Happy New Year! How the heck is it 2024 already? 2023 was a wild year full of change and growth, but I'm glad it's come to an end. Time for a fresh start.

Past

Future

Reading Challenge

Join in on the Resolution challenge and reflect on the year with us!

Well, it's been a rough year, hasn't it? CW loss

It's been a year of too many heavy, personal losses and difficult changes. Multiple family members, family pets, and friends. Each time I started to grow out of grief, another loss came around the corner. It left me uninspired and exhausted. Thankfully, I have a great support system, got the help I need, and I find myself looking at 2024 with reckless optimism.

Looking Back

Culinarypunk

This year started with a bang. Culinarypunk was awarded Best New World in the 2023 Worldbuilding Awards and ended the year hitting 100 Culinarians! I really can't believe it, thank you so much to everyone who follows this world! Knowing there are people looking forward to this silly world keeps me going. I love to make people laugh and Culinarypunk gives me one of the best outlets to be creative and goofy.
Thank you again for your support <3
Culinarypunk was also recognized as a Featured World!! I can't count how many times I refreshed the page the first time I saw this, I just couldn't believe my eyes. It's such an honor to be recognized and I hope to make the community proud in 2024.

Articles from 2023

Quests & Quarrels

I've been making progress on my TTRPG system, Quests & Quarrels. The basic rules and mechanics are developed and the starting skill trees are nearly complete! There have also been major changes, including a complete rewrite of the Social Proficiency mechanic so it can be used to enhance storytelling rather than limit gameplay.
Light playtesting began during 2023. Balancing fair gameplay with interesting character creation was a struggle, but breaking things has led to a few fixes that I believe will let players craft their unique characters without sacrificing fun.

Beckettville

Very little has happened in Beckettville, primarily due to an overhaul in the unreleased lore. I needed to rework a major aspect of the world before I could write articles about the Recently Revived and the citizens of Beckettville. Some of the revisions are still happening and I'll be going back to rewrite some old articles this year to reflect the updates.

Articles from 2023

New Worlds

2023 saw the creation of two new worlds: Eldrispace is a cosmic horror space opera while Reverium is a high fantasy. It's been fun stretching my muscles in other genres. I'm still new to this whole writing thing and although horror has always felt like my home genre, having opportunities to explore other genres has helped me find new inspirations and discover what I really want to do in my work. This will continue into 2024, but Culinarypunk and Beckettville will be my main worlds going forward.

Eldrispace

Favorite Articles

Reverium

Favorite Articles

Looking Forward

Resolutions

Activity

2023 was not a social year for me but that will change in 2024. I'll not only be getting more involved with community challenges, I'll be pushing myself to be more vocal in the WorldAnvil discord. I pop in during events here and there, but I feel weird jumping in out of nowhere. I shouldn't, though. Everyone in the WorldAnvil community is always so warm and welcoming, there's so much inspiring talent in there every day. I think this will also help with my consistency. By being more connected to the community itself, I hope to grow out of my inconsistency issues.
I also feel like I don't know as many worlds as I'd like to know. Almost every week I discover a new world I'd never seen before with a bunch of followers and I'm shocked it flew under my radar. People like Kummer Wolfe help point to amazing new work on their list. This year I'll be spending time each month exploring new worlds and getting to know as many settings as I can, starting with my reading list for this month's challenge.

Art

I've spent 2023 working on my art style behind the scenes. I'll be making a major effort to switch out all of the art to a new style free of AI tools. I started using AI as a tool in my art process the last two years. You can see the process in this article, and follow along with the changes here.
I'm excited to share the new style with a sneak peek at a new pumpkin-based species in Culinaria. Surprise! It's not just the purple art, I'm doing full color! Mashing the silly with the serious is one of my favorite hobbies and I think this new style will let me showcase that vibe.

Sneak peek at a new world coming soon:

Valorvein

Twin colossi encased in eternal strife host civilizations in their eroding intricacies. In the heart of these warring statues, Valorvein pulses—a gritty marble dreamscape where occult techno-arcane marvels meet neon-lit mineral monoliths.

The Year Ahead

First Quarter

Recoup. Review. Renew. Now that I'm back from New York, I'm doing a review of 2023 and taking stock of things that still need to be done. Once I have things scheduled and planned out, I'll be going over my worlds and giving them a lil touch up on CSS and style. I'll also be launching my new world, Valorvein, during this time.

Second Quarter

Huge art overhaul! I'll be working all year on replacing the art in Culinarypunk with new, original, art. And time for another one shot! I have a few ideas but I'm not sure while I'll go with. I usually do a Beckettville one shot, and I think I'll still get one of those out this year, but I'd really like to get one in Culinarypunk.

