This month, instead of running our own challenge with spotlighting, you guys! Yes, March 2024 is Unofficial Challenge month!

What’s an Unofficial Challenge?

If you’ve been part of the World Anvil Community for a while, you’ve probably seen that we’ve run challenges and competitions for our community. You can see all of our past challenges here.

But from time to time our community members like to run their own challenges. This challenges can vary a lot. Sometimes they are competitions with prizes, but very often they’re more along the lines of participation challenges. 

New to World Anvil? Read this handy Guide to the Community! 

Taking part in Unofficial Challenges

There are plenty of reasons to take part in an unofficial challenge. First, of course, is if a prompt resonates with you or is useful for what you’re working on right now . That’s a great way to get more worldbuilding done! Reading other’s entries will also help inspire you, and even teach you about World Anvil! 

And taking part in an unofficial challenge is also a great way to connect with the community. From global posts, to website comments, to livestreams and the Discord / Reddit / Facebook group, challenges of all kinds give you something in common, and a great reason to strike up conversation with a fellow worldbuilder!

Some unofficial challenge creators also work to create badges and even occasionally give prizes for their challenges.

Finding Unofficial Challenges to partiicpate in!

Most Unofficial Challenges will be findable on this page – along with other global posts using the hashtag #Unofficial Challenge. You should also be able to find some in the comments of this blog!

Unofficial Challenges are run exclusively by the community, not by us. That said, if you see something you think is problematic, please flag it using the report button on the website! 

How to run an unofficial challenge

There are a tonne of great prompts, themes and ideas for unofficial challenges, and several ways to run one! One of the most common is to create an article for the challenge, and have people comment with their entries. The most popular challenges leave some flexibility for worldbuilders to take part regardless of genre, or whether they’re game masters, novelists or something else.

Here’s a few great examples of unofficial challenges in our community:

If you’ve chosen to run an unofficial challenge this month, make sure it’s discoverable! 

So, are you planning on running, or taking part in any Unofficial Challenges? Let me know in the comments! <3