Summer Camp 2025 Prep and Homework

Well another year has passed by too quickly since the last Summer Camp. I've been focused almost entirely on developing Realm Studio, my mapmaking software. Over the past year, I've worked on it enough so that now it is ready (I think!) for people to use it to develop maps. No doubt it could still use a lot of polish, and I'm looking forward to getting some feedback from people that would like to try it out. (A couple of Anvilites have expressed some interest in it already). It has some pretty cool features, like the ability to create and view grayscale heightmaps in 3D, the ability to view your world as a 3D world globe in space (with a lot of different options), and integration with an AI Assistant to help you create descriptions of objects on your map (landforms, lakes, rivers, regions, and symbols), and a lot more. I've submitted it to the Microsoft Store, and hopefully, it will be available from there soon. In the meantime, if you want to try it, you can download the installer for the latest released version from Github at https://github.com/PeteNelson372/RealmStudio/releases/tag/v1.2025.149.0. Be aware that I add new features and fix bugs frequently, so check back often for new releases. For now, there is no automatic check for updates in the application, but I'm planning to add that soon. Awesome Anvilite Tillerz was kind to include Realm Studio on the World Anvil Useful Resources page in the Dungeons and Maps section. I really appreciate that!

UPDATE: Realm Studio is now available from the Microsoft Store. Or, the latest release and source code is always available from Github.

Give it a try! It's 100% free and has a lot of cool features.

Anyway, on to Summer Camp Prep. I'm hoping to get back into writing more here, now that Realm Studio has been publicly released (or pre-released, anyway), so I committed to write at least 32 articles and get the Diamond badge. As a Christmas gift, my wife bought me the Deck of Worlds, so I'm going to try using that to help me generate some ideas for articles (along with the prompts, of course). Is that cheating? I don't think so - I still have to flesh out the ideas and write the articles.

Another thing I want to work on during Summer Camp, if I have time, is to finish the latest (and maybe last?) chapter, called "Saved by the Belle," in the series of stories I've been writing about the Imperial Family of the Great Sacred Empire, specifically about Crown Prince Yixing-Jiumin Jinhai, his companion and bodyguard, Cao Qigong, Princess Yixing-Jiumin Jinyat, Amalie Nilsson, Queen Jenmei Na'Omi of Chessa, and others. I've had the latest chapter sitting half-written for months. I kind of wrote myself into a corner, and I'm trying to write my way out while not making it too long and boring - without much success, I'm afraid. I may have to re-do or scrap a pretty good-sized chunk of what I've written to make progress on it. When I get stuck on something, or something doesn't go well for me (not just writing, but in general), I tend to get discouraged and then procrastinate on picking it up again. It's something I need to work on overcoming. When I do manage to get going on something that I've been putting off, often I can fix whatever it was that discouraged me.

Week One Homework

Assignment 1: Nourishment. This is something I really haven't thought about as a worldbuilding topic. Of course, in the most straightforward interpretation, it could simply mean food. But food is often used to represent deeper aspects of the spiritual and material world. Think of the Holy Communion ceremony in Christian churches (often called The Lord's Supper). Or the ceremonies of sacrifice performed, now and in the past, by many other religions. How about virgin maidens sacrificed to dragons in many stories. Were those maidens nourishment to the dragons? Because nourishment can be interpreted in so many ways, I think this topic will provide a ton of different hooks for stories. I'm looking forward to the prompts for this one!

Assignment 2: I've mentioned already that I plan to get the Diamond Badge again this year. I've downloaded and filled out the pledge form, and it's over in the side bar.

Assignment 3: Derkomai is a well-established world now. The world meta and core articles are where I want them to be at this point, but I'll review them this week and make any changes I think should be made.

Week Two Homework

The theme for week 2 is Roots. Assignment one is to look at the cultures and areas I'll be focusing on for Summer Camp and think about how their past shaped them. Interesting. The general history of humans on Derkomai (see The Fall from the Stars and several other articles) is pretty well set, but the back story of most of the countries is not. Sudland is perhaps the one exception. I've developed the history of Sudland to a fair degree; though very little about the area prior to the founding of Sudland. I've written some about the history of Senyon and Yfel, and a little about Danyund, and Nodyund , but essentially nothing about the other countries of Derkomai. Should I write about one of the other countries, perhaps Rigosland , or add more detail to one of the countries I've already written about? I'm not really sure. I think I'll wait until I see the prompts and look for inspiration from them.

Assignment two is to revisit the home page and make changes from the perspective of drawing in new readers. I'll think about this, but I honestly don't know how to improve what I have. A couple of years ago, for Summer Camp or WorldEmber - I can't remember which right now - I completely revamped the Derkomai home page, adding a lot of custom CSS, the animated GIF starfield background, mouse-over and timed animations, created a short video that's hosted on YouTube, added custom fonts, and a lot of other work. No doubt someone with more artistic ability than me could make it better, but I think it's pretty much as good as I can make it right now.

The third assignment for this week is to go back to my first worldbuilding work and notes and look at them to gather ideas from that early work and review how far I've come since then. This one is easy, because Derkomai is my first worldbuilding project! Derkomai on World Anvil is the World Anvil implementation of the world that friends and I used for D&D campaigns back in our college days. The world of Derkomai is actually over 45 years old - older even than Toril and Faerûn. The Welcome article has a few pictures of some of the original maps of Derkomai I drew while I was in college, around 1980 or so, The super talented group of guys I played D&D with so long ago have gone on to have really successful careers as medical doctors, lawyers, and holding high-ranking positions in government and law enforcement. As you might imagine, campaigning with such a talented group of people was really fun.

