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WR Alpha Docs

Worlds overview

A world is the fundamental unit of building in Written Realms Alpha. Its content, configuration, characters, and live instances are isolated from other worlds. Every newly created world includes a Starting Zone, a Starting Room, and an immortal Builder character.

  • A room is a unit of space where characters and items reside.
  • A zone groups rooms for managing quests, loads, and paths.

Creating another zone does not create a room inside it. Create or select a room, edit its Zone field, and assign it to the new zone. See Rooms and exits for the map-building workflow.

Single-player or multiplayer

Section titled “Single-player or multiplayer”

The first decision when creating a world is whether it will be single-player or multiplayer. Is Multiplayer starts enabled on the creation form, and the current editor does not expose a control for changing the mode afterward. Choose deliberately before building player progress around it.

The two modes share the same editor but run differently:

  • Each player who enters a single-player world receives a runtime instance unique to that character. If a dragon guards the entrance to a cave, every player sees their own copy of that dragon.
  • Players in a multiplayer world share the same environment. If one player slays the dragon, it remains dead for the others until it respawns.
  • When a player exits a single-player world, their runtime is stored and restored when they return. A multiplayer world can remain running after one player disconnects.
  • Multiplayer worlds must continually respawn items and mobs so new players can collect and defeat them. Single-player worlds can also have respawning loads, but it often makes sense to define some loaders that never respawn to mark important progression.
  • Multiplayer worlds are inherently more open-ended and tend to rely on repeatable systems or endgame loops. A single-player world can have a definite ending—or a fork of possible endings—with a fixed quantity of mobs and items in its environment.

Single-player worlds are generally more predictable. It is easier to anticipate what the player will encounter, control their progression, and reset an instance to its initial state while testing the new-player experience.

Multiplayer worlds are more chaotic, and social interactions can greatly alter the gameplay experience. They require more systemic planning to ensure that the world can supply players with the loads and drops they need at varying population levels.

Do not confuse a per-player single-player runtime with an item or mob instance. The latter is simply one live object created from a reusable template. The editor also contains an experimental world-instance feature under advanced configuration; that is a separate system again.

World visibility

Section titled “World visibility”

All worlds start as private. A private world can be viewed only by:

  • its author;
  • its builders; and
  • players who have a character in the world.

Private worlds do not appear in the public sections of the lobby. They may appear in search for their author, builders, and existing players, but are not searchable by people who do not already have access.

Making a world public makes it searchable and accessible to anyone with its link, including someone without a Written Realms Alpha account. Public visibility does not automatically place the world in Featured Worlds or Staff Picks.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”