This article is a meta article and therefore its contents are to be viewed from an out of universe perspective, rather than as if it were present in-universe.
Week 1
On The Topic Of: Love
Love is a strange one for my worlds. I haven't gone into details about love (in Galactic Archives) between individuals much beyond how last names are reconciled between families, as that can be quite a contentious topic. Love in general is a confusing topic for myself, and I imagine for many others who still feel as if love is a difficult topic to fully understand. Depending on the prompts, I shall direct my thoughts regarding love to love for things beyond people, although I still feel as if I'll struggle on this, but it'll be a fun one to toy around with, I'm sure. Maybe I can twist it towards seduction for other things.
Assigning Work: The Pledge
Last year I pledged for Silver, with the lofty aspiration of Diamond. I had many notes as to what I would write for each prompt, and then sickness fell on me. While staying at home would have been great for writing, it also ensured my brain was operating nowhere near full capacity. So this time, to play it safe, I've gone with Copper, and split it between two Worlds, as Dragon Spies as a setting has come into my interest a lot lately, thanks to watching more of the inspiration media for it.
Hop To It: 1
At minimum, 8 prompts, as I have pledged, although as many as possible is the obvious answer.
A little bit disappointed by the result of 1, even if I was going on hard mode, it wouldn't matter at all. But, playing tabletop games has made me respect the dice roll, so I shall stick with it. I'm certain this will backfire on me in the future where I get a 4 after saying I'll do it on hard mode. The homepages for both Dragon Spies and Galactic Archives were in dire need of updating, so this was a good one to land on anyway. While I am unhappy with where they both sit now, they'll need a significant amount of time to rework to the point where I am as happy as I can be with how they look, so their current updates will do in the mean time.
Warming Up The Keys: A Pass
I've decided to give this one a skip, mostly due to the previously mentioned issues regarding writing about love, but the next one, if I can work with the prompt, I shall do my best to complete.
Week 2
On The Topic Of: Growth
Now this one I can do. The Siathan Court (the focus of Galactic Archives) is in a state of rather rapid growth, as they are expanding their empire to the stars, mapping out new locations for settlements, adding to the size of the empire. It should, hopefully, be an easy task to include multiple things relating to the concept of 'growth', ranging from just new locations being explored to flora and/or fauna that grow in unique and interesting ways.
As for Dragon Spies, the most basic idea relating to growth is the introduction of actual experience based mechanics for the players, although I know that such meta information isn't truly in the spirit of Summer Camp, at least last I remember. Instead, my focus will likely be on factions that the players can work for, and how they have grown and adapted in their various ways.
Assigning Work: Area of Focus
An area to focus on. This'll be a hard one, as I find I do my best work when I can jump between different topics and see how they all lead back to the original thing I was working on, such as going from how train networks work, to the infrastructure of the internet, to limitations of powers and abilities can work, all of it leading back to how trains work in the setting.
But, for the purpose of this, I shall do my best to focus on factions. Companies, communities, religious groups, government agencies. Naturally, articles surrounding these things will have to be created as well, but I shall do my best to keep them focused on how they relate to the faction.
Hop To It: 4
Factions and the things that impact them.
I said it last week and it came true. I decided to go for hard mode before rolling and look where it landed me. So, in order...
1: Why did I choose this area of focus?
I talk a lot, with friends mostly, about different factions, generally government agencies and corporations. Very few of these have ended up as actual articles, more just notes in a long list of conversations, so I figured it's time to put words to 'paper'.
2: Make a list of concepts you'd like to explore
I was tempted by the other choice for this (Make a list of related articles you already have. Expand them?), but I'm saving the expanding for when Summer Camp actually starts, as I know these related articles will end up having additions to accommodate these new articles.
For as for the list of concepts I'd like to explore...
- Faith and the organizations that form around it.
- Conflicts between businesses and government agencies that seek to do the same goal.
- Monopolies and how they form and how they are broken up.
Of course, this is just what comes to mind now and I will likely spread out to far more things come Summer Camp.
3: How does your area of focus interact with the rest of the world?
How
doesn't it? Even in human history, rarely was it one person who changed history, but groups, communities, armies, factions. This extends to all of my settings too, even the strongest warriors have to be backed by an army. Even if it's just as something as simple as a hunting party, they could impact a large amount of a long period of time.
