It’s time to grab your hammer for another Flash Challenge! Starting February 12th, we’re making a brand new settlement “on the edge”. To inspire us, we’ll be using Anvilite Brandon’s (TheBeardedHeathen’s) random settlement generator―Nerdbuilding.

“This was how it was with travel: one city gives you gifts, another robs you. One gives you the heart’s affections, the other destroys your soul. Cities and countries are as alive, as feeling, as fickle and uncertain as people.”
― Roman Payne, Cities & Countries

What is Nerdbuilding?

Nerdbuilding is developed by Anvilite Brandon (TheBeardedHeathen). Briefly, the generator aims to create as much detailed information as possible. This means, the generator gives you a ton of ideas for details, big and small. As with all generators, you can use what they give you, or change it completely.

motorboat moving away from land formation photo

by George Mitropoulos

Prompt

For this challenge, choose a random seed from the Nerdbuilding generator and build a settlement “on the edge”! It can be any size―from a tiny isolated hamlet to a sprawling interconnected space hub harboring multiple races from across the system! From there, You can play around with the settings to specify what you want to fit your setting. You can use as much or as little of the original seed as you like. Remember, this is to inspire you! Finally, you can import the seed into the World Anvil settlement template.

We’ve added the “on the edge” element because it peppers in interesting conflict and drama, but you can interpret that HOWEVER you like! For example, your settlement might be on the edge of a:

  • Political location: a border, another settlement, or unexplored frontier
  • Systemic collapse: a social, technological, or political revolution
  • Geographic edge: mountain cliffs or peak, or land bordering a body of water

For additional inspiration, you can use TJ Trewin (melior64)’s unsplash collection to find images of settlements that match your settlement’s flair.

Rules

“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

motorboat moving away from land formation photo

By Pawel Nolbert

– First, you need a World Anvil account.

–  One article per account and only one person per account.

–  The article needs to be public and between 300 minimum and 1500 maximum words.

– Submit the article to this post before February 26th, at 12:01AM GMT (the site time, look at the bottom of almost all pages of WorldAnvil.)

– Finally, post a link to your article in a comment to this blog post. Do not fret if your post isn’t visible right away. I will have to approve of it before it shows and I will be doing that around twice a day.

Prizes

“Towns are like people. Old ones often have character, the new ones are interchangeable.”
― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

worm's eye view of concrete buildings photo

by Alexandr Bormotin

– All our Flash Challenges are participation challenges, designed to give inspiration, satisfaction, and bragging rights! Join the discord and share it with friends on the #challenge-discussion channel. (#sync-your-roles to see it) You can find a link to the discord at the top right corner after clicking the circle with a question mark on all the WA pages.

– Winner will receive a one year Master Worldsmith and one year Nerdbuilding premium membership. Other runners up will receive a 3-6 month membership.

– Nerdbuilding are looking for feedback! Anyone who submits feedback will enter into a prize draw for a 1 year Master Worldsmith and one year Nerdbuilding premium membership. Other runners up will receive a 3-6 month membership.

– Janet and Dimitris will show off some of the entries on a stream over at the WorldAnvil Twitch channel when there is time. Give us a follow so you won’t miss out on any of the WorldAnvil streams.

– The World Anvil site might even feature some articles over on your dashboard.

Winners

The winners are here! The best article, chosen by Nerdbuilding, was Quariton by PrincessESH, and the runner-ups were Kwyn Marie (Badecasyon), BCGR Wurth (Cragwell), and RPG Dinosaur Bob (Krak Ruk). As for the feedback winners, Tybarbary came on top, with AmelieIS, SableAradia, and RiverFang as runner-ups. Congratulations to everyone who took part, and especially to the winners!

Other Challenges

Remember, you can also check out our older Flash Challenges to find prompts that you might want to create an article for. Here, you can find two of them: Leisure Time and Birth rites.

Want to plan what challenges you want to join during what is left of the year? Check out this year’s challenges over at: WorldAnvil Worldbuilding Challenges – 2022 Edition!

I cannot wait to see where you guys take this challenge. Make sure to use Nerdbuilding.com generator and talk to each other to get inspired for this challenge! Now, grab your hammers and go world build!