Summer Camp 2026 Homework

As is typical for me, my worldbuilding time seems to have largely vanished in the months after last year's Summer Camp, and is returning part way through June in the run up to this year's event. So much for my plan to have completed an overhaul of the entire world between events!

But there's no use crying over spilled milk. I can't turn back the clock if I wanted to. There is homework to be done! And I must say, I quite like the format of it this year, though I might be fudging my dice rolls a bit as some of these preparatory tasks don't really work for how my brain works. (For example, if I have a reference up for a thing, I'm very prone to just copying the thing rather than synthesizing it with into something I'm comfortable calling my own work, so compiling a collection of references isn't the most useful.)

As I publish articles for summer camp, I'll be adding links to them to my Summer Camp 2026 Articles list.

Week 1: Pledge

While I always try for diamond in the end, I found it much more comfortable last year when I only committed to shooting for bronze in advance. I'm still interested in Caelester and its environs, so I'll be continuing to work on Irion. And, at least for the first half of the month, for every article I complete, I'll do a rewrite/reformat of one old article, and read through something that someone else made for that prompt. (I'm not worried about the possibility of being the first person to write a prompt for that prompt; knowing this community I'll have plenty of choices even if I start writing the minute the competition launches!)

Week 2: Focus

So, picking a geographic locale as my focus isn't really logical at this point - while I hope to flesh out Eshor significantly more in the future, Caelester has been the central focus since the very beginning. Instead, I will specify certain areas of focus about the city: the dominant religion, the city's economic situation, and how that's changed over the years. I'd also like to develop an overall understanding of the geography of the city itself - which districts are where, how many are there, etc. Though that may rely on some map work I'll pencil in for August.

Hopscotch

I rolled a 4, which gives me "Update old articles from your world" or "Create some articles to get a feel for your world." Since I already think I have a pretty good idea of what I'm going for with Eshor (or at least Caelester, the centre of the action for the forseeable future) I'm going to brush up on some of the articles. My first pass is just reading through everything and adding tags - particularly ones regarding formatting and a system for tracking editing status. Since I don't know how old a given article is exactly, I'm marking everything as either high, medium or low priority for editing.

I started this homework very late (the day before the third week came out) and have had to deal wth a number of distractions taking up more time than anticipated. It is now the day before Summer Camp launches, and I've only managed to read and tag about half of my articles. I do intend to continue the reread-and-tag process into Summer Camp, as well as editing one article for every prompt that I publish an article for. But unfortunately, I think it's safe to say I won't be making any significant updates to articles before Summer Camp begins in 15 hours.

Hopscotch

I rolled a 2, which gives me either "Make a list of related articles you already have. Expand them?" and "Make a list of concepts you'd like to explore." I like both of those options, but given the rapidly approaching start, I think I'll just do the list of concepts to explore. That seems like a more useful aspect of preparation.

One area I'm interested in developing in more detail is the Asurian pantheon, from the deities themselves to the history of the faith (having transitioned from the syncretic religion of a Roman-style expansionist empire to a more insular faith rarely found outside of the empire's former heartland), to how the people worship the gods day to day.

The other area of focus is the geography of the city of Caelester itself, and the surrounding lands it controls. I've left the city's layout pretty nebulous so far, and I'd like to hammer out at least some of the notable landmarks and districts as a basis for creating a map after Summer Camp is concluded. That map will help give me some firm limits to work within and hopefully give me a more solid understanding of the city state as a defined place rather than a broad set of concepts.

Week 3: Scheduling

I'm very fortunate in that I don't have a firmly set schedule. Therefore my entire July is theoretically available to devote to Summer Camp. However, leaving my schedule completely open leaves a ton of room open to procrastination. Therefore, I will be making some adjustments to forcibly draw my attention to World Anvil during the event.

I've added World Anvil's Athena page to my Firefox home pages, which means I'll get a reminder every time I check my email (usually once or twice a day). I've also added a Summer Camp tracker spreadsheet since I've found it to be very useful for brainstorming in the last few years. I've also added a reminder about the event to my startup programs so I'll get a reminder every day when I turn on my computer. If I get back into journaling, I'll mention how I'm doing every entry, but unfortunately I've fallen out of that habit, so it's not as useful a reminder as it would be in previous years. Finally, I've mentioned the event to a few friends, in hopes they'll ask me how it's going over the course of the month. The more reminders I have, the more chances I'll actually pay attention to the event's existence and work on it!

Week 4: Goal Setting

I worldbuild mostly for the sake of worldbuilding. I might eventually reach a point where I want to write a story in one of my worlds, and this particular world is intended to be a setting for a D&D campaign, which leads to game mechanics informing certain aspects of the worldbuilding. But, for the most part, it's just a matter of enjoyment, and the satisfaction of imagining a fictional world and putting it down on paper rather than trying to keep it all in my head.

Summer Camp's collection of prompts functions as a catalyst for my imagination - coming up with something to match each of them is always a fun challenge, and helps me broaden my focus rather than pigeon-holing myself into something extremely specific and detailed existing in the foggy wastes of an undefined greater world. (Honestly for me the motivational problem is less what will keep me focused on Summer Camp and more what will keep me focused when I have no curated prompt list and deadline to keep me focused!)

Hopscotch

I rolled a 3, so I get to spend some time going through my 100+ notifications reading the cool stuff people have written about this year! I'll enjoy that!

Update: I've read a bunch of articles and I'm now up to notifications from 4 months ago or less. That leaves 68 for the future, which I'll keep chipping away at through the event. (Lots of good ideas folks have come up with got the brain going)

Hopscotch

My last roll is a 4, so I think I'll take that as a directive to do some housekeeping. I've been slacking a bit in that regard, and thus have been focused on more critical areas and leaving my office alone. But now I've done a cleaning pass and the space around my desk is cleaner than it's been in longer than I'd like to admit. Still plenty more work to be done, but it's very nice having the desk space opened up again!

All in all, while I didn't get as much done for the Homework as I initially hoped to, it's still been very successful in getting me motivated. I'm all fired up and ready for Summer Camp to start tomorrow!