The Not-So-Secret History of Tirenia

 It all started when I worked at a local hobby store, running Dungeons & Dragons night. We’d done all the Adventurers’ League modules to which we had access, and now we wanted something new. I had the idea of having our own consistent world in which our players could adventure and leave their own stamp upon. I surveyed our player base to find out what they wanted: something European, but different from the medieval English pastiche; something where all the rules they knew still applied, but where the flavour had changed to make things different; something that could be explained easily, but with the depth to sustain multiple campaigns by different Dungeon Masters.

My wife and I went out to dinner and came up with the basic idea: a world inspired by the Italian Renaissance, a highly civilized world with feuding city-states, each led by a different type of dragon. The players would be elite mercenaries, free to travel across the land fulfilling contracts, while secretly working towards the Humanist goal of overthrowing the dragons. After looking at the old Greek name for Italy, Tyrrhenia, I knew I had the name for the country: Tirenia, the land of tyrants.

Dragon Princes, as it was first called, was a massive success. Our players loved exploring a vibrant, half-familiar world. We had multiple packed tables running games set there. I had to cut that campaign short early when I stopped working at that shop, so we quickly resolved the story with a massive pitched battle: a small army of low-level characters against an adult red dragon and her demonic allies at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Almost everyone died, but they managed to kill the dragon and save the world in the process.

After that game was over, my wife convinced me that Tirenia was worth continuing. I kept it in my back pocket until a group of our friends expressed interest in learning Dungeons & Dragons. I gave them a few options of settings, and Tirenia was overwhelmingly their favourite. The game was a big success. I started a blog where I wrote short articles as the mood took me, fleshing out the world. I found the mood took me very often! We started talking about maybe one day even writing it up as a full campaign setting.

When COVID-19 forced us into lockdown in 2020, I suddenly found myself with the time on my hands that I’d been lacking. I started writing every day, hammering my old notes into a cohesive whole, creating huge amounts of detail on the fly. This is also when we wound up having to change the name because of the Netflix show to ‘Dragons of Tirenia.’ We aimed to have something to release at the Armageddon pop culture expo at the end of the year, which wound up being an introductory guide and an adventure, with a full mini-campaign at the convention to support it. Once again, feedback was overwhelmingly positive (even if some of our business decisions were, in retrospect, maybe not such a good idea – you can find out about that in our podcast!)

We’ve now decided to continue doing small zine-like books, they’re easier for us to create (since we’re working full time and have a child!) In the future, once we’ve got a decent amount done, we’ll launch a Kickstarter for deluxe collected editions, which will be the Dragons of Tirenia Campaign Setting that I’ve always dreamed about. Thanks for joining me on this adventure, it’s been a wild ride so far! I’m going to keep writing small regular articles about whatever takes my fancy. If there’s anything you’d like me to talk about, please send us a message!

My original draft map of Tirenia, which just directly uses Italy. Not that it's changed much! Lots of the names have changed - the only ones that are still the same are Fiumenze, Medilano and Staglia. The brass and copper dragons have changed where they're based, the brown, orange, iron and quicksilver dragons don't exist yet. Some of the races are still the traditional D&D ones at this point too - I can see half-orcs and dwarves on the map.