OnlyWorlds

An open standard for worldbuilding.

One shape for any kind of world, so your heroes, villains and stories can live wherever you want them.

One element, in many places

Admiral Fluffington is a Character, one of the standard's 22 categories. Every field is optional, and you can add fields of your own.

title: "Character"
properties:
  Constitution:
    properties:
      physicality:
        type: "string"
  Origins:
    properties:
      birth_date:
        type: "integer"
  World:
    properties:
      location:
        type: "single-link"
        category: "Location"
  Social:
    properties:
      rivals:
        type: "multi-link"
        description: "Characters the character is in active opposition or competition with"
        category: "Character"

His data can be fetched from the OnlyWorlds server, which is free and optional. Each link is the id of an element.

www.onlyworlds.com/api/v2/character/0695db83-afd7-76ee-8000-00f4295f8866/trimmed
{
  "name": "Admiral Fluffington",
  "supertype": "Military",
  "subtype": "Admiral",
  "reputation": "Respected commander. The establishment, personified.",
  "birth_date": 249,
  "birthplace": "0695db83-8ce7-7510-8000-5f44d31b8f79",
  "location": "0695db83-972a-74da-8000-262f1559a7f1",
  "institutions": ["0695db83-c6e8-7ab6-8000-bf4b7d713f37"],
  "family": ["069945d9-d873-7076-8000-96d538f41a22"],
  "rivals": ["0695db83-b69a-772b-8000-557e9ba0dcc3"]
}

API reference →

Any tool can read or write him. In Atlas, a workspace, he has his own page and a place on the world's maps. Little Lens is a small tool for looking through a world. Connect one to Tactical Tangle, a battle game, and its people take the field.

Atlas · Moppetopia
Atlas with Moppetopia open: the element list, Admiral Fluffington's page with his picture and fields, and the Moppetopia space map with Feltropolis, Soggia and the USS Fuzzball.

All tools →

Obsidian · Admiral Fluffington.md
Admiral Fluffington as a note in Obsidian, with his fields as properties: name, id, supertype Military, subtype Admiral, image_url, birth_date 249.

The Obsidian plugin writes him as a note. His fields become properties, his links become wikilinks, and with an account, edits sync back.

OnlyWorlds/Worlds/Moppetopia/Elements/Character (23)/Admiral Fluffington.mdexcerpt
location: "[[Feltropolis]]"
rivals:
  - "[[Captain Snoot]]"
---
### Reputation
Respected commander. The establishment, personified.
World Browser · Unity editor
Three cuts from the Unity SDK's World Browser: Moppetopia's categories, Admiral Fluffington's header, and his links to places, species, objects and the Puddle Navy.

Get playful with the fluff: the Unity SDK lets you browse a world in the editor and bring it into your game.

var client = new OWClient(new OWClientConfig { ApiKey = "0000000001", Transport = new UnityWebRequestTransport() });
var admiral = await client.GetAsync<OWCharacter>("character", "0695db83-afd7-76ee-8000-00f4295f8866");
Debug.Log(admiral.Reputation);   // Respected commander. The establishment, personified.

Who is the Admiral's rival?

Captain Snoot, a rogue explorer and smuggler. He and Admiral Fluffington were friends at the Naval Academy until The Incident.

Snoot left the Puddle Navy after it. To the establishment he is a disgraced ex-officer. To others, a folk hero.

from the Admiral's rivalsdescription and Snoot's descriptionreputation

An assistant connected to a world answers from the world itself, not from memory. With a write key or a seat, it can write back.

Connect an AI →

Your worlds

Move where you like

Any tool that reads the standard opens the same world, links and all.

Can be shared

As one file, as a public page with an account, or through onlyworlds.com, with people and with tools.

Can be built on

Games, apps and AI assistants read the same shape, so one world can feed all of them.

Are yours

The standard is open, and you can keep a world as a folder you own, on your machine or in your browser.

Every element has a name and a category, one of these 22. Every other field is optional, so an element can start as one line and grow.

Elements point to each other. Admiral Fluffington lives in , serves in the , belongs to , and has a rival, .

lives inserves infamilyrival

Where to start

Start a world

Atlas

A workspace for building, writing, mapping and charting a world.

Start a world or explore Moppetopia
Opens a copy in your browser, which can take a moment.

Start in Atlas, no account needed. Make an account when you want your world online, shared, or opened by other tools.

Already have a world? Bring it in.

For developers

Build on it

OnlyWorlds is an open standard. Build on it, and sell what you build.

  • The REST API, and packages for TypeScript, Python and Unity.
  • A demo key, 0000000001, to try the server without an account.
  • Docs for the standard, the server and each package.

Governance

Anyone can read the standard, and anyone with a world can propose a change

The standard is open source on GitHub. A change starts as a motion in the Council, where it is voted on and recorded, and a world's Characters can sit there as its delegates.

How do you define a world? Ground it in locations. Characters move through it. Stories give it meaning. Map its powers and conflicts. Create its elements. For everything, an element.

Admiral Fluffington's element card: his fields, his connections and the elements that refer to him