Naelin's SummerCamp 2021 Pledge

A reflection on where I'm at, and how to get back to where I was

Flag of Thaur by Naelin

"I, King Naelin of Thaur, pledge to spend this month of Preparing by reading thirty and more wild tales from all corners of the Archipelago, and from all corners of our delusional storytellers' minds!

— King Naelin, doing his best to piss off his advisors

Where I'm At

SummerCamp marks the anniversary of the time I started getting involved in the WA Community, which brought me all the best things I had in the past twelve months.
Having seen how fellow worlbuilders and friends felt victim to The Overwhelm, and having stumbled upon some seriously mind-blowing, gamechanger content on how we get there in the first place, I am actively trying to come back to the mindset and goal I had the last year.

Game of Strings by Naelin

It's the worldbuilding, not the badge.

Here We Go Again:
Holding on to the sense of authentic hype instead of completionism

If I will try again to get the 31 prompts done... what is so different from the last time?
After watching a (seriously mind blowing) course about gamification and the mechanism it follows, I understood a phenomenom I saw happening everywhere around the WA community on these past 12 months:

"I love worldbuilding! I will do this competition to do more/show my worldbuilding!"

"Oh, a badge, shiny! What a cool prize after my worldbuild-y effort!"

"I love worldbuilding and shinies! I will do this competition to get the badge!"

"There is no badge, I will wait until the next competition/prompt to worldbuild"

"I don't want to do this competition, but I want the badge"

The lollipop effect

by Mae Mu

The basic concept I've learned from this course was called "The lollipop effect": The instructor explains that, when he was trying to find ways for his students to do their homework, he started giving lollipops as a reward for completing them. It worked very well at first, but he then noticed that:

The students that started doing the homework now had no reason to do anything if the lollipop was not involved.

The students that previously enjoyed doing homework lost their motivation to do it, as the lollipop became the new "goal", removing the sense of accomplishment that they used to get from a job well done.

I started here because I enjoy worldbuilding. While badges and other shinies are cool and great, I need to remember that I started all this for fun. I need to go back to my original reward, and try my best not to turn the likes, badges and prizes into the only goal in my mind.

The four horses of motivation

I then learned about the four main components of sustainable motivation.

1: Mastery

The sense of doing the thing because you can become better at it, with feedback, goals and challenges.
World Anvil has this in the form of the learning that you do in both the writing and your chose of things like css, formatting, mapmaking, illustration, character creation, etc, as well as having loads of ways to get meaningful feedback.

2: Meaning

The sense of doing the thing because there is meaning behind it, be it personal, or externally created.
We have this in our reason for worldbuilding: maybe it's a passion project, or your childhood's mindscape, maybe it's a collaborative project!
World Anvil also has this in projects created by the community, such as the Game of Tomes.

3: Autonomy

The freedom of doing the thing without being forced, and the sense of being permitted to contribute, to be yourself, and to fail safely.
World Anvil has this, full stop. You are doing this because you want, you are asked for your opinion on things, and you can be yourself and learn by trial and error without fear.

4: Community

The sense of doing the thing because you are part of a community of like-minded people that are enjoyable and authentic.
World Anvil has this in its fantastic community of authors, hobbyist and roleplayers, and on the extensive network of streams where you can talk directly with the founders.

So how do I prevent The Overwhelm?

After finding my experience (and that of several of my WA friends) accurately portrayed on the "loss of meaning" scenario, I thought on it and realized that we always had these four components from the start, but many of us lost them along the way by replacing them with with goals such as "getting the more likes", "being on the shortlist" or "not missing any badge".
And, don't get me wrong, these are amazing INCENTIVES, but they are not intended to be the end goal (As Janet Forbes puts it, you win by having more worldbuilding done than when you started!)
So I plan on getting back to the mindscape I was in during SC and WE 2020, before I got caught in the need for badges or shortlist features. How am I trying to get there?

Do's:

• Share because I'm proud
  Not because I want more likes.
• Make prompts be a challenge to expand my world
  Instead of a burden to inflict on it.
• Share the enthusiasm with others
  Instead of secluding myself to get "more time to write".
• Make the prizes be prizes...
  ...Instead of goals.

Dont's:

• Harvest the engagement
  Get it by being authentically enthusiastic instead.
• See the prompts as bending my world
  Bend them into a source of motivation instead.
• Write alone for fear of boring people
  Bring the bf in. Build together.
• Play against
  Play with.

The Prep, Week 1

You can read about Week 1 homework prompts in this blog post.

The Worlds

Since forcing myself on a limited frame (AKA a "Focus Area") is very difficult for me, I will be using all of my four worlds on SummerCamp.
I will try to fit some prompts into my two childhood worlds: Tierras Mágicas and the Deiginundo.
However, since these are both closed worlds, I calculate most of it will be in my main world, Symbols of Power.
Some wild ideas may end up in Shakiraverse, the side project I share with TC, if any good enough arises.

Insert intro article for Deiginundo here

Preparing my Worlds

• I plan on creating a Primer/Introductory article for each of them, so newcomers can get the gist of what are they reading


• I plan on revisiting and polishing my Potential topics list... and maybe make it stop being so obviously ripped from The WorldEmber Pledge.

Focus Areas

• Since the Deiginundo and Tierras Mágicas are virtually empty at the moment, I plan on trying to use the prompts to write some of the fundamental concepts, places and characters on both of them.