Derkomai as it exists today has grown and expanded far beyond what it was back then, with new maps, lots of new characters, cities, history, and backstory, but it's still the same world we developed so many years ago. I'm grateful for World Anvil giving me the opportunity (and making it relatively easy) to give Derkomai a home where other people can read about it, base game campaigns, or draw some inspiration.

Week Three Homework

For week three, the focus is "Metamorphosis." The only constant is change, as Heraclitus of Ephesus said something like 2500 years ago.

This theme fits very well with Derkomai and its back story. Humans, in my opinion, are always seeking to learn and grow, to make life easier and better. On the other hand, many also seek power and wealth to the detriment of others. The deities of Derkomai, the Nop Derk Safir, understood that about Humans, and so they implemented the Praxis Cogendi to prevent Humans from destroying the other sentient species on Derkomai and even Derkomai itself. The Praxis Cogendi and the Praxis Illicitus limit the knowledge and technology that Humans are allowed to acquire and use on Derkomai, so that sets up a natural tension between the Praxis and the Human drive to learn, grow, and acquire power and wealth. Depending on the prompts, I think there will be lots of opportunities to develop some stories around this tension.   For the other two assignments this week, I will spend some time looking at and reading some of the creative work other people have done here on WA. I've enjoyed reading E. Christopher Clark's writing, so I think I will take a look at some of what he's written recently. There are so many really good writers here in WA; I'm sure I'll learn some new things!

Week Four Homework

The final week of Summer Camp Prep is upon us! And I just now noticed an embarrassing typo in the title of my entry for last week. Sigh.     What will tomorrow bring on Derkomai? That's a good question. I hadn't really thought about it before. Because of the Praxis Cogendi, Derkomai doesn't change much technologically or socially. I've toyed with the idea of the technologically advanced Human civilization outside of Derkomai (see articles like Your Presence Here is Anathema and Attempt No Landing Here) overcoming the Praxis Cogendi and making contact with the Humans on Derkomai, but I think it would unbalance the world and ruin the entire premise of how Humans interact with the other sentient species on Derkomai. Maybe...maybe someday, I might develop a story where an individual scout explorer from off world survives a crash landing on Derkomai and is stranded, essentially reliving what happened to the original Human colonists at The Fall from the Stars. That could be interesting. But other than that, Derkomai will remain much as it has, with drama provided not by societal changes wrought by technological progress, but by Human (and Elvirim, Drow Elvirim, Dwarvirim, Orkrim, etc. etc.) ambition and conflict.   Addressing assignment one: the physical space for my writing is pretty much set. I have a standing desk and a comfy chair in my home office, with my computer and good-sized monitor. I spend a lot of time working on Realm Studio, reading, and writing here, so I've spent some effort to make it comfortable. One thing I've run into recently, though, is that as I get older, I cannot sit as long as I once could without getting a lot of aches and pains in my joints and muscles, so I very much need to take better care of myself. I have a treadmill in my office, too, so I really have to make sure I stand and walk on my treadmill often. (By the way, I'm still hoping for some people to give Realm Studio a try for map making. You can get it on the Microsoft Store or from Github - the links are above!).   Which brings up assignment two: I'd really like to connect more with the WA community, but to be honest, I've found that to be a little difficult. I think I'm outside the demographic of most WA users, so perhaps most people on WA don't relate to my writing that well. Or something. I don't know. I also haven't felt very welcome when interacting with some people in the forums. I've felt a little discouraged about that and that Realm Studio hasn't gotten the reception that I hoped it would. Oh well, I'll just continue working on it and working on my writing and worldbuilding, and if it gets some attention, great; if not, I'm not going to lose sleep over it.   For assignment three, I guess I don't really have a sharing strategy. I know some people post on Instagram and other social media about what they've written here on WA, but I've never done that. I just write my articles, submit them, and hope someone will take the time to read. It's lousy marketing, I know, but since I'm not trying to make money from Derkomai, I haven't tried to promote it beyond that. Should I? I never know how to answer that question for myself, because I don't have that much confidence in my writing. Sometimes I ask for feedback, and some Anvilites have been kind and said some positive things, but I just don't really know if my work is interesting, boring, just so-so, or what. I always find it difficult to be part of a community - I'm not outgoing, and I'm very independent (even with wife thinks so!), so making connections is always a challenge for me - but I'll try!   This July is going to be pretty hectic, so I will have to manage my time well to meet my Diamond goal. We're having our kitchen remodeled completely - all new cabinets and appliances - and floors refinished in our house. We'll have to be completely out of our house for four days while the floors are worked on (the floors will be sanded down to strip off the old finish, cleaned and repaired, and then new finish put on. The floor finish has a strong smell and isn't great to breath until it cures, so we'll have to be out of the house while that work is done). So, all of that will be disruptive, but fortunately, since I'm retired, I have a lot of free time to work on writing. I think I can still meet my goal, but I'll give myself a little grace to write shorter articles if I'm busier than I expect.