My Fantasy RPG World, Feedback and Ideas appreciated

[Scalenex]

As of the writing of this post, I have completed 25 prompts for Summer Camp 2024. I've had fun writing Scaraquan entries especially. Here is the Scaraquan equivalent to pigs...but can you make hagfish bacon?

hagfish

It is of course a real fish that exists in our seas, but I expanded on them for an aquatic fantasy setting.

 

[Scalenex]

Many Irons in the Fire

Summer Camp 2024

Summer Camp 2024 is over. I needed 32 article entries to win the Diamond Badge, I wrote 39, there were 42 options. You check them all out here.

It's already got me some new eyeballs on Scarterra plus a tiny handful of subscribers. Since August is World Anvil "reading challenge", I'll hopefully pick up a few more.

I'm going to peruse other peoples stuff and leave constructive criticism and hope some people return the favor.

Crazy Marketing Experiment

I've been a lurker on DeviantArt for over a year. I found two artists I like willing to do work for me. I found a bunch of artists I like who don't take commissions and I found many artists I find interesting to look at their work but I wouldn't want to hire.

And there is a veritable ocean of stuff on Deviant Art I am not interested in.

And I'm adding a drop in the ocean. A bit of AI Art with a short story story attached and a link to scarterra.com

Maybe it'll help with marketing Scarterra, maybe it won't. But it doesn't cost me much to try.

Planning RPG book

I have about 92% of my RPG rules pinned down. I'm working on the last 8% which is the slowest and most painful 8%. I got a new online friend who is kindly helping me review my RPG rules. My long-time buddy is helping me, but this falls on me mostly.

Once I get the RPG rules down, I can finalize my RPG book. Of course I need to add lots of art to my book, put in short story vignettes and work on the graphic design.

My hypothetical RPG book will not have any AI art in it, I will never charge someone money to see AI art, but I have thousands of articles on Scarterra.com for free, and I cannot afford commissions for all of them, so some of them will have AI art. I am working on refining my technique and making the right key words to get the AI art I want.

Art

As much as I can afford, I'm commissioning human artists to make stuff for me.

My buddy Zeta Gardner took a vacation recently and he works on my commissions as a side hustle to his main job, but he is back on the grindstone. The portraits of the Nine should be ready soonish. 7.75/9 are done so far.

Tengku and kalazotz are Scalenex-original races and they have professional illustrations.

Scarterran satyrs are a slight twist on traditional satyr lore, and they have professional illustrations.

Scarterran elves and dwarves are really not that different from "standard" elves and dwarves other than they have unusual skin and hair colors. At this point, it would be an inefficient use of my discretionary funds to pay professional artists for portraits Scarterran elves and dwarves when everyone has a pretty good idea of what they look like or I can make a reasonable facsimile from Hero Forge.

There is no consensus in the fantasy artist community for what a "standard gnome" looks like. D&D alters between little dwarves, little elves, long-nosed hobbits, and goofy tinkerers. Warcraft very much seems to like goofy tinkerers. Pathfinder seems to like to lean towards female gnomes, especially 3 foot tall sex kittens.

I have written thousands of words for how Scarterran gnome society works, but I haven't pegged down what Scarterran gnomes look like. Illustrating Scarterran gnomes is the next step after the Nine get their portraits.

Then Zeta Gardner is going to help me figure out what Scarterran gnomes look like and make at least five or six gnome portraits and two or three action shots that happen to include a gnome. At this point I don't know what the end result will look like, but Zeta is pretty good at coming up with ideas.

We'll see what comes out of this.

 

[Scalenex]

Usually when I make an AI image, I consider it a win if get an adequate image.

Once in a blue moon, I get a near perfect image. Behold, Turoch the primordial god that the Nine battled.

In unrelated news, I made an article for a relatively minor dwarf NPC and was compelled to invent a new Scarterran dwarf clan and I got a decent family crest for them. I consider this an above average AI result though it took me multiple tries and rewording to get this one. When I make Scarterran dwarf heraldry I usually include the key words "Old Norse style".

Here is an icon for the Meckelorn Tenders, a dwarf faction I recently flushed out. I consider an adequate AI Art, it's a little louder than I wanted but this is best I could get from multiple tries.

 

[Killer Angel]

Usually when I make an AI image, I consider it a win if get an adequate image.

