My Fantasy RPG World, Feedback and Ideas appreciated

I slowed down. I'm 13th on the leaderboard for total word count at 64,530. There are just shy of 30,000 authors on World Anvil but only 331 have hit 10,000 words. Most writers are trying to write 10,000 over the whole month and then resting their laurels. I'm betting by the end of the contest, there are at least 2000 people hitting the 10,000 word mark.

There is a special prize for the highest word count, but nothing for the runnersup. The top of the heap right now is 185,000 with 181,000 in #2. Almost triple what I have.

I am less than 1000 words behind the 12th place person but I am considerably behind the 11th place person. That's par for this course this month.

I am 9th place for number of articles with 183, at one point at I was in 5th place but I switched from writing short articles to writing long articles. I enjoy writing longer articles more, but I've been filling a lot of family trees and filling family trees means a lot of short articles. Of my 183 I bet about 90 of them are family tree bios.

Spoiler: tangent on how I write family tree bios

Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Grew worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday.
That was the end,
Of Solomon Grundy.

My first process is, by the standards of their species, did they live to a ripe old age, die young, or die in the middle. I roll a d10. 1 means they died in childhood. 2 as an adolescent or young adult. 3-6 in middle age, and 7-10 in old age, with 10 being very impressive.

These family trees are nobles, so I need to figure out if they were good at being nobles. Then I roll a d10 with 1 being terrible and 10 being amazing judging them on their managerial skills, diplomacy, piety, martial prowess, and popularity with the peasants. For Swynfaredians I sometimes skip piety because they weren't very pious in general. Since Swynfaredian nobles must be sorcerers or sorceresses, I also roll a d10 gaging their magical skill.

If they lived into their child bearing years, I roll a d10 to see if they had lots of children or few children, relatively speaking. Those who live longer tend to have more children. I also roll to see how well they liked their spouse. Couples that like each other more get a few extra children.

Last night I wrote profiles for the five "legitimate" and three proven bastard children of Lady Rhian Fremiss the Promiscuous. The dice said she had lots of children but hated her husband (who was an asshole anyway) and Fremiss in general are known to be hedonists so I decided to give her the nickname the Promiscuous.

Then I make up how this goes together. Her first born daughter, who I named Lady Celyn, rolled amazing stats but died as young adult. She was a great manager, great diplomat, neither beloved by the peasants or hated by them, a powerful sorceress, and a competent tactician.

So why would someone who is this awesome die young? Well she was too awesome, was viewed as a political obstacle to a schemer and ended up drinking from a poison cup.

Since Lady Rhian Fremiss the Promiscous did get along well with her husband Lord Troilus Numaness the Mask, I added the detail that Lord Troilus claimed the competent children were his trueborn heirs and the bad ones were the product of adultery though in truth, the more disappointing ones were the ones that looked most like him.

It is probably unnecessary for me to go this far back into the royal family of a 800 year extended family given that Rhian and Troillus died 600 years ago, but the family tree tool is kind of fun and I like being a completionist.

From a world building perspective It is easier to write a family tree starting in the past and going forward than it is to start in the present and work backwards.

As my friend Eron12 once said, for a royal family you really only need to be answer two questions. Who was the first king? Who is the king now?

It will probably quite a while before I can run an RPG again, but Eron12 said next session he would like his character Kormatin to reach out to try to ally with the Deorac family. So I've been fleshing them out.

Until about 100 years ago, the Deoracs were the royal family of a small nation called Talama. 100ish years ago, the Swynfaredians conquered Talama and killed as many Deoracs as they could find.

The surviving Deoracs have intermarried into other noble families but they haven't forgotten their heritage and they naturally hate Swynfaredians. Since Kormatin's enemies are Swynfaredian, this seemed like an obvious thing to do.

It's a lot easier to write family trees for 100 years than 890 years. Especially I only need to really focus on the ones who lived.

I am not on any of the leaderboards for likes. I am still entered in 11 or 12 special categories. I need to trim this down to 10 by the end of the month, or I will be disqualified from every category.