As for how it will impact my worlds, for the Galactic Archives, I intend to focus on modern businesses and religious organizations, so they will impact the general flow of every day life for at least some amount of the population, either through work, willing association or their products being present in life.
For Dragon Spies, I intend to focus more on political power players, which will have large impacts on the Players, as they may work for, or against, these factions and how they vie for control over the delicate political system of the nation.
4: Plan the category structure for your area of focus
They will likely fall into multiple categories, especially for the Galactic Archives as I like to keep them separated by their purpose. Religious organizations, government agencies, businesses, all in their own category. I've strayed away from using the built-in categories system lately, so this will be a good chance for me to get used to it once again. For the government agencies one, I once had a category page for but was unhappy so deleted it, so this shall be a good time to give it another go.
Warming Up The Keys: Ecosystems
A few ideas floated around for this, mostly ones that I struggled to figure out how to put into words, but I ended up on an idea inspired by the portrayal of Xen from Black Mesa, with ecosystems on floating space rocks. Now, I don't have an alternate dimension or reality (Half-Life is never clear which Xen actually is. What even is a 'Borderworld' after all?) for it, so I had to be a little more grounded, and settled on asteroids containing multiple forms of life. Now while the article of
Living Belt may not end up completed before Summer Camp starts, it'll stay as a thing for me to come back to when time permits!
Week 3
On The Topic Of: Loss
Now loss is a topic I'm far more comfortable writing, at least compared to love. I've talked with friends before about the funerary practices of the Siathan, especially because of how cold their planet is, they cannot do burials, much like the town of
Longyearbyen. Loss also applies to many other things in the worlds I'm writing. With Dragon Spies I can focus on the loss that comes with an industrial revolution, the loss of wonder in the world as transit and magic becomes easier and more accessible. The Galactic Archives is where I think it can truly shine, with how the loss of Caithlyn's sister affects the empire at large. Many ways for me to go about this, and I'm sure I can use at least a few prompts for it.
Assigning Work: Planning Writing
I'm rather simple to plan my writing, as I have very little in the way of obligations, even if, annoyingly, this does not often result in more writing being done. My weekends, despite being generally occupied, do tend to result in more writing being done as I have others to motivate me. I am often torn between focusing on worldbuilding (or related) writing and story writing, which has caught my fancy a lot more lately than actual worldbuilding. I do figure this is a matter of direction though, and with the prompts from Summer Camp, I should be able to write a lot more here.
As for scheduling, really I'll aim to finish at least one prompt a day, especially if I want to get the fabled Diamond badge, even if that'll need me to double up on a day or two, depending on how things go. But at the very least, two a week should be possible, depending on how fussy I get with formatting, which is truly my biggest woe!
Hop To It: 4
4 again. And I'm always doing hardmode, I do think the dice have a grudge against me, but I shall abide by it this time.
1: What's your typical creative process and routine?
I don't truly have a routine, and maybe that's why things don't get written as much as they should. Often I'll write while multitasking on something else, generally watching a piece of inspiration media, or playing a game that also serves as inspiration. This does limit the kinds of games I can play though, as I need ones that can run partially unattended or be tabbed out easily, cutting off a lot of multiplayer games.
As for my process, it's rather erratic. Fumbling with names is the hardest part, this generally involves smacking keys until I get something that looks right to me. Then it's a lot of jumping between Wikipedia and other research materials. It's quite difficult to write grounded-ish science for the Galactic Archives, as it is a sci-fi/sci-fantasy setting, requiring me to make a lot of assumptions about science that is way above my head, or just assume that science will work the way I need it to. Honestly, I may be a bit caught up in it, but that is part of the fun for me. Often I will leave placeholders, or links to articles that don't exist yet, just to get the first draft written up. From there, it becomes rather annoying to pick out what should go where though.
2: Go for a walk!
I wanted to pick the other option, but my VR headset isn't working (Actually I think it's my PC, I keep putting off fixing it properly). On a more fitting note however, I genuinely cannot pick a favourite fictional world. There are many that I like for various reasons, and it's hard to pick which one the favourite is, so a walk it is!
I combined the walk with some other errands, several of which were quite helpful towards my worldbuilding. My mind wandered as it usually does, although sadly not to many things useful for this worldbuilding. Perhaps I shall try again another time, perhaps make a habit of it when I get stuck on a prompt.