Once in a blue moon, I get a near perfect image. Behold, Turoch the primordial god that the Nine battled.

this one is AMAZING

 

[Imrahil]

Once in a blue moon, I get a near perfect image. Behold, Turoch the primordial god that the Nine battled.

This one is epic!
Also read the article and some more, I love the Scarterra origin story. Well thought up.

Grrr, !mrahil

 

[Scalenex]

this one is AMAZING

This one is epic!
Also read the article and some more, I love the Scarterra origin story. Well thought up.

Grrr, !mrahil

Thanks for the words of encouragement and know that this is the tip of the iceberg.

I now have a professional portrait for all nine of the Nine. The only thing that is left is lay out the complete set and make final adjustments to make sure they fit together.

I'm revamping my Scarterra overview to be more succinct. The plan is to make a couple surface level primer articles with lots of art and very short summations of core lore of Scarterra with optional hyperlinks to follow for aspects of the lore that catch their fancy. And of course with lots and lots of pictures.

My WIP overview article is here but it doesn't have the new art yet, it has this image posted over and over again \/

 

[Scalenex]

It's not that I have a low attention span, it's that I have TOO much attention. My instincts are to juggle several projects at once, and very few people can pull that off. As the proverb goes, "If you chase two rabbits, you will lose them both"

Long Term Goal

In my dream the impossible dream, I would have Scarterran fiction novels that have an advertisement in the back. "Want to be a part of Scarterra, try the Scarterra RPG! Go to scarterra.com for details."

I'd have RPG books that have an advertisement in the back. "Want to read more about the lore of Scarterra, try these Scarterra novels and short stories. Go to scarterra.com for details."

At this point, I have registered scarterra.com at least.

I have a lot of work to do, but I am MUCH closer to having a complete RPG book than I am to having a complete novel. Heck, I'm closer to have a RPG main book plus a couple supplements than I am to having one novel. So I'm going to focus on that as much as I can.

Medium Term Goals

I will hunt for Play Testers

It is difficult to find groups to play in my area or to convince strangers or casual acquaintances on the internet to Discord with me.

I've been mostly running for my friends. It's helped me make deep dives into the more obscure rules things.

I would say my one-shot adventure demo for strangers was a smashing success because everyone who played it wanted to do more. Unfortunately scheduling conflicts made a longer campaign not work.

Hopefully I can run my one-shot demo for more new people and maybe find a new longer term play group.

As difficult as it is to convince strangers to play my game, It will be even more difficult to convince strangers to run my game. I've never been to an RPG convention, I'm going to start going to as many as I can and get a feel for how playtesting and demos work. After two or three conventions, I'll see if I can throw my hat into the ring.

I will look into publishing options

I will look into publishing options, editor options, art options, and graphic design options for making my RPG book.


Short Term Goals

I will Polish the Rules

There are only a few very minor things rules wise that I'm still sorting out. Golem construction, specific curses, upper level magic items.

Here there be Monsters...but not enough

The core of my RPG combat rules leans towards a group of humanoids fighting another group of humanoids. But I think if I want my RPG to appeal to a more mainstream audience I need to increase my number of non-humanoid monsters to fight with or ally with.

I have dragons in my setting but I haven't play tested them yet. I ALMOST tried a dragon fight with my main RPG group but the players opted to bribe and flatter the young dragon into going away rather than physically fight it.

I don't want to just throw monsters into the world willy-nilly. I want to play test their stats so they are reasonably powered and I want them to make sense in the world story wise.

I learned what CSS is

CSS stands for "Cascading Style Sheets". Right now World Anvil gives me about 15 options and I'm using one of theirs for scarterra.com

I want to create my own. In 9 days there is an online lecture on CSS for dummies that I plan to attend. But I also found a person online I can outsource this too for relatively cheap if I decide to be lazy on this.

I'm thinking blue with metallic flecks as a colored background or maybe a castle wall background, possibly making text blocks have a tapestry motif.

I can play with a stylistic font, but not too stylistic because some weird fonts are harder to read.

Revamping the Site Organization

I am in the premium level of World Anvil membership so I have access to more resources to improve my site.

I watched videos of the creators of World Anvil giving constructive criticism towards would-be professional fantasy and sci-fi sites and I've made educated guesses on what the obvious correctible flaws in my world.


@pendrake likes descriptions less than 30 words, and that seems to be something the World Anvil team likes to push. More like 50 to 100 words than 30, but same basic principle. And they tell almost everyone to do this in expanding layers.

