My Fantasy RPG World, Feedback and Ideas appreciated

[Scalenex]

Worldember 2025 is here!


Worldember is upon this, and this is the time of year where I write random articles like a madman for the whole month of December.

My Worldember page is here.
The leaderboard page is here.

As of the writing of this post, I'm about 14,300 words in. I only need to write 10,000 words to get a badge and 50,000 to get the top level badge. In past years, I've run between 80,000 and 100,000 words and usually land somewhere between 8 and 12 on the leaderboard.

I am currently in 18th place (pathetic!), and they only keep track of the top ten for number of articles, and I'm not even close to tenth place. but I'm focusing more on quality of words than quantity of words. And I'm putting in more pictures and quotes and doing a better job proofreading (which often means trimming redundant passages which hurts my word count).

My new approach seems to be working. I'm getting more "likes" than I ever have before. I'm currently 20th for most likes. I've never even made the top 100 before. I'm currently on four subcategories for most liked articles. The subcategories are based on template and I'm on the board for the species, tradition, material, and title. Something that's never happened before either.

I'm getting new subscribers too. So my quality based approach is working. That said, if I can do quality and quantity.

Capes as signifiers of status in Fumaya is one of my earliest articles written this season and is my best received so far.

I might actually win the subcategory for titles with moon-brightened leaders. This is my second-best received article, but I have a lot of fewer writers competing in this category.

My personal favorite, is midnight mushrooms, is my personal favorite and also seems well received. Though this is in the species category which is normally the second most written category besides "characters". I have written several character bios, so far, but none of them stand apart in my mind as head and shoulders above the rest of my articles, so I haven't entered that category yet and might not do so.

 

[Scalenex]

I am writing articles in themed sets.

Zarthus Morality Plays

Phidas Morality Plays

Greymoria Morality Plays

I have nine deities and ten priesthoods and all of them occasionally run plays but these are the three groups that put a lot of effort into their theatrical productions.

I also am writing a lot of articles about clothing and fashion but that's still a work in progress.

 

[Scalenex]

Scalenex moonlights as a Deviant

The website DeviantArt is not a perfect website. It has more deviants and less artists than I prefer, but I keep an eye on it. I did find two spectacular artists who I have hired via DeviantArt.

Perhaps I am becoming part of the problem, but I figured if most of DeviantArt is AI art and I am making my own AI art in increasing quantities, I might as well start debuting Scarterra stuff on DeviantArt and MAYBE it will create an uptick of traffic for Scarterra.com

I'm making the AI art anyway, so I might as well get maximum use of it, labeling it as AI art, I'm going to fraudulently pass AI art as human art.

It turns out, pictures of attractive women get more engagement on Deviant than pictures of anything else. Who knew?

15 likes
(generic bard to add a visual to an article about musicians, I might give her a name and backstory later)

Follow this link if the picture doesn't work

2 likes

Ifan is a minor character in my main RPG campaign.

Follow this link if the picture doesn't work.

I like both pictures. In any event Midjourney 7 is letting me make more detailed Scarterran characters and I can put in very specific parameters and usually get one I want, skin color, hair color, hair texture, eye color, detailed clothing description, etc.

I am not sure if my DeviantArt account will yield dividends, as I've only just begun. I've only put up a small percentage of my AI art on it thus far. Every picture as a plug for www.scarterra.com on it.

My DeviantArt page is here.

 

[Scalenex]

Worldember is over.

The totality of my Worldember articles can be seen here.

I wrote less than in previous Worldembers, but I had more views and more likes than I ever had before, so that's a win. I hit the leaderboard ten times, rather than my usual two.

I kind of wrote a few clothing articles as a lark, but they got a far more positive reception than I anticipated, so I created a whole section on my website specifically for clothes and fashion which I plan to keep adding to.

The Flag of the Maw is an article I made that was well received. It's also a rarity among my works in that it's relatively short, and I got a very nice GIF for it.

