Shared universe
A shared universe means a setting that many different artists and writers work in, often in different media. Popular shared universes like Star Wars or the Marvel Universe include movies, novels, comic books, and TV shows, all created by different people working together and contributing to a shared setting. These shared universes entertain and delight us, and in many ways give us a modern mythology.
Unfortunately, these modern mythologies also constitute the valuable intellectual property of large corporations — corporations which may often have other priorities besides caring for them as modern mythologies.
The Fifth World provides a shared universe, too, but an open source one that belongs to its community of creators. We want you to enjoy it and explore it, but we also want you to help us build it. We want this to belong to us, all of us, as a community.