The rules for the Worldbuilding Exchange v3 are mostly taken from the previous incarnation of this exchange.
Quick Links: Schedule | Tag Set: Coming Soon | Collection: Coming Soon | Evidence Post: Coming Soon | Mod contact: worldbuildmod@gmail.com
What is "worldbuilding"?
For the purposes of this exchange, "worldbuilding" is defined as any exploration of how a fictional world works beyond the information presented in canon. This includes (but is not limited to) more detailed extrapolation of information presented in canon, filling in gaps in the canon backstory, attempts to reconcile apparent contradictions in canon information, exploring the perspectives on canon events of characters implied to exist but not considered within the canon, and so on.
This exchange allows all fandoms whose content is predominantly fictional. RPF or fandoms that are largely based on historical figures or events with very little fictionalization are not eligible. (For example, the film “Lincoln” would not be accepted, but “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer” would be.)
It is absolutely fine for the gift you create to be an action-adventure story/shippy fanart/etc (provided your recipient hasn't expressed a desire for you to avoid such things), so long as there are also worldbuilding elements present in a significant way.
Participants are expected to create one of:
Fanfiction - a complete fic of at least 1000 words
Fanart - a finished piece of art, not on lined paper
In-Universe Media - a complete piece of in-universe media (any format of text or documents that might exist in-universe) of at least 1000 words
Podfic - a complete podfic of an existing work (fic or in-universe media) of at least 1000 words, OR podfic of a newly written work of at least 500 words.
When you sign up, you will need to request at least three fandoms with distinct lore, and offer at least four. The maximum number for both requests and offers will be ten. You may request/offer the same fandom in more than one slot, but the total number of distinct fandoms must still be three or more (for requests) or four or more (for offers). You may request specific characters, Any or No Characters, or Original Characters, or any combination of these. If you choose Any or No Characters, this means any characters in the canon, not just in the tagset; however, you may DNW particular characters from the canon. You may specify a gender for original work characters if that gendered tag was nominated in that fandom.
Worldbuilding tags are requested in the relationship slot and are specific to each fandom.
Nominations
You may nominate up to five fandoms. For each fandom, there are five character slots and six "worldbuilding" slots. Because of the limitations of AO3 tag sets, we will be using the "Relationship" field for worldbuilding elements.
Nominate only single characters in the Character field; groups or relationships (/ or &) will be rejected.
Nominate only worldbuilding tags in the Relationship field; groups or relationships (/ or &) will be rejected.
Fandoms must have at least one worldbuilding tag nominated by the end of nominations, or they will be rejected.
Fandoms
Please nominate fandoms in a way that makes it clear which canons you are looking to receive/create worldbuilding fanworks about, whether the names match AO3 canonicals or not. Unlike many other exchanges, in Worldbuilding Exchange it is expected that in some cases overlapping canons will exist within the tag set, since the worldbuilding ideas people might come up with will differ depending on which source materials they are considering. For example, previously both Dragon Age (All Media Types) and Dragon Age II were in the tag set. However, if it’s possible to nominate a more distinct fandom rather than a larger umbrella, it’s probably better for matching purposes to do so.
Please check already-approved tags before you start nominating, and try to be consistent with what has already been put in the tag set if your ideas are compatible.
"Original Work - [Genre]" will be allowed as a fandom. For example, "(Original Work - High Fantasy)", "(Original Work - Hard SF Space Setting)", etc.
“Creator’s Choice of Fandom” will not be allowed as a fandom.
Real Person Fiction (RPF) and fandoms that are closely based on real events (such as “Hamilton” or “The Crown”) will not be allowed, on the grounds that "real world worldbuilding", if it means anything at all, covers essentially all forms of human intellectual enquiry from quantum cosmology to celebrity journalism, and is therefore outside the scope of a fanworks exchange.
Crossovers are eligible if the crossover actually happened within one or other of the canons involved, as this implies shared worldbuilding. Please provide evidence on the Evidence Post for any crossover nominations before nominating, and nominate with a "fandom" tag consisting of the two crossed over canons names separated by a "/", eg "Bones/Sleepy Hollow".
Recursive (fanworks) fandoms are eligible with permission from their creator. Please provide a link to a public statement from the creator giving permission for recursive works on the Evidence Post for any recursive nominations before nominating.
Characters
Please nominate only single characters in this field. Nominations for groups or relationships will be rejected.
