RESOLUTIONS 2025

What A Year It Has Been

I want to apologize for not having the technical skills to make this article reflect the hard work of the authors that stuck out to me. I'm trying but due to so personal (highly positive) changes going on my time is limited and while I do want to acknowlege some of the work I've enocuntered on World Anvil, I wanted to get some thoughts out there before I forget - which I almost certainly will.  

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  For me, handing out likes on World Anvil isn’t just a courtesy—it’s a way to say, “I see you. I appreciate you and you have rad shit!” If I’ve liked your page, it’s because I took the time to read it, and I want to thank you for putting your work out there. It's a big deal, and it sucks to shout into the dark. If I haven’t explored your corner of the multiverse yet, just be patient—I will. If I gave you a sticker, it's because I also liked it and I have a mountain of coins that I otherwise don't use. Also, because stickers are fun. And that’s the point, isn’t it? Fun. Sharing. Imagination. Not guarding your “sacred pearl” like some elitist gatekeeper ducking in long enough to say, “I’m not sharing my work with anyone.” Like, great—why write and tell us that? Go polish your rock in silence. This is a community platform. If you’re here, share your work, engage with others, make connections. If you’re not into that, no one cares, but spare us the manifesto. The world sucks enough without that noise.   I deeply lament not having tools like World Anvil, Inkarnate, Campaign Cartographer, Evernote, Discord, and D\&D Beyond back in 1993 when I started my own building. If just one of those platforms had existed, I absolutely cry myself to sleep imagining where the world of Unknown Shores might be today. Dancing baby gifs and all. Because at three-quarters of a million pages of digital data (most of it is awful and unusable, so don’t get excited), after three decades, I think about what could have been with those tools in my hands. There's no limit to my ability to dwell in pointless minutiae when it comes to building, so perhaps it was for the best World Anvil didn't exist back then. I almost certainly would have never left the basement, gone totally, peak COVID feral; complete with Howard Hughes-length fingernails, a beard down to my knees, and wildly out of touch with reality instead of the normal, you know, mostly out of touch with reality.   This isn’t about boasting—it’s about decades of relentless creativity that I sometimes think must actually be some esoteric form of psychosis. I often half-joke that the setting is nothing more than a handwritten mental illness. Unknown Shores has been with me for so long that I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t there, an ever-growing monument to ideas half-finished or forgotten, now being organized and shared.   After 32 years of doing this daily, let me be blunt: consistency isn’t some tidy motivational catchphrase. It’s the grueling, unglamorous grind that separates a fleeting project from a living, breathing world. There are going to be stretches, sometimes long ones—sometimes very long ones—where inspiration is a ghost, everything you think of feels hollow, and everything you write immediately bursts into flames. The trick isn’t finding a way to induce some magical burst of creativity; it’s the choice to keep going anyway. Even the smallest acts, like revising an old article or jotting down a single line, keep the momentum alive. It's having the courage to keep working on a piece of art that you know damn well is never going to be "done" and to keep at it anyway. This isn’t about chasing perfection every day—it’s about showing up, chipping away at the stone, and trusting that those small efforts, over time, will carve something meaningful and beautiful. And I promise all of you reading this, that if you do keep showing up—it will. It absolutely will.   Balancing research and inspiration isn’t as separate as some make it seem. Every waking moment of your life can be research—every book, picture, conversation, or experience offers something to enrich your work if you know how to extract its value. Of course, you should do targeted research—look up climates, study languages, dig into histories. But if you aren’t naturally curious about literally everything, all the time, always—you’re never going to reach the level of creative depth you want. If you don’t have that relentless drive to know why and how, more than you want air in your lungs, then you’re never going to truly excel at this. And honestly? I think your work deserves that level of care and curiosity. Don’t you?   The search for inspiration is another concern I see. Of course, you should absorb ideas from all kinds of media and sources, much like you approach research. But when you stick with this long enough, when you truly commit, something profound happens: you just know. You’ll have your story. You’ll have your world. The constant hunt for inspiration will fade, not because it’s unwelcome, but because it's unnecessary. That quiet shift in confidence transforms how you engage with outside influences. Instead of searching for something to borrow or adapt, you’ll view those things through the aperture of your own creativity, solidly grounded in the foundation of your work.   Here’s a silly example: let’s say George Lucas loves manga. He created Star Wars. Is he reading One Piece and thinking to himself, “Should I add or adapt XYZ to Star Wars?” No. Why? Because he created Star Wars. He’s not searching for inspiration to change or enhance what he’s made—he’s confident in what it already is. That’s the kind of shift I’m talking about. If you stick with your work long enough, you’ll reach that point where the inspiration you seek outside of yourself is no longer about shaping your world—it’s about appreciating the artistry of others while standing firm in the artistry and merits of your own creation. And that’s a really great feeling.   I don't pretend to be some kind of master of any of this or even a particularly good writer. And I don't mean to sound like Yoda. I'm just speaking as a guy who has done this for a very long time who might have a nugget or two of advice. I realize the insane scope of my work. I realize it isn't normal. It's nothing special and shouldn't be a benchmark or example of anything and in fact should really serve as a dire warning to others. This is what happens when maybe you go too far. When maybe you should have stopped. If for no other reason than to avoid a "Fuck, now I have to edit 30 years worth of this shit!" moment. Not every idea is meant to survive the world-building process, and that’s okay. Over the years, I’ve let go of concepts that no longer resonated or fit my evolving vision. The more I go through notebooks from the Clinton administration, the more I dig through ancient hard drives, DVDs, CDs, and, yes, 3.5" floppy disks (save buttons), the more I find stuff I don't even remember writing. These obsolete ideas, while retired, remain an important part of the foundation I’ve built and a testament to the journey itself.   Just remember, eventually no matter how much data you have, no matter where you are in your worldbuilding, you need a dead set way to keep it organized and accessible. Not just for your own ongoing work but for what comes after. Something else people sometimes don't think about is the brutal fact that your world—here or wherever you store it—will almost certainly outlive you, the author. So when you're building your world, consider how you want your work and your world accessible, understandable, and most of all, how you want it to be remembered. Which makes platforms like World Anvil so precious. Because if you do this as long as I have, you'll get to a point where either the size of your work or the candles on your cake make you think about the legacy of your creativity. It's uncomfortable, I know. But thanks to the internet, chances are all the data we make on here will outlive us and then some. So pour every ounce of your soul into your art every chance you get. Even if that means some days you just stare at a blank page.