A quick follow-up to Creativity sprees incoming – World Anvil Summer Camp and RPGaDay. The first batch prompts of WorldAnvil summer camp were released last night during their Twitch stream and on their blog.
It appears the numbers of prompts in each group have changed. The copper batch contains eight prompts rather than the previous ten, and it appears eight responses will be sufficient for a copper badge. Maybe this was to make Diamond (previously 33) more of a step up from Gold (previously 30). For whatever reason, this and the revised schedule releasing each of the subsequent sets of prompts earlier makes it feel more achievable and easier to schedule.
Copper theme: Expanse
The copper prompts are themed with “Expanse”, where an expanse is a “wide and continuous area”. Very broad and generic leaving plenty of scope…but also somewhat limiting. Since most of my worldbuilding at the moment is concentrated on the city of Akorros, I’m not sure there are many wide and continuous areas within it. I’ll need to look wider. But the main purpose of my worldbuilding is as inspiration and background for my campaigns.
My campaigns are all set within the world of Mystara. My current campaign is starting in Akorros, a city slightly to the west of centre in the Republic of Darokin, but I am thinking it will probably involve some sort of quest which takes the characters around the different nations (and they are very different in character – one thing which particularly attracts me to Mystara). I want to develop things which might relate to something there.
So, what are the prompts? Maybe that will provide more inspiration.
- An ocean, desert, plain, pocket dimension, or other large expanse
- A religion or organisation connected to a natural phenomenon
- A species that survives in an unlikely place
- A vehicle or type of vehicle used for long journeys
- A settlement beside or in a great expanse
- A material only harvestable from nature
- A culture who lives by, near or within an ocean, desert or other expanse
- A food that marks a rite of passage for a culture in your world
Hmmm. Nearby expanses:
- Akorros is on the shores of the massive Lake Amsorak
- Beyond Lake Amsorak to the west is the port of Akesoli and the even larger Sind desert
- To the north of Lake Amsorak is a large range of mountains separating Darokin from Glantri, the Silver Sierras
- To the east of Akorros is the rich central area of the Republic of Darokin, the growing region
I could see the campaign heading to most of these, but maybe Lake Amsorak is the best one to concentrate on. It is, after all, the most immediate, and I could see links for several articles immediately:
- 1: The expanse: Lake Amsorak itself
- 4: The vehicle: the trading ships which ply the lake
- 7: The culture: the traders – what quirks could I introduce?
- 5: The settlement: the most obvious might be Akorros, but I’ve already written plenty about that, so maybe I should go for Akesoli, the sister city at the other end of the lake, and the trade portal to the west
- 3: The species: not so clear; maybe an underwater species/culture within the lake?
- 6: The material: again, not clear yet, but maybe something from the lake
- 2: The religion: some sort of lake druid? Or is there some particular phenomenon in the lake which it might be related to? Whirlpools or something? That could be interesting.
- 8: The food: very unclear. Maybe this is related to the traders?
So those are the prompts and my initial thinking. Expect some of the output to appear on the blog in the future…
