Summer Camp Prep 2024
Once Summer Camp begins in proper, I will link my prompt replies here.
Per usual Scarterra will receive the bulk of my care and attention, but I will write prompts for the Warhammer Fantasy Scaleverse or Westhammer World if the muses inspire me or if I get really stuck on a prompt for Scarterra.
I've been buillding Scarterra for a long time since I joined World Anvil in late 2020 and a couple years before with my own disorganized notes.
The previous two summer camps, when I see a prompt I think "I already did something very similar to this long ago" Because my other worlds are so much less development, it has a lot more undeveloped territory in it making it easier to utilize prompts for. I may end up writing a few Summer Camp articles for my Warhammer fan fiction worlds, WHF Scale-verse and Westhammer.
2023 I made a pledge to focus my Summer Camp entries on the Scaraqua side of Scarterra and I got the diamond award and had a lot of fun of writing articles, but I barely dipped my toe in the waters of Scaraqua unlike 2022 where I made no such promise. I'd liked to develop Scaraqua and Scarterra's southern hemisphere more, but I make no promises because I am seemingly more effective that way. I will cover the prompts the way the muses drive me.
Week 1
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Find a community—whether that’s our Discord server, Facebook Group, your RPG or friend group, or something else.
Already have this covered.
Assignment One
Consider what kind of changes would fit in with your world's themes, genre, and other foundational points. Scarterra is an "old" world in that I've been working on it a very long time. I have been tweaking this a lot already. I guess I need to admit that Scarterra is a high fantasy world. I am contrarian by nature and I set out to make a "medium fantasy world" squarely between "low" and "high" and while it is true that Scarterra doesn't have massive magic spells that can destroy whole armies or teleport groups of people 1000 miles, Scarterra does have a lot of magic that is reliable and ubiquitous enough that magic shapes every economy and government of every location in one or the other. Since I am leaning towards high fantasy, I'm going to lean more towards the Rule of Cool than the Rule of Realism for Summer Camp 2024.Assignment Two
Decide how many prompts you'll go for during Summer Camp. Then, download the pledge document and fill it accordingly!Assignment Three
Get your categories and tags organized! I recently added a few two or three new subfolders for organizational but nothing major.Assignment Four
Take a look at your meta, primer, and any other high-level document and update it according to the current state of your world. Well I'm dropping my laughable claim to be "medium fantasy". I made some other minor updates to my meta, mostly fixing spelling errors and rewording things for clarityWeek 2
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Assignment One
Consider what kinds of refuge would fit in with your world's themes, genre, and other foundational points. I have been looking for an excuse to highlight some temples, inns, hospitals, and monasteries, so that is probably the most obvious direction to go if there is a refuge based prompt but I'm open to non-obvious explorations of the concept of refuge.Assignment Two
Find a community—whether that’s our Discord server, Facebook Group, your RPG or friend group, or something else. Already covered in spades.Assignment Three
(for older worlds) Find ways to improve styling and layout in your world! I started with mostly blobs of text. Then I started adding header pictures over blobs of texts. Then I started added pictures in the article to break up the text. A lot of people on World Anvil don't follow the rules on art, but I do. I have lots of public domain art, creative commons pictures, Hero Forge portaits made by me and friend and controversially some AI art, but they are all clearly labeled. I have some art I posted with the artist's permission but I can barely fill the fingers of one hand with that. I have a small but beloved cache of art from artists I've paid for comissions. Viewable here: Putting the "Art" in ScARTerra. I have more art in the pipeline but it's a slow process because I am not made of money and the artists I use have day jobs and independent comissions is a side hustle they get to when they can. The talented Zeta Gardner is working on some awesome portraits of the Nine and has completed six of them, but I am waiting for the complete set before I showcase the art. Since the Nine are the foundation of Scarterra's setting and lore, I am giddy with anticipation but these portraits may or may not be completed before the end of July. Excellence cannot be rushed. My newest thing I've done for Scarterra's visuals is to add quotes from Scarterran characters. One by one, me and my good friend have made portraits form them (mostly via Hero Forge) to give them pictures to go with their quotes. Most of my quoters have portraits now, but not all of them. I can try to make a few more before July 1st. I keep track of all this via the Master List of Quotes. A lot of my articles have fluff aspects and RPG mechanics aspects. The RPG mechanics are annotated with a pile of d10 dice. This way readers of my world that are uninterested in the mechanics can skim over it, while my players can hone in on the rules if they so desire. I'll give this page a read and ponder it. I am running out of non-CSS things I can do to improve my visuals. I'm questioning my players and fans for feedback. I'm perusing the top World Anvil worlds by subscribers for ideas.
Assignment 4
If you’re a CSS wizard, maybe take the time now to give it a polish! I am not even a CSS novice at this point. That is something I need to rectify eventually but it probably won't be this Summer, maybe by Summer Camp 2025.Week 3
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Assignment One
Consider what kind of beliefs would fit in with your world's themes, genre, and other foundational points. I have this covered in spades. Scarterra is based on the Nine and in Worldember 2023 and my attempt at getting into the 2023 World Building, I set up How ordinary mortals worship the Nine, abandoned draft as one of the tent poles of my world's lore. I got seven likes on this article, so I did something right.Assignment Two
Create a bank of inspirations! Quotes, music, description of experiences and shower thoughts, etc. Asking me to do this is like asking a dog to bark. I got it covered via threads on a gaming websites and a small pile of MS Word notes, and chats with friends. I had this informal system before I opted to join World Anvil.Assignment Three
Find art and pictures that inspire you, and grab a map if you don't have one (and need one). I have a few maps. I plan to make more, but realistically I won't have any new maps before July. I have more comissioned art in the pipeline. I'm not made of money so I can't comission art for everything, only the most important stuff. For the lesser details I have public domain art and AI. I have a subscription to Midjourney. Sometimes Midjourney gives me AI art that I like, sometimes it doesn't. I have tried Nightcafe and Dreamup in the past but I have much better success with Midjourney. Scarterra has many eye colors, skin tones, and hair types for humans and demihumans. Sometimes they ressemble real world humans, sometimes not. Check out elemental ethnicity in mortals for details. AI is good at making weird hair and eye colors but it's not great at making weird skin tones. I can make blue cats, but I can't make blue skinned humans and is even worse at making grey skinned humans. My holy grail for AI is to find a program that can make humans and demihumans with exotic skin colors. It doesn't work, I can only mimic, Caucasion, African, and Asian variants with consistency.Assignment Four
Check your inspirations again. Are they still relevant? Can you find any that better represent the current state of your project? I believe my inspirations are still relevant.Week 4
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