The World At Hand: The Elyssom Update

What the heck are you thinking?!

I'm thinking that the people around me deserve my best work. That the people of the World Anvil server are cheering me on from their keyboards. That my players deserve a world as fantastic as their characters. That I deserve to put the work in because I deserve a beautiful world for a story I want to tell. There's nothing functionally wrong with the way Elyssom currently exists by any stretch of the imagination... heck, it's currently 80+ articles strong with a couple of followers (which is more than I ever expected when I started my account on World Anvil). But it could be bigger, better, and more inspiring. And so... I want to dedicate the rest of 2026 to creating and overhauling Elyssom to be something I'm proud of showing off to the World Anvil community. I want it to be something my players get excited to show off when they tell people they play D&D and that I'm their GM. Selfishly, I want bragging rights.

Current Stats:

• 8 Categories (two with at least one Sub Category)
• 24,826 words
• 2 followers
• 7 likes
• 91 articles

Tracking My Progress

21 March 2026

Okay first off, I've created this article so consider this my official kick-off my personal challenge. I've added a whole host of new Categories and have moved my existing articles into the appropriate folder. I'm sure the organization will change over and as I learn what works for my brain (and my players brains).

I added a "Start Here" category to catch worldwide lore and information as well as to hold a world primer... once I have one of those. Yes - I'm a year into a campaign and never made a Primer for my players. Be nice, it's my first time running a campaign.

I moved my "Organizations" and "Locations" categories into a new "World Encyclopedia" category. The encyclopedia includes several new categories - "Fauna & Flora", "Deities & Religions", "Ethnicities & Cultures", "Magic, Science, & Technology", and "Commerce & Trade". If there are no articles in a category right now, I've marked it as private so I don't clutter my page. The categories of "Lore" and "Characters" simply no longer exist. Characters have been re-distributed to their home city (with minimal exceptions). Lore was probably the hardest one to redistribute but I landed on some decision making rules:

1. If the lore applies to all of Elyssom, it goes in the "Start Here" category.
2. If the lore deals with a religion, God, Angel, or Demon, it goes in "Deities & Religions > Religions".
3. If the lore is regional, it goes in "Locations" under the correct region/city.

I also renamed the "Meta" category as it was less actual world meta and just stuff I'm working on as the Creator™. So it is now more aptly named "Behind the Scenes". If you've found this article, you probably have the gist of what this section is - my attempts at engaging with the community and documenting my experience with World Anvil. I'm considerably less of a camera based personality and prefer to take my chances on paper... so here on my thoughts, on paper, as I build the world my players, the WA community, and I deserve.

04 April 2026

The latest session report (Session 16: Cultists and Coffee) went live today after my party's latest session yesterday. But that's not the most exciting part or why I'm writing this update. I started an HTML & CSS "course" (aka a YouTube series) and downloaded a free coding software to help make this more manageable. Within a few hours (rabbit holes, perfectionism, and maybe some possible ADHD sprinkled in), I have successfully changed the backgrounds of the world! I even started playing around with fonts though I suspect those will take much more fiddling and tweaking before I'm happy with them.

Did I skip around the tutorials I watched to get the information I needed? Absolutely. Did I also search up some of my favorite worlds and inspect their pages to figure out how to do the font? ABSOLUTEY. While I could have easily just asked for help, I went to one of my "default inspiration" worlds that I knew used a different font and eventually found what I was looking for (special shoutout to Mochimanoban and the phenomenal world of the Yonderverse).

I expected the feeling of overwhelm with learning a new thing but I definitely did not expect the constant fear of potentially somehow breaking rules even though I'm cross-referencing everything learned in the video course with the Codex and Learn modules here on WA. Anyway - here's to breaking things, putting them back together, and learning something along the way.

Here's what Elyssom looks like after today's CSS changes:

The To Do List

Reorganize Categories
Complete Worldbuilding 101 for the current region my players are exploring
Re-write World Introduction/Elevator Pitch
Update appearance with CSS
Write articles from my New Year 2026 list
Explore Maps & Chronicles!