I came up with a new spell called Memory's Visage that I'm proud of and it's one of the top liked in that category (sadly there is no prize for that category).

For fans of puns.

I try to write at least one reindeer related article every December. This one has a GIF

2026 Incremental Improvements.

In 2025, World Anvil gained a bunch of icon options. I didn't pay much attention to it before, but last week I put icons on all my Table of Content categories and subcategories and a large portion of my core articles. It shows up on computers, and it SOMETIMES shows up on smartphones. I'm not sure why it shows up on some Smartphones and not others. Figuring out how to improve website interface for smartphones is on my to-do list.

So I have increased the volume of illustrations in my articles, both old and new. I haven't paid much attention to the size of my pictures. Sometimes large pictures slow down the load time of an article. Less commonly, small pictures get stretched out and look a bit pixely.

I'm going to try to convert all my art to jpegs and then use editing software to adjust the size and shape of my pictures to make it load smoother. An ambitious project, but a time consuming one.

 

[Killer Angel]

An ambitious project, but a time consuming one.

As is anything worthwhile.

 

[Scalenex]

View attachment 170564

I feel like this is written about my play testers

Not everyone is playing a human fighter. I don't technically have fighters, and my playtesters are only going human 50% of time but very few people mainline a weapon other than a sword.

With one exception of an axe and shield wielding half-orc barbarian, the few people who have opted to go with swords are practically pacifists and rely on magic, rarely taking a swing at the enemy.

I don't know how much of this is a game design issue and how much of it is the universal appeal of guys liking swords (the player of the axe-wielding half-orc was my only female play tester).

 

[Scalenex]

Worldember is about fast writing in large word counts. My most important article for Worldember 2026 was an article about the political strategies Scarterran kings and queens deal with nine pushy and magic-wielding priesthoods making demands on them. And I wrote nine attached companion articles on strategies the various priesthoods use to deal with kings and queens.

I put lots of effort into polishing these ten articles, using dynamic formatting, BBC code, illustrations, POV quotes and lots of proofreading to make these articles as excellent as possible.

Without further ado, here is the link.

 

[Scalenex]

Last week I went to the GAMA Expo.

GAMA is the Tabletop Game Manufacturers Association (the name doesn't quite match the acronym, I don't know why).

I only joined about six weeks before the expo, but they accepted www.scarterra.com as credentials for me being a "creative" and I was willing to pay the annual membership dues.

The main purpose of GAMA is to let the owners of gaming stores network with their peers and network with the manufacturers of board games and TTRPGs, and TCG (Trading Card Games), but I got to rub elbows with other game designers.

I would say that the plurality of the game designers were board game makers, but I did meet some people connected to the TTRPG industry so I learned some useful information to help me convert my collection underpants into profit.

Step One

All the stuff I've already done. A sunk cost.

Step Two

I don't need to find "TTRPG editors" I need to find "game developers" I did not meet any TTRGP game developers face-to-face, but I have some organizations to email to try . From what I was told, TTRPG game developers normally go "quid pro quo" rather than work for money. Essentially, "I'll look over your RPG rulebook if you look over mine".

Step Three

Once I have subjected my RPG rules to enough scrutiny, I will make any changes necessary from the constructive criticism and look for "blind play testers". Essentially I need to get people who are not me to pick up my rule book and some pre-created campaigns and see if these Game Masters can run a fun game without me over their shoulder explaining things.

Some blind play testers work for money, some go quid pro quo. There are actually people who go to conventions and run demos of other people's games for money (and not a whole lot of of money at that), but most of the people running TTRPG demos worked for the company that produced the game or were the actual creator.

Step Four

Gather the constructive criticism then make final changes to the text of my rulebook and starter campaign/adventure books. Then I take my giant block of text and hand it over to graphic designers to make it look pretty and bloc out where to put illustrations.

Fortunately, GAMA is flush with experienced graphic designers like this. Assuming I get to this stage, finding a graphic designer with relevant experience will be pretty easy.


