20 Years of the Forgotten Realms Wiki

By: Nick Sampson | November 14, 2025

Since its founding on October 1, 2005, the Forgotten Realms Wiki has grown from a modest fan resource into the largest encyclopedia dedicated to the Forgotten Realms campaign setting of Dungeons & Dragons. From its earliest days, the wiki served as a bridge between fans, players, and creators. It catalogs sourcebooks, novels, adventures, video games, comics, and more while offering deep lore on Faerûn and its many eras.

The wiki launched during the rise of fan-run encyclopedias at a time when online communities were rapidly organizing around shared interests. Its growth reflects that enthusiasm. It reached 10,000 articles by February 2011, 20,000 by August 2016, and 30,000 by November 2019. By June 2023, it passed 50,000 articles, a milestone that showcased the passion and persistence of its contributors.

One of the most distinctive elements of the Forgotten Realms Wiki is its commitment to narrative consistency. All articles are written in past tense, a deliberate choice meant to future-proof entries against constant updates and edition changes. As a long-time contributor and self-identified Chief Scribe explained, “We use narrative past tense. This way we do not have to go back over the most recent section, change all the tense from present to past, then add a new section in present tense that you will one day have to fix when new information becomes available.” This approach has helped the wiki remain stable and reliable across decades of evolving source material.

Community engagement has been recognized beyond the wiki itself. In 2021, contributor Artemaz received Fandom’s Editor of the Year in Gaming award for creating 455 new location articles during the “Year of Maps” initiative. This demonstrated how dedicated editors have shaped the wiki’s breadth and quality.

The wiki’s influence also extends into official D&D media. Writers for the 2023 film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves consulted the wiki, and Fandom collaborated with FRW editors to style the site’s main page for the film’s promotional campaign. Several fifth edition Forgotten Realms campaign books have acknowledged the wiki as a resource, showing how deeply the FRW has permeated modern Realms scholarship and development.

In July 2025, the wiki expanded into publishing with The Forgotten Realms Wiki Presents: Juniper’s Companion to Venturesome Cookery, a 281-page cookbook and fifth-edition sourcebook. The volume features new dishes, Realmslore, magical items, and short fiction. It includes a foreword by Ed Greenwood, and Realms author Steven E. Schend not only praised the book, calling it “a fun read with some great recipes I may have to try soon”, but also contributed an article to it.

This publication is likely the first time any fan wiki has contributed new, original material to the official canon of its parent franchise, not only within the Forgotten Realms but possibly across all major fandom wikis. The FRW community hopes it will not be the last.

The wiki’s reach extends into academia as well. One research project noted that “the data set was extracted from the Forgotten Realms Fandom wiki consisting of more than 45,200 articles. This is the first data set of this size for the D&D domain.” Its comprehensive coverage has made it a valuable resource for scholars studying fantasy worldbuilding, narrative structures, and fan-driven knowledge aggregation.

By 2025, the wiki approached 60,000 articles, and the community declared its 20th anniversary the “Year of Machinations”. Editorial efforts focused on organizations, schemes, and political feuds ahead of upcoming fifth edition Realms releases. As one community member reflected during the anniversary year, “The wiki has 55,000 articles. It is a good thing, with plenty of areas for people to still sink their teeth into.”

Beyond its core mission, the wiki also supports independent booksellers through an online storefront hosted on Bookshop.org, offering fans a way to purchase Realms-related titles while supporting local shops in the United States and the United Kingdom. - That link can be found here - https://bookshop.org/shop/forgottenrealmswiki

From its modest beginnings in 2005 to its expansion into cross-media collaboration and publishing in 2025, the Forgotten Realms Wiki has become a cornerstone of Realms fandom. It has preserved generations of lore, bridged editions, supported creators, and inspired countless campaigns. As it celebrates twenty years, the FRW stands as a testament to what sustained and organized fan passion can accomplish. It remains an ever-growing resource for anyone who loves the Forgotten Realms, whether designing a campaign, researching a novel, or exploring recipes from its community-created cookbook.

References

• Forgotten Realms Wiki: History page. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Forgotten_Realms_Wiki%3AHistory

• Forgotten Realms Wiki homepage and statistics. https://wikis.fandom.com/wiki/Forgotten_Realms_Wiki

• The Forgotten Realms Wiki Presents Juniper’s Companion to Venturesome Cookery. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/The_Forgotten_Realms_Wiki_Presents_Juniper%27s_Companion_to_Venturesome_Cookery

• Fandom Editor of the Year – 2021 (Artemaz). https://community.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog%3AMisterWoodhouse/This_Year_at_Fandom_-_2021

• Academic paper on the FRW dataset. https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.09080

• Reddit commentary on article count milestone. https://www.reddit.com/r/Forgotten_Realms/comments/14jwdg5