Please disambiguate your character nominations to indicate the fandom you’ve nominated as clearly as possible. For example, if nominating Darth Vader for the TV show Obi-Wan Kenobi, nominate as "Darth Vader (Kenobi TV)" rather than simply “Darth Vader (Star Wars)”. If nominating Amos Burton under “The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey”, you could nominate him as "Amos Burton (Expanse Books)".
Mods will ensure that you can select original characters by adding the tags "Original Character(s) (Name of Fandom)" and "Any or No Characters (Name of Fandom)" to each fandom in the tag set. You do not have to nominate these tags. However, if the gender of original characters is particularly important to you and you strongly prefer to only create for or request particular genders, please use one of your character slots to nominate specific genders, such as "Original Non-binary Character(s) (Name of Fandom)" or "Original Female Character(s) (Name of Fandom)". Otherwise the choice of gender will be up to the creator, not the requester.
Please do not nominate any other kind of specific original characters. Please incorporate any canon-related specifics into your worldbuilding tags, for example, "WB: Surface Dwarf Culture (Dragon Inquisition)" or “WB: How halfbloods balance two worlds (Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling)”.
Worldbuilding
Tags for fandom-specific worldbuilding elements should be nominated in the Relationship field. Use "WB: " at the start of each of these tags, and disambiguate with the fandom name at the end (for example: "WB: Belter Culture and Customs (Expanse TV)"). Do not nominate any type of actual relationship (/ or &); any such nominations will be rejected. You may wish to look at previous tagsets for ideas; see 2025’s tag set here, and previous tagsets can be found through the parent collection pages for v2 and v1.
Worldbuilding tags for fandoms that overlap closely with the real world should concentrate on topics where a creator has leeway to make things up rather than being predominantly researchable. For example, “WB: Casino Security (Ocean’s Eleven)” would not be accepted, but “WB: Urban Legends about the Bellagio Heist (Ocean’s Eleven)” would be.
Signups
How matching will work
Matching will be OR, on characters, worldbuilding elements ("Relationship" tags), and category (“Freeform” tags). That is, you will match on one (or more) character and one (or more) worldbuilding tag and one (or more) category of fanwork (fanfiction, fanart, in-universe media, and podfic). From the point of view of your sign up, please ensure that you are happy to receive or create any combination that might come up. The “Any or No Characters” tag in a prompt means that the requester is leaving the use of characters (including original characters or canon characters not in the tag set) up to their creator. It should be taken to indicate an interest in receiving/creating works where the primary focus is on worldbuilding and characters are secondary, if they appear at all.
The boundary between "Fanfiction" and "In-Universe Media" is intentionally somewhat fuzzy: if you are signing up to receive one but not the other and have strong preferences about which side of that boundary you would like your gift to be on, or certain types of media you do not want to receive, please make that clear in your request.
Requests (3-10)
You may make between three and ten requests, which must include at least three distinct fandoms amongst them. You can repeat fandoms in different slots as long as you have a minimum of three distinct fandoms requested overall. “Distinct fandoms” for this exchange are defined as fandoms that do not (or would not reasonably) share an “All Media Types” or similar parent or metatag. For example, "Marvel Cinematic Universe" and "Marvel Comics" would not count as distinct because they share the "Marvel" metatag.
For each fandom, you can request 1-10 characters (including the "Any or No Characters" tag), 1-10 worldbuilding ("Relationship") tags and one to four categories of fanwork (fic, art, in-universe media, and podfic).
You may use the AO3 optional details box and/or a separately linked letter to provide extra detail for your assigned creator about your likes and dislikes, specific prompts, etc. Alternatively, you may simply leave the tags you have selected to speak for themselves.
"Do Not Wants" (DNWs): Please ensure that anything you definitely do not want to receive is clearly stated in the AO3 optional details box. You may also repeat this information in your letter, if you write one, and provide further information on your likes and dislikes, but only DNWs in the AO3 box will be enforceable. Only reasonable DNWs that do not contradict your requested tags will be enforced, and please do not use Do Not Wants to try to box your creator into making one very specific type of fanwork.
Requests will be visible throughout the sign up period.
Offers (4-10)
You may make between four and ten offers, which must include at least four distinct fandoms amongst them. You can repeat fandoms in different slots as long as you have a minimum of four distinct fandoms offered overall.
For each fandom, you can offer 1-10 characters (including the "Any or No Characters" tag), 1-10 worldbuilding ("Relationship") tags and one to four categories of fanwork (fic, art, in-universe media, or podfic).
You may offer all tags in either or both of the Character and Worldbuilding categories for a fandom, by ticking the "Any" box. However, please be very sure before you do this. In particular, please bear in mind that "Any" Character tag includes the "Any or No Characters" tag.
