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Fictional Universe With The Most Lore?

Darkmakaimura

Darkmakaimura

Can You Imagine What SureAI Is Going To Do With Garfield?
What fictional universe do you feel is the most expansive as far as details and lore go?

I'm going to be biased but also due to researching I would definitely have to go with Warhammer 40,000.

It's just insanely massive and I can't really think of anything else that even comes close. Not even LOTR, Star Wars, Star Trek, Elder Scrolls or anything else I can think of for that matter.

Apparently the Horus Heresy is over 60 books alone.

You could probably spend an entire lifetime doing research into this universe. Entire college courses could be made.
 
I'm less familiar with Warhammer, so you might be right, but Middle Earth has an insane amount of lore, if you get into all the many books Christopher Tolkien put out.

I've never actually read any of this writer's work, but a while ago I read an article about a man called Henry Darger who lived as a janitor in Chicago and was probably mentally ill, and who had a horrific childhood. He apparently also secretly wrote multiple books of thousands and thousands of pages, with a lot of illustrations, that construct a deeply disturbing world that was probably a way for him to deal with all that trauma. None of it was ever published in his lifetime. I wasn't able to find exactly the same article, but here are two different ones that between them cover what I remember.
https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,985966-1,00.html
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017...left-a-legacy-of-brilliant-if-disturbing-art/
 
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It's D&D. Multiple campaign settings each with multiple iterations and an absolute avalanche of source books, monster manuals, etc dating back to the 70's.
 
ClanOfNone said:
It's D&D. Multiple campaign settings each with multiple iterations and an absolute avalanche of source books, monster manuals, etc dating back to the 70's.
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True but D&D lore is all over the place and the canon is fuzzy at best.
 
Darkmakaimura said:
True but D&D lore is all over the place and the canon is fuzzy at best.
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The sheer volume of stuff to draw on is the hook for me. The Forgotten Realms being the mainstay is what really holds it back, the other settings like Planescape, Spelljammer, Greyhawk, Ravenloft, and mother fucking Dark Sun are where the really cool shit is.
Alas, WotC is run by fucking morons so the lion's share of really interesting stuff is in the past.
 
ClanOfNone said:
The sheer volume of stuff to draw on is the hook for me. The Forgotten Realms being the mainstay is what really holds it back, the other settings like Planescape, Spelljammer, Greyhawk, Ravenloft, and mother fucking Dark Sun are where the really cool shit is.
Alas, WotC is run by fucking morons so the lion's share of really interesting stuff is in the past.
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This is what makes second edition my favorite. So many different worlds and settings. Planescape is one of the best fictional settings ever made.
 
Easily Warhammer. There are hundreds of books, 11 versions of the game, video games, over 500 white dwarfs, hundreds of codex's, etc.

I'd think Star Trek would be second due to hundreds and hundreds of tv episodes.
 
I think we kinda need to define what "lore" means. Timelines of events, spanning years and years, covering dynasties rising and falling of a single universe, like actual Earth history? Just lists of 'stuff' like weapons and factions? Or weight of stories, even if they reference the same pool of historical information?

I think Battletech has timelines covering many different eras, dozens and dozens of sourcebooks and novels of various eras and houses. Malazan as well, composes 15-20 novels but alludes to a DEEP history spanning thousands and thousands of years across a planet.

DnD can't really be taken as a whole, IMHO. You have to parse out Faerun, Ravenloft, Greyhawk as they don't really crossreference each other outside of the rules set. Then you have stuff like DC or Marvel, with THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of comics, but so many are, if not out right contradictory, at least incompatible with a single "truth" and can't really be considered 'lore' since the multiverse type shenanigans render any kid of objective "truth" irrelevant. Once an IP gets to the point of retconning things, that really destroys the "lore" of it as canon details of a place are the bedrock of being able to tell stories based on it. IMHO.
 
Trogdor1123 said:
Easily Warhammer. There are hundreds of books, 11 versions of the game, video games, over 500 white dwarfs, hundreds of codex's, etc.

I'd think Star Trek would be second due to hundreds and hundreds of tv episodes.
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Technically there are soap operas that have been running since the 1960s. So technically them.
 
jason10mm said:
I think we kinda need to define what "lore" means. Timelines of events, spanning years and years, covering dynasties rising and falling of a single universe, like actual Earth history? Just lists of 'stuff' like weapons and factions? Or weight of stories, even if they reference the same pool of historical information?

I think Battletech has timelines covering many different eras, dozens and dozens of sourcebooks and novels of various eras and houses. Malazan as well, composes 15-20 novels but alludes to a DEEP history spanning thousands and thousands of years across a planet.