We get digital badges for 10k, 25k, or 50k words, but after 50,000 words, I have no real reason to fight to stay on the leaderboard other than bragging rights.

Anyone who gets 10,000 is put in for raffle drawings. I think 25k and 50k people get their name in the pot an extra time.

I am a writing a bit each day, but I'm not planning to write 10,000 words in a single day again. The Contest ends on January 1st. The last week or so, I've been chasing non-numerical goals. I'm trying to round out Scarterra's Food and Holiday categories.

After the Worldember challenge ends, I am going to try to put a pin in writing world gratuitous world building articles and see if I can force myself to write more my novel. A detailed setting is not much good without any stories.

Maybe make a few more maps. I am also going into RPG withdrawals. My friends are like brothers to me, but we cannot meet to play table top RPGs very often. it is difficult to get three or four adults with families to have a few hours off at the same time. I need to see if I can find a second group interested in playing a Scarterran campaign.

 

World Anvil makes minor updates all the time. To make sure the developers aren't flooded with bad suggestions, suggestions have to be upvoted by other users before they are considered.

Anyway, after the article on Geu-puppies, I had to classify it as "miscellaneous."

I made a suggestion to add "toy" as a subtype to the item outlook. It got upvoted like crazy.

Here is the sidebar now
Item type
Toy
Current Location
Scarterra
Rarity
Geu-Puppies are very common, found in almost every human or gnome household with children. A few dwarves and elves also give their children geu-Puppies.

I believe the developer waited till Christmas Day to implement the change to make a Santa joke which I am okay with.

It's a small update, but I'm glad that World Anvil makes updates like this weekly.

 

Over the last couple days, I have composed articles, narrated by Scarterran priests and priestesses, for 27 religious holidays.

Once, not long ago, I had to constantly check my notes to remember the order of my Zodiac. Now it's burned into my mind I can probably recite it drunk as a skunk.


Go to Scarterra Homepage
Zodiac Holidays in general

"There are twenty-seven zodiac holidays not counting New Year's (does New Year's count as five holidays or one? who knows). Twenty-seven. Three for each of the Nine.

Most of the Nine have two or three holidays that don't fall on their Zodiac month in addition to their three Zodiac days.

Then there are the secular holidays. It is SO important we acknowledge the king's name day, the prince's name day, the last king's name day, and the date the nation was founded and the national feast day.

Then you family holidays, name days and anniversaries, if we stopped working on each and every special day, we would all starve to death.With all respect to the Nine, I feel no guilt whatsoever blowing off a Zodiac holiday."

-Havro, Fumayan peasant farmer

"Nine's blessings be upon you child. As I'm sure you know, the Zodiac calendar has a forty-day month for each one of the Nine.

We recognize the first day of the month as the Dawn of that deities month and the last day of the month as the Solace of that month. The lay people are welcome to join us during these days, but these ritual days are mostly only observed by members of priesthoods.

The night of the 20th and the day of the 21st of each month is called the Apex or Zenith. Usually the general population recognizes these time with some simple honorifics to the deity in question, but nothing too elaborate.

Of course we have a nine-year Zodiac style as well as a nine-month Zodiac cycle. Often, when the year and month line up to the same deity, more people are likely to observe the Zodiac days for that deity that year."
-Priest Benek of the Cult of the Compact

