Summer Camp Prep 2024

Well this is a last minute entry, isn't it. My summer has been exceedingly busy this year and I haven't been giving much time to worldbuilding at all. I'm pretty far behind on Species-A-Day, and while I do intend on picking that back up, I've come to terms with the fact that that'll have to wait until August. That being said, I haven't gotten the chance to really do any worldbuilding this summer, which comes back to the reason I want to do Summer Camp this year. I need more variety in what I'm doing, and I need a space for my creativity. I don't know how many prompts I'll get done, and despite my completionism I will try my best not to pressure myself into completing every prompt. My goal this year is to have fun and get whatever worldbuilding I can done.

Week 1: Change

Thinking about this theme, my mind immediately goes to Dulūn. As the setting for my campaigns, Dulūn is constantly changing. The actions of my players have significant impact on the world, even in ways they're not fully aware of yet. One of my players has changed the entire course of a major faction on Vehasi, and another sparked the rise and fall of a monarchy. A side joke between players caused a mountain range to form. I think an important thing to me about Dulūn is that both in-world and out-of-world, things are subject to change.

My Pledge

I don't want to set any particular goal this SC, to be entirely honest. I'm scared that if I do, I'll end up putting too much pressure on myself to complete the goal, and the event will become more stressful than freeing. A lot of it will depend on the prompts themselves, how inspired I feel by them, how much they apply to the concepts I want to write about. So, no pledge this year - maybe next year, if I have more free time.

Organisation

Okay, I'll be honest. The organisational system of the Library is... dilapidated at best. I need to reorganise it, but that requires making new covers for the categories as well, and I frankly don't have time for that before July. As for the rest of my worlds, I have all I need in each of them, so that shouldn't be a problem. This little section is more reflecting than doing, but hey, I suppose that's what I get for waiting until the last minute to even decide if I wanted to participate in Summer Camp or not.

Week 2: Refuge

Refuge is an interesting theme, and there are a few things in my worlds that come to mind for this. My mind first goes to the wars of Dulūn, who are no doubt leaving many refugees. I can think of characters and communities related to this theme, as well as traditions and rituals.

Accountability

I suppose the reason I'm writing this prep in the first place is for accountability. Thinking more about this, though, I think I'm not really the kind of person to give up - even when it's detrimental to me. If I make a promise, I have to follow through, even if I'm burned out and making things worse. So I think the more important accountability for me is making sure that I don't push myself too far.

Styling

I've (semi-) recently finished CSS themes for pretty much all of my active worlds. I'm still chipping away at some of Etharai's sub-themes, and there are a lot of them - nowhere near something I could get done in the span of a day or two. I've thought a lot about going back and cleaning up some of my old CSS - It's not the most organised - but that's a job for another time.

Week 3: Belief

Religion plays an incredibly large role in my worldbuilding, especially in Dulūn, but talking to some of the folks in the WorldAnvil discord have also brought some new perspectives on this to mind: belief in factions or groups, in people or leaders, and in oneself. There are a lot of different ways that this theme could go, and I'm very excited to see what the prompts relating to this are.

Inspiration

Oh, good, an excuse for me to ramble about some of my favourite worldbuilders. Hanhula's world, Istralar, was one of the first other worlds I found on WorldAnvil, and it completely blew my mind. With Han's world, I began to see the possibilities of worldbuilding, and she's a good part of the reason I actually seriously got into worldbuilding. Mochimanoban's species articles inspired me to create my own species, which I now have many ecosystems of. Their love for the natural world was clear in their work, and it made me want to write about the things that I'm passionate about, including not just species, but people, organisations, and religion. Catoblepon is a large part of the reason I got into CSS, and is also why I wrote my first condition articles, which are now one of my favourite templates. Daeni's characters and their interactions with one another really felt alive, and inspired me to write about my own character's relationships with one another. There are so many people I could name here, but I (unfortunately) cannot spend this entire article on this section.

Images & Maps

I do have plenty of images in Etharai, and the maps I've made for Dulūn (which I still need to flesh out a bit, but that's neither here nor there). The maps in particular, I think I can look at and pick out certain areas that I want to elaborate more on. For ant settlement or geography prompts, I definitely think I can look to my maps for ideas.

Week 4: Decay

Hell yeah! Decay is by far my favourite theme on here, and I cannot wait to write about anything and everything involving decay. Species and conditions relating to decomposition, moral decay, the goddess of decay in Dulūn. My mind is going so many places at once with this theme and I cannot wait for the prompts.

Environment

I don't have many options for places to write in my apartment, it's really just the bed, the table, and the couch. I really don't have much in the way of external distractions - all of my distractions are internal - though I can likely use tools such as word sprints to help focus myself.

Homepage

I actually still like the homepages I have set up for each of my worlds. I think the only exception to this would be Crossroads, since I haven't really done anything with, but I also haven't made much in the way of articles for that world anyways. I'm definitely very happy with how the homepages for Dulūn and Etharai look, and don't know if there's anything much I want to change with them at the moment.