World Ember Pledge 2022

Anyone else always write better when they're under a time crunch?

Week 1

#1: Aidonia is currently my one and only, so it's the world I will be focusing my time on.
#3: I think expanding on these more player-centric areas rather than just worldbuilding for the sake of worldbuilding will be helpful for actually getting started on longer campaigns. I only really started working on this world in earnest towards the end of the last World Ember, and since then I've only run a singular one-shot in it, but I think I've finally reached a point where all the overarching, big-picture things have clicked into place and I feel confident setting up campaigns and knowing where they will fit into everything.

#2: When I'm writing, I'm very rarely setting out to drive a certain campaign forward. More often I write in whatever direction my interests take me, and then look for ways to build intrigue that could be fitting for a campaign. However, for this World Ember I think my plan will be to focus more on player-centric topics. It's always been my intention to do a fair bit of re-writing for D&D's racial lore, and I do have a couple articles done that I'm pretty proud of, but there are also a lot of stubs and articles I made as placeholders and never finished.
I also want to elaborate on more factions that players will be able to interact with and play off of because many of them are stub articles as well.

Week 2 – Mini-meta

Scope/Theme

The scope is already defined above, but I'm less sure about themes, at least when it comes to the specific articles I'm planning on working on. One of the overall themes I've been wanting to expand is the as above, so below theme that I already have mentioned in my regular meta. I expanded on it somewhat so it doesn't just represent reflections between the divine and the mortal, but also between the present and the past:

Both mortals and gods have precursors who have left things behind, not in an ancient super-weapon sort of way, more like a manor out in the countryside that was well loved and well lived in until it very abruptly wasn't and has been left to rot ever since.

Mood

I'm unsure if I'll have any one particular mood going into this month; a lot of the races and cultures I'll be writing for come from very diverse geographic regions and circumstances.
However, because every single time I write out my intent to work on one thing, I invariably get distracted and do something different, one mood I've been wanting to establish more in my setting is the light dieselpunk vibes. It's always been my intention for this world to have a slight diesel/decopunk aesthetic to it, but I think I've struggled with portraying that because most places in my world are more of a Ghibli-flavored dieselpunk than the usual dark, gritty kind, so finding visuals is challenging. Maybe I just need to re-watch The Wind Rises and start talking about the golden age of aviation more.

The Wind Rises Screenshot by Studio Ghibli

Howl's Moving Castle screenshot by Studio Ghibli

Week 3

I think this week counts as a week off for me seeing as I'm happy with my categories as they are and have never had a use for tagging. Perhaps in the future I will, but for now, the only way I can think to use them would end up being somewhat redundant.
As far as whether or not the homework has been helpful, I'm not entirely sure yet. I did homework for summer camp as well and I'm aware that lots of people find that putting their thoughts into writing is helpful, but I don't feel like I've had that same experience, at least when it comes to the worldbuilding process. I don't think it's any fault of the design of the homework itself; I've always loathed writing about myself and my thoughts because I feel like my self and my thoughts already exist well enough in my own head, I don't need a secondary copy to reference. Also, like I'd mentioned up in the week one homework, even if I try to plan things out, it's often in vain because I will almost always choose to write whatever is most interesting to me, regardless of what I set out to do.
So ultimately: I think the homework is good, I'm just not so good at utilizing it, but by god I will do just about anything for a shiny sticker.

Week 4

I've already spent a fair bit of time getting the look of my world just how I want it to be, so I'm fairly happy with it as-is. I kind of wanted for the homepage to look like the sound of the music that plays during the credits of a Disney movie that roll before the movie starts (i.e. the main titles from Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland), and I like to think I've somewhat achieved that look. I have always wanted to fiddle with some of the colors used on article tooltips since they don't seem to match up with some of the other colors I've set for text, and haven't up until now because I already struggle a bit with regular CSS, so messing with tooltips seems a little beyond my ability, but I suppose now is the time to learn!

Sindwargi Cityscape by illumiinae with Midjourney

As for visual resources, I've decided to give Midjourney another shot even though I didn't have the best luck with it the first time around, and I think I've had better results this time! I don't know if I'll use it a lot because a lot of what it makes is still iffy in terms of usability, but I might try subscribing for the month to play around with it more when I need a break from writing.

Crystal Guardian by illumiinae with Midjourney