3: Read an article (or more) from other Anvilites
I'll went about this the same way I did last time we had 'read articles from others' task: Picking someone at random from the list of submissions and finding an article in one of their worlds.
I landed on
Lady Leah's pledge, and ended up quite surprised that I didn't think to have a little 'hub' world of my own like they do! From there I went to their latest article, which was the
Yonai from
Brihland. It's a nice article, even with some of the areas clearly marked as coming soon! (At least when I read it they were marked like that) and I especially enjoyed the in-character comment from Elowena. I also quite liked how unsure some of the information is, giving the impression that there is a lot more to this species than even the scholars/scientists of the setting are aware of.
4: Read a book to inspire you
This one is actually really good for me, as I borrowed a few books from the library for the last challenge (
Hitchhiker's Guide To Your World), and decided to borrow at least one book every month or so that I can use to help with my writing. So I have a book about weather to read very soon!
Warming Up The Keys: Another Pass
This one is a little
too difficult for me, since I've yet to go into languages, so I'll be skipping this one.
Week 4
On The Topic Of: Family
Family... Well, Dragon Spies this is an easy one as I've been toying with the Family lately, finally got a name that wasn't a placeholder for them. They're a very influential old money family that the player can be a part of using a loresheet. Despite the capitalisation of Family, it is still a genuine family, blood relations and all, and not even that criminal. I've toyed with the thoughts as to other members of this family lately as well as their actual holdings.
For the Galactic Archives, I've had many ideas as to how their last names work and the fights that can ensue over who gets which name when two families join. I've also thought as to how housing works with families, since I am potentially leaning away from multi-generation households as a concept, even though I do quite enjoy them for other things.
Assigning Work: Goal As A Worldbuilder
My main goal as a worldbuilder? Just to get these words out of my head and into a format that people can read. I do yearn for recognition, for people to tell me that what I've written is good, but in the end, it's enough for me to be able to just say "Hey, I wrote all this, I think it's pretty cool.". Of course, I do have more goals beyond that as well. Galactic Archives has become something of a 'do-it-all' setting, one to be played in via a TTRPG system, while also being able to just be read from the outside, or be used for a Tabletop Miniature Game, which I know is not truly realistic in scope, but I enjoy toying around with the ideas for all of them.
Dragon Spies, on the other hand, was made on a whim but exclusively for being run as a setting to play in using the Storyteller system, so that's the main goal for that, just get it functional enough that I can run it and fill things out as they go along.
Hop To It: 4
Again, 4. This is becoming absurd. But I shall abide by the rules. I swear if this happens next time there's a hopscotch-style thing, I will cry.
1: Which articles do you need to create to achieve your goal?
Well, beyond the actual prompt response articles, I'll likely need to create some organisational chart ones, rehash a few things and perhaps some BBCode storage ones, since I'm not great with CSS, most of my formatting is done via stacking a bunch of BBCode.
2: Find an accountability buddy
A couple of friends that enjoy my writing are likely to be my accountability buddies, since I've told them about this and they are eager to see what I have written, so I've let them bug me constantly until I've done at least talked about one article a day. They won't make me start it, but at least throwing around some ideas is enough, and at least one will become an article.
3: Take a break and re-energize before Summer Camp begins
It feels like that's all I've been doing, honestly. I've been trying to avoid creating new articles simply because what if the one I writes ends up being a perfect response to a prompt and now I've already pre-written it. So, plenty of break and ready to go when Summer Camp starts!
4: Prepare your worldbuilding playlist
This is a tough one, usually I just let YouTube's auto playlist handle it for me and swap to another one when it runs out of things I like in the current one. But for this, I've assembled what really just amounts to the playlists of other people combined into one. You know those 'one hour of x ambient music' and such, I've got that for sci-fi and cyberpunk for Galactic Archives, and I'm throwing together some more Victorian England and detective vibes for Dragon Spies, as that has taken a very Sherlock-esque turn thanks to the media I've been watching lately. (The latter playlist also includes
The Rocky Road to Dublin as featured in Sherlock Holmes.)
Warming Up The Keys: A Final Pass
It's a
very interesting prompt, I will admit, but very much something that I know I'll spend way too much time overthinking and probably get nowhere with it. So I'll save my energies for actual Summer Camp!
Image within!
