Worldember 2025
Pledge
Preparation
Review or collect your world inspirations & Define your scope for WorldEmber
So, this year, I decided to start prepping for Worldember in early October! I'm the past, I've run out of ideas partway through December, and end up not writing as much as I'd hoped, so I'm hoping that a bit of a kick-start would give me more time to brainstorm. To help me pick a focus, I reached out to a couple of friends and asked them the below question - as they are the people most likely to interact with the setting.When you're getting into a new story setting (books, tv, movies, whatever), is there a specific aspect of the world you find more interesting or you tend to focus on?
George
"Hmm for fantasy settings? I like it when you can tell things are old, like in lotr you can just feel how old the world is, ruins, large libraries but enough mystery around forgotten knowledge"Ideas
So I've made some references to an ancient, elvish empire which used to reside along the western coast of Wyrring and their ruins which remain, but I haven't really fleshed out a lot of it
- What has been written: Pre-History
- Example of ruins: Last Stand, Romys Returns
- A general overview of the elvish empire
- A general overview of the ruins
- Large ruin complexes
- In addition to the surficial empire, there's also Miyeritar, which Eryndlyn is built upon
- What do we know about their culture?
- Theories about what happened to them?
- Where did Estalians come from?
- Large vaults and archives full of various documents - court filings, meeting minutes, laws
- The Grand College would have similar vaults, such as the reliquary. In "Guards! Guards!" by Terry Pratchett, there is a library where the weight of knowledge within it warps time and space itself. Perhaps the magical pressure of the items stored in the reliquary would have a similar effect?
- Did the ancient elvish empire know more about magic than current day? Did the knowledge get lost with the empire itself?
- Is some of this magic practiced by modern elves in the Clarenware Woods, Eryndlyn, or Sylvia? Are they aware of the magic, or has it been passed down as rituals and traditions?
- How does The Grand College feel about researching this magic? If it's more powerful, would it violate Mystra's Ban?
- A rogue group of researchers? Perhaps fighting against The League of Magical Items and Mysteries?
- Ancient, magical items
- Idea for character options: Special skills. Essentially allow the players to add one unique skill that they can specialize in. Some examples could be this ancient magic, piloting, Kinetic Engines, or dungeoneering. A character can only have one of these at a time, and if they want to learn a different one, they lose the one they already have. They automatically get proficiency with the skill, with a specific ability modifier, and gain the benefits of "Jack of all Trades". One can take this skill during character creation in lieu of one of their class-provided skills, or they can meet requirements to the DM's descretion during regular play.
Anthony
"Murder mysteries, crime series, heists, mafia. Old times/medieval times/renaissance. Assassins." There's this podcast called "Scotland Yard Confidential", which he liked - more for the heists (how they did it, how they were caught).Ideas
So Wyrring is already a typical fantasy setting, which roughly approximates to medieval times.
- With the invention of the Kinetic Engine, we could start to lean more into the renaissance.
- Inventors creating new forms of technology.
- Previously discussed areas include Angel's Harbour, and specific organizations include Red Cloaks or The Group of Six.
- The Group of Nine (and Drury) in general could also be a great opportunity for more organized crime - merchants dealing with unethical goods (drugs, weapons, people), "guilds" wandering the streets shaking businesses down for protection money.
- Assassins would also be a great inclusion - sounds like something Eryndlyn would do?
- Alternatively, Morovian assassins trying to curry favour with their god
- What criminal organizations work within Estalia - City near Long Wall? - the name of the game isn't breaking the law, it's how to bend the law so that you're not breaking it and the law becomes foisted by its own incompetence (i.e. relying on the slow beaurocracy to give you time to make money).
- How do they make money/do their work? That's part of the mystery to uncover!
- I've recently prepared a heist adventure of my own (Honour Among Mice - DM Notes)
- How about an unsolved heist?
- Did someone rob the Reliquary of some powerful magical artifacts, causing the creation of The League of Magical Items and Mysteries to retrieve them?
