World Anvil News: October 2024

The spooky season is upon us—and with it, a new challenge to spook up your world! 👻 We have new major features to introduce, and we’ll reveal details about the Worldbuilding Awards later in the month too, including some major changes from last year! Here are all the details.

📝 UI upgrades

We’ve upgraded the quick create/edit processes and secrets and generally tweaked the interface to make everything faster and more optimized—all based on your feedback! Here are some of the changes:

If you create an article using the Hammer button, the quick create interface will now be larger to give you more space for your creativity!
The new quick create modal is also available for editing when you open an article from the Search bar AND from the Article Management interface.
Secrets now use an edit modal too, so they’re way easier and quicker to create and edit!

And if you’re a Grandmaster+, you’ve probably already seen the notification that SOMETHING is available for testing now. 👀 That should be coming out for everyone later this month, too. (Not an Alchemist yet? Find out how to join the alchemists here)

For the full details, check the release blog post!

🤫 Feature improvement: revealed secrets

Secrets got an upgrade to make them more flexible! In detail…

You can now set a secret as “public”, which basically means that you can very easily reveal secrets to your players or readers!
If you have RPG features enabled, you’ll also have a box for GM secrets that will always stay private, even if the secret as a whole is public.
For Grandmasters of the Guild, you can also set a custom CSS class for the secret to give it a unique look.

To see all these features, just edit any secret in your world! Check the guide to secrets for more information.

🎲 New character sheets!

Thanks to the amazing Tillerz, we have two more systems with character sheets on World Anvil!

Edge of the Empire. Jump on a spaceship with your droid and Chewbacca friends to explore the worlds of a galaxy far, far away! (click for an example)
Alternity (1999 edition). This is a flexible d20 system designed for sci-fi and space campaigns (although it’s flexible enough to be used in multiple technology eras). It lends itself beautifully to space opera, military sci-fi, and exploration-focused campaigns but it has somewhat realistic lethality… so don’t get shot! (click for an example!)

Alternity Character Sheet

Edge of the Empire character sheet

You can use these sheets with our campaign manager to run your campaign on World Anvil. And check the guide to statblocks for more information about creating sheets!

Check out the Changelog page on World Anvil for the full changelog.

🗓️ October events

We have several awesome events this month!

😱 Spooktober: This month’s challenge is Spooktober! Answer at least 13 one-word prompts before October 26th and get the participation badge. Learn more in the challenge page!
✨ Community Day: every third Saturday of the month (19th October, this month!) is World Anvil Community Day! Here’s the programme:
- 🎓 Seasonal Sales: a group round table discussion (5pm UK/9am Pacific): Join this Sage roundtable to discuss with other professional worldbuilders how to deal with seasonal sales! Find the link in the Professional Portal (Sages only).
- 🙌 “Is that a Monster?” Supernatural and Horror worlds (6pm UK/10am Pacific): Join us as we chat with Anvilites Daeni and Ademal about creating dark worlds on World Anvil!
- ☕ Inner Sanctum Coffee: if you’re a member of the Inner Sanctum, keep your eyes peeled for this month’s Coffee details on Discord!

📚 NovelEmber is coming in November!

In response to community requests, we’ll be running a NovelEmber event this November. We’ll challenge you to write 50,000 words of prose to win a badge and a certificate! We’ll also be running some prep events over October for this—more details will follow soon!

🎥 September YouTube round-up

Our YouTube channel is back! Here are all the videos that we released this month—check them out for tips, inspiration, and advice to power up your worldbuilding!

Urban fantasy for worldbuilding: this genre isn’t just about fantasy in a city—there’s also a bunch of tropes that you can use or subvert in your story.
Sword & sorcery worldbuilding… and how is it different from epic fantasy? Slash and spellcast your way to a more exciting sword & sorcery world!
What is the Tiffany Problem? Hint: it’s related to names! Learn how to give your characters names that feel appropriate to the setting!
Romantasy worldbuilding: what’s the difference between romantic fantasy and fantasy romance?

What’s the Tiffany problem in fantasy? How can you create a good Sword & Sorcery setting? These are just some of the newest videos on our YouTube channel. Check it out now for tips, inspirations, and advice to power up your worldbuidling!

🌟 Community highlight

This month’s highlight is After Silence, a dark and unforgiving fantasy setting in which demon hordes tried to destroy the world, and now humanity struggles to survive. Here’s what Hatwolf, the creator of the world, had to say:

With After Silence, I aim to tell the stories of archetypes often seen as ‘outcasts,’ ‘villains,’ or ‘wicked’ in traditional fantasy worlds—like witches, monsters, and cursed beings. These are characters I’ve always identified with more deeply than the heroes in shining armor. My goal is to create a world where their voices are heard, their experiences shared. Building this world as a freelance artist and writer is a challenging, but the recognition of being voted Best Newcomer on World Anvil meant everything to me—it’s a huge encouragement to keep going.

This world won the Best Newcomer 2024 award, and it truly deserves it! So if you’re looking to dive into an immersive dark fantasy world, check out After Silence now!