Yesterday the lovely faces behind World Anvil officially announced the World Anvil Summer Camp Challenge of 2018- and boy are we really excited about it! But what is it and… Better yet… How does a budding worldbuilder participate? We’ve been collecting your questions all week for an FaQ, and now it’s time to answer them!

The Short and Sweet

Summer Camp’s our largest event of the year, consisting of 30 prompts of 300 words or more (called Duels) over the course of 30 days- beginning July 1st at midnight BST, and ending on July 31st at 23:59 BST; in short, it’s a completion challenge where the goal is to finish as many of the Duels as you can before the clock runs out.

And of course, like with all World Anvil competitions, there are badges! These badges will be awarded to participants by rank, based on how many prompts they submit valid entries for; participants will get a Copper badge for completing 10 Duels, Silver for 20, and a Gold badge if they complete all 30 prompts for the month.

But wait, because we’re not done! As a bonus, those that earn Gold badges will be entered into the grand prize raffle with over $750 worth of prizes- including the chance to win a lifetime World Anvil membership courtesy of DUNGEONFOG.com!

PRIZES:

A Lifetime World Anvil memberships, courtesy of DUNGEONFOG
Multiple 3 month World Anvil memberships, courtesy of DUNGEONFOG
Multiple 12 month World Anvil memberships, courtesy of DUNGEONFOG
Over $200 Worth of Dice Gift cards, courtesy of Tabletop Loot
10 x $30 Vouchers for PDF books from (and courtesy of) Modiphius
A signed copy of the Cthulhu Dark RPG
A signed copy of the Spire: City Must Fall RPG
Crystal Heart Comics, signed by Eran Aviram and Aviv
A copy of Wizards of the Coast’s 5e DnD Dungeon Masters Guide, signed by Satine Phoenix and Ruty Rutenburg
A set of secret dice with a very special message (to be revealed only to the person who wins them)

Additionally, Dimitris and Janet themselves will be making a few prizes to be given to Special Category winners; hearts (or likes) won’t factor into the winner selection for the primary competition, but they will factor into a secondary challenge: Community Favourite… So make sure to show your support for others- and share your articles with the community, whether through our Discord server, or all your favorite Social Media sites!

But I’m sure you still have many more questions, so without further ado, let’s answer some of them!

World Anvil Summer Camp FAQ

Do articles need to be written in English?

Absolutely not! World Anvil is a diverse site with community members all over the world- a great many of whom write in their native, non-English languages. A few of them even have two versions of their world… One in their native tongue, and one in English. So never be afraid of writing in your preferred language- it certainly won’t disqualify you from any of our competitions!

Do I have to answer 1 prompt every single day?

Not at all! The World Anvil Summer Camp challenge lasts until the end of July- and as Dimitris is fond of saying: “It’s a marathon, not a sprint”; take your time and answer the prompts at your leisure, in whatever order you wish… As long as you’ve given it your best shot and completed as many as you can by the end, that’s all that matters!

* Do I have to respond to prompts exactly as they’re written?

While each article you submit does need to use the required template and be relevant to the prompt in some manner? There’s absolutely no need to take the prompts at face value and respond to them directly as written.

In other words, feel free to take a little creative license and interpret each prompt as you see fit- whether that’s making the most expensive item in your world the most priceless one in existence, or making your scariest plague one that only one culture’s actually afraid of; this challenge is largely about worldbuilding and inspiration, so we encourage out of the box interpretation of the prompts and look forward to seeing what you come up with!

* Can one article cover multiple prompts?

Unfortunately they cannot; participants are limited to only one article per prompt, and only one prompt per article (though each article can still contain content that, realistically, may be applicable to multiple prompts). Anything else is an unofficial entry that can’t be submitted- or won’t be counted as a valid entry if it is submitted.

* Can my articles or world be private and still be eligible?

Due to World Anvil’s unique copyright policies, no user- staff, site creator, or otherwise- has access to the contents of private articles or Worlds that users submit to the site. This means no one can validate that these articles meet the competition guidelines. Additionally, the main point of this event is about sharing and inspiring.