- Did the Romyians take over a local armoury to supply their revolution?
Rudi
"Interesting technologies or power scaling systems. If you have this, you're good at this, or you have a certain power level."Ideas
Power scaling
- Wyrring has a power scaling system automatically built in, since it was developed as a setting for D&D.
- As well, ideas such as Arcane Indexing could provide an interesting base for a separate power scaling.
- There's also some meta scaling with Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies. Perhaps more should be added to give bonuses on class-specific skills or on specific skills?
- It would probably be a bit too much to overhaul the D&D levelling system in its entirety, but maybe there could be an in-world recognition of some kind of mastery (think Weaponmasters from Shadows of the Apt), where by completing a specific challenge one is granted a rank signifying their skills. One for each class would be too much, but maybe one per archetype (striker, defender, healer, etc.)? By completing this you would be given a recognizable trinket, plus some minor related bonus. Each challenge would also need an organization (official or otherwise) to grant the rank itself. This would also lend itself to some easy side-quest potential in larger, open-world campaigns.
- Fighters (elves only) - okay, so I can't shake Weaponmasters... The elves of Sylvia or Clarenware Woods could have a similar tradition. If a warrior survives the trip to some secret and ceremonial hunting grounds, they can undertake the challenge. The Challenger drinks a special potion (hallucinogen by some, magical by others) and goes out to hunt by themselves. Out there they face a shadowy reflection of their doubts - represented as either someone important in their life or a reflection of themselves. By defeating it, they wake up where they started with the notifying trinket in their hand.
- Natural Mages - Maybe inspired by the requirements to become a war chief? Steal horses, disarm and enemy, kill an enemy, and touch an enemy without killing them. Plus a pilgrimage to Dulra's Roots.
- Religious Mages/Healers? - it would be very difficult to have one organization presiding over all the different religions, however, specific sects may have their own hierarchy. Once you reach a certain level of devotion, perhaps you're marked with an invisible (but magically detected) sign.
- Morovians - Murder cult. Could tie into Anthony's "assassins" comment
- A religious test where one is bound and blindfolded and placed in a room with a raging, injured bull. If they survive, it's treated as protection from their god.
- Enginists - Enginist
- Psions -
- Fighter -
- Arcane Mages -
- The world already has a good base for cool technologies with Kinetic Engines, however, most of the technologies based on it are fairly basic (car, train, etc.)
Patrick
"I guess in terms of like the physical world itself and like magic and stuff you don't need to change that much to make things interesting. As long as the thing that is unique about the world affects enough aspects of the world to always be interesting. I'd say what I find more interesting is the history, and having characters discover things about the history of the world as their stories progress, and from that discover why other aspects of the world are the way they are or why previous events happened the way they did. I've been reading a lot of Brandon Sanderson recently and I think he does that really well. As you learn things about the history the context of previous events in the story are completely changed. Another good example I think is Attack on Titan. Then the other thing i guess is having the individual character arcs be interesting in their own right, and not just serving a purpose to the wider worldbuilding."Ideas What makes the world unique?
- This is absolutely something that I've been falling short on. In comparison to other fantasy worlds, Wyrring is unique because it both has artifice - through the Kinetic Engine - and influential religion - through Totems.
- What is it like to live in a world where the gods are provable? Where shards of their power regularly use divine might to push their agenda?
- Churches would be far more powerful/influential
- Atheism would be very rare, and highly criticized
- This includes both large secrets and breadcrumbs for one to find these secrets.
- Source of Kinetic Engine powers
- Cases where traditional magic is fading, such as Clarenware Customs - DM Notes or the lowerer frequency of traditional sorcerers
- What happened to Keryth Romys? Who were they?
- Were they one individual? Or a group?
- Did they die? Have they been manipulating the world from behind the scenes? I feel like the world is missing a lich/vampire. A lich whose phylactery is their followers? The power of belief in them is what's keeping them alive (a la Fides Theorem)?
