FAQ

Make your free account on World Anvil, create a world, and get writing! The website will automatically track your word count progress.

Nope! Check the rules! Words written in articles only. Any words written in timelines, RPG blocks, maps, notes, secrets or historical events DO NOT count towards your total wordcount.

The leaderboard information refreshes periodically to prevent it from creating lag on the website. Check back in an hour or so and it will have updated! In the meantime, why don't you GO WORLDBUILD?!

Verbatim copying of previously done work (even your own!) is not in the spirit of the competition, but expanding on previous work - for example, creating a book bible extrapolated from the first draft of a novel - is just fine.

Nope! Wordcount is per author, so you can write across as many worlds as you like!

Multiple co-authors can write in a single world; their word counts are accumulated based on individual user, not the world they write in.

You can increase the visibility of your articles by sharing them on Social Media - remember to hashtag #WorldEmber and the official World Anvil Social Media may share your post! Remember that your fans will need a free World Anvil account in order to like your article and show their love! Like-boosting through alternate/multi accounts will disqualify you from any prizes you might otherwise have won.

The winners will be announced at the WorldEmber 2020 Awards Ceremony stream, a special live-streamed Awards Ceremony on our Twitch - www.twitch.tv/worldanvil. The projected date for this is in January 2021. If you can't tune in live, you can watch on VoD, or read the partner blog that we release which will contain a full list of usernames of all the winners! We will keep you updated on our Discord and social media nearer the time!

Once the Awards Ceremony has taken place and all the winners have been announced, we will start the process of giving out the badges. World Anvil has over 1,000,000 users, though, so this might take a minute! Please be patient!

The prize winners will be announced at the WorldEmber 2020 Awards Ceremony and also listed on a blog post. This will probably be in January 2021, but we'll confirm this nearer the time. If you have won a prize, you have two weeks to email your World Anvil username, name, email address and full international postal address (double-check it!) to [email protected] (Due to GDPR regulations we destroy all information after use, so even if you've won a previous competition we will need your address again!)
If you do not claim the prize within the allotted time, it will be distributed at World Anvil's discretion.

Most of the WorldEmber prizes are donated by our amazing sponsors, and they are the ones responsible for shipping your gifts! Once we have your details, we pass those on to the sponsor, and the sponsor will fulfill delivery within a month. So, six weeks or so after the prizes are announced, you should have your prize! If by then you still haven't received something, we can you provide you their contact details for any further questions.

Articles need to be public in order for the word count to be updated, and also for our team to be able to check for any cheating.

After the Awards Ceremony, yes! If you make your articles private or delete them before the ceremony has taken place, you may forfeit your digital badge or your prize, as our team will be unable to check your work for cheating.

Well, aren't you awesome for asking! All our sponsorships are full for this event, but if you are interested in becoming a sponsor for one of our future events, let us know at [email protected]!

All eligible words are automatically counted by the World Anvil platform. You don’t need to do anything except write them!

To take part, simply write an article using the specified template. A shortlist of the top 10 articles - as judged by community favorites - will be submitted to the judge of the competition, which is almost always the sponsor of that special category. The judge will choose the winner at their own discretion, by their own means. There is a maximum word count limit on special category articles. If your article exceeds 5,000 words it will not be counted in the shortlist. Even with this limit, the judge would potentially have to read up to 50,000 words of worldbuilding to pick a winner!

Each special category is sponsored or bestowed by an individual or company (check the details further up the page). The judge may or may not have a prize for the special category, but each one has a unique badge to win. The top 10 articles by most likes (not including multiple entries from the same user) are checked for cheating & plagiarism by the World Anvil team. The shortlist of articles is then passed to the judge, who will pick a sole winner at their discretion and own judging criteria. The judge of the Special Category will have until 21st January to make their decision. If they are unable to do so in that time frame, the World Anvil Team will adjudicate for them.

The Human of the Match is a competitor with a good community spirit who has (usually) ranked high in several categories, and has really captured the community spirit of WorldEmber. They may be a prolific commenter, have a team spirit, and concentrate on lifting up other competitors and furthering the art of worldbuilding rather than their own private goals - basically, a great human. This award is given at the World Anvil Team’s discretion.

Yep! As stated above the special categories section - only your most liked article is the one that will be judged if you are in the top 10 of that category. If it looks like an individual is taking up all of the top 10 slots, that's not the case!

We love trying out new things, and this is one of them! Last year we had a channel on our Discord server, but it required heavy moderation. With over 15,000 users in the Discord at the time, it needed round the clock surveillance. We want to try out Reddit as an easier format to use and to encourage people to share their worldbuilding online!