Worldember 2023 Preparation Article/Idea Bank

County of East Lake   County of South Lake   County of West Lake

Swynfaredian Grey Forest   Old Swynfaredia Region   Old Talama   Southeast region of Swynfaredia   Southwest Region of Swynfaredia

Economics of magical items   Poison Detection Jewelry

I created a whole new section of the table of contents   Potionomics   Cost of Living at different lifestyles   expenses of landed nobles   salt, economics   How much money do Scarterrans make? (old article but revised a fair bit)

Week 4 Homework, Last Minute Prep

  I did a little bit of tidying up. I don't have a lot more than that pre-wise I haven't already done. I talked to my friends who visit the site and gathered a little bit of pictures.  

Week 3 Homework, Reviewing the Homepage

  The Worldember Homework for Week 3 is to review homepage. I had two RPG campaigns on the page. One is an active RPG campaign I continue to run and the other is for second RPG campaign that never started. I removed the blank campaign. That technically improved the homepage a little bit removing the dross.   I am planning to make a narrative (from a Scarterran narrator), covering the basics for the Divine Rebellion and the immediate aftermath and when I get that polished up to put it prominently under my homepage. Eventually I might make or purchase some art for that, but that won't happen till after December.   Hypothetically, I could make more tentpole narrative articles later, but I'm not sure what to write them about.     The cover page image is the Symbol of the Nine that a friend made for me. Hypothetically I could revamp it, putting on a stained glass window, or a medieval tapestry, or a silver pendant, or stone carving or branded leather. I could replace the simple arrow-like ends with mini-symbols of the individual Nine.   But I cannot do any upgrades with my own limited art skills or AI art. All my attempts to alter this with AI tools has bellyflopped. Much like how AI tends to screw up fingers and toes, it miscounts the nine spokes and/or it mangles them. I could do a commission for a revamped image of the Symbol of the Nine, which I could do but I have to be 100% certain of what I want it to look like before shelling out real money for it.       Other than that, I cannot think of any major changes. I'm open to any and all constructive suggestions for how to improve the curb appeal and utility of Scarterra's homepage.  

Week 2 Homework, Establish a Mini-Meta

  I'm going to do a mini-meta to flesh out Scarterra's economy in much greater detail. Conveniently I recently got a finished commission for a Scarterran haggling scene that I can use as the cover art for most/all general economic articles.      

Week One Homework, make the pledge and idea bank

  I pledge to write at least 50,000 and enter the maximum number of category contests that i am allowed.   I plan to enter the maximum number of contests I am allowed and put in extra TLC to make these articles well-polished and visually appealing   Last year I passed 100k words, but with my increased work commitments, that is not practical this year. I may try for 100k anyway because I am not a very practical person.

I couldn't find the leaderboard for Worldember 2020 but I id clear 50,000 words and I think I managed to cling to a spot in the top ten. I had only recently joined Worldember and I had a lot of disorganized notes on Scarterra to compile into articles so getting a high word count was relatively easy.   In Worldember 2021 I wrote 80,963 words and I was 11th on the leader board.   In Worldember 2022 I wrote and 100,476 and I was 11th on the leader board.

The last year or so, I have made a serious effort to improve the graphic design of my articles with more dynamic formatting and more pictures.   I've made lots of pictures of characters on Heroforge and my players have made many for me of NPCs they like or like to hate. I have a made a few standards and icons with Worldspinner, MS paint, or a combination of the two. I have long used many open source photos and have dipped my toe into the water of AI art generators.   I also paid some artists for a few commissions. I'm not made of money so I can only get this art for a fraction of my articles, but you can see all the commissioned art in Putting the "Art" in ScARTerra.   I am continuing to expand on my commissioned art, and I have some art in the pipeline, but it is a slow process and won't have much bearing on Worldember.