Summer Camp 2018 Retrospective
Now that the Summer Camp is done and there's some space to breath, I thought it might be interesting to look back on the entire creative process that took place during the Camp, as well as everything that went into each individual prompt. I'm putting it down here as its own article, in case anyone would like to read it. :) Let me know what you think! And if there's anything you'd like to see specifically in it! Here are some of the insights I've had regarding my own experience with the Summer Camp:
Prompt 1: Write an introduction to the geography of your world.
When I first started doing the Summer Camp, I didn't really have much of a plan as to what my world was. What I did have was the high concept for the setting, the starting point: a world where humanity was forced to live beneath the surface in caves and tunnels. But not because of some post-apocalyptic war or disaster: the surface world had just always been kind of crappy. Scrounging up some old notes, it looked like it was going to be a mix of cosmic horror and fantasy, with elements of sci-fi and SCP-y stuff. What I ended up with was a world divided into four parts: the surface, the outer shell, the inner shell and the far deep, essentially sandwiching civilization between two great expanses of strangeness. Even the world where they live is largely unexplored, due to how vast and difficult to traverse it is, though I chose not to put any exact numbers down to preserve the sense of unknown and mystery. The Surface deserves note again. I wanted to avoided the stereotypical desert, so my mental image of the Surface was sort of a mix between Mars (barren, rocky and craggy) and Antarctica from Lovecraft's fever dreams. I did still end up with a bunch of sands and deserts and wastelands, but also a lot of glaciers and crags and other neat places, so close enough. Creating a world where life is possible deep underground means tweaking quite a few things. There needed to be power sources for things to grow, so lots of magma and other weird things was starting to take shape.Prompt 2: Describe the most impressive landmark in your world.
This was actually the last prompt that I completed and it turned out, for some reason, to be the most difficult to figure out. My first idea was an alien pyramid, then a maw-like maelstorm in the biggest underground lake, and a few other half-formed ideas, but nothing really took shape. In the end, I decided that I would take an environment we might commonly think about, and see how I could adapt it to the Far Deep. So I picked "desert" and changed the sand, making it into grains of crystal and quartz. That base concept let me play with some other aspects of it; blinding in the light as a hazard, the quartz pox if you breath in the more aggressive "species" of quartz-dust and dust-devil of crystal dust for fun. Add its own eco-system to that, a bit of a mystery and potentially sentience of the entire place, and it was something I was finally happy with. I'll probably return to this after Camp and elaborate on the different areas of the desert and the critters who live there.Prompt 3: Which criminal organization in your world is the most notorious, and why?
As I am a big fan of conspiracies, secret societies, occult stuff and things like that, these were aspects I wanted to work into the criminal aspect. So I decided to make a secret occult society and build a criminal enterprise around them, mystics who could take a corpse and kind of possess it. Unmanned Drone, but with a corpse. Once that fell into place, I could figure out the rest around that, like the Reapers; enforcers that had been gifted power through occult means to carry out the secretive agenda of the council. In a way, the entire crime aspect of it is of secondary concern to the people running it: it's just a great way to get after what they really want.Prompt 4: Describe a settlement that’s a major trade hub. What can you find there?
This was another late entry. At first, I had what would eventually become the Largest City as the Trade Hub, but I kept getting stuck. So to get unstuck, I changed it to something else. "What if the city was also a prison" was the thought that set it off, and turned it into a slightly dystopic/cyberpunk-y type of city run by money and slavery.Prompt 5: Describe the most marginalised ethnicity in your world.
This was an early article. I didn't want to do an actual ethnicity because I wasn't sure about it, so I decided to make something that was more or less a caste.. Criminal, in this case. I wanted to see some danger to the surface that was more personal then a storm or a monster, with an element of moral grey. I was (and am) a little concerned that they are stereotypical wasteland mutant-cannibals, so I also wanted to put emphasis on the fact that a lot of them are just regular people who pissed off the wrong person and they're just trying to survive now. A second idea was that these could be a character type for players in case this ever became a game, which would become a reoccurring theme.Prompt 6: Which is the most prestigious profession in your world?
Another late one... In fact, I don't think it was until late week 2 or so that I started to actually doing the prompts when they were supposed to come out. :D This was a pick between metal-shifting wizards (as hinted at in the Quicksilver Sphere) and something else.. And then I decided against both and went with what my notes tell me I first called "Pathfinders" but renamed for obvious reasons. The idea was that that I could use this as a way to explore the rest of the setting and create sort of a support mechanism for adventure and PCs (as well as character types) with it. So I made the Kaia; specialized cave-explorers!Prompt 7: What are some common insults unique to a language in your world?
This one was a difficult one and I was stuck on it for a long time. Reading articles like Hanhula's approach to making it something different helped me think of in other terms than a list of words and terms. Plus, I'm terrible at making up languages. So instead, I focused on the culture that surrounded cursing, swearing and insults in the world. It ended up having a bunch of implicit details about the world too, which is always a bonus for creating the flavor and atmosphere.Prompt 8: What’s the most famous fairy tale or children’s story in your world?
I went with "fairy tales are warnings against certain behavior" route with prompt and I thought it would be fun to make the sun (usually a cherished entity in fantasy settings) into an evil malign thing that would be the main antagonist in the story. :)Prompt 9: Describe the most feared illness or condition in your world?
This was an early article, so I hadn't figured out how to use the side panels and other stuff. Go look at LaughingProphet's stuff; that was a big inspiration for me in getting started on that. Desolation has been compared to a sort of souped-up depression, and that was definitely the base. Isolation does terrible things to people, so I built on that with a super-natural element of possession and spirits to give it some Lovecraftian/SCP-y flavor. I also wanted to make it something that could potentially be a PC type; a character like the Abomination from Darkest Dungeon, getting their powers from their affliction.Prompt 10: What unique resource exists in your world? What are its properties?
This went through a few different variations. When it says unique, the temptation was always to go with something really rare. My first pick (an organic, growing and semi-alive glass) ran aground because of that. But watching Unpacking the Prompt helped me break out of that line of thinking, and I decided to go for something very common but unique to the world. What I decided on came from the realization that there are no trees in the world, at all. So how the heck do they make plants, or spear-shafts? That to me are the interesting part of weird settings, figuring out what things change and how the people in it deal with the differences. So mushrooms that need to be cut and tanned to create a wood-substitute was the result! :DPrompt 11: Write about a hero in your world who changed history.
Prompt 12: Write about a villain in your world who changed history.
Prompt 13: Describe one technology which fundamentally altered your world.
Prompt 14: Write about an ancient kingdom, nation or empire in your world.
Prompt 15: Describe a species in your world associated with good or bad luck.
Prompt 16: Describe a building that was once a grand place, but is now ruined.
Prompt 17: What is the most stylish method of transportation in your world?
Quicksilver Sphere
Vehicle
| Feb 25, 2020
A ride of liquid metal, as impractical as it is luxurious.
Prompt 18: Describe the most influential or well-known book within your world.
Prompt 19: Describe a species in your world used for medicinal purposes.
Prompt 20: What is considered the most valuable item ever created in your world?
Prompt 21: What is the most popular sport in your world? Explain the rules.
Prompt 22: Describe the traditional funeral rites of a culture in your world.
Prompt 23: What’s the highest rank in a powerful organisation within your world.
Prompt 24: Describe the events of the shortest war in your world’s history?
Prompt 25: What traditions surround courting and marriage in one culture of your world?
Prompt 26: Describe the greatest pirate legend in your world. Did it really happen?
Prompt 27: Share a short poem, haiku or song that was written by someone in your world.
Shrike's Shadow
Prose
| Oct 6, 2018
A short poem about the Shrike and four very unfortunate villains
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