WorldEmber 2025

Perhaps this year will be the one that sticks again?

— Ynix, again

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Pledge

Like always, the goal is 10,000 words of fresh worldbuilding. This year's different from previous years in that I'm back to being a Dungeon Master after many unplanned years away. Last year I got a few thousand words done, which is better than previous years, so even if I get 5,000 words, it'll be more than last year and I'll count that as a win!

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The bingo card this year is pretty cool! I've picked the highlighted column for my prep, as well as participating in NovelEmber to get the campaigns (you know, the things that started this whole worldbuilding spree?)

Author Page

"WorldEmber is a great moment to share your work with the community! Since you might get more readers than usual, make sure your user profile on World Anvil has everything you want other people to know about you (such as social links, a brief introduction, etc)"

So this started... a bit of a rabbit hole. I decided I wanted a new cover image for my profile which led to me remaking... basically all the cover images for Chardovil. They turned out nice though so I'm happy about that! I've been putting it off for a while so I'm counting it as time well-spent.

Scope

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Defining a realistic scope is essential to avoid burn-out. Your area of focus should be well-defined and something you're excited to work on. Within that area, think about what you want to write about exactly, and how deep you want your worldbuilding to be.

Okay I had to spend an hour yapping to talk myself to a solution here, but I think I finally got my thoughts in order. We're just going to pretend I had it figured out this whole time okay?

So I've won WorldEmber twice before life lifed all over the place and broke my stride. Naturally, given it's been about 3 years since I've won a WorldEmber, that got me wondering what I did right previous years. I'm taking a slightly different approach to the "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" strat I've used in previous years. But restricting myself to just the articles in those tags will likely result in failure, even though there are plenty of articles to go around. So I'm giving myself permission to follow any interesting ideas and/or articles that spin off of my work on the main organizations. Hopefully this'll give me both the structure and the flexibility to hit 10k!

My last win was 3 years ago now...

"Hey EldritchWifeRiteburn... you bored?"

— Me, realizing I didn't tag my stubs

Reading

Reading is a great way to both get inspired and learn from other storytellers. Read a book and write down your favorite parts and how they might inspire your worldbuilding in WorldEmber!

Okay okay, I confess: I mostly spent this time reading fanfic, old character development with friends, and watching Critical Role. But I think it counts! I got a fair amount of inspiration! Especially from that last one! Campaign Four of Critical Role has me in a chokehold and even as Brennan Lee Mulligan drags me through the dirt of this ride, I will thank him for it!

Campaign Four's Sundered Houses and what little I know about the Gate to Faerie has given me so many notes about the Ashijan noble houses beyond just the bullet points I've had in my notebook for ages, so I think Ashijan and its nobility will be where I start! And for the sake of spoilers, I'll leave it there.

Article List

What do you want to write about? Don't start writing yet, but make a list of new article titles and specific topics you want to write about! This is especially important if you need some time to come up with ideas, so you can focus on just writing during WorldEmber.

As stated above, the plan is to focus on Organizations in Chardovil! Thankfully, EldritchWifeRiteburn did me a huge favor and tagged all the stubs I forgot to tag under this window, so I'll have a solid list to start with!

Since I've archived large sections of my old worldbuilding when I started moving Chardovil to be system-agnostic, I have a lot of articles with some structure and contents that are well overdue an update and conversion, and I figured now's a great time to kill two birds with one stone! I'll be fleshing out long-neglected articles regarding the nations of Chardovil, as well as the various organizations, business, and religions that make it up. It gives me a very diverse subject matter to write about, as well as an even wider subject matter to chase as various rabbit holes open up.

Articles

As I finish articles for WorldEmber on this list, they will turn red with links directly to them! Bold text are articles that have been created but are incomplete for the duration of WorldEmber.

Nations Guilds Businesses Faiths

Join The Community

Few things are as motivating as fellow worldbuilders cheering you on! Join the WorldEmber community on our Discord server and introduce yourself! Share your progress and see what others are writing about.

Is this one cheating if I've been in the World Anvil discord since 2020? Oh well. Around challenge season, I tend to become more active in the discord anyways, doing stuff like updating my server name to reflect my current word count, posting articles and maps as I finish them, that sort of thing. Otherwise I'm fairly quiet, mostly interacting in the comments of others' articles, liking them, that kind of them. I'm fairly solitary in my worldbuilding, though I've been trying to get more of my close friends onto the WorldAnvil/WorldEmber bandwagon so a bunch of us can compete together!

If you find the Ynix in the WorldEmber discord that has FF14 as his favorite game, that's me!