Dawn of Maylar, Maylar 1, Afternike 1

Apex of Maylar, Maylar 20-21, Afternike 20-21

Maylar's Solace, Maylar 40, Horning 10

Mera's Dawn, Mera 1, Horning 11

Mera's Zenith, Mera 20-21, Horning 30-Stirring 1

Mera's Solace, Mera 40, Stirring 20

Korus' Verdance, Korus 1, Stirring 21

Apex of Korus, Korus 20-21, Verdance 10-11

Korus' Solace, Korus 40, Verdance 30

Dawn of Nami, Nami 1, Afterverdance 1

Nami's Zenith, Nami 20-21, Afterverdance 20-21

Nami's Solace, Nami 40, Thrimlich 10

Greymoria's Verdance, Greymoria 1, Thrimlich 11

Apex of Greymoria, Greymoria 20-21st, Thrimlich 30 through Embers 1

Greymoria's Solace, Greymoria 40, Embers 20

Khemra's Dawn, Khemra 1, Embers 21

Khemra's Zenith, Khemra 20-21, Midsummer 10-11

Khemra's Dusk, Khemra 40, Midsummer 30

Zarthus' Dawn, Zarthus 1, Hayseed 1

Zenith of Zarthus, Zarthus 20-21, Hayseed 20-21

Zarthus' Solace, Zarthus 40, Harvesting 10

Hallisan's Dawn, Hallisan 1, Harvesting 11

Apex of Hallisan, Hallisan 20-21, Harvesting 30 through Blooding 1

Hallisan's Solace, Hallisan 40, Blooding 20

Phidas' Dawn, Phidas 1, Blooding 21

Zenith of Phidas, Phidas 20-21, Forenike 10-11

Phidas' Solace, Phidas 40, Forenike 30

New Year's Observances, Turoch 1-5, Nike 1-5

 

It's my birthday tomorrow, and I plan to be eating junk food and playing cards with friends, so today is my last writing day for the Worldember contest.

The contest technically ends on 1:00 PM in my time zone on January 1st, so I could write that morning, but I'll probably sleep in.

We'll see where the muses take me for what to write on the last day(s) but right now I need to clean up what I have written.

I want to enter 10 special categories, no more, no less and I have 17 articles that I think would be worthy entries. After much debate I got 7 in the definitely category and 7 in maybe category.

If I reject anything, that doesn't meant the article is going away, it's just not being used in the contest.

Now that I think about, it, I probably don't want to submit Saurian as a language article. I wrote a lot of the material in this long article but not all of it so I shouldn't put it forth for a prize for me though I am proud of what at L-O were able to create. I guess I'll take it off the maybe pile and turn it into a "No" I guess i have six maybes now.

Definitely
1-Natural Law: Merfolk Ethnicity variations
2-Profession: Dwarf Salt Masters
3-Building: Kalazotz Memorial Stellae
4-Material: Brodesopp
5-Item: Geu-puppies
6-Technology: Scaraquan vinumaca
7-Military Formation: Deep Wardens Legion

8-New Years Traditions in Scarterra.
9-????
10-????

Maybes

Language: Saurian

Tradition: Near and Far Wedding Tokens OR New Years Traditions in Scarterra.

The Wedding Tokens was one of the first things I wrote this month. I think it's elegant in it's simplicity and I thought using Grover demonstrating Near and Far as the illustration would be a good hook.

While I'm not sure it would have the mass appeal, Scarterran New Years does incorporate elements from many many previous things I wrote and I poured my heart into this, so I should probably use that instead of the Grover thing even it has less mass appeal.

With Wedding Tokens and Saurian removed this leaves my new Maybe pile

Condition: Eclipse Touched
Character: Mother of Mountains
Organization: Red Shaft Clan
Species: Culchans (Westhammer)
Plot: King's Drosst's Secret

I can only pick two. I guess I'll eliminate eclipse touched because while I am proud of the article, I don't really need the prize which is a $50 gift card for a company that makes custom blankets and pillows.

I guess by the same token, I am very proud of the Red Shaft Clan article, especially the stereotypes section. But I don't particularly want the prize. I don't need a free tutorial on how to be a good DM in Dungeons and Dragons. I've been running games for my friends since I was 13. I'm not running D&D anymore, I am running D&D10. If someone else wants to act as Dungeon Master, I will happily play in someone's else D&D campaign.

 

The leader board is public. the url never changed, you can look for yourself. Though last year the World Anvil owners blacked out the leader board on December 29th and didn't reveal the scores until the contest was over.

5th on number of articles. 233 articles. About 30 behind #4, but I suppose I should defend my spot. #5 also has 233 articles. I guess I got the #4 spot for getting 233 first. I am lucky number 13 on number of words. Only a about 150 words behind #12 but about 10,000 words ahead 14. I could probably stop writing altogether and keep my #13 but I have hankering to write a bit about fae.

