Browsing the Worlds of the Anvil
Writers are encouraged to be readers. We are encouraged to read a lot, good works and bad. And not only of our particular pet genre. Likewise with worldbuilding. Not only do you get great ideas, but it expands your possibilities and maybe you will even find people who have similar interests.
To browse for other worlds, start by clicking on the "COMMUNITY" tab above. You'll see something like this:
Now let's pick a category of interest. Hmmm...saaaay... Informational!
You will see a bunch of tasty morsels to choose from.
That is all there is to it if you want to find worlds in those genres.
Q: How does World Anvil know what genre my world is?
A: It doesn't. Well, like most H.A.L. 9000 series artificially intelligent machines, you have to tell it to do something first. Each world you create, you can assign up to five genres to your world. That gives World Anvil the information. So the next time you search by genre, you can find it playing with all of the others in its field.
To assign genres, head over to your world's ⚙ CONFIGURATION tab link.
Right there on the BASIC tab, past the description of your world is the place where you can assign your genre. There are many to choose from, and five is a fair number to give it more complexity.
Note, though, that there isn't really a definition of what each genre "should be". Personally, I think that's well and good because the author should be the one to decide rather than, say, Amazon's marketing department. But that also means that you may disagree with whatever genre others assign their worlds. Well, as one common saying suggests: "Your mileage may vary"...
Alrighty, then...I'll leave you to discovering a multi-Multiverse of awesome sauce.
by Shaudawn
Good luck, have fun, "light up the Forge", etc.
I know I read in one of your worlds about stars and planets and what not but I couldn't find it. Probably because of a massive sleep debt. All I need to know is if there is a way to have a sun like star plus two moons and have 36 hour days. I don't plan to go into great detail but I made a creation myth for Autauga and I took one single astrophysics course as an undergrad and apparently whatever I learned disappeared through a black hole. I want to live in a world where there are 36 hour days. But I don't want to make a really ridiculous statement. I think one can possibly get away with a little latitude for what I'm writing about but in the most basic way, would it take something terribly hard to have 36 hour days? I can always change the creation myth to something different. It was a summer camp prompt. I hope it's not being too rude to ask you to do the hard work for me. Haha. If it is, I understand. One of my DM's was an astrophysics major and if I ask him our game will be delayed for at least an hour. He lives in Toronto and says, "right?" all the time. I don't know why I said that. Exhaustion. Any advice at all is appreciated.
It is definitely possible to have a sun-like star, two moons, and a planet with 36 hours per day. The consideration becomes more of a problem of the planet's atmosphere, climate and temperature than astrophysics. Years--orbital periods around stars--need to be mindful of the star, the planet, their masses and distance from one another. Days--how fast the planet spins--is more about the planet. The moons do play a part, but often to a much lesser degree. I would say that if you want to be mindful of Autauga's climate, 18 hours of sunlight and 18 hours of darkness may need a bit of consideration. You're going to have more dramatic temperature swings as your day goes on, so perhaps a planet with a bit more thermal insulation (often, more cloud cover) is an option. Or--as a recent guest of theirs once said about science fiction mentioned--sometimes just leaving out details allows our imaginations to fill in the gaps without breaking that suspension of belief. Let me know if you want hard numbers, though. I've got a program (that I really need to get onto my website...) that can calculate those for worldbuilders.
What you said here is really helpful. The main consideration for me is that when someone reads (if someone ever does) that there are 2 moons, etc., they don't immediately respond with 'rubbish!' and quit reading. I confess I've done that myself but only when the subject is something I know more about than the author. It doesn't happen that often but it happens enough that I had to consider it. I don't have to have 36 hours in Autauga; I probably shouldn't even mention how many hours are in the day. It's simply my own fantasy - wishing that there were 36 hours in a day so I could get more stuff done. But then when you parsed that down to 18 hours of darkness and 18 hours of light, I realized that 36 hours might be too much. :)