If your offer turns out to be unmatchable, you will be contacted shortly after sign ups close to discuss the situation. Please try to avoid deleting your sign up if your only reason for doing so is that you are worried that you are unmatchable: it may be that you are someone else's only potential recipient.
Posting
Assignment
Your assignment should be a new fanwork for your recipient, in the sense that it should not consist of work which has been previously available in public. (To give some specific examples: If you have drawerfic that is a good fit for your recip's prompts, and the exchange gives you the impetus to finish it, no one except you is going to know. If it's something you've posted large chunks of in venues such as the WIP threads on FFA, that's a problem.)
Works produced using "AI" such as large language models (e.g. ChatGPT) or "art generators" (e.g. Midjourney) are prohibited.
Please keep your assignment secret until creator reveals. (Artists may sign their work, but may not cross-post until creator reveals.) If you want to ask your assigned recipient (or a recipient you are considering treating) anything, please do so by emailing the mod, who will forward your question(s).
Please turn in a complete assignment on the due date. You are welcome to edit your fanwork as much as you like in the period between the due date and reveals, but please ensure that the version that exists in the archive when assignments are due -- and any subsequent version you save -- is of a quality that you would be comfortable with your recipient receiving if circumstances were to prevent you getting online again later.
Tagging
Please don’t use the worldbuilding tags used in signups (that is, the relationship tags beginning with WB) for tagging your work. If you’d like to indicate worldbuilding content, please use freeforms (additional tags) to describe your work (for example, “Blood of Eden recruitment (Locked Tomb)”). If you do not use a freeform tag that resembles the worldbuilding request you are filling, please indicate what worldbuilding tag you are fulfilling in your top author’s note for work-checking purposes.
Please also use canonical character tags where possible rather than the specially-disambiguated character tags; when tag set tags are used on works, the wranglers syn them to the canonicals, and that may make them useless for future exchange tag sets.
Defaulting
You may default for any reason at any time, by using the "Default" button on the AO3 assignments page. The only penalty will be that if you default and your assigned creator also defaults, you will not go out as a pinch hit.
There will be a soft "default deadline" (one week before assignments are due) check-in. This exists to provide a prompt for participants to think carefully about whether they will be able to finish in time, or whether it would be better for their recipient to go out as a pinch hit with a longer period available than an at-deadline pinch hit.
Pinch Hits
Initial pinch hits generated by the matching process, and any pinch hits which become necessary due to defaults, will be posted to the exchange Dreamwidth community with comments screened. Claim by commenting with your AO3 username and the number or recipient name that you would like to claim. Comments on these posts will not be responded to; if you see that the pinch hit has been claimed and you do not have a new AO3 assignment, then someone else claimed it before you did, but please do feel free to treat the participant in question.
There is no need for potential pinch hitters to sign up to any separate pinch hit list. You may claim pinch hits even if you are not signed up to participate. There will be a post for pinch hitters who are not signed up to the exchange to submit prompts for possible treating.
Treats
Treats are very much encouraged. Treats do not have to adhere to the minimum requirements for main gifts, but should still be of a quality that you are comfortable giving as a gift and in a medium that the recipient requested.
As a recipient, if you would like to receive treats, please ensure that you have “Allow anyone to gift me works” checked in your preferences under “Collections, Challenges and Gifts.” It will help others to indicate whether you accept treats in your signup and/or letter. If you have a preference against any particular types of fanwork that fall below the minimum requirements, or are open to receiving treats in mediums you didn’t otherwise request, please make this clear in your sign up.
Treats that meet the minimum requirement for main gifts may become main gifts in the extreme circumstance that we can’t find a pinch hitter in the last few days before the collection is scheduled to open. In most situations we will endeavor to find a pinch hit regardless of treats.
You may give treats even if you are not signed up to participate. Treats may be added to the archive at any time. While treating before creator reveals is encouraged, the collection will stay open indefinitely for late treats.
Acknowledge your gifts
Please acknowledge your gift. Ideally, this would be commenting to thank the creator for their efforts, but contacting the mod to raise an issue with your gift will also be considered as acknowledgement of your gift. (You may also use the “Refuse Gift” functionality on AO3, but please also contact the mod to let us know you have done so.) If you do not acknowledge your gift you will be ineligible to sign up for future rounds.
Mod Contact
If you have any questions, you can contact the mods via email at worldbuildmod@gmail.com or comment on this post (please note that this post is unscreened and comments will be public). If you do not have a Dreamwidth account, you may comment anonymously, but please sign your comment in some way.
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