DnD can't really be taken as a whole, IMHO. You have to parse out Faerun, Ravenloft, Greyhawk as they don't really crossreference each other outside of the rules set. Then you have stuff like DC or Marvel, with THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of comics, but so many are, if not out right contradictory, at least incompatible with a single "truth" and can't really be considered 'lore' since the multiverse type shenanigans render any kid of objective "truth" irrelevant. Once an IP gets to the point of retconning things, that really destroys the "lore" of it as canon details of a place are the bedrock of being able to tell stories based on it. IMHO.
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This is why Discworld came to mind for me. Because it comes from a singular vision and hasn't had a bunch of reboots and retcons.
 
okay-see-there-was-this-golden-era-of-technology-v0-9m41w9ftga351.jpg
 
Wastelander92 said:
Technically there are soap operas that have been running since the 1960s. So technically them.
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There is one in the UK called Coronation Street that has been running since 1960. My dad is 71 this year and was 5 when it first hit British television!

With almost 12K episodes, I would say it technically has more "lore" than 40k and Star Wars.
 
Hard to pick just one, but I'd say Warhammer 40K is probably up there—feels like it has endless layers of history stacked on top of more history.


Middle-earth is another strong contender, just way more "clean" and ancient-feeling rather than sprawling chaos.
 
Warhammer i'd say is easily the largest, but i also think it's the most bloated. Same with other fantasy roleplaying type genres, When everyone and their uncle gets to add to the lore things tend to get messy.

In terms of literature, there's good mentions here, obviously Tolkiens work, Discworld is another good one, i'd even add the King Universe (Dark Tower) even though some of the connections are rather loose.
 
The Westeros/GOT lore with all the big/small houses, the family trees and their interactions in a span of 300 years is pretty deep.
 
falconhoof said:
Probably Chris Chan.
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Or tales got trolled

jason10mm said:
Then you have stuff like DC or Marvel, with THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of comics, but so many are, if not out right contradictory, at least incompatible with a single "truth" and can't really be considered 'lore' since the multiverse type shenanigans render any kid of objective "truth" irrelevant.
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Not to mention stuff that isn't retconed but simple never again , like them time Peter parked murdered an entire small town, punches his pregnant wife through a wall and the green goblin replaced the baby with a still born baby
 
Of course the Abrahamic religions fictional universe has the most lore, they've been working on it for nearly 4000 years.

ladies GIF
 
Star Wars had a ton of lore until Kathleen Kennedy.

I like the John Carter lore, it is really fun. Traveling through space and maybe time to Barsoom.

LOTR is probably where I would settle. Most established lore by a single individual.
 
Has anyone said Game of Thrones, because it seems to be pretty deep, and George RR Martin is great at Lore.

I was looking up stuff about this and someone listed Avatar and I wanted to pluck out my eyes.

Why did we not get this version of Avatar?
 
Tams said:
This. Quantity vs. quality.

Much of 40k lore isn't very good.
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That's not what I meant ~however~ I will agree LOTR is classier than the "every-sci-fi-rip-off" that is Wh40k.

(Edit: hell it even rips off Tolkein himself)

But then again, that being said, I also find LOTR dull and prefer Wh40k over it.
 
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None of you have read my NeoGAF fanfics yet
 
Tams said:
This. Quantity vs. quality.

Much of 40k lore isn't very good.
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Yeah, I haven't gotten that far into Horus Heresy but the overall quality of the books is far below what I expected.

The idea of the everlasting space Emperor and his all-powerful children fighting truly evil chaos gods and aliens is so great that people don't care if the stories mostly suck.
 
I have a serious contender:
Perry Rhodan

Since 1961, the series has published a new novella every single week without a break. We are currently at over 3,250 main episodes, plus thousands of spin-off novels (Planetenromane), paperbacks, and neo-reboots.
200 million words in an ongoing, unbroken continuity.

If 40k is a massive library, Perry Rhodan is the Library of Alexandria

Edit: The series even inspired the Borg. The similarities with the "Posbis" (positronic robots that assimilate other technology and travel in cubes) are quite strong.
 
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DUNE, which is the grandfather of science fiction and, in a way, of many fantasy works too.

Just think of any fiction, from Star Wars to Game of Thrones and Dune's inspirations are all over the place. It reaches everything. Not even close to whatever comes after.
 
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Artoris said:
I would go with D&D but it could easily be one of the Warhammers or Star Trek
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I thought D&D and Warhammer shared the same universe for some reason. Like D&D was the past/old world fantasy and Warhammer was the future/sci-fi.(shows how much I know..🤦‍♂️. Though when I think about it, I did collect some of the old fantasy Warhammer with my bro when we were kids)

Having watched the latest movies recently, I'm getting back into Dune lore. Going to pick up some of the later books ASAP.
 
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