The Community Hub
The Community Hub is where players publish, discover, and play each other's worlds. Browse worlds built by other creators — complete with NPCs, settlements, maps, quests, and lorebooks — follow the creators you like, talk about the worlds you've played, and share your own.
Browsing the Hub
On the Dashboard's Worlds view, switch between Your Worlds and Community Hub with the toggle at the top.
The hub opens on a featured World of the week, followed by a Continue rail — community worlds you're already playing, with your campaign day and how many NPCs you've met — and a grid of world cards.
Each card shows the world's banner, title, creator (with avatar), a short description, featured characters, play count, and a like button. Cards also call out what's notable: World of the week, New this week, or how often it was liked recently.
Sort with the chips at the top:
- Most played / Most liked / Newest — everything in the hub, ranked.
- Following — only worlds from creators you follow, newest first.
The search box searches titles, creator handles, and tags across the whole hub.
World Pages
Every published world has its own public page at rpbuddy.ai/w/world-name — anyone can open it, signed in or not.
A world page shows the banner, title and creator, plays / likes / comments, the world's genre and art style, a Who you'll meet roster of its characters, and the comments section. Share this world copies the link — anyone can preview the world before signing up.
From the page you can like the world, follow its creator, and hit Play This World to start playing.
Playing a Community World
Previewing (free, no account needed). Every world can be previewed before you commit: hit Preview on a hub card or world page and you're dropped into a shared read-only copy — walk the map, enter buildings, and meet the characters. Signed-out visitors can browse the hub at rpbuddy.ai/community.
Playing (subscribers). Click Play on a hub card (or Play This World on a world page) to clone the world into your account. This creates a full copy — the original creator's world is unaffected. Playing community worlds requires a subscription; if you already cloned a world, you'll be asked to confirm before cloning a second copy.
Your clone includes everything: the map, settlements, buildings and their rooms, NPCs, enemies, quests, regions, districts, and optionally the creator's lorebook entries. NPC dispositions reset to Neutral so you start fresh.
Community world clones are marked with a Community World badge on your Dashboard.
You can't re-publish a cloned world.
Creator Profiles
Your creator profile is a real, shareable page at rpbuddy.ai/@yourhandle, showing your avatar, bio, follower count, published worlds, and lifetime stats (published worlds, plays, likes, followers, comments).
- Claiming a handle. The first time you publish, follow, or comment, you'll pick a public username — 3–24 characters, letters, numbers, and underscores. You can rename later, but only once every 30 days (changing just the capitalization is always free).
- Edit profile lets you write a bio and upload an avatar (square works best; PNG, JPG, or WebP up to 5 MB, with drag-to-crop).
- Share profile copies your public link.
Only follower and following counts are public — nobody can see who follows whom. Your own Following list lives in the hub, visible only to you.
Publishing Your World
To share a world you've built:
- On the Dashboard, open the ⋮ menu on your world card and select Publish. A frozen snapshot of the world is submitted — later edits to your world don't change the published copy.
- First time only: claim your creator handle (see above).
- Fill in the details:
- Public Title — the name players will see (max 100 characters)
- Description — what makes your world interesting (max 500 characters)
- Tags — pick up to 5 (Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Modern, Historical, Horror, Post-Apocalyptic, Urban, Rural, Political, Cozy, Dark, Whimsical)
- Banner image — pick which of your world's images headlines your card and world page. No pick? The first settlement image is used automatically.
- Preview characters — pick your featured cast, in the order you click them (up to 20). No pick? A default roster is shown.
- Include lorebook entries — on by default. Players who clone your world get your custom lore.
- Review the disclaimer confirming original content and no NSFW/copyrighted material.
- Submit. The RPBuddy team reviews submissions before they go live — you'll get a notification either way.
Managing Your Publications
Your own profile page doubles as your publications manager. Each world shows its status — Live, In review, Unpublished, or Rejected — plus its plays, likes, and comments, and recent comments on your worlds are collected below.
Click Manage on any publication to change its title, description, banner, or featured cast — images and characters come from your approved snapshot, so no re-review is needed.
To take a world down, open your Account page and use Remove under My Published Worlds. Existing clones stay playable for the people already in them; new players can no longer find or play it.
Comments
Comments come from people who actually played: the comment box unlocks once you've cloned and played a world, and each comment carries how far its author got ("played to day 12"). The world's creator gets an OP badge on their own comments.
- Comments need at least 20 characters — tell people what worked or what surprised you.
- Reply to a comment to start a thread (one level deep).
- Helpful upvotes the comments that told you something useful.
- Report flags a comment for moderation.
- You can edit or delete your own comments; edited ones are marked.
Follows & Notifications
Follow a creator from their profile, any of their world pages, or a hub card. When a creator you follow publishes a new world, you're notified the moment it goes live, and the Following filter in the hub collects their worlds, newest first.
The notification bell on the Dashboard gathers everything: comments on your worlds, replies to your comments, new worlds from creators you follow, and publication approvals or rejections.
Likes
Click the heart on any hub card or world page to like a world. Likes are public counts and help surface popular worlds — the Most liked sort ranks by them. You need to be signed in to like a world.