Make a list of articles to write
Some of this was already done as part of the above inspirations, but below is a list of miscellaneous ideas:- A one-shot where the party is on a pub-crawl and slowly uncovering some mystery as they travel across town. Includes recommended drinks for players for each location/story point.
- Travel guide for the coastal road (Adoris to Drury).
- Travel guide for all routes leading from Estalia.
- Add "Here there be dragons" to map
- Literal "here there be dragons"
- Thunderbird
- Encounter tables for The Climb
- Finish Homesick
- Write Ghosts of the Past
- Beast people
- City carved onto a cliffside, into the rock
- Messenger stables in Estalia - think Mongolian empire
- The Grand College being founded where it is because the "sea breeze brings in nurioushment and magic"
- The Ottawa Senators Brambleball team
- A creature which seemingly defies the laws of physics, due to it consuming magic directly from the Demispell as energy (Inspired by dragons in "Guards! Guards!" by Terry Pratchett).
- A monster which lives in movement in the corner of your eye and in the flashes of shadow from a candle.
- A monster which haunts your sleep, giving you pleasant dreams which turn to nightmares where they try to kill you.
- A sect of Thalor who believe that in addition to Totems, there are specific people who embody the aspect of each god (major AND minor). They spend all their time arguing who these people are.
- I should prepare an article which provides targetted links for each of my friends which they might be interested in (since they were so nice to provide responses to the above)
Review or Set up your World Home page
So I reviewed my home page, and am pleasantly surprised with the new UI! Although some of it isn't useful for me (my world map is contained to a chronicle, and I couldn't find a way to present it under "Maps" or "Timelines"), I did make a couple of changes. The current date is one year after the end of the last D&D campaign I hosted in the world (Into the Dark). Some minor edits to the introductory text!Finish all your unfinished articles
I'm already up to date!Refresh your author page for new readers
Wrote up a quick bio.Review your category tree
My category tree was mostly good, but I took a couple of minutes to compile all the area-specific flora and fauna categories into one, and sorted out the Brightwater Locations article.Go for a walk
I tend to go for walks quite often, but on Nov 5 I specifically went for a walk on a rainy evening, listening to an audiobook of Terry Pratchett's "Guards! Guards!" It was quite enjoyable.Review or create your world primer article
I've made some minor edits to the primer article here.Re-read your core articles
I re-read the following articles, which serve as either introductory articles for new readers, or are fundamental articles which many others refer to!- Character Inspirations
- Magic in Wyrring
- Arcane Indexing
- Demispell
- Fides Theorem
- Penrose Theory of Magic
- Wyrring Diplomacy
- Kinetic Engine
- The Pact of Gold
- Scars of the Godswar
- Totems
Plan your Writing Schedule
To achieve my goal of 10,000 words, I need to write approximately 300 words every day. I've added reminders to my calendar to write everyday, however, I know there's going to be days where I have more or less free time. I hope to play it by ear, and see how it goes!Review your world's visual appearance
Visually, I still think the world looks nice!Make a list of stubs to expand
I don't have specific stubs that I'm hoping to expand on, however, I learned how to filter articles in the search bar by word count!Tidy up your writing space
I tend to do most of my writing on the bus while travelling to and from work, but I spent a day deep cleaning my house.Read a Book
I've been listening to "Guards! Guards!" by Terry Pratchett, and although I haven't finished it yet, I'm still going to count it!Checklist
| Topic | New Articles |
|---|---|
| Ancient Empires (George) | |
| Old Estalia (George) | |
| Ancient Magic (George) | |
| Ciminal Organizations (Anthony) | |
| Heists (Anthony) | |
| Power Scaling (Rudi) | |
| Technology (Rudi) | |
| Unique Parts of the World (Patrick) | |
| Source of Kinetic Engine Power (Patrick) | |
| Keryth Romys (Patrick) | |
| Miscellaneous |
|
Best of luck with all your goals!! The background image of your world is pretty cool :)