For core lore of Scarterra I'm going to try to make over view pages where the basic stuff is laid out in 50 to 100 words. If you want more, you can clip on a hyperlink to get a 500 to 1000 word expansion and follow hyperlinks from there to very specific lore tangents if desired.

Make the basic lore easy to digest in small chunks (with pretty art) and make it easy for casual visitors to expand on specific aspects of the lore that interest them.

I got some new critical eyes on Scarterra. I have been advised twice to make a clearer demarcation between Scarterra lore and my RPG system. I'm going to try to make navigating just the RPGs or just the lore easier. Easier said than done, but I got a roadmap.

It might also be a good idea to separate out the well-fleshed out parts of my lore, West Colassia, especially the Borderlands, Fumaya and Swynfaredia, from the WIP parts of my lore especially Scaraqua and Scarnoctis which are very fuzzy right now.

I want a professional character sheet

I adapted a generic character sheet into my RPG system (attached below). I gets the job done. But it's not streamlined and it's not pretty.

If I want to convince strangers to play my game, especially run my game, I need a professional character sheet even if the rest of my world and rules are not quite professional yet.

Everything I do takes longer than I hope, but I want to get my site overhauled and my new character sheet done before December with the big World Anvil "Worldember" event that I plan to write heavily for because doing so always gets more eyes on Scarterra.

 

[Scalenex]

I responded to a writing prompt on an institution of learning and I got a little carried away. I put a lot of polish and elbow grease into this one and I ended managing to creature some pretty badass heraldry with Midjourney.

It's a slow learning curve but I'm getting better at using Midjourney to create better heraldry. I'm sure @Warden will appreciate it.

University of Zarun

 

[Killer Angel]

I responded to a writing prompt on an institution of learning and I got a little carried away. I put a lot of polish and elbow grease into this one and I ended managing to creature some pretty badass heraldry with Midjourney.

It's a slow learning curve but I'm getting better at using Midjourney to create better heraldry. I'm sure @Warden will appreciate it.

University of Zarun

Great job!

 

[Scalenex]

The Nine's portraits are done, but there are some minor details to work out.

My buddy Zeta Gardner is still exceeding my expectations for the care he puts into his commissions. He is working on thematic backgrounds.

Here's a preview of what is to come.




And here is a brief summation of where much of Scarterra's cosmic level conflicts come from.

 

[Scalenex]

I have a desire to come up with new monsters, and there is a World Anvil event called Spooktober calling for assorted Halloween themed entries. I need 13 prompts by the end of the month and thus far I have one.

I'm reasonably happy with this, but I feel like it's missing something I can't put my finger on what. They are little redundant in their niche with other creatures in Scarterra, redundancy is not always a bad thing.

The 25 word summary is:

Cruorans are human-like creatures very similar to vampires in that they skulk in shadows and drink blood, but they are very much alive, not undead.

The lengthy description is in the hyperlink below.

False Vampires

One trick that helps with making AI pictures is if its wreathed in shadows it obscures small details that would otherwise be wrong.

EDIT: My primary advisor on Scarterra said they seemed a bit redundant with regards to Metamorphs which already exist in Scarterra, but I misunderstood this. He thinks False Vampires fill the same story niche for a shapechanging villain better than Metamorphs, so I maybe I should remove the Metamorphs from Scarterra because I was never sure where Metamorphs fit in narratively.

Given that Metamorphs are a rebranded idea from D&D and False Vampires are a Scalenex Original, perhaps that is a wise course of action.

 

[Scalenex]

The Nine's portraits are done. I revamped all the major divine related article. It's all accessible via hyperlinks from the main Nine article.

 

[Warden]

Woah that is cool @Scalenex ! I like that you have been able to get portaits of the Nine created!

