Summercamp Reading 2023

This article is part of participating in the Summercamp 2023 Reading Challenge. I'll be reading a bunch of articles written by others as part of the summer camp in the hopes of finding some more inspiration for my own world that I might be able to borrow. I'm planning to focus on three prompts that seem like they might help most with my current world-building challenges.

Articles

Settlement - A Seat of Power (of any kind)

This one is of interest to me as the campaign has recently travelled to Akavel, which is a bit of a local capital. I'm hoping to find some good ideas to help flesh the place out a bit and give it some more life.

Zaigon by Kaari13

Zaigon is an interesting settlement. I particularly liked the bit about it being built up on the ruins of prior settlements, that was a cool detail that would create plenty of ways for making a place feel unique as it gets explored.

Everfjord by Kishimp

Everfjord includes a lot of detail and it's hard not to be impressed by the map. Having some rumours prepared is always a good idea though I'm likely to keep them in my GM notes rather than publish them on a WorldAnvil page

Nova City by AmethystScribe

Moving away from Fantasy, Nova City is a dystopian cyberpunk hell. I do like the curse eaters, using supernatural means to fight back. I may be able to use that idea to make The Patchwork Dream a little more interesting.

Person - A Character who excels at manipulating others

Always helpful to seek out inspiration for some new NPCs, and while I've already got a few some kind of untrustworthy sort can always be fun to add to ones cast of characters.

Maria Ina Iya by Ebonxgaming

Maria Ina Iya is an example of someone in a position of power and influence, scheming to gain yet more power and influence. Its also interesting to think how religion might fit into the Zira Imperium, and that leads down some interesting avenues I'll need to think some more about.

Elerra Duskryn by Isekai

Elerra Duskryn is your archetypical scheming evil queen, kept in power by the breadth and depth of her machinations. While I wouldn't use her as-is (I already have Exarch Kurin Tresh, who works better for me story wise, but I may be able to adapt some of the ideas here to create a scheming adviser instead.

Fallington Stacks by Wordigirl

Fallington Stacks is a shadowy figure with a mysterious past. Always a good thing to have when you need a bit of intrigue. Seems to be a broker type of character.

Zhang Fengzhe by TrudyG

Zhang Fengzhe is a good example of a scheming official who affects a friendly and affable demeanor yet actually possesses a much darker nature. There's certainly room for characters like that within a fairly repressive empire like the Zira Imperium.

Ritual - A Cuisine from a sparse, barren or remote region in your world

Food can often be emblematic of cultures, so it can be a good way to provide local colour to a setting. I'm hoping to find some good inspiration for local dishes that I can use to help give Akavel some distinctiveness.

Edwistberry Treats by Wordigirl

Edwistberry Treats was an interesting one. I particularly liked the part about the small group fighting to keep the plant from going extinct and think I can use that as a seed for an idea (although I'm taking it in a very different direction with Masonbreaker Briar).

Bacon Bark Stew by Nomadic Gaming

Bacon Bark Stew is a good example of getting good results out of very basic ingredients. It's a good inspiration for coming up with cuisines for the downtrodden peoples of Akavel, who would be accustomed to having to scrap and salvage what they can and may find ways to create surprisingly delicious food from ingredients their higher status peers might overlook.

Iron Rations by Travakh

Iron Rations is a clever article that takes what is a very basic kind of gruel and adds a whole cultural context of wierd masochism around it. It's rather creative and well done. I'm not precisely sure what to do with that, but it is interesting to consider how people can lean in to suffering.

Bolkorost by No-bees Nova

Bolkorost is meat cooked over magma - which is a powerful illustration of how cultures and cuisines are shaped by their environments. They learn to use what is there and unique situations often result in unique solutions and cultures.

Technology - A system to send messages between distant places

This one I came back to do because I needed to think about how the cells in The Patchwork Dream are able to communicate with one another and I needed to figure out an interesting idea for how that worked and how they kept it secure. Many of these articles helped inspire the Needle and Thread communications technology that they use.

Dropbox by Bardoftherift

A Dropbox is a simple point-to-point teleportation device. Simple and sensible, it got me to realise that a resistance organisation like The Patchwork Dream would be more likely to rely on point-to-point communications than on some kind of central network that could be readily targeted.

Luminal Couriers by momococa

The Luminal Couriers are entangled crystals that send encoded messages. The messages require a particular training to be able to successfully decode, while in this case that isn't used for secrecy that certainly seems like something useful to think about when designing something used by a resistance organisation.

Summary

There's a lot of really interesting ideas out there and I've gotten more than a few ideas that will help me populate a new city for the next stage in my Numenera campaign. I'll have to make sure to spend some more time exploring other pages as there's bound to be more inspiration to be found.