It’s July, and that means it’s time for WorldAnvil’s annual Summer Camp of worldbuilding. Over the last few years I have diligently taken part, but after last year I started to wonder whether it was worth the time and effort.
My last session has shown me the value of some worldbuilding I did three years ago.
What is Worldbuilding?
Before I get into the wheres and whyfores, maybe a bit of definition of what I mean by worldbuilding.
I’m talking about work developing the background to the campaign world, which informs what happens in the campaign, but isn’t directly linked to an adventure or session.
This includes developing the geography, creating maps and deciding what towns, cities, hills, lakes, seas, rivers, roads exist, and how they relate to each other.
It also includes work to describe particular features. What is Lake Amsorak like? What creatures live within it? Who lives on and around it, and what are their lives like? What can be harvested from it? What’s the weather like?
What about the Sind Desert? The Silver Sierras mountains? The Streel River? The Streel Plain and its rich farming land which surrounds it?
There’s politics: who are the leaders and factions in Akorros? How do they relate to each other? What temples and religions? What are their observances? What is life like for the ordinary person? What laws and regulations are there?
This is something that you can obviously spend a LOT of time on. Is it time well spent?
Before I answer that, let me look at a tool to help you with your worldbuilding, and their annual Summer Camp of inspiration.
World Anvil Summer Camp
WorldAnvil, as I have described before, is a web site dedicated to worldbuilding. Originally created by Dimitri Havlidis as a present for his wife Janet Forbes (a former opera singer!) to help her keep track of her world information for her writing and playing, it has now grown into an extremely fully-featured tool containing a massive collection of worlds. At its heart it has the articles, each of which has a certain category – Geography, Ethnicity, Character, Document, Vehicle, Military Conflict – there’s a large list. The different article types have different prompts and sections which help you think about what’s relevant to that particular bit of development.
It also has various ways of collecting and categorising your articles – maps which you can link articles into, timelines for events, hierarchical structure. And, as you would expect from a web-based tool, this can all be crosslinked, and you can include images and other media. The basic membership is free, but paid higher tiers unlock extra features such as greater control over formatting, and a book-writing interface.
They run Summer Camp throughout July, where you are challenged to write articles in response to prompts which are revealed bit-by-bit through the month. Completing eight prompts earns a copper badge, completing sixteen earns a silver badge, gold for twenty-four and platinum for thirty-two or more. Each article must be at least 300 words long, and must be new writing.
The prompts are revealed during their regular Saturday call, and the copper and silver prompts for this year are now out.
All of them start: “Somewhere in your world, describe…”, and this year’s copper prompts are based on the theme of Change.
- …a tumultuous region prone to natural disasters [Geography]
- …an environmental or other large-scale natural disaster [Natural Law]
- …a character who goes through a great change or metamorphosis [Character]
- …a sickness that caused societal upheaval [Condition]
- …a document that changed the course of history [Document]
- …a displaced people in your world [Ethnicity]
- …a conflict that involved a changing environment [Military Conflict]
- …a vehicle that, when introduced, caused social upheaval [Vehicle]
Last year they also started introducing “wild card prompts”, additional prompts not related to the theme in case the theme isn’t talking to you, and this year’s copper ones are:
- …a myth about food [Myth]
- …a building associated with joy and fun [Building]
The silver prompts are based on the theme of “refuge”.
- …a settlement considered a refuge [Settlement]
- …a technology used for defence or protection [Tcehnology]
- …a naturally sheltered place [Geography]
- …a building considered a refuge against the world [Building]
- …a unit dedicated to guarding someone or something [Military Formation]
- …a personal item that keep you safe [Item]
- …a tradition that gives comfort [Tradition]
- …a species with a protective anatomy [Species]
And the silver “wild card” prompts are:
- …a sub-culture considered larger than life by some [Ethnicity]
- …a charity or other organisation focused on doing good [Organisation]
Just to be clear: since there are four sets of prompts, that’s a total of 40 prompts by the end, and any eight of these is sufficient for a copper badge – it doesn’t have to be the copper prompts, or it can be some copper prompts, some silver prompts, and so on.
Join Summer Camp yourself via their web site. All you need is to sign up for a free account.
What’s the value?
So, worldbuilding – is it valuable? Is it worth your time (which can be not inconsiderable)? And what about WorldAnvil Summer Camp?
First question: is it necessary? Absolutely not.
Well, with a small caveat. To get started, you need enough so your players have some choices, and so you have a vague idea what they find if they head in a certain direction. But this can be a roughly sketched map with a few features on it, a few names, and a starting location.
