This past month we’ve released a TON of major updates to make your worldbuilding experience even better! Plus, November is the month of writing (in NovelEmber)… and preparing for WorldEmber! Let’s look at everything new this month.
📁 Folders everywhere!
You can now organize EVERYTHING into folders! Images, timelines, maps, historical events—you name it. So whenever you access one of the side menus, you can have everything neat and tidy! Here’s a quick start:
- Click on a side menu (such as ⌛Timelines).
- At the bottom of the side panel, click “Add Folder”.
- With the folder created, drag and drop timelines into the folder!
Plus, you can have folders inside other folders for maximum folderception! Check how to use folders for more information!
📒 Notebook update
The Notebook is now more powerful than ever. Pull it down by clicking “Notebook” at the top without ever leaving the page. Organize your notes in sections, color-code them, and even split your thoughts into multiple notebooks. Plus, this update introduces advanced features like note metadata and note templates to take your note-taking to the next level! Check the guide to the notebook for details.
🖼️ Image Manager update
The Image Manager also got a MASSIVE upgrade! We’ve introduced folders (in addition to galleries), all image editing options are now better organized and accessible, and it’s more mobile-friendly than before. Check the guide to images for details!
📝 Article Manager and Interim Desktops
The new Article Manage is the new all-in-one solution to manage AND edit your articles and categories, as well as world settings, all from one place! Easily jump between articles, and toggle between view and edit mode, without waiting for page reloads or using the search. And, since this update integrates the functionality of the old world dashboard, that’s been replaced by Interim Desktops. There, you can find various widgets with useful information about your world—and is a sign of many cool features to come! We’re currently gathering a lot of feedback from the community and we already have a plan for many more improvements to these features based on your comments—keep an eye on the changelog for details!
Check the release blog for details, and the Learn guide for help!
Check out the Changelog page on World Anvil for the full changelog.
🗓️ November events
We have SO MANY THINGS going on this month! Here’s all our events for November!
- ✍️ NovelEmber: This month, we challenge you to write 50k words of prose… or go rebel and set your own goal! Check the challenge page.
- 🔥 WorldEmber Prep: WorldEmber is coming (our annual December worldbuilding marathon challenge, see last year’s event page here). But for this year’s WorldEmber prep, we have a NEW approach—bingo! Start preparing!
- 🎂 Birthday Celebration! World Anvil is turning 8 years old… on November 8th! Join the celebration on stream to celebrate with the community and get a sneak peek at the future of World Anvil. Follow us on Twitch!
- ✨ Community Day: this month’s World Anvil Community Day will be on November 15th! Here’s the programme:
- 🔥 Prep WorldEmber together! This is week 3 of WorldEmber Prep, so let’s check our progress and make sure everything’s ready for WorldEmber.
- 🎓 Sage Seminar: Preparing articles (and other work) for competitions. With WorldEmber and the Worldbuilding Awards drawing closer, this Seminar will be dedicated to preparing your world for competing! You’ll find the link in the Professional Portal.
Upcoming Events on World Anvil!
Here’s a list of our upcoming challenges and community events, to help you get ready:
- November:
- NovelEmber – write 50k in a month… or go rebel!
- Get ready for WorldEmber with WorldEmber Prep.
- December: WorldEmber is coming…
- January: Start a new year by setting achievable creative resolutions
All our challenges launch first on community live stream, so follow us on Twitch to get the news first!
📹 YouTube video round-up
Need a little push to improve your worldbuilding? Or want some advice from a professional worldbuilder? Here are our latest YouTube videos:
- How to make an in-world travel guide: Do your players dread travel decisions? Is you campaign’s down-time a real downer? With a little worldbuilding magic, travel guides can be a fantastic resource that helps engage players – and naturally work plot hooks into your game.
- Avoid “Deus Ex Machina” when worldbuilding technology: If all of your advanced sci-fi tech works flawlessly every time, you’re not just killing suspension of disbelief, you’re missing out on a metric butt-tonne of storytelling rocket fuel! Let’s explore the 2 ways too-perfect tech can undermine your story – and 6 tips to fix it!
- What is the columbian exchange? So much traditional cuisine would be unrecognizable to a native of the culture 500 years ago, because of what historians call “the Columbian Exchange.” And while this is an event heavy with real-world history – it’s also incredibly valuable for worldbuilders to study.
- There are only 4 types of worlds: There are literally thousands of subgenres in fiction… but only FOUR kinds of worlds. If you know which one you’re building, you’ll know exactly where to start, what you absolutely must figure out, and what you can leave for later.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay on top of all our latest videos.
🌟 Community highlight
This month we delve into the dark fantasy setting for Cathedris to feature the Relentless Advancement of the Veiled Academy, which won the Best Article 2025 award in the 5th Worldbuilding Awards! Delve into the hidden secrets of the Veiled Academy to enjoy a beautifully put-together article with a map and other interactive elements.
Here’s what Stormbril, the author, had to say about this fantastic piece of worldbuilding and his creative work:
Cathedris is just about 6 years old now, which is just wild to think about. It seems both too short and too long of a timespan for this project of mine—so much has happened, and there’s so much more I want to do. An often repeated fact is how it relates to my love for architecture, and I can now say that Cathedris helped get me into, through, and out of architecture school.
Which, I think, ties perfectly into the Veiled Academy haha. It’s no secret that architecture school is brutal, and that’s something I really leaned into as inspiration for the Veiled Academy. With a lot of embellishments to amp up the secrecy and difficulty, as well as danger, to truly fit the world of Cathedris. I’ve always loved good academic conspiracy stories, secret societies, and shadowed horrors, so I took great delight in trying to really tie those concepts into my own personal experiences. I’m still working on my own character writing skills as well (and always will be), so having the opportunity to create a very colourful cast of students and faculty was one of my favourite parts of this. I found I even got into writing the academy itself as a character in some portions, too!
As always, I love the Worldbuilding Awards. Healthy competition drives me to try new things, to improve my skills, and to do the best I can. I will always enjoy pushing myself as best I can. I still always feel imposter syndrome, but I think that’s a good thing. I’d love to leave off with a quote from my supervisor at work when I mentioned to her that I felt imposter syndrome in my role: “I just want you to know that I, after all these years, still feel that too. But, I’ve been redefining how I think about it—to me, it’s a positive feeling, because it means I’m in a place where I’m growing, pushing my own boundaries, and slightly escaping my own comfort zone. I see it as a feeling of learning rather than a feeling of not belonging.”
So push your own boundaries, escape your comfort zone, and go build some amazing worlds!
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