World Ember 2023 Prep

Week 1

Initially I planned to write for the City of Ten Thousand Daggers page during World Ember just like I do every year. In fact, I even started reorganizing that page to make it less of a mess during December. Unfortunately, the reorganization is going to take longer than I thought, so instead of adding more content to be dealt with, I decided to take the handful of pages I'd written for Diner Punks and set up a new WA site that I can expand during World Ember.

Week 2

This is a whole new world, so the scope is "everything," but Diner Punks is geared toward setting up the groundwork for an RPG project, so the focus will be on gameable content. Since the system is in development, the information here will be system agnostic but structured in a way that allows me to easily add the dice and crunch later. To keep things simple, I've set up 4 categories (3 primaries and a catch-all):

• The Boomlands: This is the world/gazetteer section and contains general background information; details about specific people, places, and things; and other big-picture setting stuff.
• The Camp:In addition to general street-level "what life is like in the post-apocalyptic wasteland" stuff, this section will inlcude information and suggestions to help the players create the camp that their characters belong to during the zero session. Community and found family should be big themes for most games, so it's important to make sure the PCs have people counting on them. In addition to establishing the PCs as "Diner Punks" instead of just drifters, the camp provides the GM with a way to raise the stakes and set up stakes, deadlines, patrons, and other tools that are helpful for keeping the game moving smoothly. Without people counting on them, there's nothing but mutant biker gangs and giant ants to keep the party from lolligagging through the wasteland without the speed and urgency you need for a good race and chase story.
• The Convoy:Convoys are the default PC party for the game, so this section is basiclly for stuff that goes in the Players' Guide. Common convoy roles/player archetypes/classes go here, along with details about vehicles and equipment, best practices for Boomlands travel, and general player advice.
• Everything ElseThe plan is for this to be sort of a meta page for things like this page and other things that aren't game content. If I run into thing that don't easily fit my three main categories, I can also use this as a staging area where I can stick things until I figure out where thy fit.

Since I'll be laying a lot of the groundwork for the setting during WorldEmber, all the themes and influences from the meta will be relevant to some of the things I'll write during December. The main focus will be establishing the setting and feel of the game and building hooks that I can hang things on later.

Week 3

Since this is a new page, I already had a vague plan for making the landing page user friendly, so this week's homework was really just a matter of finishing the things I'd been meaning to do anyway.

• The world introduction was previously just a chunk of text I'd pulled from the overview article that broadly describes the setting. I started by taking this text and editing it down to a brief, to-the-point description of the setting.
• In an effort to broadcast the vibe of the setting, I added an "elevator pitch" section that calls out the world's major influences by name.
• Finally, I pointed readers to the "World Overview" article, gave a very quick rundown on home page navigation, and put out a call to action (to follow the page).
• To make that call to action easier, I added a follow button right there so visitors don't have to scroll down to find the button.
• At the top of the intro I added a tag line/subtitle that sums up the setting.
• The homepage header section of the theme I'm using doesn't fill the entire content area, which both looked weird and made the intro take up a lot of vertical page space, so I spent a while blindly trying to remember enough CSS to stretch it out to the full page width. While I was there, I made a few other CSS changes, like altering the color of the follow button to fit the page theme.
• Spreading out the header section made for very long line lengths that aren't conducive to a quick read, so I added an image to make the section more readable.
• Last but not least, I added the Spotify playlist for the setting, since it already appears on every page except the homepage.




Week 4

Not much to do for this week's homework. I've got my work area set up, know roughly when I'll be writing because my day job only gives me a limited window, and have been building the playlist for this world for about 3 years now. I might pre-generate some art to make the pages prettier, but at this point I'm basically just waiting for December 1.