On World Anvil, most of your worldbuilding happens through articles. World Anvil has 28 worldbuilding templates and some Guild members can customize their own article templates too.
Check How to create an article if you don't know how to do it.
So what’s the difference between each worldbuilding template? In this guide, you’ll learn about world building template’s special features, and some template FAQs too!
Contents
Features of All Worldbuilding templates
All article templates share some features:
- Article introduction: the text box at the top of the article editor. The text you write here appears at the top of the article. It’s a free-form text box, so you can write the full article there if you want.
- Template prompts: at the bottom of the article editor you’ll see worldbuilding prompts tailored to each template. You don’t have to answer all (or any!) of the prompts if you don’t want to—they’re there to inspire you!
- Layout tools: in the “Sections” tab at the top, you can add more free-form text to different areas of the article. Check out the article layout guide for some tips!
- Article relations: if you set up parent articles in the “Navigation” tab, a tree showing relationships between articles will appear at the bottom of the article.
- Linking: many templates have pre-defined fields where you can establish relationships between two articles (for example, an organization and its leader). These fields are template-based: for example in a “Leader” field you’ll only be able to select articles that use the Character template.
Worldbuilding Templates with special features
Some templates have special features beyond the ones described above:
Character
- Family trees: by entering the character’s parents in the “Relationships” tab, you can generate a family tree that you can embed anywhere on World Anvil. Read the full guide to family trees here.
- Relationship panels: you can also enter the kind of relationship two characters have (friends, partners, enemies, etc.) in great detail. This relationship will display in the articles of both characters.
- RPG character link: you can link characters to campaigns to use them as playable characters or NPCs.
Organization
- Diplomacy Webs: if you enter the relationship between different organizations, you can generate an interactive diagram to represent them. Read the full guide to diplomacy webs here.
- Relationship panels: like with character relationships, you can display panels in organization articles that show the relationship between two organizations in detail.
Prose
- Reading mode: when viewing the article, the text will take the full width of the page and readers will have options to change the background color and font size.
Language
- Dictionaries: the dictionary feature adds a search bar in the article that you can use to look up words in your language’s dictionary.
- VulgarLang integration: if you use VulgarLang to generate a conlang, you can export it in World Anvil-compatible BBCode.
Plot
- Plot tree: plots let you specify subplots, especially useful if you’re using World Anvil for a campaign. Your plots will be displayed automatically as a “plot tree” in the campaign manager. Pot trees for are useful for planning out a novel series, too.
Document
- Document text: the template has a field to write the contents of your document. When viewing the article, the document’s text will be accessible by clicking a button on the right side.
Session report
- Campaign integration: these can be linked to RPG campaign sessions, which integrates them with the campaign manager.
Full list of World Anvil’s worldbuilding templates unpacked
The following list details each worldbuilding template on World Anvil, with examples of how you might use it. It’s not an exhaustive list, but illustrates the wide variety of applications any template can have. However, the templates are just there to help you. It’s not a test, and there is no incorrect answer! If a template is helpful to you, you've chosen correctly, even if you’re not using it for its intended purpose.
Character
Extra features: Family trees, Relationship panels, RPG character link
- Characters
- Pets, mounts, and animal companions
- Gods, demons, and other divine individuals
- Spirit guides, individual ghosts etc.
- Any individual entity that has some degree of agency in your world
Condition
- Diseases (viruses, bacterial, etc) - both congenital and transmissible
- Mutations and transformations, e.g. lycanthropy, vampirism
- Super powers, if they are treated similarly to a mutation (e.g. the Incredible Hulk, Spider Man)
- Phases of life - e.g. Pon Farr (mating season) for Vulcans
- RPG conditions, like fatigue, stun, prone etc.
Document
Extra features: Document text
- Books and other written documents
- Videos, CDs, and audio files
- Musical manuscripts
- Holodeck programs
Ethnicity
- Designed to talk about people who share a common ancestry or culture, regardless of their country or current political situation.
- Cultures and ethnicities
- Alternative or sub-cultures, like a Punk movement, “Hippy” culture, or Corporate culture
Military Unit
- Special types of military formation in your world (for example, a Clone Battalion, or a mounted elf archer unit).
Item
- Magical artifacts, e.g. wand, sword, crown etc.
- Specific technological items, e.g. a transporter. (Use Technology instead if you’re writing about the technology the powers the item in abstract)
- Weapons & armor: e.g. swords, rayguns, helmets etc.
- Food (use Document for a recipe, or Tradition for a specific method of cooking)
- Common items (clothes, coins, tools, etc.)
Language
Extra features: Dictionaries, VulgarLang Integration
- Naming languages
- Lists of expressions and idioms in your world.
- Full conlangs
Material
- Materials that are unique or different in your world, e.g. mithril or unobtanium (use Item for the things you make with them).
(Military) Conflict
- Wars and battles
- Street fights
- Debates and tense discussions
Myth / Legend
- Myths and legends
- Urban legends
- Prophecies
Location, Building
- A specific building in your world
- Building archetypes unique to your world (e.g. an amphitheatre, or a cinema)
- Space stations or flying structures that are treated as buildings rather than vehicles
- Burrows, nests or other animal-made structures
- Man-made landmarks, e.g. an obelisk, the statue of liberty,
Location, Geographic
- Anything that is in a specific place and is not a building or a settlement
- Planetary geographical features e.g. lakes, canyons, mountains, oceans
- Planets, stars, galaxies, nebulas, and other regional space phenomena
- Planes of existence and parallel dimensions
- The region or territory occupied by a country (but not the country itself—use Organization for that)
Location, Settlement
- Cities, towns, and villages of any size
- Space stations or flying structures that are treated as cities rather than vehicles or buildings
- Mining outposts, colonies, hamlets and other
- Seasonal settlement areas, e.g. for nomadic cultures
Natural Law
- Laws of physics that are unique or different in your world (for example, gravity working differently).