EDIT: You are cheering my rankings but you have no constructive criticism for anything I'm putting in a contest?????

 

I'm sorry, it's not you. I am miffed I cannot get any of my in-person friends to look at my Scarterra wiki and tell me what they think and I was hoping you could help narrow down which articles to include. But I shouldn't be lazy and make that decision myself.

 

Well if I was comparing article X and article Y and neither was clearly artistically superior to the other, I just picked the category with the more enticing prize.

This is what I'm going with.

1-Natural Law: Merfolk Ethnicity variations
2-Profession: Dwarf Salt Masters
3-Building: Kalazotz Memorial Stellae
4-Material: Brodesopp
5-Item: Geu-puppies
6-Technology: Scaraquan vinumaca
7-Military Formation: Deep Wardens Legion
8-Tradition: New Years Traditions in Scarterra.
9-Character: Mother of Mountains
10-Plot: King's Drosst's Secret

If you have any thoughts for how to make last minute improvements on these artciles.

Geu-puppies I think is my most inspired, I actually plan to incorporate them into my WIP novel in conjunction with a papa wolf plot of some sort. Papa wolf is a character archetype I like a lot. Essentially little Timmy (name subject to change) with a distinctive geu-puppy, then finding the seemingly abandoned geu-puppy by itself near a crime scene to signal what the stakes are.

New Year's Traditions is the one I spent the most time on because it represents a cumulation of lots of different things and it has an awesome prize.

Merfolk ethnicity is the one I really am drooling over the prize on.

 

Don't worry about it unless you are very fast. The deadline is in 3 hours 55 minutes. 2:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. Thank you for your feed back.

A merfolk near magma on the bottom of the sea would actually have a mix of earthy and fiery traits. I think I mentioned that in passing but I can make that clearer.

 

I won't know till the end of the month if I won any prizes but the leaderboard is final

Word Count

• 1 185159 MMPB
• 2 181188 snakekeeper7
• 3 134623 Shiki763
• 4 124660 Tray MacVelle
• 5 116394 Rieliesza
• 6 100377 Chrispy_0
• 7 100272 Jarhed
• 8 90288 RougeQc
• 9 89226 Fingerfeast
• 10 87628 Aloria
• 11 80963 Scalenex
• 12 78512 Valeriemarie

595 people hit 10,000 words last month. I believe that is a World Anvil record.

Number of Articles

• 1 403 Noah Hayes
• 2 397 RougeQc
• 3 381 ErikBloodAxe
• 4 266 snakekeeper7
• 5 261 Scalenex
• 6 250 Bonus Action
• 7 218 mezzopatricia

I did some book keeping and organizing on my wiki but I have taken a break from writing gratuitous articles. Next up, I am going to try to make a few more maps. Something that doesn't come as easy or fast to me.

 

I would certainly be open to some constructive criticism, even if it's negative.

 

I struggle forward on my novel

At the the very least, I have given the five main characters names.

So I have the basic concept, than Nilen, a gnome cobbler gets roped into an adventure against his will playing Cat and Mouse with an evil wizard in the Border Baronies, loosely inspired by Bilbo Baggins getting roped into an adventure in The Hobbit.

For a very long time, I was and am hit by Writer’s Block on rounding out Nilen’s adventuring companions.

Contrasting The Hobbit with the Lord of the Rings. In The Hobbit, Bilbo’s adventuring companions were barely competent. This enabled Bilbo to save the party more than once. In Lord of the Rings, the non-Hobbit members of the Fellowship were extreme bad asses, in a lot of ways, the Hobbits were deadweight at least until they thought outside the box with Frodo and Sam allying with Smeagol and Merry and Pippen allying with the ents.

Besides Lord of the Rings, I’m partially turning to The Three Musketeers for inspiration. The titular three musketeers Athos, Porthos, and Aramis all have roughly the same profession and the same basic skill set but they have very different personalities and motivations.


So I’m thinking a five man adventuring team. Two pairs of humans plus a gnome. Both pairs of humans work for separate Border Barons. The two pairs don’t get along particularly well so one of the things Nilen does to help is to smooth out friction.