For both reasons, as with all of our competitions, Articles and the Worlds they’re attached to have to be set as public in order to be counted as official entries. They also have to be published; you can submit WIPs (Works in Progress), but drafts don’t qualify either… So while you can do it all privately if you wish, it’s considered an unofficial entry and you won’t be eligible for badges or prizes. It would be grossly unfair to the rest of the competitors, otherwise.

But can I keep all of my articles private until the last two days of the competition?

Oh, you’re a cheeky one, aren’t you? We say go for it! As long as all of the entries are public and meet the guidelines when the challenge ends, your entries will be counted along with the rest… Just keep in mind that you might miss out on the “Community Favorite” portion of the challenge by doing so!

What happens if we don’t want to use the template for a particular prompt?

Our contest system will automatically show you a submission button any time an article hits or exceeds the 300 word minimum for entries, and that button will allow you to choose from the prompts the article qualifies for based on its template. Unfortunately, if you don’t use the required template for your article, the system won’t be able to correctly detect and submit your article, and it can’t be counted.

Don’t despair, though! If you have a submission but don’t enjoy the required template features? You can write your entire article in the Vignette area of the required Template instead, ignoring all the inbuilt Template features entirely… Plenty of users already do this outside of competition times when templates don’t meet all of their needs, they don’t enjoy the template’s native formatting, and many other reasons.

* What if we’ve already written about one of the topics before- or submitted one of the topics to a prior competition?

All of Summer Camp’s prompts are open to interpretation. So, sure, you might’ve already written about the scariest plague in your world for our PLAAAAAAGUE! competition this year- or you may have already covered the grandest location just because you could… But if you really can’t write about a different one for Summer Camp, try thinking about another direction you can come at this one from. Another option is to simply write about the next best thing; you’d be surprised how many different ways you can approach a single topic, even if you’ve already written about it before!

Unfortunately, though, articles can’t be submitted to more than one competition or challenge. So if you have an article you’d like to submit for Summer Camp, you won’t be able too if it was a submission for any prior competitions. But if the prompts the same, and you want to write about the same topic, try to get creative using the above suggestions!

What if I only write Fanfiction or Derivative works?

What kind of a site would we be if we offered our users a Fanfiction genre tag but excluded your beautiful writing from our competitions? The answer is not a very good one at all; fanfiction works still count like any other submission as long as they meet the 300 word minimum and are written using the correct template, don’t worry!

* Can I submit an already created article?

Yes and no… Yes you can submit either an existing article or a “placeholder”. However, we also encourage you to build upon your world. So if you have an existing article, that’s great! But we’d like to see everyone add at least 300+ more words before formal submission. This isn’t a hard and fast rule we expect everyone to abide by, though. It’s just something we’d appreciate you do in order to keep with the spirit of the competition!

Some of my stuff isn’t on World Anvil at all. Can I still submit it for the challenge?

Only articles submitted through World Anvil can be officially submitted into the contest. So while you can complete it outside of World Anvil if you wish? If you don’t submit it, then you won’t be eligible for badges or prizes.

I author more than one world, can I answer questions on both? What about co-authors on the same world?

The competition is judged per account, so each author will be counted individually- and independently of their Worlds; users should feel free to spread the prompts over any worlds they author (or co-author), without worrying about how it’ll effect their ranking… Just make sure you have the correct world selected before you click on the challenge page to submit an entry!

Will all the entries be listed on a public page like they have been in past competitions?

Yes! Users can click around on the Summer Camp homepage to view all the submitted responses to the prompts… Even better, each user has an individual progress page where they can check their own progress in the challenge by clicking the View my progress button on the Summer Camp homepage, too. You can even share your progress page with others!

We’ll continue to monitor community areas and update the FaQ as necessary, so check back in periodically to see any updates; we’ll keep you informed on what’s been added or modified through asterisks and italicized text in the FaQ section, so it’s easy for you to spot the changes.

So there you have it! Simple, right? Now head on over to the Summer Camp 2018 challenge page, check out the prompts, and get to writing! Don’t forget to return every now and then to check on your progress, though. We also have some amazing events coming up all month- including a nightly Twitch Livestream by Gorge, Mini Spotlights in our Discord Server, and weekly roundups here on the blog.

Keep your eyes peeled, and don’t miss out on the mad dash for the finish line!