Patreon is an awesome platform for creatives to monetize their work, and World Anvil is a GREAT way to deliver your exclusive Patreon ideas and content in a beautiful way! Last year we released Sage, our professional Guild tier, designed especially for professional indie creators. However, if you have a smaller audience or you’re just starting out, you don’t need to go full Sage — the Grandmaster rank is more than enough! In this post (first of a series of three) we’ll help you get your world set up for Patreon supporter rewards with just the Grandmaster tier, and share our Patreon ideas too!
The set-up process of World Anvil for Patreon is super simple. Create Subscriber Groups – one group for each Patreon Tier. Next, add your Patreons themselves, and define which tier(s) they have access to. Finally, add your exclusive content to your Subscriber Groups, so your supporters can see your amazing work! Sounds simple enough, right? Let’s unpack that!
Subscriber groups
Here’s how to create a new subscriber group!
On World Anvil, you can control who can read secret or exclusive content with Subscriber Groups and Subscriber Slots! You can use your subscriber slots for whatever you like – playtesters, beta-readers or customers. But if you have a Patreon, the smart thing to do is give each of your Patreon supporters a subscriber slot! As a Grandmaster, you get 20 subscriber slots, but by the end of June this will be raised to 50! And if your Patreon is bigger than that, no worries – Sages get 1000 subscriber slots, and we can arrange for more too! You can choose which information each Patreon supporter can see by assigning subscriber groups! Here’s how to do it!
First, create a subscriber group, which you can do from the Access rights link on the left sidebar. (Pst! You can check out a video tutorial for all this here!) Click on Groups, fill in the text fields, and click the Create Group button. For Patreon creators, we suggest you create one subscriber group for each of your Patreon Tiers.
Once you’ve made your groups, it’s time to add your Patreon Supporters as Subscribers! Simply use the Add subscriber to group(s) panel and enter their World Anvil username —after you click the Add subscriber button, they will be able to see any exclusive content that you set as visible for their group. Just a note – your Patreons will need a World Anvil account – a free one is fine – so that the system knows who they are. If you have a Sage membership, you can also mass-add by email address list, ideal for bigger Patreons!
And adding a subscriber to the group is just as easy!
Now you’ve assigned your Patreons to Subscriber Slots, and given them access to their Subscriber Groups… So it’s time to add some content to those groups! Let’s get to that now!
Exclusive content
There are two ways to share exclusive content with your Patreons or subscribers. On one hand, you can share whole pieces of content, like complete articles, maps, and timelines, exclusively with your Patreon supporters. On the other hand, you can add snippets and fragments of exclusive content into articles that are public to everyone. The general public will be able to read what you’ve made public, but your subscribers will be able to see secrets, details, and other extra content! Both methods are very straight-forward.
In order to make a complete article exclusive to a subscriber group, you need to make it private first. Find the Access tab in the article’s editing interface and choose Private in the visibility drop-down. Then, select one of the Subscriber Groups you’ve made. Maps, timelines, categories, and other content types have similar drop-downs too.
Making the article exclusive to a single subscriber group is quick and easy!
To add a snippet of exclusive content in a other-wise public article, use the subgroups feature. This is a BBCode tag that makes everything inside it visible to a subscriber group only. Go to the access rights page and copy the group’s tag (see gif below), paste it in your article, and replace Add_your_content_here for the exclusive content:
And making only parts of the article exclusive to your subscribers is also pretty easy.
Subgroups are a feature for Grandmasters and above ranks. If you are a Master or Journeyman, you can use secrets instead. Check out the Codex guide to secrets for more information!
By the way, you can also make elements on a map (pins, marker groups, layers) and historical entries within a timeline exclusively available to your Patreon Supporters. This is an amazing way to share secrets and tantalizing tidbits about your world with your supporters! Just make those elements private, and then assign subscriber groups to them. You’ll find subscriber group settings in the edit forms of all pieces of content on World Anvil!
Questions and more Patreon Ideas?
Have more questions about how to set up your world for your Patreons? Hop on over to the Discord (www.worldanvil.com/discord) and ask in our guild EXCLUSIVE help channel for immediate help! You can throw comments into this post too, but replies will slower.
If you want CONTENT ideas for your Patreon, then you’re in luck! The next posts on this topic will be focused on different kinds of content you can reward your Patreon supporters with!
World Anvil for RPG creators
There are several ways for you to monetize your RPG content, exclusive races, classes, mechanics, stat blocks, GM secrets, and more! Check out the dedicated post!
World Anvil for writers
On the flip side, if you are a writer, there are also many ways to monetize your world, and create quick content your supporters will love! Check out this post packed with ideas!
So, how are you using World Anvil with Patreon? Share your ideas in the comments!
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