As you go through the campaign, what the party does and where the party goes will determine what you need to flesh out next, so you can very much work on a just-in-time basis, and the players will probably never know. You certainly don’t need to know anything about the marriage rituals of the Sembiona tribe of lizardmen if the players aren’t going anywhere near the Mudbiter swamp where they live.
Also, if you don’t have a regular campaign, and just play one-shots, there is no world to build.
On the other hand, having developed an area and having an idea of the setting can inform your descriptions and stories as you go through the campaign, and can lead to plot ideas and inspire the players to head in certain directions (because you can drop hints describing them).
But it can be a lot of work, and it probably isn’t the most directly useful thing you can do to prepare for next Tuesday’s session. Creating some NPCs or working out what existing NPCs or factions might have been doing in the background, developing locations (rooms, pubs, shops, geographical features…) where the party are likely to head in the next session, thinking up encounters or scenes which might occur – obviously these are more directly relevant to the session.
My experience with WorldAnvil and Summer Camp
I joined WorldAnvil in autumn 2019, and I’ve been taking part in Summer Camp ever since, always achieving at least copper, though one year I did manage silver. This means I have forty-plus articles I have written about my world in response to Summer Camp prompts. I have also been running campaigns in that world throughout that time. See my WorldAnvil world here.
I’ve written about the Gyrfalcon, the mysterious head of the Thieves’ Guild in Akorros, and the deal they struck with the Tongs of the Spice quarter. I wrote a story of a gang raid into the Spice Quarter, and the chaos that ensued. I’ve written about the Shi’ika boat people of Lake Amsorak, their boats, their settlement and their sacred place. I’ve written a bit about Akesoli, the settlement on the other side of the lake. Last year I wrote a lot about the geography, wildlife, and weather of the Sind desert, along with the salt mines. I’ve written about Khoronus and the Chardastes wing of his temple, which acts as the city hospital. I’ve written about the itinerant peddlers of Darokin, their caravans and the stocks they might carry from settlement to settlement. I’ve written quite a bit about the noisome tanneries of Akorros and the people and creatures who work and live there. I’ve written about guindamettla, the local cherry brandy. I’ve written a creation myth about the geography of Akorros and the range of hills to the east, and also the real geographical history of the Amsorak basin. I’ve written about Certified Letters of Credit, a way of transferring large sums of money without having to carry pounds and pounds of metal. I’ve written about the language of flowers used by the Tsili. And more…
How much has this helped my sessions? To be honest, mostly as background colour. The guindamettla has featured a fair bit in the pubs. The Gyrfalcon has been established as the current “big bad”. There has been a fair amount of to and fro to the temple (site of the main library) and the Chardastes wing. The CLOCs came up in conversation. Some flower tattoos have appeared on NPCs, but not been explained. Now that I’ve developed the Sind waste, that has inspired various creature parts that have featured in the exotic butcher and as magical item ingredients. But as to significantly affecting the story, not so much.
Having said that, the last session was inspired by part of my worldbuilding, and I used a fair amount of the description I had already written pretty much verbatim.
Background: someone has developed a “portal bomb” – a ball which, when thrown, creates a portal to the Abyss on landing (which coincidentally always somehow seems to be where demons can come through…) These have now been seen in sufficient number that there is obviously some sort of manufactory for them, and they’ve been looking for this for a while.
Where better to site a clandestine operation than in the foul tanneries where people only go because they have to, and where there are already weird things in the back streets?
It gave me some nice description of a rather different area of town. It gave me inspiration for encounters in the tanneries, and on the way to the place where the manufactory was (rats, terriers, swarms of zombie limbs). And siting the manufactory location in a ruin next to the city midden gave some interesting encounters and puzzles inside.
However, that’s probably the most direct use of all these hours of worldbuilding, and in terms of return on the time I spent, that’s really not much.
Conclusions
Is worldbuilding worth it? As a direct preparation activity, not really. However, if you have spare time and the interest, it can colour the world and help make it feel more real, and if you enjoy it, why not? Just be honest about why you’re doing it, and don’t think of it as session prep.
Now to respond to those SummerCamp prompts…
Postscript
I’ve taken so long writing this post that the gold prompts have just come out too. They’re based on the theme of “belief”.
- A faction of an organization built around belief [Organisation]
- A myth, urban legend, or conspiracy theory believed by many to be true [Myth]
- An evil spirit or divine antagonist [Character]
- A document of spurious or controversial attribution [Document]
- A relic or symbol of belief [Item]
- Slang or a language associated with a religion or belief [Language]
- A leading or high-ranking position in an organization [Title]
- The practices and ceremonies of worship [Tradition]
And the wildcard prompts are:
- A settlement that’s known as a party town or pleasure city [Settlement]
- A hybrid species intentionally bred [Species]