One pair of humans is going to have a criminal background (working names Barossa and Frasco) and the other pair is going to have poor but proud respectable backgrounds (working names Havro and Ziven). Havro and Frasco both think they should be in charge and butt heads a lot while Nilen smooth things over, until eventually they both grudgingly make Nilen the party leader.


I’m thinking Frasco and Barossa are best friends from troubled families who more or less grew up on the streets. They are probably either going to be from Monteballo where just about everyone is a criminal or they are part of the black market of Tollmore where legal fees force honest people to be criminals. Or somewhere else.

Either way they got on the wrong side of their local Baron. They were told, “You can go on a quest for me and get a pardon for crimes and some money, or you can refuse and be punished for your crimes.”

So I’m thinking Barossa is a short but muscular guy. Barossa is a Spanish name meaning “muddy.” It might be a little clichéd but we’ll give him Short Guy Syndrome. He is insecure about his height and this led him to work out a lot to build up muscle and to hone his combat skills. I am going to make his weakness a short temper. He really hates being called a “shaved dwarf” but he does have the body type of a dwarf.

Frasco is a more cerebral man who has spent most of his childhood and young adult life restraining Barossa from doing stupid things. Frasco is a Spanish name meaning “free.” His weakness is going to be fierce independence and a stubborn need to be right.


I’m thinking Havro and Ziven are going to be retainers of the more honorable Border Barons, perhaps Red Streams or Freistadt or somewhere else.

While they are being offered a reward, they are on this quest more for civic duty than anything else. I’m thinking Havro and Ziven are going to be brothers who are big into filial piety.

Havro is going to be the responsible and protective older brother. Havro is a Polish name meaning “God is my strength”. A Nine-fearing man of great honor. His weakness, cliché as it may be is that he is a little too hide bound.

Ziven is going to be the weird little brother. Ziven is a Polish name meaning “vigorous and alive” which is somewhat ironic as Ziven is more comfortable talking to dead people than living people. He’s going to be a socially awkward spirit loa. His weakness is going to be general shyness and a lack of confidence.

All four are going to be moderately competent fighters. Frasco is going to have a little bit of larceny skills, Barossa is going to be the physically strongest, Havro is going to have a bit of ranger skills, and Ziven is going to be a spirit Loa which means he can sometimes channel the skills of ghosts.

So I think I have a balanced group of good guys. Now I can flesh out the bad guys a bit.

 

I thought about making the group tri-racial (counting gnomes as three), but ruled it out.

First, I didn't want the friction between the humans to be able to be written off as racism or fantasy allegorical racism. I wanted them to have different personalities and values but otherwise be the same.

Second, less importantly but still in my calculations. I want to color within the lines I've drawn with Scarterra. I want to showcase Scarterra as I created WITHOUT bogging down the readers with a giant info dump. I want to illustrate that humans are the dominant group and that gnomes exist primarily as a minority group within human lands.

Though I have been waffling on how much I want to include other races in my first story. Since most of my first story will be in the Border Baronies and the Borderlands are a cosmopolitan place, so I can easily have the party interact with elves, dwarves, kalazotz, and/or tengku throughout their adventures. I am telling a fairly straight forward "warriors versus evil wizard" story so to add spice to this old story, I plan to have the backdrop change from one Border Barony to another to showcase all the weird local cultures there.

I think I can enhance characterization having the different humans interact with the different races differently.

 

I'm not deliberately dodging woke issues. I just want to tell a simple story.

I want to do three things.

1) Scrappy underdogs defeat evil with a classic hero's journey arc
2) I want to showcase Scarterra as much as possible without being ham fisted about it.
3) I want a noticeable but not ham fisted theme of family

Nilen is never go to meet with any of his family on his adventure but he's going to constantly reflect back on things his parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles taught him to solve various problems.

Havro and Ziven are literally brothers. Ziven actually draws literal powerf rom his ancestors. Frasco and Barossa are figuratively brothers.

Eventually I want the five main characters to form a weird informal family of sorts.