Step Five

Give the specs to illustrators. "I need of picture of X and it needs to be these specific dimensions". I'll probably want at least 100 pictures. Illustrators are easy to find. Good illustrators are harder to find.

Step Six

Print out a prototype book to make sure everything is in order.

Step Seven

Shop around for publishers and work on marketing. The style of marketing is linked to the type of publishing. This is a complicated step, but I don't need to worry about it too much until I have an actual book ready.

I might be able to figure out a hybrid marketing strategy but I see a binary path.

Path 1: Print out a large quantity of books as cheaply as possible and sell them myself.

Path 2: Make a deal with a print on demand publishers and set up an ordering system so when customer buy a book from my website, the on demand publishers makes the book and ships it to that customer.

I believe Path 2 will meet my needs better.

Path 1 makes a lot more money IF I can accurately forecast how many books I'm likely to sell, I don't see how I can accurately make that forecast. I'm likely to have a garage full of unsold books this way.

I have no guarantee of a successful Kickstarter and even if I run a successful Kickstarter a lot of Kickstarter TTRPGs are one-hit wonders that burn bright and then are forgotten.

I'm more concerned with getting Scarterra out there than I am with raking in piles of money. So I want to put my product on Drivethru RPG and some similar sites as well as a link on scarterra.com and basically sell small amounts of books over a long period of time. Print on Demand is a better system for this marketing style and it will make it a lot easier to not have a "Made in China" label on my books.

My goal is to sell cheap PDFs and fancy hardcover books.


So that's my plan in a nutshell.

Related Tangents

I was told that business cards are an obsolete relic from yesteryear, but at the GAMA Expo I felt like the only person without business cards. Even if most people throw away business cards pretty fast, I want them for scarterra.com and I need to figure out a way to give my website a QR code. And business cards aren't very expensive in the grand scheme of things.

I'm going to look into public speaking classes to see if I can work on my elevator pitch. I'm not afraid of public speaking, but I can always be better.

I gave my Scarterra elevator pitch many times, twice in a literal elevator. The GAMA people are a welcoming bunch, but sometimes I sensed sometimes they were just being polite and other times they were genuinely interested.

The people who seemed genuinely interested in Scarterra were self-proclaimed fans of Greek and Norse mythology and fans of story-driven RPGs rather than action driven RPGs. This is my marketing niche, I just need to figure out how to capitalize on it.

"If you chase two rabbits, you will lose them both"

Based on that proverb, I put writing Scarterran fiction on the back burner so I can focus on the RPG side of Scarterra, but since the primary appeal of Scarterra is the lore, maybe I need to try to work on my fiction concurrently for cross-marketing.

Food for thought.

 

[Warden]

Last week I went to the GAMA Expo.

GAMA is the Tabletop Game Manufacturers Association (the name doesn't quite match the acronym, I don't know why).

I only joined about six weeks before the expo, but they accepted www.scarterra.com as credentials for me being a "creative" and I was willing to pay the annual membership dues.

The main purpose of GAMA is to let the owners of gaming stores network with their peers and network with the manufacturers of board games and TTRPGs, and TCG (Trading Card Games), but I got to rub elbows with other game designers.

I would say that the plurality of the game designers were board game makers, but I did meet some people connected to the TTRPG industry so I learned some useful information to help me convert my collection underpants into profit.

Step One

All the stuff I've already done. A sunk cost.

Step Two

I don't need to find "TTRPG editors" I need to find "game developers" I did not meet any TTRGP game developers face-to-face, but I have some organizations to email to try . From what I was told, TTRPG game developers normally go "quid pro quo" rather than work for money. Essentially, "I'll look over your RPG rulebook if you look over mine".

Step Three

Once I have subjected my RPG rules to enough scrutiny, I will make any changes necessary from the constructive criticism and look for "blind play testers". Essentially I need to get people who are not me to pick up my rule book and some pre-created campaigns and see if these Game Masters can run a fun game without me over their shoulder explaining things.

