Warhammer Fantasy (setting)

Warhammer Fantasy (later renamed Warhammer: The Old World) is a fictional fantasy universe created by Games Workshop and used in many of its games, including the table top wargame Warhammer, the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP) pen-and-paper role-playing game, and a number of video games: the MMORPG Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, the strategy games Total War: Warhammer, Total War: Warhammer II, Total War: Warhammer III and Total War: Warhammer 40,000, and the two first-person shooter games in the Warhammer Vermintide series, Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide and Warhammer: Vermintide 2, among many others. Warhammer is notable for its “dark and gritty” background world, which references a range of historical cultures such as the Holy Roman Empire, Mesoamerica, ancient Egypt, and medieval France, and is populated with a variety of races such as humans, high elves, dark elves, wood elves, dwarfs, undead, orcs, lizardmen, and other creatures familiar to many fantasy/role-playing settings. The development of the setting began with the release of a game simply called “Warhammer” in 1983. In 2014, Games Workshop introduced The End Times, a setting-wide event that culminated in the destruction of the Warhammer world. The setting is followed by a soft reboot known as Warhammer Age of Sigmar, created in 2015. In 2024, Warhammer Fantasy was brought back in a reboot known as Warhammer The Old World, which brings a new version of the old rules and updated models.