Summercamp 2022 Pledge

So this year has been a wild one for me. I had to move, my trade is on strike right now, battled some illness in february. So sadly the CSS stuff and all that I had hoped to learn over the year between last camp and this one I just did not have the time to commit myself. But over working on things, I found that Valerick as world I need to come in a bit fresh. I need to redefine a bit. My old rough copy world is chock full of ideas and mad lab max notes but it doesn't have a proper focus or feel like a place I'm happy with for the future of running my tabletop rpgs there, or writing stories there.

It needs to be redone with a more focused and polished vision. And that is what this summercamp is going to be about for me. I am aiming for Diamond because I can't help myself, I love to set myself high expectations. But ultimately my goal is to focus. To truly focus on the process of creating the setting, the world, people and places in it. I will have a new world map by summercamp (I hope) showing all nine countries on the three major landmasses that make up Valerick (another big change, no more mega continent that felt wrong). And that will be up before camp begins I hope.

From there I will focus on whichever area, nation, characters or places take my fancy. My goal is to get a more organic process from inspiration now. To play with the features a bit more perhaps. To try and fail, or to try and succeed to make things more than just my normal mass text blocks with maybe maps.

So to sum up;

Creative Goal: To just re-enter Valerick in its new more polished geographic vision and see what grows naturally, not limit myself to one place but see where the prompts take me.

Motivation: I ran a small 'beta' if you will in my world and the players enjoyed it thoroughly. They want to see future games held here by me. I want to provide this. Furthermore this is my hobby, this is my creative outlet, its how I unwind after a hard day's work or when I'm stressed. I love writing and creating stories and fictional places and settings and plots in my head, so I'm quite excited. Summercamp is a lot of fun every year for me, and this year will be no exception!

Challenge Goal: I always set my goal at Diamond. I've always been one of those yelling Diamond or Death like a crazy person cause I have zero chill. No change this year. Gimme Diamond or give me Death!!!

Making the Themes Fit

Honestly given where I am at in my worldbuilding, and I'm doing a soft refresh, and going to open myself up to wide scope inspiration, which is great, because these themes are also wide in scope.

Expanse: I have plenty of options and areas needing names and backgrounds and stories and lore. Deserts, oceans, jungles and more. I have a plethora of places to look and turn to to fill any and all prompts, and that's exciting.
Leadership: This might be one of the two themes I'm looking forward to the most. I have so many regions and kingdoms and organizations that I have mere names, no articles nothing yet, but names and ideas in my head for whom they are. Governments, organizations in charge of powerful entities and more. So again I have so much to work with, which is going to be a great deal of fun to see what each prompt sort of inspires, where it pokes me to look.
Discovery: In a world admist a steampunk/industrial revolution, again this one excites me. I have a lot I can work with here, both for exploring forgotten places, arts, magicks, ruins, but also science, technology, natural laws and more. Its a great theme and I can't wait to see what prompts come from them.
Monstrous: And this is the one the theme that has me exceedingly excited. Beasts, Nightmares from the Void, Corrupted Dragons, Abberations, Wars, Battlefields, War Criminals and more. i've so many ideas. So many ideas. Conflicts as well. I'm neck deep in the seeds but I wanna see what tickles my fancy based on the prompts.

HOMEWORK THREE, Motivation and Inspiration

Given I am revamping the existing rough material I had kinda come up with in my 'mad alchemist labratory' that is my other world on here, the 'staging area' where I just throw ideas all over the walls like spaghetti, checking to see if they done and ready to be finalized into something beautiful, this madhouse of a staging area, this labratory of chaos and insanity will be a major inspiration and motivational force, along with a place I draw rough ideas from, taking and polishing things that showed promise but need...a proper finished home/rewrite/revamp, with how the world's geography is changed now from 1 mega continent into 3 seperate continents.

Tariek Rough Collection Homepage

Besides that, for me the motivation is the wonderful energy of the community, the discord Summercamp channel and twitch streams (those that I catch this year, as I may be at work during many of them). Its adrenaline, this community when we all engaged like this, all building our worlds, the multiverse of wild insanity that is worldanvil growing together to explore later. Music is another motivation, but one key piece for me, if there is a conflict prompt this year, I have the....beginnings of a thought. The seeds of a story, a moment, a tale worth telling. Drawing on real world stuff and fantasy spinning my own version, I have...ideas and one of them stuck in my head that is just ready and willing, drawing inspiration from this particular piece of music.



So we'll see if the Summercamp prompts scratch this itch or if I'll be doing some bonus writing. But I've a whole playlist set up of music I'll be listening too. A lot of Kamelot, Sabaton, Iron Maiden, Alestorm, Airbourne, Eluveitie and more.

I also learned from last year. I've got my other half and my ferrets for company and to keep me honest and insure I don't torch myself. So I think I'm all ready for camp this year, and can't wait to see what the last homework assignment is.

Support Network and Workspace Prep

We all need good support and allies, and this community provides so much of that during these challenges and its amazing!!! But we all need that in our lives too. People who care and will keep an eye on you to make sure you don't turn your own brain to mush. I am blessed with excellent support, as listed below;

• My wonderful amazing other half, Selena, whom puts up with me shutting myself up for two months a year and writing like an insane person, and yet still loves me dearly. I am very lucky to have such an understanding partner.

• My little fur noodles of madness, Kaos and Karma, my ferrets, whom love to distract me at just the right time, where frustration and/or burnout might be about to set in. They will come in, and attempt, adorably, to stash me, as a person. And I mean, how can I not play along and say no to such loving efforts?!

• And of course, My TTRPG players and game group, whom are my dearest and best friends from childhood, for keeping me social two days a week, so I don't shut in completely for a month and just....forget how to human being.

As to my workspace, I am a bit strange in how I work compared to many of you. For me, I thrive in some sort of near just barely unstable chaos. I have my desk set up, notebooks laid out, with a million ideas just plastered all about for me to flip and tear through whenever we get prompts laid on us, Endless handwritten little notes and ideas. I got a monitor that is just dedicated to keeping my maps up for me to flip through as I need. Writing implements, dice for generating randomized parts of prompts (eye color of character prompts for example), along with a few random knicknacks that do not distract me, but help me through tactile interaction whenever I get a bit to deep into the work and start experiencing mad scientist syndrome, and start losing focus and branching way to far off the paths I'm setting. Some of that is fine, but there is a clear line that needs establishing when you trying for Diamond. Need some level of laser-ish focus. So that is how I recollect and re-focus my mind. Whether it be flipping the butterfly knife I have for fun, or shuffling about a deck of Magic the Gathering Cards, or rolling a few dice, fiddling with a miniature that I'm in the midst of slowly but steadily assembling or painting. I am a construction worker by trade, a pieceworker to boot, so I need to be busy, but also kept engaged by a bit of complexity and...layering to activities and tasks. I've always been this way even as a kid. So I keep a couple little knicknack hands on projects and objects to fiddle with nearby, as a way to recalibrate my focus.