Some blind play testers work for money, some go quid pro quo. There are actually people who go to conventions and run demos of other people's games for money (and not a whole lot of of money at that), but most of the people running TTRPG demos worked for the company that produced the game or were the actual creator.

Step Four

Gather the constructive criticism then make final changes to the text of my rulebook and starter campaign/adventure books. Then I take my giant block of text and hand it over to graphic designers to make it look pretty and bloc out where to put illustrations.

Fortunately, GAMA is flush with experienced graphic designers like this. Assuming I get to this stage, finding a graphic designer with relevant experience will be pretty easy.


Step Five

Give the specs to illustrators. "I need of picture of X and it needs to be these specific dimensions". I'll probably want at least 100 pictures. Illustrators are easy to find. Good illustrators are harder to find.

Step Six

Print out a prototype book to make sure everything is in order.

Step Seven

Shop around for publishers and work on marketing. The style of marketing is linked to the type of publishing. This is a complicated step, but I don't need to worry about it too much until I have an actual book ready.

I might be able to figure out a hybrid marketing strategy but I see a binary path.

Path 1: Print out a large quantity of books as cheaply as possible and sell them myself.

Path 2: Make a deal with a print on demand publishers and set up an ordering system so when customer buy a book from my website, the on demand publishers makes the book and ships it to that customer.

I believe Path 2 will meet my needs better.

Path 1 makes a lot more money IF I can accurately forecast how many books I'm likely to sell, I don't see how I can accurately make that forecast. I'm likely to have a garage full of unsold books this way.

I have no guarantee of a successful Kickstarter and even if I run a successful Kickstarter a lot of Kickstarter TTRPGs are one-hit wonders that burn bright and then are forgotten.

I'm more concerned with getting Scarterra out there than I am with raking in piles of money. So I want to put my product on Drivethru RPG and some similar sites as well as a link on scarterra.com and basically sell small amounts of books over a long period of time. Print on Demand is a better system for this marketing style and it will make it a lot easier to not have a "Made in China" label on my books.

My goal is to sell cheap PDFs and fancy hardcover books.


So that's my plan in a nutshell.

Related Tangents

I was told that business cards are an obsolete relic from yesteryear, but at the GAMA Expo I felt like the only person without business cards. Even if most people throw away business cards pretty fast, I want them for scarterra.com and I need to figure out a way to give my website a QR code. And business cards aren't very expensive in the grand scheme of things.

I'm going to look into public speaking classes to see if I can work on my elevator pitch. I'm not afraid of public speaking, but I can always be better.

I gave my Scarterra elevator pitch many times, twice in a literal elevator. The GAMA people are a welcoming bunch, but sometimes I sensed sometimes they were just being polite and other times they were genuinely interested.

The people who seemed genuinely interested in Scarterra were self-proclaimed fans of Greek and Norse mythology and fans of story-driven RPGs rather than action driven RPGs. This is my marketing niche, I just need to figure out how to capitalize on it.

"If you chase two rabbits, you will lose them both"

Based on that proverb, I put writing Scarterran fiction on the back burner so I can focus on the RPG side of Scarterra, but since the primary appeal of Scarterra is the lore, maybe I need to try to work on my fiction concurrently for cross-marketing.

Food for thought.

The South Park reference drew me in... but after reading the whole post wow you got a lot of great stuff here. Really impressive!

I have heard great things about GAMA from youtube before, sounds like you had a very useful experience there. I really hope you can get Scarterra out there!!!!!

 

[Scalenex]

The South Park reference drew me in...

A lot of my brain is wired to think in cartoon references.

Anyway your comment about the South Park reference drawing you in only reinforces how important visuals are. My recent articles have a lot more pictures in them than my older articles (though I'm working on revamping a lot of older articles).