Third Quarter

Summercamp! One of my favorite events, Summercamp always helps me build out interesting places in my worlds. I also really enjoyed being a judge last year. I would love to do it for both Summercamp and WorldEmber, but it feels unfair to the people I'd be judging because I'm in NY for half the judging period in January. I like to take time and read through articles without rushing, so I'll likely stick with sponsoring prompts during Summercamp only. August is usually my rest month, but this year my sister is getting married! Halfway through August I'll be flying back to New York to be her matron of honor and celebrate with the family.

Fourth Quarter

Expect to see an influx in spooky content during October. Halloween is my favorite holiday and horror is my favorite genre, so I take the entire month to bask in the immaculate vibes of spooky season. I would really love to release a solo TTRPG about trick or treating-like traditions in Culinarypunk, but we'll seeee~ November may end up being a bit of a rest month for me where I can spend some time recharging before the holiday rush. And then it's WorldEmber! As always, I'll be leaving for the holidays so my WorldEmber is cut a bit short, but I'll be taking advantage of any time I have at home to complete the challenge.

Looking Outward

Articles from Around the Anvil

Time for some reading! I specifically set out with the goal of reading worlds I hadn't explored yet. While on vacation, I read a bunch of articles from the worlds I already know and love, but for this challenge I wanted to branch out further.

Crystal Oscillation Machine

Ruby O'Degee

I came into this article expecting to read about some sort of fantasy crystal tech but was pleasantly surprised to find a darker story mixing technology and the paranormal. The setting Ruby has created for the Candela Obscura system sounds grim but is presented in a beautiful way that makes me want to explore further.

Star Parasitism

NimrodialLibrary

This is one of those worlds that I wonder how I could have possibly missed it. This condition article is short yet ridiculously effective, it's so creepy and somehow makes me feel bad for stars.

Bestiary: Creatures of Vreathe

Chrispy_0

Another world I was somehow not already following, Vreathe is just really freakin' cool. I love the use of clever CSS to show off some of the book and the reviews are fantastic, definitely give this a read.

Abyssal Shells

TailorOfFates

Suuuper creepy creature with awesome, original art. These are horrific, limb-extending beings from the Abyss who hunt for sport. Give me more, but also keep these creepy dudes as far away from me as possible please.

Ruwa Sea Cow

LeeStepp

I'm a sucker for sea cows. I live pretty close to a dock where manatees frequently visit and they are so ridiculously adorable, I love them so much. I wish our manatees could use water magic like the Ruwa Sea Cow, it's such a charming creature.

The Apocalypse

SpyglassRealms

SpyglassRealms has a fabulous world with Astra Planeta. The design is clean and well thought out, the concepts are terrific, and their article on the Apocalypse sums up a huge event in a wonderfully succinct way.

Ground Zero Diner

Steve Johnson

If you're not following Diner Punks, you're missing out. Steve has such a fun world filled with fast cars and big guns in the post apocalyptic 1980s. Ground Zero Diner is a great place to start with a juicy quote to start and a neat map on the sidebar.

Sins

Jandis

Wow, what a beautiful article. The design speaks for itself, Jandis does stunning work with Sins. The entire world is so well done and I've been having a blast exploring every inch of it. I hope to see more from them, Resai is forming into a really interesting setting.

Broom Galleons

Hatwolf

This was such a fun article to read. My reference point for flying carriages immediately goes to the death coach from irish folklore, so seeing it in a new way was such a delight. There's such a sense of whimsy around these vehicles, I love that they weren't immediately successful but Broomie never gave up!

Soul Map

Kydra_Hunter

Kydra does a great job explaining the Soul Map in this article, it's a really interesting system that grows with the people of the setting. I also love the diagrams Kydra created to showcase the Soul Map, they're simple but elegant and have the ability to show layered information at a glance.

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Other Articles From Worlds I Love

I didn't want to leave anyone out, so here are some links to articles I loved from worlds I already followed during WorldEmber.

A Very WADY WorldEmber

Did you know We Aren't Dead Yet is now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music? Listen to episode one of our podcast here or on your favorite podcast platform!

Cagewire 2079

Usurperkings

Well dang, Sapha said "hold my whiskey" and went wild this WorldEmber. It was hard to decide which to feature, so I'm shamelessly popping this and this here for you to also check out, but the storyboard for Cagewire 2079 is incredibly inspiring and makes me want to start storyboarding my own stories in a similar way. Original art, sleek cyberpunk CSS, and great music inspiration on top of the stellar writing style I've already come to love from Sapha's work.

Fun on the Beach

Dazzlinkat

If you're looking for some awesome mini games to add to your campaigns, Dazz has you all set! I would be thrilled to have a DM pop any of these in a game. Dazz has been working on her CSS and formatting skills recently and it's totally showing off in this article. She's also been developing Meaty Bones all year behind the scenes and it's been fascinating to watch, check it out here!