- Magic systems and their rules
- Extraplanar travel and portals, and the rules surrounding them
- Anything that an average person in your world would describe as “this is just how the world/universe works”.
Organization
Extra features: Diplomacy webs, Relationship panels
- Countries, Empires, Federations
- Religions (consider using Tradition if it’s not an organized religion)
- Pantheons of deities
- Cults, secret fellowships, clandestine organizations and organized crime syndicates
- Companies, Corporations and Guilds
- Major clans, families or dynasties (e.g. Hapsbergs, Medici)
- Universities, Colleges, Charities
- Adventuring parties, and other groups of characters united for a specific goal
Prose
Extra features: Reading mode
- Use it to write short stories, scenes, or anything that’s not raw worldbuilding.
- If what you’re writing is an in-world text, use Document or Myth instead.
- If you’re a Guild member, we recommend using the Manuscripts instead, especially for long-form writing
Profession
- Jobs that are unique or different in your world, e.g. gryphon tamer, dragon rider, alien bounty hunter
Plot
Extra features: Plot trees
- Use it to prepare RPG sessions or plan your novel.
Title
- Specific ranks or titles held by specific people in your world.
- For example, “engineer” would be a Profession, while a Title article might be, for example, “Chief of Engineering”, or “Junior Engineer”
Session Report
Extra features: Campaign integration
- Keep track of what happened during your last RPG session
- Can also be used to plan a session. If so, add a separate section for what ACTUALLY happened during the session (they are rarely the same thing!)
Species
- Plants, animals, bacteria etc. of any kind, both intelligent and not.
- RPG “races” and other sapient species, e.g. orcs, elves, mushroom folk
- General descriptions of magical or divine beings that wouldn’t necessarily be considered “living creatures”.
- For intelligent species, culture and species aren’t (necessarily) related—for example, there are many cultures of humans! Use Ethnicity to write about cultures.
Spell
- Traditional “spells”
- Magical Rituals
- Specific feats or manifestations of magic, e.g. some forms of Mutant powers
(Use Natural Law to describe a magic system)
Technology / Science
- General description of how a technology works, who discovered it, etc. (e.g. Faster than Light Travel, Portals). Use Item to describe specific items that use this technology
Tradition / Ritual
- Any cultural element that has its origins in tradition.
- Festivals, ceremonies, and other celebrations, e.g. valentine’s day, Yule
- Social constructs like beauty standards, gender roles, and money (use Item if you want to describe physical coins or notes rather than the concept of money).
- Games, sports, and other leisure activities.
- Cooking traditions (use Item for specific foods or Document for recipes).
- Sets of beliefs that don’t form an organized religion (use the Organization template for organized religions).
Vehicle
- Any structure that moves and has transportation as its primary objective.
- Carriages, cars, ships and airships, spaceships.
- Self-propelled vehicles - e.g. skateboards, scooters, bicycles.
If a structure can move but its primary goal is to function as a living place (like a space station), use the Settlement or Building templates instead (depending on size)
Generic Article
Generic articles have no prompts and are meant to be used if you can’t find a good fit for your idea.
World Anvil Worldbuilding Template FAQs
How to create a god or a pantheon on World Anvil?
A god is a character: even if it’s not a person, it has (or it’s believed to have) agency. Use the character template, and make use of the Deity tab to fill in optional prompts designed for divine beings.
A pantheon is a group of gods (i.e. characters) that are united, so they use the Organization template. If your pantheon has internal factions of gods, each of these factions can also be an organization, e.g. water gods vs. earth gods.
Religions are usually organizations too. However, if it’s not an organized religion, (i.e. it doesn’t have a set hierarchy or group of people governing it), but is instead a belief system and a set of traditions, use the Tradition template to describe it.
What about creating magic systems on World Anvil?
A magic system is a natural part of the world, so you can use the Natural Law template. Of course, magic isn’t just about how it works, so you can also use Organization for magic schools (or Traditions if it’s about the method of doing magic, rather than an actual group of people) and Spell to describe specific spells.
If you’re building a hard magic system with a strict structure, you could use content trees or whiteboards to organize them visually. For example, you could show which spells or types of magic belong to each school.
Which kind of article would be best to use for a movement?
Social or artistic movements can be considered sub-cultures—so use the Ethnicity template for them. Even though a sub-culture is generally not considered an ethnicity in the real world, on World Anvil, the Ethnicity template covers all kinds of cultural expressions.
Which kind of article would be best to use for politics?
Politics is a very broad topic that can be described from many different points of view:
- If you’re writing about a government, political party, or another politically motivated faction, use Organization.
- If you’re writing about a politician, use Character.
- To write about an ideology without linking it to a single faction, use Tradition.
What about creating other planes of existence (e.g. Plane of Fire)?
A plane of existence is a “place”, in the broadest sense of the word. So, to write about a plane of existence of parallel dimensions, use the Geography template. There’s a special dropdown item for Planes.
How to create family histories on World Anvil?
A family is a group of people, so you can use the Organization template for it. Of course, each individual member of the family can have its own Character article.
How to change article types on World Anvil?
On World Anvil, once you’ve created an article in one template type, you cannot change it to another template type. You will need to recreate the article in the correct template. A quick copy-paste should do the trick!
