Frequently Asked Questions

Head to Sign up, pick a username, and verify your email. Usernames are public and become part of your author URL at /authors/<username>, so choose something you'd be happy to publish under.

We never ask for a phone number. The only thing required is a working email so password resets land somewhere you control.

Open Account settings and tap Enable 2FA. Scan the QR code with any TOTP app (Authy, Google Authenticator, 1Password, Bitwarden) and confirm the 6-digit code to finish setup.

Save the recovery codes somewhere safe. If you lose your authenticator and your recovery codes, the only way back into the account is via email-verified support, which can take a few days.

Use the Forgot password link on the sign-in screen. We email a one-time reset link valid for 30 minutes. If it doesn't arrive in 5 minutes, check spam, then try again - the link generator is rate-limited to one every 60 seconds.

If you no longer have access to the email on file, open a support ticket and we'll walk through identity verification.

Go to Account settings and use Delete account. The action is permanent - your worlds, characters, stories, and chapters are removed within 24 hours; backups age out within 30 days.

If you want to keep your work but stop using the site, deactivate instead. Deactivation hides your profile and unpublishes your books but preserves the data so you can come back.

Need a clean export before deleting? See Data Ownership below.

Account settings -> Security lists every active session with device, IP, and last-active time. Tap Sign out next to any session - or Sign out everywhere to nuke all sessions and force a fresh login on every device, including this one.

Yes, but it changes your public author URL too. Old links to /authors/<old-username> will redirect for 30 days, after which the slug becomes claimable by another user. Change usernames sparingly.

On Stories, use Import. We accept .md (Markdown), .docx (Word), and .scriv (Scrivener) files. The importer splits chapters on headings (H1/H2 in markdown, Heading styles in Word, Binder folders in Scrivener) and creates a draft Story with one Chapter per heading.

Imported chapters are private until you publish them. Word counts, scene breaks, and inline formatting all carry over.

A Story is the container - title, cover, summary, tags, world association. Chapters are the actual prose; you publish chapters one at a time so readers can follow along.

Open a story to add chapters, reorder them, or rearrange via the chapter list. The chapter editor (TipTap) handles formatting, footnotes, and scene breaks.

Structure Scan analyzes a chapter's prose against the beats of your chosen template (Hero's Journey, Save the Cat, Three-Act, etc.) and tells you which beats are missing or under-developed. It's a side-panel tool inside the chapter editor.

Free-tier writers can run it once per chapter; subscribers get unlimited scans. Results are stored on the chapter so you can revisit them without re-scanning.

The side panel sits next to the chapter editor and surfaces context without leaving the page: characters in the chapter, world entities mentioned, plot beats, story notes, and the structure scanner.

Click any entity to open its detail card; click again to insert a reference into the prose. The panel auto-collapses on narrow screens; on desktop you can drag the splitter to resize it.

No. As of 2026-04-30 the free tier has unlimited stories, unlimited chapters per story, and unlimited words per chapter. Manuscript imports are also gate-free.

World creation still respects per-tier `maxWorlds` quotas - see Subscriptions & Pricing.

Yes. Story-to-world is optional. Write the prose, then bind it to a world later if you ever want to. Side-panel tools that need a world (entity references, place lookups) light up only after you bind one.

Yes - the chapter editor autosaves every few seconds while you type, plus on tab blur. The status indicator next to the chapter title flips between Saving... / Saved. If you ever see a red Offline badge, your edits are queued locally and will sync when the connection comes back.

Go to Create and pick World. You'll get a fresh world shell - name it, give it a one-line tagline, and start filling in planets, factions, eras, species, and the rest. Worlds are private by default; flip the Public toggle when they're ready.

Free-tier writers can keep up to 50 worlds, but each existing world must be 80% filled before you can create a new one. Same rule for characters: 50 free, 80% fill required to add another.

The 80% gate exists so each creation is functional rather than skeletal - the panels that depend on world data (side panel, structure scan, recommendations) only work well when the data is there.

Subscribers don't have this gate.

Each world has a layout - planets, continents, oceans, cities, factions, religions, eras, species, magic systems, currencies, languages, and so on. Fill % is computed from the fields and sub-resources defined by your world's layout.

Open the world settings page to see a progress bar with the breakdown by section. Click any section to jump straight to the fields that are still empty.

A world has to be at least 90% complete (per its own layout) before the Publish button unlocks. This is the same completion metric as the 80% fill rule, just at a higher threshold for the public-facing version.

Open the world's settings -> Completion section to see exactly what's missing. Once you cross 90%, the Publish toggle becomes active.

Yes - the Seed-the-World feature lets you spend 200 glyphs to invoke an LLM that takes your world's existing partial data as canonical and generates everything missing: characters, items, lore, cities, factions, religions, eras, species, magic, languages.

Generated content lands as draft rows you can edit, keep, or delete. You retain full ownership - see Data Ownership.

Absolutely. A world only goes public when you flip the Public toggle yourself. Private worlds are visible only to you (and any collaborators you've explicitly invited).

From Create -> Character, or directly inside a world via Add Character. Characters can live free-floating (not tied to a world) or attached to a world for use in the side panel.

