boxed set campaign setting, and a series of regional sourcebooks, 2e redid the core with the slim Forgotten Realms Adventures hardcover then the 2e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting big boxed set then a bunch of sourcebooks and regional boxed sets (covering new areas and redoing old ones) then the later 2e Player's Guide to the Forgotten Realms intended an easier intro into again the core setting, then 3e had its own huge hardcover Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book and a series of regional sourcebooks.

4e was notable for its comparative disciplined restraint here, just the three books and no regional sourcebooks, just dragon articles which were part of the online subscription. Plus with the timeline advancement and world changes it was a much bigger proportion of completely new stuff compared to 2e and 3e.

haakon1 said:

4) Compatibility with the new editions was a key goal. Gotta shoehorn in some Dragonborn Warlocks, new spells, etc., so a reset to pretend they were always there - instead of a new book about their arrival in the setting - was deemed preferable.

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Tieflings were there pre-4e, warlocks and warlords were easy to incorporate. Dragonborn there was no pretending they were always there, the world changing event in the time advance explicitly brought them in so they were now established in the time advanced 4e FR.

Voadam said:

That was explicitly a thing WotC was saying, that the volume of lore and existing detail was a deterrent to new players getting into the Forgotten Realms and for DMs to choose to run the setting. A 100 year time advancement, a world shakeup, and a three big RPG books and done publishing plan for the setting (player's book, DM setting guide, and a big module), meant it was easy to get into.

Not everyone can be Eric Boyd.

That had been a thing already. 1e had its big boxed set campaign setting, and a series of regional sourcebooks, 2e redid the core with the slim Forgotten Realms Adventures hardcover then the 2e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting big boxed set then a bunch of sourcebooks and regional boxed sets (covering new areas and redoing old ones) then the later 2e Player's Guide to the Forgotten Realms intended an easier intro into again the core setting, then 3e had its own huge hardcover Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book and a series of regional sourcebooks.

4e was notable for its comparative disciplined restraint here, just the three books and no regional sourcebooks, just dragon articles which were part of the online subscription. Plus with the timeline advancement and world changes it was a much bigger proportion of completely new stuff compared to 2e and 3e.

Tieflings were there pre-4e, warlocks and warlords were easy to incorporate. Dragonborn there was no pretending they were always there, the world changing event in the time advance explicitly brought them in so they were now established in the time advanced 4e FR.

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Pro lem was they lost their existing fans and gained very few new ones.

Prime example of trying to appeal to everyone and appealing to no one.

FRs bloat has always been over exaggerated. Reading the wiki some places haven't been touched in 30 odd years or very little. I think theres a potential megadungeon thats referenced but they never pulled the trigger on.