WorldEmber 2023 Homework

First Week Homework

For this year's Worldember, I am going to focus not on my fantasy world, but Tacoma by Night, the World of Darkness setting with vampires, werewolves, mages, and more! As for the Area of Focus this year, I plan on focusing a lot on Characters. Anyone who has played a World of Darkness game, especially Vampire the Masquerade knows how key the cast is. Even beyond the players, you have their mortal ties, accentuated with V5's Touchstone system, their vampiric allies and enemies, and even their community to consider. I personally feel like I'm very good at character creation, so the amount of NPC's i've come up with to fill Tacoma as a vampiric community might be a bit...

...excessive, but I view it as part of making the world feel more lived in. Now obviously I won't be able to get all nearly 600 Kindred into articles in December, I'm not THAT crazy, but I do want to get more of the key players and authority figures for these crazy anarchs taken care of.
To lead up to that, I want to finish all the Kindred Clansthat I haven't yet, as well as a few other articles to lay the groundwork for character connections and information. That way I can just dive fully into the characters and their backstories, as meager or major as that ends up being.

Pledge

I don't know how much I'll actually be able to write, energy is very dependent after all, and working in a toy store means that December is gonna be a busy month for me. But, I want to reach the minimum at least, so I pledge to make Tacoma by Night 10k words longer by the time the year is over! I also plan to compete, for as much as that means in something like this.

Second Week Homework

Mini-Meta

Scope

I plan on focusing mainly on key Kindred characters within Tacoma and its surrounding areas. This will be the Barons I haven't made already and either their direct aides or the Overseers of key districts within the city.

Goals

I'd like to do this not only to light a fire under my butt to finish the building-block lore articles but also to flesh out the cast more for my writing and DMing. Doing this will also let me focus on the non-kindred building block articles for the Mages, Werewolves, etc.

Inspirations

There aren't a lot of direct inspirations for my characters, they all just kind of mishmash together from creative impulses, but a lot about the characters will be informed by their personal tragedies as Vampires with their clans, backstories, and the influences of the city and its environment.

Third Week Homework

Homepage

This one was a bit different for me (hence my lateness in actually updating this article) because I had already spruced it up in the lead-up to Summercamp and then again for World of Darkness' WODTober event. As for what I did, I added icons for all the folders/subfolders on the side, detailed the preamble for the series, and added a personal tracker of sorts for what my current article task is, what I finished last, and what I'm working on next. When WODTober came around, I also added in links to my two primary manuscripts for easy access!
Hopefully, this setup will remain intuitive and understandable for the new guests I'll get to the page.

Fourth Week Homework

Last-Minute

My last-minute prep is finishing up as many of the Kindred Clansas I can, so I can deep-dive into purely characters once December comes around. If I'm not able to finish up all of them, then I might just put it on pause or carry it over for Worldember, that'll depend on how far along I am. 
I'm interested in making a schedule for myself, but I work retail in a toy store, so I doubt I'll have enough available time to make a purely consistent schedule. What I can try is at least putting in an hour of writing 4 or 5 times a week, either before work, after work, or during my commute. On my days off, if not totally wiped (or slammed with Christmas shopping), I can throw myself more into the veritable fire.
That's the last homework for now folks, happy writing, and may we all come out of this tens-of-thousands of words richer!