Worldember 2023 Prep

This has been a year of new ideas, new directions, and new projects. At the beginning of the year, the Great WotC License Debacle caused me to rethink the direction I wished to take with regard to publishing parts of Cartyrion for TTRPG play. This resulted in the Laurels & Loot project - the design of an entirely new TTRPG rules system. At the same time, the #Dungeon23 challenge saw the birth of a classic, old-school "megadungeon" for players to explore.

Then Real Life reared its head, and the distractions abounded. Now, I've got most, but not all, of a rules system ready for play-test, and the beginnings of a dungeon crawl in which to do that testing.

Week 1: The Pledge

This Worldember, my goal is to finish the basic rules for Laurels & Loot, as well as the scripting for the Forgotten Academy Adventure dungeon crawl. The former will involve a lot of work on spell and item descriptions, and a lot of editing of the mechanics as playtesting proceeds. The latter will include statblocks and information necessary for use with Laurels & Loot only (though I still may, in the future, also provide versions for other TTRPG systems).


Though the title of my Worldember work suggests a focus on the Adventure, in order for it to be a "Laurels & Loot Adventure", I will need to apply equal focus to the rules themselves.

Week 2: The Mini-Meta

Scope

As indicated in the pledge, my Worldember work will be focused on two areas. With regard to the Laurels & Loot rules, the intent is to complete drafting the basic gameplay rule sections, and define enough magic spells, common items, and magical items to support play through character level 3. With regard to the Forgotten Academy Adventure, the intent is to complete the dungeon areas targeted for characters of Level 1 through 3, with the creation of the necessary monsters as well.

Goal

Overall, the intent is to have a comprehensive enough set of Game Rules, and enough of a dungeon-crawl styled adventure to support playtesters through three levels of adventuring.

Theme and Mood

From a RPG "styling" standpoint, the Laurels & Loot effort is intended to bring back some of the attitudes and emotions that were evoked by the earliest versions of RPGs such as Dungeons & Dragons. This means keeping the aura of heroism and fantastic achievements alive while still making it all too clear that character death is a reality. I'm trying to achieve this by making the sword-edge on which characters figuratively dance a little sharper than it has become in more modern versions of D&D. Characters can go from "in full control" to "hey, I'm gonna die!" very quickly. Players should have to think about the the consequences of their actions, but players should also be encouraged to be creative with their solutions, and not be hamstrung by predefined feats, features, and skills.

Inspiration

The primary inspiration for this work is the collective experience I amassed playing and dungeon-mastering TTRPGs throughout my 45 years or so of doing so. In the old days, there seemed to be more sense of danger, and there was definitely more creativity. These are the feelings I wish to re-emphasize.

Category Structure

Having already addressed cagetory structure for the World of Cartyrion in several prior Summercamp and Worldember prep periods, I'm happy with what is already in place.

Week 3: The World Homepage

This assignment forced me to do something that I've been putting off for a while: cleaning up at least some of my world Landing Page. The "first landing / first impression" part of the page has been updated to put a bit more emphasis on Laurels & Loot; it has also brought the "category books" for surfing the world and investigating the game rules closer to the top of the page.

The text associated with Patreon Supporters selecing Gamemaster and Player options were updated to reflect the parentage (race) names that I've decided to stick with. (This is something that should have been done months ago!)

FInally, the bottom half of the page was tidied up a bit. The list of timelines was removed via CSS (need to talk to Dimi about a way to selectively show/hide Chronicles! Currently, while old Timelines can be individually excluded from the homepage, this is not an option for Chronicles!) Maps were pared down significantly. Finally, the service that was once known as Twitter has been removed, as I am no longer associated with that service. (I'm going to have to do something in the future to up my Social Media game, but that's for another day!)

Week 4: Final Prep

In my case, there really isn't a lot I need to do in order to get ready for a WorldEmber full of writing. I've got a dedicated space. And as I'm already streaming Worldbuilding four days a week (join me at https://twitch.tv/rpgdinosaurbob on Tuesdays through Fridays, 9AM EST / 6AM PST / 1400 UTC / 1AM AEDT), I've got a built-in support group and several well-planned blocks of time to get writing done. As long the occasional "real life" interruptions don't get too distracting, I should be fine.

So... Bring it on! I'm ready for WorldEmber 2023!