The free tier allows up to 50 characters, with the same 80% fill rule that applies to worlds.

We support importing 5e-style stat blocks via the character editor's Import Statblock tab - paste JSON or text. The class/level matrix powers gear suggestions for the 13 PHB classes; custom classes work but won't get the gear matrix bonus.

Open the story in Stories, click Publish, and confirm the cover, summary, tags, and chapter list. Once published, the book appears at /books/<slug> and gets indexed in the discovery rails on Books.

You can keep individual chapters as drafts even after the book is public - readers only see chapters you've published.

/books is the public reading hub - new this week, by category, top picks (logged-in users), and Top 10 in your country (if your profile has a country set).

Each book has its own profile at /books/<slug> with cover, summary, stats, chapter list, and a Read first chapter CTA.

On every /books/<slug> profile, the Suggested for You rail recommends other books with overlapping tags and similar reader patterns. It updates as more readers tag/favorite books and the recommender re-ranks nightly.

Logged-in users get a personalized version blended with their read history; logged-out users see a tag-overlap version.

Yes - on any /authors/<username> page, tap Follow. You'll get a notification when they publish a new book or a new chapter on a followed book. Manage follows from your settings.

Yes. Comments are per-chapter and threaded one level deep. Authors can moderate their own chapter comments - approve, delete, hide-by-keyword, or ban a reader from a single chapter.

Free tier (as of 2026-04-30): - Unlimited stories, chapters, and words per chapter - Manuscript import (.md / .docx / .scriv) - Up to 50 worlds and 50 characters, with the 80% fill rule - One Structure Scan per chapter, one entity scan per world

Subscriber tier adds: unlimited worlds and characters, no 80% gate, unlimited scans, priority entity scans, and access to subscriber-only commission surfaces (see Discord).

Glyphs are the in-site currency for one-off LLM-powered actions: 200 glyphs runs Seed-the-World on a single world, smaller amounts run targeted scans, lore expansions, or character backstory generators.

You earn glyphs through engagement (publishing, getting reads, completing quests) and can also buy glyph packs. Glyphs never expire.

Settings -> Billing -> Cancel subscription. Your subscriber benefits stay active until the end of the current billing period. We don't pro-rate refunds, but we also don't charge cancellation fees.

Not at this exact moment, but we're piloting a discounted tier for verified educators. Open a support ticket with your .edu email and we'll add you to the waitlist.

You do. Always. You retain full copyright on every word, character, world, image, and chapter you create, including content generated by LLM-powered features (Seed-the-World, structure scan, etc.).

We have a non-exclusive license to host and display your work on the site for as long as you keep it published. Unpublish or delete and that license ends.

Yes. Settings -> Export generates a ZIP with: - All your stories as Markdown (one .md per chapter, plus a story-level meta.json) - All your worlds as JSON (one folder per world, with sub-resources nested) - All your characters as JSON - A manifest.json summarizing what's included

Exports are throttled to one per 24 hours. Subscribers can also export individual worlds or stories on demand.

Account deletion removes your published content from the public site within minutes and your private data from our database within 24 hours. Encrypted backups age out within 30 days, after which the data is unrecoverable even by us.

If you want to preserve your work first, run an Export from Settings -> Export before deleting.

No. We do not train any model on user-private content. LLM features that act on your data (Seed-the-World, scans) call commercial APIs that contractually do not train on the prompts. Public-published books may, in the future, opt into a recommendations-only embedding index, with an opt-out toggle in settings.

Tap Message author on any /authors/<username> page or /books/<slug> profile to open a DM thread. DMs are end-to-end private - only the two of you can read them.

You can disable incoming DMs from non-followers in Settings -> Privacy.

Follow an author to get notified about new books and new chapters on books you've followed. Follow lists are public by default; you can make yours private in Settings -> Privacy.

Authors get a moderation queue under each story showing pending and reported comments. Tools include approve, delete, hide-by-keyword, and ban-from-chapter (the reader can't comment on that specific chapter again).

Site-wide abuse goes through Report; admins handle bans at the platform level.

Yes - join us at discord.realmforge.gg. Subscribers get role-synced perks: subscriber-only channels, commission-board access, and early-access betas. Tier-to-role sync runs every 15 minutes.

Use Report on any user, book, chapter, or comment. Plagiarism reports go to the priority queue and we aim to triage within 48 hours. Threats and harassment route immediately to on-call staff.

Changelog - we post every release there. Major features show full notes; minor fixes are summarized as 'Minor bug fixes' to keep the page readable.

Open a support ticket - you'll get a thread you can keep open until the issue is resolved. We aim to respond within one business day; subscriber tickets are tagged for priority.

The reading surface (/books, book profiles, chapter reader) is fully mobile-friendly. The writing studio works best on tablets and desktops because the side panel and chapter editor benefit from screen width; on phones, the side panel collapses to a slide-out drawer.

Partially. Chapter drafts cached on your device stay editable offline and queue saves until you reconnect. The reader caches recently-read chapters too. Discovery rails and the side panel need network.