Here is a GIF I made for a recent article. If the image doesn't work, click on the article link for Astral Creatures, or just click on the link anyway. Of the lore I've come up with in 2026 I've come up with recently, I'm most proud of this one. I'm not sure how to represent them in game stats yet, but I like the base lore.

With regards to Black Jack, I have some vague ideas swirling in my head to what Scarterran casinos might look like, but that's for another time. There was a casino next to the convention center where the GAMA was, and since I had time to kill I walked in for a lark with the intention of losing $20, but Scolenex was with me in spirit and I actually won $200 at a panda themed slot machine.

My vague thought is that modern casino are bright and glitzy but most medieval style fantasy have gambling dens be dark and seedy. I think in a world with magic, gambling parlors might hire mages to glitz up the place, but maybe gamblers wouldn't trust a place with mages flinging spells around. Maybe the mages are fudging the cards or dice?

 

[Scalenex]

For some reason articles I write about Scarterran fashion tend to get high engagement. So if you wondered how Scarterran mages choose to look fabulous.

The cliff notes version is that magic spells of the same type consistently have similar magical auras and some mages dress to match their auras.



Main article.

I'm also working on a new adventure to demo Scarterra at game stores or conventions, and I'm entering it in World Anvil's Adventure April event. I got ways to go, as I gave myself a lot of work to do.

The gist is that of the nine major religious factions are having a big sporting events...with weapons.

Five priesthoods (the gods) have set up flags behind obstacles and challenges. And four priesthoods (the goddesses) have sent teams of 3 to 5 players to try to get flags faster than the other three teams.

Players can pick any of the four competing teams, and the three unpicked teams becoming competing NPCs. That means in addition to having five challenges to write out, I am working on 20 PC options.

To make a pokemon allegory.

Team Valor ~ Team Mera

Team Mystic ~ Team Khemra

Team Instinct ~ Team Nami

Team Rocket ~ Team Greymoria

Though this is how they will behave as NPCs. If the PCs pick the Greymoria team and opt to be models of good sportsmanship that's an option. They can also play the Mera team as ruthless competitors if they choose.

Each team is going to have five basic archetypes. Brawns, Brains, Trickery, and Theurgist plus a Wild Card that embodies their faction's stereotype.

The four Brawny characters are going to have very similar statlines, just different backgrounds and motivations. Only the Wild Card characters differ significantly.


I'm a ways away from finishing it, I'll post it when it's done.

 

[Scalenex]

This is my Adventure April 2026 entry.

I put a lot of time and effort into this one. I have about 36 hours to make any edits before it's judged, but if and when I'm about to run this at a convention, I'm sure I'll edit it again.

 

[Scalenex]

I work on Scarterra almost every day. It's been about a month since I posted anything on this thread. Let me cover what I've been doing in broad strokes.

Revising my Magic System

My game system is originally based on White Wolf's d10 based mechanics system and Dungeon and Dragon's magic system. As time progresses, I've gradually been dropping legacy add-ons of D&D.

D&D has eight schools of magic and for most of Scarterra's history, Scarterra had the same eight schools of magic: Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Illusion, Invocation, Necromancy, and Transmutation.

For various reasons, I decided this wasn't a good fit, so I axed Divination and Invocation. I might rename some of the schools of the magic (especially Abjuration), but here's the rationale for the six remaining categories.

Conjuration: Conjuring tangible things.

Illusion: Conjuring intangible things.

Transmutation: Altering tangible things.

Enchantment: Altering intangible things.

Necromancy: Manipulating primal life energy.

Abjuration: Manipulating primal magic energy.


I played musical chairs with my existing spell list with spells changing categories based on my new definitions. I axed some spells that are no longer a good fit for any of the six categories and I created a bunch of new spells. This process is still ongoing but I am mostly done.

My magic operates on a 1 to 5 scale and it's mostly level 5 where I still need to do the most work. Level 5 spells are hard to get, so I want them to be powerful and useful, but I don't want them to be game breaking.

