The Conception

Terrainia started off in 2004 as a single island for a role-playing game (using a well-known and popular third edition rule set). This island became wonderfully detailed, players would recognise who they were dealing with when suitable miniatures (made by another well-known table-top games company) were placed on the table. But eventually the players finished the campaign, and managed to slay the dragon, or so they thought.

So with the campaign over, but the desire to continue burning ever bright, further areas were designed and planned, and over the course of five long but enjoyable years the world grew exponentially. At its peak of these five years there were six regular groups, around forty players, two dungeon masters, and a world as large as Earth drawn up and with huge levels of detail.

The Evolution

While that is where Terrainia was born, now 16 years on and the development hasn’t stopped, we began to construct this website in 2010 as a resource for our players to use. Then in 2020 (during the world wide pandemic), our founder took the opportunity to flesh out the world even more and add this to the website, during which thoughts turned to sharing Terrainia with the rest of the world.

It was at this time that the founder began to commission artists. Budgets were low, and it took time to find the right artists with the right style. But over the next few years, the main cast got made: the deities, the primary heroes and villains, then monsters. It was important for the founder that all artwork was theirs, monster design was theirs, and in turn, game systems were theirs — we did not want to copy or reproduce existing systems.

Along with the game world, contributors are writing novels and designing games, all set within Terrainia. At the time this page was last updated, there were no fewer than seven different games/books in production. Soon we will have links to these games/books for you to immerse yourselves within.

A Note on Artwork

Bringing a world as vast as Terrainia to life requires an immense amount of visual development. Currently, as you explore the site and your campaigns, you will encounter AI-generated artwork. We want to be fully transparent about this choice.

Where AI tools are used, we are committed to utilizing only ethical providers and platforms, and we ensure we hold the proper licensed rights for all generated images featured on the site. It is incredibly important to us that we operate legally and respect the wider creative community, while still providing our players and readers with the rich, visual anchors needed to immerse themselves in the Multiverse.

However, AI generation is only a temporary stepping stone for us. Our ultimate goal is for traditional, human-created art to eventually replace every single AI-generated image on this platform. As Terrainia grows and our resources expand, we will continue commissioning talented artists, slowly phasing out AI generation until the entire world is brought to life exclusively by human hands.

The Future

After this first wave of games and books, who knows? But one thing is for sure: there is plenty of material, and our aim will be to share this world with as many fantasy fans as possible.