Getting started guide

At its core, World Anvil is a tool to help you organize your creative process. As such, this is not a definitive guide on how you should use World Anvil, but rather what you can do.

First steps

After creating your account, you will be given the choice of either creating a new world or a new character. If you have created an account specifically to play in a campaign, you should choose the character option. Otherwise, choose Create my world (choose this option if you are game master too). This will take you to the world creation and the character creation pages, respectively.
For more information on how to create a character, please see the following guide:
Otherwise, create the world and keep reading for an overview of the World Anvil's layout.

The Dashboard

Whenever you click the World Anvil logo at the top left corner you will access the Dashboard:

The top bar has a row of buttons to navigate to different parts of the interface and search box to look up your world's content. The Discover button will let you check public content from other World Anvil users, as well as the current and past challenges, the faeture suggestion board, and more community-related pages.
The sidebar contains links to various parts and tools of World Anvil (keep reading for more information on them). Clicking your world name will open a drop-down you can use to switch between the worlds, characters, and campaign you have created. Under the world name there is a Continue working... box; click it to go to the last article you were editing.
The central section of the page has a stream of the latest blog entries. You can visit our blog at blog.worldanvil.com! The right sidebar shows the most recent video from our YouTube channel. At the top, there's a menu bar with several tabs to check out other news from the community and your own content.

World dashboard

When you click the Dashboard option in the left sidebar, you will get to the dashboard specific for your active world.

The central part of the page has three sections. The left side has the world search, in the middle there's the list of article templates, and the right has other tools for the world.

Search and preview

The search and preview feature lets you search, view, and make quick edits to your world's content, all from within the dashboard. Simply type in the search bar, and any results from articles, maps, notebooks, and more will appear (for Guild members, it searches the article contents too, not just the title). Alternatively, you can use the category tree and press the article you want to view.
For more information on this feature, check this guide:

Stats

At the bottom of the page, Guild members have stats about the world. Journeymen and Masters see four numbers: total number of comments, likes, articles, and followers. Grandmasters and above tiers see these stats plus a graphic with the daily evolution, which includes some additional stats like views and word count.

Creation menu

In the middle, you have the list of available article templates. In World Anvil, all articles are created using a template (for example, religion is an organisation template, a person is a character template, etc.). If you click any of the buttons, you will access the article editor.

Statblock creation

If you click the Statblock section, you'll see buttons to create RPG statblocks:

Note that you will only see this section if you have selected Dungeons & Dragons 5e as your world's RPG system. You can still create blocks with other systems, see the Guide to Blocks for more information.

Creation of other content

In the Other tab you have links to create maps, timelines and historical entries, and secrets. Check their respective guides for more information.

Right panels

The right side of the world dashboard has these panels, from top to bottom:

• Continue working: The last five articles you edited will appear there so that you can get right back to work!
• Get inspired: this displays a random worldbuilding prompt that you can answer. See the Guide to Prompts for more information.
• To-do list: it will be generated automatically every time you create a link to an article that doesn't exist. It contains all links to unexisting articles as well as articles created using the purple inkwell button. More information in the Guide to the to-do list.
• World meta progress: this displays the completion progress of your world meta, as well as buttons to edit and view it.

Sidebar

The sidebar changes its contents depending on what you have active. When you have an active world, it looks like the example on the left. These are its options:

• Dashboard: go to the world dashboard
• View World: view the world from presentation mode
• Articles: see the Guide to the Articles & Categories Manager
• Maps: see the Guide to Maps
• Timelines: see the Guide to Timelines
• Images: see the Guide to Images
• Statblocks: see the Guide to Statblocks
• Secrets: see the Guide to Secrets
• Calendars: see the Guide to Calendars
• Content trees: see the Guide to Content trees
• Tables: see the Guide to tables
• Variables: see the Guide to Variables
• Discussion boards: see the Guide to Discussion Boards
• Player characters: lists the player characters invited to the world. See the Guide to Character Creation
• Manuscripts: see the Guide to Manuscripts

Note that your subscription level (or lack of thereof) will change the options available to you in the sidebar.

