Struggling to find inspiration or to make that extra step to take your world to the next level? Well, good news, because I have a challenge for you! It’s JUNE, which means that Worldbuilding Summer Camp 2022 is only 1 month away! It also means we’re going to be helping you get yourself ready with the Summer Camp Pledge to breeze through the challenge. How? With the World building Summer Camp 2022 Homework Club! Piece of (ice cream) cake!

What is Summer Camp 2022?

Summer Camp is one of the biggest world building events of the year! During July, we challenge you to answer 31 prompts of world building! You answer to a prompt by creating an article during July that’s at least 300 words long and submitting it to the prompt. It’s a great time to start new worlds, focus on new areas of your existing world, or simply get inspired and take part in the community that comes together for the event!

Now, coming up with 31 articles in one month can be tricky, which is why we use June as the prep month! Every week, we’ll give you a homework post to get your ideas flowing. You don’t have to do the homework if you don’t want to, but it will be helpful! Plus, if you do it, you’ll get a fancy badge for your World Anvil profile!

What are the Summer Camp 2022 Themes?

Last year, we introduced prompt themes: several prompts were related to a single concept. And your feedback was that you loved them! So, this year, most prompts will follow one of these themes:

  • Expanse: deserts, prairies, oceans, urban expanse, pocket dimensions, planes of existence, or nebulas.
  • Leadership: monarchs, presidents, generals, revolutionaries…
  • Discovery: research, exploration, and investigation.
  • Monstrous: things considered villainous, cruel, unlucky, unnatural, or just “wrong”!

As you can see, they are all setting-agnostic, so you’ll be able to integrate them into your world seamlessly! We’ll be unpacking these themes more next week, but they are intended to give inspiration and can be interpreted in any way you like! Not every prompt is directly related to a theme, but each can be tied together by the theme if you like.

What is the Summer Camp Pledge?

The Summer Camp Pledge is a way to prepare yourself mentally for the challenge—and keep you accountable so you don’t lose track of your goal! Instead of improvising, sit down and think in advance about what your goal will be, what will you be writing about, and why. This will be your Summer Camp Pledge!

Coming up with your Creative Goal and Motivation

To write your Summer Camp Pledge, start thinking about your creative goal: what do you want to write about? Of course, you can’t be too specific because you don’t know the prompts yet, but here are some creative goals as examples:

  • I want to expand into a new area of my world
  • I want to create a new world
  • I want to begin world building for a new novel
  • I want to work on my RPG campaign setting

If you take one of these examples, make sure to tweak them so they fit your actual goal! For example, if you want to expand into a new area of your world, what is that area? If you’re creating a new world, what’s the elevator pitch for it?

Then think about why you want to achieve your creative goal! This will make sure you actually have the motivation to reach it. Here are some reasons you might have your goal:

  • I’m passionate about the genre
  • I’m excited about expanding my world!
  • I want to create an X experience for my players or readers
  • I really want to delve into X or Y theme!

Coming up with your Challenge Goal for the Summer Camp Pledge

Now that you have your creative goal, it’s time to think about your challenge goal! What’s your completion goal for Summer Camp itself? You must answer each prompt with at least 300 words, so think about what a realistic goal is for you. Since there will be a badge for every 8 prompts (except for Diamond, with only 7 prompts), you can use the badges as a challenge goal.

You can also add additional goals: maybe you want to challenge yourself to have a higher word count (500 words instead of 300, for example). Or you could challenge yourself to read a certain number of articles from other people and give them feedback to share the love! Whatever you decide, this will be part of your Summer Camp Pledge too.

Summer Camp 2022 Homework Assignment 1: The Summer Camp Pledge

This is your Summer Camp 2022 homework for this week!

  1. Create a generic article on World Anvil and name it “Summer Camp Pledge” (or a similar title).
  2. What is your creative goal and your motivation? Add this to the Summer Camp Pledge.
  3. What is your challenge goal: Copper (8 prompts), Silver (16 prompts), Gold (24 prompts), Diamond(31 prompts)? Add this to the Summer Camp Pledge too.
  4. Submit the article in the comments of this post!

Make sure the Summer Camp Pledge is published and public (i.e. not a draft and not private) before posting it here. If your comment doesn’t appear immediately, it’s because it needs approval—but we’ll get it sorted as soon as possible!

Are you part of the Homework Club?

One of the highlights of Summer Camp is the community, which comes together to pour their creativity on World Anvil and our community channels! If you want to be part of the Homework Club, tune in to the Homework Club streams every Sunday in June and July! We’ll be live on our Twitch channel at 7pm UK/11am Pacific.

If you want to show off your participation to Summer Camp, we have some graphics you can use in your World Anvil world or in social media:

Summer Camp Pledge Document cover

Summer Camp participation Twitter banner

Download all participation graphics and the community streaming pack! You’ll find logos, stickers, banners—anything your heart desires!

Summer Camp 2022 is sponsored by GacuCon, Norse Foundry, and Kobold Press

Big shout out to our amazing sponsors, GACUCon, Norse Foundry, and Kobold Press! They make it possible to offer so many prizes to celebrate your awesome creativity! Check them out and give them some love!