Reflections on 2025, Musings on 2026
Worldember 2025
Worldember was a success for me in 2025. Worldember 2021: 80,963 words Worldember 2022: 100,476 words Wolrdember 2023: 70,135 words Worldember 2024: 84,601 words Worldember 2025: 58,166 words On the surface this looks like i backslid, but I got more views, more likes, and more engagement in 2025 than in previous years. I think I got more "likes" in 2025 than I did in the previous four Worldembers combined. I lit up the Worldember Leaderboard more than I ever did in this past This feedback tells me I made the right choices. I'll probably act similarly for Worldember 2026. I got to keep above 50,000 words though because I'm a badge goblin.
Composite Display of the Nine's portraits by Zeta Gardner
Other Achievements I made in 2025
In 2025, I added more visuals, more dynamic formatting, more POV quotes from in-universe characters. Stuff I've been doing since 2023 at least but more so in 2025. I am working on improving my skills at making AI art and Hero Forge portraits, but also commissioning artwork for real human artists. I'm not made of money, so I can't commission artwork for everything, but I'm trying to cover the important articles. In 2025 specifically, I revamped my world's elevator pitch, reformatted the main page, and very carefully and painstakingly constructed a world primer and organized some tentpole articles of the core parts of Scarterra lore. At the advice of a fellow Anvilite, kitopoy. I have tried to incorporate more horizontally focused artwork to use as the headers. So that's something that I've added a lot more of in 2025, including this one Zeta Gardner made for me in 1920 x 500 pixels which is apparently the gold standard size for internet headers, but sometimes I have to settle for approximately 1920 x 500 pixels. I set up Google Analytics to look at my traffic to www.scarterra.com though I'm still working on figuring out how to interpret and use this data. The most useful piece of information I have gleaned thus far is that a large portion of my traffic is on smart phones. So I need to proofread my articles via smart phones too and not just assume that most of my viewers are looking at Scarterra with their computers like I do. My proudest achievement of 2026 is that I got a super awesome professional gtrade character sheet made for Scarterra by the talented Mr.Gone2026 changes
Website Facelift
I only just started adding icons to article headers in late 2025 for new articles. But the first week of January 2026, I added icons to all my Table of Contents headers and sub-headers and on most of my more important older articles.
So that is a small improvement I made already. You'll notice that my RPG focused articles are marked with a d10 icons now.
I think it looks nice on computer screens, but apparently the icons are visible on some smartphones but not others, I don't know why, this is something to look into.
My website uses a mix of commissioned art, AI art, public domain art, and art I've made myself using Hero Forge and Worldspinner. Thus far, I have mostly focused on aesthetics, and have not paid attention to the size of the pictures. World Anvil will automatically resize images to fit, but if a small image is stretched into a large image, it will get a little pixelated.
More importantly, if a large image is squeezed into a small image, it will still have a high Megabyte size which will adversely affect an article's loading time on a less than perfect internet connection. Since the quantity and quality of my embedded art has increased recently, this has had a negative effect on loading times of some articles.
I'm looking into options to convert most of my existing PNGs to JPEGs and use a program such as Adobe Bridge to resize my images. This is something I plan to do in 2026...eventually. At the very least I want to try to get this done before Summer Camp 2026.
I have tried all the World Anvil pre-packaged theme options for background and font and of the existing options, I like the "Worldember" theme best. I also implemented a custom blue and silver background that I cooked up with Midjourney. Scarterra doesn't necessarily have to be silvery blue, but I don't have a better idea at this point.
I'd like to make a custom theme for Scarterra, but there are two obstacles. 1) I'm not sure what I want my custom theme to look like beyond "Me want website to look good! Me want lots of subscribers and views!"
2) I'm not particularly tech savvy or gifted as a graphic designer.
I'm willing to hire a graphic designer, but until I figure out what to ask for, I can't really progress on this one. This may or may not be completed in 2026.
by me with Midjourney
If I ever get to the point of publishing a Scarterra RPG book, I want my book and website to have the same basic font style and color scheme, so I should probably hold off on hiring a graphic designer until I get the basics of my book nailed down. My main stumbling block on this long-term goal is my inability to find an experienced editor of RPG works willing to do a freelance job for a bit player such as myself.
There are a couple things I can do myself without hiring an editor or a graphic designer. Another thing I was advised from kitopoy is to avoid blank space on my articles. This is more of a going forward thing than an all articles thing, but I'm going to try to use various tricks to minimize space like this on my core tent pole lore articles.
Scarterra is now on DeviantArt
I had a DeviantArt page for a long time, but I've only recently started putting a lot of things on it. I get that some people are morally opposed to AI Art. I do pay real human artists to make art for Scarterra, but I'm not made of money, so I can only afford a couple human-made illustrations. As much as possible I try to utilize human made art and photos in the creative commons or public domain, but I write about stuff that doesn't exist in real life, so that can only go so far. I ever get to the point where I monetize Scarterra, I will not charge people for AI art, but I have no qualms about using AI art on free material. So I will continue to use AI art (clearly labeled). I figured since most of DeviantArt is AI these days and I'm making lots of AI art anyway, I might as well post my stuff on DeviantArt. And every single piece of art I put on DeviantArt has a shameless plug for www.scarterra.com in the description. There are some truly great artists on DeviantArt. This is how I found Zeta Gardner and Diana Rahfoth, who I commissioned before. When Zeta's busy schedule permits, she will do more Scarterra art in 2026. Next in the pipeline is dwarf illustration and spirit loa illustrations. Probably be ready for the website in February or March. I might look into other websites besides DeviantArt both for showcasing my stuff and looking for new talent to hire for commissions. Lately the site has more deviants and less art than it did before. Zeta and Diana are diamonds in the rough that I found on the site, but only a tiny portion of the posters on DeviantArt are of their caliber and a lot of the top tier are not taking commissions from people such as myself.The quest for a book
Long-term I'd like to figure how to monetize Scarterra. Last year, I started the process to get Scarterra a formal copyright. I hopefully will have completed that in a couple months. I have some ideas for Scarterra-setting novels, but my heart is with TTRPGs more than it is with fiction. Better to focus on one task at a time. I think I have most of the kinks worked out my RPG system, but more play testers would be invaluable if I could find people with compatible schedules. My current long-term plan is to market two RPG books, a free downloadable PDF and a fancy hard cover book. Or possible three tiers, free, cheap, and fancy. My game system is pretty intuitive to learn, but the question remains, could someone learn to play without me standing over their shoulder explaining it? Can someone learn the system from reading a book? Can I make a rule book interesting enough to read that people don't give up and quit reading a few pages in? I have a rough draft trying to push all my website information into a user-friendly book, but I need to find a skilled RPG editor willing to work freelance to move forward with this noble goal.The Purple Cow of Death is Chaotic Mootral
Purple Cow Placeholder by Me with Midjourney
Long-time viewers to my website may or may not have noticed one of these images. The Purple Cow is an inside joke with my old gaming group explained here explained here facetiously and explained here seriously.
One of my sillier goals for 2026 is to obtain a couple purple cow plushies, provided I can find a source for them that isn't a Hellish sweatshop. I made some inquiries to Etsy last year to makers of cow plushies but they have said they are unable to find appropriate purple materials.
I'd want a purple cow plushie for my workspace and some purple cows to gift to my friends. I probably won't be able to hit the convention scene as an exhibitor until 2027 at the earliest, but I wouldn't mind having a stash of promotional purple cow plushies.
This is a silly goal for 2026, but it is a goal for 2026 none the less.
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