• In the case of Symbols of Power, I will try to develop more about the Kingdom of Thaur and the island of Stunveldt, for which I've defined some basic concepts around their sociopolitical to work on.


• Shakiraverse is, of course, the wildcard. Anything could happen, though I would like to write down some things I had going around in my mind about The Shakirian Plane of Reality TV.

The Author by Naelin & TJ

"I, Master of Skulls Naelin, pledge to try my best to complete the 31 SummerCamp 2021 prompts, while taking care of my mental health and encouraging my friends to do so as well"

— The Author, side-eyeing his friends

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The gamification course I mention in the article is "Gamification: Motivation Psychology & The Art of Engagement" by Rob Suttclife.
You can find it on Udemy and Skillshare

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Look here's the thing about life and dance: you can't tell what will happen in advance.
Sometimes your moves don't work so hot, but it's best to keep dancing with what you've got.
And even if you are whittled down to one, remember that you started all this for fun.
You haven't really thought about that for a bit, but your love of dance is why you started it.
You focus too hard on what others feel, your anxiety and worries will start to seem real.
But the truth is that your dancing doesn't have to be great, they'll have more fun if you don't concentrate
And the best way to get you back to a smile is to give yourself a chance to freestyle

— Brian David Gilbert, "Dances Moving! Ep. 7: Freestyle"

Cuek! by Currix

My Support Network

WA has such an amazing community that it's almost hard not to end up with a found family out of nowhere.

Crow and birbs and The Sun

My support networks for SC 2021 are my partner, the wonderful TJ Trewin, the amazing Happy Sun Lodge, and my family of birbs over at the Aviary.
I will also be trying my best to get back at WA discord server's spanish channel Kiosko de Paella, to my chapter the Good Cookies Lodge, and to share the hype with the general challenge/SC channel.

Wigglefeathers by Naelin

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Hey, psst. Nothing is set on stone until the prompts are out, but I am planning on making some of my WASC21 articles be or include adult-only content.
Make sure to join the naughty list with the options below if you want to be able to see all the content!

Log in to World Anvil to view bonus content and secrets!

The Prep, Week 2

You can read about Week 2's homework prompts on this blog post.

Organising my worldbuilding

Categories

My categories are pretty now!
I have worked on the categories by adding some new ones, rearranging others, fixing some minor translation mistakes, and adding shiny icons for each category.

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Laying it Out

I have actually started doing this some days ago!
I am working on a world primer / introductory article for Symbols of Power, and I have added a section indicating how I use my different containers, with references on how to use each one. I hope to have it finished before July!

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Image Inspiration Pool

I always have at hand my faithful pile of... Pictures I made eons ago and never did the articles for.
But this time I also made a map for Tierras Mágicas, one of the new worlds I plan on developing this SC.

Fancy Themes

I have spent the best chunk of a night tweaking the theme for Tierras Mágicas, as the original theme had fonts quite too small and some too difficult to read for my taste, and adding some fancy containers. The end result looks quite similar to the original, but with increased readibility.

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Placeholder images?

Judgy Lyraik by Naelin

While I am not fond of using actual placeholder pictures in my world, I do have a small collection of silly decorative pictures I use basically for the same purpose. The last one I made is this ridiculous, but very judgy Lyraik.

Tierras Mágicas' map!

Map of Tierras Magicas and Around

Open full size

Unused pics waiting for their turn

Symbols of Power

Endeler by Naelin

Alcholoh by Naelín

Irate Hideout by Naelin through Inkarnate

Road by Naelin

Tierras Mágicas

Queen Laura by Naelin

Knight Sebastián by Naelin

Chopek And Rodrigo by Naelin

Placeholder Shields
Hah! I lied! I ended up creating some shields based on my nations' flags to use as placeholder portraits for characters in order to avoid the generic image that would show in timeline events otherwise.

Shield of Thaur by Naelin

The Prep, Week 3

You can read about Week 3 homework prompts in this blog post.

Social Media

I will be using my Twitter account and perhaps (perhaaaaaps) my Reddit account in order to post news about Summer Camp articles.
My main social media sharing will happen through Discord, though.
I also followed some peeps on Twitter that I didn't realise I was not following.
My subreddits of choice are /r/worldanvil, /r/speculativeevolution and /r/worldbuilding

World Anvil Profile

I have updated my profile banner :D I used a cropped version of the picture in the right, that looks better than the one I had before. I have also added my Twitter account.

A Trip to a Wonderful Land by Naelin, based on a scene of the music video "Wonderland", by Caravan Palace

Caw Aristocracy by Currix

Article release plan/checklist

1. Write the main body of the article
2. Set the: Tags, Banner, Excerpt, Category/Parent, Sidebar articleblocks, Flag/Portrait/Phenotype, Author's Notes
3. Check tagged articles and add notices in case they're old
4. Add to the Naelin's SummerCamp 2021 article list
5. Push notifications
6. Share in Discord as I see fit: Kiosko, Lodge, Aviary, SC channel, Guild Showcase, Mature Channel, TJ's server
7. Share in social media as I see fit: Twitter, Reddit
8. Add in TJ's 400 prompts list and remove from Potential topics list if applicable

Are you all ready? WorldEmber SummerCamp is coming