2025 Summer Camp Prep

Week One

Nourishment

The world of Lorgaire offers an abundance to those who can harness it, even in the harshest of its physical environments. This abundance is precisely what lures in the dangers of the outer realms, with their offers to uplift the native inhabitants. The power wielded by the peoples of Lorgaire is frequently unknown to them, and the denizens of the other worlds have come to rely on manipulation of the ignorant to empower themselves. What the natives of Lorgaire receive in return in this exchange is a more tangible or immediate fulfilment of their needs than they can harness on their own.   Those native to Lorgaire can harness from it the ability to shape both the physical and metaphysical. Calling forth not just the fulfilment of their basic needs with the labor of their body but granting the power to change reality or spawn new ones, and to grant vast power to the inhabitants of other planes of existence with little more than their focused thought. With this power unknown to them the devious and devout of Lorgaire are plied with the very powers granted to the entities they imagine.   Unknown to all but a few, the original inhabitants of Lorgaire regularly prune away these parasitic relationships that draw on the first realm for their nourishment. This has frequently taken the form of great and mysterious catastrophes.  

Pledge

I will be aiming for Gold again during this summer camp, but hope that I will be able to manage another diamond. I've been quite lax in my writing for the last several months and hope to turn that around.  

Renewal

Meta and core articles renewed. The central theme and goal have changed little since inception. The landing pages have largely been refined to achieve suitable guidance for visitors.  

Week Two

Roots

I will continue to primarily develop the areas of the Gold Coast and King's Bay for tabletop adventures. These are core cultural areas for the humans that strongly influence their current society and have the greatest potential for adventure related historical development. Two of the great empires of the ogres that serve as the origin of human culture overlap these modern human cultural strongholds, and offer ancient mysteries to be stumbled upon.  

Home

The Player Primer and Lorgaire Homepage continue to serve well in bringing a contextual summary of Lorgaire to new players and visitors. The Discovery Campaign had the roots of the adventure portal I would like it to be with a partially developed Develop The Border adventure page, but this and at least one more mini-adventure need fleshing out.  

Repeat

Peering back twenty or thirty years to the first settings I developed, I can remind myself not to delve too hard into any one piece of preparation. My first map was hand drawn on over a dozen 11x17 sheets of paper, representing an abandoned city rendered in detail that perhaps saw a single night of adventure pass through one corner of it. A large world map with a complex history and geopolitical web was developed for a campaign that ran for three years, but saw the party never leave the kingdom they started in.   Some elements from those early worlds have already been integrated into the underlying concepts of Lorgaire. From the beginning I have worked the idea of divergent evolutionary connections into the races of the setting, although which races are the origin or branch from the same trunk have shifted to make room for additional influences and themes.   Influences here (Summer Camp '24 Reflections) and from the web in general have also given me the inspiration I think I need to weave the links between the fragments of material I develop to create a network of articles and images that will draw people in to perceive the same vision that lives in my imagination.  

Week Three

Metamorphosis & Transformation

Slow and subtle change over time is a major theme of Lorgaire. Who appears to be in control of the world has profoundly changed many times over the history of the civilizations inhabiting it. The fall of the Ogres and rise of their servants partially mirrors the history of the ogres themselves, but much of this is hidden by time, and more so by those the ogres once served. The peoples in power now, Humans, Dwarves and Elves, have themselves transformed to such degree that they spawn new lineages and species as they struggle against foes new and old, from within and without.   As the current crop of powers begin to truly exert their will on the First World and all of its client realms, will the true powers in Lorgaire tolerate it, or unravel them with another Cataclysm as they did the progenitors of these upstarts?  

Style Inspiration

The one 'good' thing about the last few months in which little writing progress occurred on Lorgaire, is that I spent a large part of it listening to audiobooks from both familiar and new sources. I found some insight in genres and authors I hadn't sampled before, but also a few things I know not to do as I felt they were not just incompatible with the theme or goals of this project, but also some that are common pitfalls that expose the uninspired shallowness or derivative nature of a story.  

Community Inspiration

I have called it out before, but the use of various inline inserts for articles like Demongrey uses in this regional overview of the Million Islands is something I need to do more of. This kind of article linking is very compelling.   An example of immersion that I would be unlikely to think of on my own is the use of music to use the senses to multiply mental connections the way Valraun has in the Urbûn article for Djerdad Sikta. Our other senses are often dsconnected from a purely visual written article with a few images, but by exploiting the other senses as well we can boost our players and readers ability to connect conceptually with out presentation.  

Week Four

Tomorrow

Both of the foundational cultures in the focus regions of the Gold Coast and King's Bay are in dominant positions with a renewal of past sense of glory and an outward expansion occurring. Their peoples are flush with resources from a favorable period of time, and many of their leaders are ready to use this condition to seize more.  

Plan

Time has been set aside for writing, with work expectations mostly settled for the period of the Summer Camp event (as much as it reasonably can be). More importantly, my personal recreational goals have been focused on worldbuilding and away from less productive options.  

Connect

My sharing strategy will be a weekly tale. Setting large goals for a short time has not worked well for me in the past, but on a more intermediate period like a week I can find enough moments to get quite a bit accomplished. On game days I can have a goal set to have enough material to lure in some interest, with a small selection of items that will offer options and display some commitment.