RPG Campaigns

If you want to use World Anvil as a campaign manager, create your first campaign. To do it, find the Your Campaigns tab in the global dashboard (click the World Anvil logo on the top left corner) and then click the Create a new Campaign button you'll find on the right. See the Introduction to Campaigns for more details.

Character Profiles

If you have been using Heroes (or want to start using it) to create and manage characters that live in your world, you can use the drop-down on top of the left sidebar to get a list of them and switch between them. Take a look at the Guide to character creation and Guide to character interaction for more information!

The community

Homepage

A big part of World Anvil is its community, which mainly lives on Discord but is also important in the site itself. The community homepage can be accessed from the Discover menu at the top. You can use it to see the latest and most popular articles, published manuscripts, random generators, and more. You can also suggest features for the site or vote on open suggestions, and participate in worldbuilding challenges. If you are in need of inspiration, this page is an amazing resource to see what your fellow worldbuilders are working on!

Stream

Lists updates for characters you follow or for a sampling of global characters.

Challenges

A list of challenges from present to past for World Anvil members to participate in. The newest/active ones are listed at the top.

Followed Worlds

A list of worlds you follow. When the creators of these worlds push notifications you will find them in the notification (bell) menu.

Your Reading List

Articles that you clicked on to add to your reading list. Great for saving things to read later or just plain cool stuff!

Settings

Allows you to modify aspects for your account.

FAQ

AARRGGHHH MY EYES!!

Don't worry, we've got a dark theme! Go to your interface settings (click on your profile picture at the top right corner for the link) and choose Villains as a theme. Guides are made with the light theme (called Heroes) because it's default one, but the layout is the same, only colors are different.

Is a world really a world?

Your "worlds" in World Anvil can contain multiple planets and solar systems (which is pretty common for SciFi settings, for example).

How do I delete X?

Delete buttons are generally found in the configuration page (in the case of world and campaigns) or the edit page (articles, images, maps, etc.).

Where is the template for X?

Sometimes, you want to create something that doesn't exactly fit one of the predefined templates. Keep in mind that templates are guidelines, not rules. Take a look at different templates and think which is the template with text fields that fit the article you want to create better.

Why did all my content disappear or go wonky?

Sometimes, after you save an article and view it from the presentation view, everything looks weird. If that has happened to you, check for unclosed tags. For example, if you have a [row], make sure that you close it with [/row] at the end of the row!

Is there a way to see what articles link to a specific article?

This feature is for Master of the Guild and above ranks.

If I change the title of an Article, do links to that Article need to be fixed?

The links will still work, but the old title will be displayed in the links instead of the new one.

Can I export my work?

You will find an "Export article" box in every article's edit page (bottom of the sidebar). This will export the article to PDF format in a printer-friendly version.

Can I make an entire article or world private?

This feature is for Journeymen of the Guild and above ranks.

How do I add a subscriber or a co-author to my world?

This feature is for Journeymen of the Guild and above ranks.

I found a bug or I miss a feature and I think it should be added!

Great! Go to the general Help page of World Anvil (accessible from the footer of any page) and click the "Report a bug" or "Suggest a feature". Your World Anvil login details will NOT automatically work, and you'll need to create a new account with the third-party bug-tracking system, since it uses an external platform (Jira).

This is too basic, I want more information about something!

Check out the following list of guides in this Codex! You can also join our Discord server, where we have a dedicated help channel

Other guides

Finding your workflow

If you're looking for a good worldbuilding workflow, check out our getting started guides on the blog!

1. Set up your world's meta
2. Organize your world with categories
3. Create and set up your map
4. Record your world's history with timelines
5. Use themes to customize how your world looks

Example worlds

If you're looking for some examples of the types of worlds that can be created on World Anvil, this community resource has many different types of world: