SummerCamp 2022 Reading Challenge
Wow, just wow, SummerCamp began and ended. I never got around to writing a Camp Prep article or anything, but I aimed for Copper and completed up to Diamond. I did the math, and I wrote over 20K combined words and BBCode in the month. I was also impressed I finished before my self-imposed deadline of the afternoon of July 30th in my timezone (I had some IRL stuff going on that afternoon) Now with SummerCamp ended, I should turn away from the myopic view of only focusing on my own stuff (and then throwing ideas into the Discord to help spark thoughts with others while sparking off my own), and see what others have done in response to their own prompts. I will try to avoid selecting articles written by people I regularly interact with on a near daily or even weekly basis, because those individuals tend to already have influence on me - Ademal and Barron, for a pair of examples, influenced me way back in WorldEmber 2018 or so when I learned I could make my own headers and my own arrangement for articles, and with the idea of trying keep similar articles consistent with their layouts. So, I love you all, my friends, but I feel reflecting on your articles is a bit like cheating. This is not to say that those I read here, comment on, or make a reflection on, are not my friends -everyone is my friend, I just haven't gotten around to befriending you diretly yet- just that I don't routinely interact with you in particular. Yet. At this time.
Prompt
A title that commands respect from those in the knowPre-Reflection: I chose articles with titles that felt likes ones that may not command respect (or a lot of respect) from the viewpoint of someone who knew nothing of the world.Author:Rahjar
World:
Lyraine's Reflection: I am quickly invested in this story presented in the article, and I find the exposition in a quote-box type container to be very interesting when usually, prose would be in that and exposition would be the "plain text." I enjoyed the idea of presenting a topic entirely within a story scene, though I feel that the way I use World Anvil as more of an in-universe encyclopedia of knowledge common and uncommon better suits my uses in preparing for a campaign. This is absolutely an example argument for including more prose in my writing, however.Author:TechnoNomadic
World:
Lyraine's Reflection: This article had some really nice vibes of how an Adventurer's Guild is part of the society it's in. Corive used to have (still does? I think I'm keeping that article for Archive reasons of Stuff That Used To Be Canon) Adventurers before I felt really conflicted with basically tomb raiding that is in the name of Dungeons and Dragons. My players' PCs have other jobs, so I wouldn't be bringing it back, but this article also really hit how an Adept in a guild is someone to respect. This article also did a really good job of showcasing the power found in people who are not of the top ranks in a guild.Author:Rockchewer
World:
Lyraine's Reflection: I was honestly more reminded of my first SummerCamp (2019, I skipped 2018 despite joining WA in June 2018), but I think that's because this article has fewer mention links than I use these dayswith way too many articles. But unlike the me from my first SummerCamp, there is a nice use of custom headers. I found myself asking more questions of the setting as a result, which I hope would be helpful to the author.
Prompt
A technology lost, forgotten or shrouded in mysteryPre-Reflections: I'm selecting articles that sound interesting as possibly lost/forgotten for the setting, or mysterious, to someone outside of the setting who has no idea what anything is. I like seeing what "mundane IRL stuff" shows up here, and seeing traditionally "handwaved" stuff as a response as well.Author: epstenson
World:
Lyraine's Reflection: This article read like a report or an essay from someone to be read directly by me (I work in schools, so I see a lot of "you" in essays). But I'm not really reflecting on how the article makes me think on my own writing. I do like how the reader is "assumed" to be a part of the world.Author:The Big G
World:
Lyraine's Reflection: Fire, one of the most mundane "inventions," and I was surprised to see it. So I had to pick at least one article about Fire. I'm immediately presented with that exact detail, and why fire is not a part of life in the region written about - the people are in a volcanic region, fire is dangerous for ships in the setting's region, and technology has made the flame obsolete for a culture based on life on the waters.Author:Solstice
World:
Lyraine's Reflection: I like how the author used prior forms of magic and newer forms of magic to describe the development of magical techniques that rendered the article's topic lost and mysterious. I love the concept of tech loss over time due to redundancy or similar - like the memetic Roman Concrete using salt water.
Prompt
A condition considered monstrous or "unlucky" by somePre-Reflection: This was a hard prompt for me, and I want to see what else other people came up with for responses - and I am adding an additional condition (ha ha) to my selection process. No Lycanthropy and similar, no Vampires, no Undead. Why? Because I couldn't write about those either! (eek, Vampires is oooooold Corive Canon. I think that's WorldEmber 2018 if not late 2018)Author:Drunkenpanda951
World:
Lyraine's Reflection: Another almost entirely prose article. But the prose describes from a personal point of view how Intelligence is a monstrous or unlucky condition. The prose also made me really care about the individual this article speaks of, and well, go read it! The open ending invites the reader to ask for a continuation or make up their own, which is something really useful for a world of adventuring, and is definitely something I should look into since Corive is meant for a TTRPG group to play in. EDIT: Oh snap, Panda snuck into my list when I wasn't paying attention to the username. XDAuthor:Elise727
World:
Lyraine's Reflection: I love when settings have magic and consider what it means to be a person who can't use magic, or in this case, the apparent removal of the ability to use magic in their ancestral line. This world, to my unknowing eyes, reads like one where the majority of people are mages, and that really shifts what "normal" looks like. In comparison, Corive is more like 60-75% non-mage and 25-40% mage of some kind so mages and non-mages are pretty balanced out even as mages are outnumbered. I should remember this note and number for The Kingdom of Tormyra when I rewrite the article since that's a mage-ruled region.Author:Damparo
World:
Lyraine's Reflection: Oooh! This article did a nice job pulling out a question about what a Human is. With how far people may go with their enhancements, the article also raises the question of where is the line between human and machine. To compare with Corive, I have the opposite result going on - I have mechanical constructs who became people, so it's fun to see the other side.
My SummerCamp page, as I did not write a pledge or other articleNow What?
Camp is over, now what? Now I go back to looking over what I have, tracking down my Core Lore Articles and then setting up a priority list of those articles for WorldEmber and other challenges (if I get lucky enough for one to be tied to a Core, sweet, if not, maybe it'll tie to a Campaign article or serve as a spark-starter to branch off and feed back into my Core Lore articles). Of the Camp articles that are Core, I will do some cleanup and retagging (some are missing summercamp-2022 as a tag still, but whoops on my part for that). I also need to go through my (eek, over 800!) articles and start correct the inconsistencies where I flat out contradict myself on things that shouldn't be contradicted (ex. if I said Region A is all flatlands back in 2018, but in 2022, I wrote about its mountains and forested hills, I need to massage stuff around to clarify that) As for what I've learned from SummerCamp that I will be taking with me forward - I can write 20K words (and BBCode) in 29 days (I finished July 29th, though I also started about half a week in or so, if not a full week after SC started, so even less!). I have also learned that I have not finished setting up my BBCode layouts for the prompts and various prompts that would actually be different (for example, factions in wars are not the same set up as a family organization, nor a guild, or a half dozen other types of Organizations). Artwork
I will also be working to collect images through tools such as Artbreeder, MidJourney, and other similar stuff while I work on my own art versions and (maybe) commission others. For the future, I will also be working to develop "CSS Themes" for specific tagged articles because I believe it would help tie articles together, but I'm more focused on the content first.
*sneaks in* Awesome job, as expected from us late-starter and over achieving SC types. I am in a very similar boat of needing to go back to all my old articles and clean up some lore, and my timeline, which is currently a jumbled-up mess. Only small thing, while it is the reading challenge, if there were perhaps a link to you Summer Camp page or tracker so we could go straight from here to find some of your articles to share the gift of feedback. (it may be there and i missed it, I lost my glasses a week or so ago and am waiting for new ones, so while i can still read etc, some finer details get by) Last note, because I was so sneaky, the "1" at the end of my author name rolled a crit for its stealth check in the article, no worries though. ;) *sneaks out*
You were so sneaky! I'm also incredibly used to you being "DrunkenPanda" that the numbers threw off my expectations! I did not include a tracker article link, so I will go ahead and link to the tracking page. I also have, in general, a need to go through my *incredibly old now, at five years of age* articles and do a lot of clean up because Corive has changed in the last five years, and some of those pages are from past challenges (SCs, WEs) as well.