 

[Scalenex]

Picking on some constructive criticism, I have removed the Scarterra's 287 word primer from the home page

Spoiler: Original Scarterra primer

Original Home page primer

Scarterra is a fantasy world with a detailed cosmology of gods and cosmic events setting the framework for a Tolkien inspired sword and sorcery fantasy world. The current gods known as the Nine ruled the universe since overthrowing their tyrannical progenitor during the Divine Rebellion. The Nine collectively created dragons to be the dominant race during The First Age. A few of the Nine independently made other races as a personal projects. Everything was going good until constant conflict between nations pushed a dragon queen to tamper with forces beyond her ken accidentally destroyed most of the known world in what was called the First Unmaking . The Nine hit the reset button and collectively made elves to be the new dominant race during the the Second Age. A few of the Nine made other races as personal projects. Everything was going good until constant conflict between nations pushed an elf king to tamper with forces beyond her ken and accidentally destroyed most of the known world in what Second Unmaking. The Nine hit the reset button and collectively created humans to be the new dominant race during the Third Age , the current Age. A few of the Nine made other races as personal projects and the world is crowded with surviving remnants from previous ages. As the various human and non-human factions compete for resources, everyone is aware of the disasters that occurred before, so there is definitely probably not a chance someone will destroy the world again. Scaraqua, the realm of the sea, is both the same world as Scarterra and a second world altogether. They have the same laws of physics and metaphysical but have different myths and cultures.

and replaced it with a 48 word elevator pitch.

Nine deities work to shore up the battered world of Scarterra while simultaneously undermining each other to advance their own personal agendas. Great mortals can try to rise above the strife to create a better world, or they can exploit the various conflicts to better their own position.

I'm still on the fence whether I should say "deities" "gods" or "gods and goddesses", but I'm reasonably satisfied with this pitch.

 

[Scalenex]

Finally, the most important unanswered question of Scarterra is answered.

The First Sandwich

The most epic fantasy story EVER

 

[Scalenex]

I serendipitously ran into a fantasy artist on Discord and her trial run was an Indian subcontinent chimera.

Here is the main chimera article.

Here is the short article I made for the new character, Zirvid the chimera.

 

[Killer Angel]

I serendipitously ran into a fantasy artist on Discord and her trial run was an Indian subcontinent chimera.

Here is the main chimera article.

Here is the short article I made for the new character, Zirvid the chimera.

I suppose the picture is not copyrighted?
I don't know how discord works

 

[Scalenex]

I suppose the picture is not copyrighted?
I don't know how discord works

I ran into the artist serendipitously, not the art. I paid her money, to make something specific, and I now own the rights to this picture.

EDIT: I guess it's not copywrite formally, but the artist seemed hard up for money so I bent my guideline.

My general plan is to pay the licensing fee to my artists only after I monetize Scarterra, but in this case to be nice, I paid the licensing fee up front. Even though I'm not 100% sure I'm going to monetize Scarterra someday. But now I'm 80% sure I'm going to monetize Scarterra someday, so it's not a huge risk on my part.

 

[Killer Angel]

I ran into the artist serendipitously, not the art. I paid her money, to make something specific, and I now own the rights to this picture.

Ah ok, i misunderstood that part!
Great for you, excellent work.

 

[Scalenex]

The best way to get eyeballs on Scarterra seems to be to participate in World Anvil contests.

Here is my Spooktober 2024 page which was a Halloween themed contest.

Here is an old article I edited up for the mini-contest "Fires of Creation". Scaraquan Story for the Origin of All Life.

The big event on World Anvil is Worldember which is in December. Here is my Worldember prep article.

Here is a new basic Scarterra primer I wrote, just not sure on the best place it on the website. I started an advanced Scarterra primer, but it's getting long and not even done yet. I'm still working on ways to make it easier for new fans and visitors to navigate my website and be able to cherry pick the lore items they are most interested in and skip the stuff they are not interested in.

I have some various artwork in the pipeline. Gnomes, a grootslang, and maybe some giants or dabeshi. It may or may not be ready by the end of the year.

I reached out to someone who can help me with the site's CSS and graphic design, but that's going to be a slow process and probably won't yield visible results till 2025.

I went to my first Gencon recently. It was not the Gencon, it was a small regional one. it was kind of lame. It mostly focused on Pokemon and comic books, very little on tabletop gaming. I need to look for gaming conventions specifically, which means I'm going to have travel farther.

Besides writing my guts out for Worldember 2024, my next short-term goal is to design a awesome character sheet. At the moment I have an ugly but functional character sheet.

It is clear that the sort of people who like to try new RPG systems will base their first impressions of a game system on how the character sheet looks. And hypothetical if I can finagle running demo games at a gaming conventions, the players can take their character sheets home as souvenirs and it will have scarterra.com featured on it.

I have the bones of an RPG book done but it needs a lot of editing and graphic design and some illustration. My plan is to make three versions. Free, cheap, and fancy.