Invocation got folded into Conjuring (essentially Invocation is a combat focused summoning of primal elements).

Divination (which mostly covers extrasensory abilities) got folded into everything though the bulk of the divination spells are going into necromancy, anything that analyzing living things.

Thus far, most player characters who opt to play mages pick two schools of magic to focus on and I don't foresee this changing.



Map Planning
Anywho, reworking my magic system is fairly time consuming. As that is winding down, I'm working on a new time consuming part of Scarterra: mapmaking.

I barely begun, but I will try to post some maps when I can. I have been lazily being vague with what the scale of Scarterra is.

My instinct on fantasy world building is to start big and work my way down, but this is not practical.

90% of my stories and RPG campaigns take place in Fumaya, Swynfaredia, and the Borderlands. I don't need to make a detailed map all of Scarterra, I only need to make a detailed map for the parts of Scarterra that I actively use.

If I want to keep things realistic, I frequently reference this website, Donjon Medieval Demographics.

Blindly trusting one website is not wise, so I checked various medieval history resources. The numbers Donjon uses are in line with most medieval historians.

Fumaya is roughly 20,000 square miles (32,000 km) and has a population of 1.5 million people. That is roughly 75 people per square mile. I according to Donjon, the average population density in medieval Europe was 80 people per square mile.

I land size, that is roughly equivalent to the state of West Virginia or 2/3 of Scotland or the Czech Republic.

Swynfaredia has about 4.5 million people in about 55,000 square miles.

The Borderlands is more complicated because the terrain is so rugged, so I haven't figured out the math yet. It's bigger than Swynfaredia in terms of land, but smaller than Fumaya in terms of people. Essentially it's 20 metaphorical islands of good farmland surrounded by untamable wilderness. Probably about a million people over 80,000 square miles.

Based predominantly on the Youtube Channel Medieval History TV (but cross-referenced against other medieval history online resources), I concluded that a normal person on a normal road traveling on foot or with an ox, horse, or donkey cart will average 15 miles per day. A typical equestrian on a decent horse without a heavy load can average 30 miles per day. A very skilled rider on a very good horse can average 45 miles per day.

On average, roadside inns are 15 miles apart, so most travels go inn hopping.

Magical flying spells don't exist in the real world of course, but I decided that the Overland Flight spell is roughly as fast as a very skilled rider on a very good horse. Note, a flying person doesn't haven't to stick to roads, but most flyers actually do stick to roads because it's easy to lose track of landmarks and get lost if you don't.

I make a deep dive into characters traveling in this article since overland travel is a huge part of most fantasy RPGs.

A new Youtube video from a guy I never heard of came up in my Youtube feed and it was very stimulating, covering the Three Day Ox Rule. The gist of it is that with medieval technology, if you load a cart with grain, your pack animals will eat 10% of the grain on your cart every day, so if you travel for ten days you will lose all your grain.

In economic terms, if you want to sell your grain, make a profit and then go back home, the farthest you can realistically go and not a waste a trip is three days.

It also means that if you are a feudal lord, you can effectively project your power in a three radius at best. If you go farther than this, you need to set up a new feudal lord.

There are mitigating factors, water travel is more efficient than land travel, so a noble that controls a navigable water way is able to rule over a wider area than a landlocked lord.

The original rough draft maps I made for Fumaya and Swynfaredia just equally split my land into roughly uniform duchies and counties, but now I'm going to try to use the Three-Day Ox Rule to make more organic feudal maps.

Assuming the base level is a baron, every province set up will be a barony. I'll take the richest and best baronies and make them county seats. And take the richest and best counties and make them ducal seats. It may change the number of counts I have up or down.

I bought a lot of 43 x 34 graph paper. I have a rough Fumaya map where one square is 25 square miles.

Now I'm going to make some regional maps where one square is 5 square miles, so a normal one's days travel would be three squares. So I can plot where the villages and castles are.