Operating your world

World building changes definitions; play creates live state from those definitions. Running mobs and items, character progress, loader timers, and single-player instances can therefore outlive the edit that originally created them.

The Admin and Players screens are available to the author and builders of rank 3 or 4. Use them to inspect that live state. These controls are operational tools, not part of the normal edit-and-playtest loop.

Put a world into maintenance

Open World > Admin to enable Maintenance mode and enter a maintenance message. While maintenance is enabled, regular players cannot enter the world, but builder characters can.

Maintenance mode is the safest starting point for a disruptive change:

1. Set a message that tells players what is happening.
2. Enable maintenance before changing runtime state.
3. Check the active instance for connected players.
4. Make and test the change as a builder.
5. Disable maintenance when the world is ready.

Maintenance does not disconnect players who are already inside. Coordinate with them before stopping or killing an instance.

Understand the Admin screen

For a multiplayer world, Main Instance is its shared runtime. The screen reports the runtime’s state, whether cleanup is in progress, and links to counts and connected-player details.

For a single-player world, the screen also lists the currently running per-player instances. Those are separate from the root world definition and from each player’s saved character progress.

The three lifecycle buttons have very different purposes:

Control	Use it when	Important consequence
Start	A stored multiplayer instance needs to be brought online.	Starting can take a minute.
Stop	A running multiplayer instance should shut down normally.	The runtime receives a stop request and stores its state. Coordinate with connected players first.
Kill	A runtime is stuck and cannot be stopped normally.	This is a forced operation. The editor warns that connected players may lose data.

Treat Kill as recovery, not as a routine way to apply edits. Never use it merely because a newly saved description or rule is not visible yet.

Inspect players

Open World > Players to find a character and inspect its level, location, explored map, factions, inventory, equipment, quests, trophies, and marks. The player-facts panel is available for single-player worlds only. This is useful when a report depends on player-specific state rather than on the room or template definition.

The player page also exposes high-impact controls:

• Is Builder grants or removes builder-character status. Give it only to someone who should have privileged in-game commands.
• Reset appears only for single-player worlds and reinitializes that character. It is not a room refresh or a loader rerun. It clears level and experience, currency, non-core faction standing, trophies, aliases, quests, explored rooms, inventory and equipment, and marks; learned feats, flex skills, and custom skills currently remain.
• Delete permanently removes the character from the world. Confirm the target carefully.

Do not reset or delete another person’s character as a diagnostic shortcut. Reproduce the problem with your own test character whenever possible.

Restore recently deleted items

Item Restoration on a player page lists inventory and equipment that are pending deletion. The player must be out of the game before either Restore or Restore All will work. Deleted items remain recoverable for at least a week and may remain longer while the world keeps running. Restore one item or use Restore All before cleanup permanently removes it.

This is a recovery window, not a backup system. It does not undo a character reset or restore quests, marks, facts, levels, or other progress.

Choose the smallest refresh

Use the least disruptive tool that matches the state you need to change:

1. Save the form when changing a definition.
2. Use /load for one temporary mob or item.
3. Use /repopulate to test the current zone’s loader rules; counts and conditions still apply.
4. Use the builder character’s /reset only when you intentionally need to erase that character’s single-player progress and replay the world from its starting state.
5. Use Stop, then Start, only when you need to cycle a multiplayer runtime and have coordinated with its players.
6. Use Kill only to recover a runtime that cannot be stopped normally.

There is no universal “publish edits to the live world” button and the editor does not label every field with its runtime-refresh behavior. When a change seems stale, first distinguish the template or rule you edited from the live object you are observing. Then reproduce it with a newly loaded object before escalating to a runtime restart.

See Playtesting and refreshing for the everyday builder loop and Moderation for tools that limit disruptive characters.