Hello fans of Vhaeraun. Let's make a settlement together. Or three.
Let's Make a Settlement Together is a fan run event, looking to homebrew some Vhaeraunite-Controlled settlements for Vhaeraun and his people. Within this event, there will be a focus on the day-to-day lives of these settlements - Inns & Taverns, Traditions & Festivals, Fashion and Trade... Any number of elements that is otherwise looked over in our modern realms! This project is a love story to Vhaeraun and his people - A chance to breath life into his church.
Event Schedule
The goal:
Three settlements will be designed for this event: One fully on the surface, one in the underdark, and one that exists both on the surface and within the underdark. Each settlement will have a different location and aesthetic, different histories & traditions, and different design priorities. We believe this will give everyone the opportunity to design something that strikes their personal aesthetic interest, as well as showcase the different ways Vhaeraun's settlements often manifest in canon. Each settlement will, likewise, have it's own characters (Designed and submitted by those within the event.)
Once everything has been created for the event, it will be posted both online and in a pdf packet, making it accessible for anyone who would like to use it.
Who is running this event:
@mystxmomo and @prouvaroline.
We have run Many a Zine, Exchange, and Shipping Olympics together.
How will this event be run:
Discord will be needed, as it is the best way we have to keep everything collected and together, and keep communications running smoothly.
Participation:
If you're scared to participate because you don't think you know that much about the Forgotten realms, Drow lore, or Vhaeraun and his church... please don't be! We're hoping to make this event as accessible as possible to anyone of any skill and with any amount of knowledge of the Forgotten Realms. We have more than enough mega-nerds in the chat. If you have what you think is a WONDERFUL idea for a forest settlement, but don't know which forest you'd put it in? That's where we're here to help. With enough people, any gap in knowledge can be filled and built on...
Likewise, we're accepting anyone of any skill level. Whether you've never done world building in your life or your a life-long world building geek, we'd love to have you! This goes for any element on offer within the event: This is a passion project, and one being done out of love for a niche Forgotten Realms Character and his larger religion. If you want to offer art or writing in any way, it will be accepted, regardless of how long you've been drawing or writing for. This is an informal, passion project where people can contribute as much or as little as they'd like. If the most you can offer is a small shrine idea? We would love your small shrine. #YourSmallShrine
Finally, we're hoping to run this in a way where anyone can join at just about any part of it - If you discover the event after it's started and you're interested in participating, it's still worth shooting off a messaging through tumblr to join! However, the event will be run in phases, and once a phase has passed you may not be able to contribute to that element of it. As example: If you join half way into it, I fear that you won't be able to have a say in the design of the settlement itself. However, you will still be more than welcome to contribute characters to the settlements that have been decided! It's simply not feasible to go back and re-work settlement ideas, after a certain point.
There will be a schedule. We will release the schedule once the interest check has finished, as it will help us figure out how long certain phases of the event will need to be. The interest check will go until April 1st - Please offer your input if you're interested in the event.
About the event itself:
How will Major Choices be decided?
We will be using rank choice voting for major decisions. This will allow folks participating to vote for multiple options in each phase, in order of ones they like most to what they like least. Results take into account preference order in each vote, ensuring that even if your top choice for an element of the project does not get chosen, something you are happy with will be what’s picked!
Likewise, there are some things that have already been decided for the sake of making the event run as easily as possible, and giving everyone a chance to design for certain aspects of it As an example: Because we can only have three major temples within the event - One per settlement, we know going into this that one of the settlements will have the cultural tradition of creating street shrines. This is to allow everyone who would like to create a "Religious Space" to scratch that itch, should their temple not get picked.
Examples of Major Choices include: Settlement designs (Aesthetic direction of it, history of it, ect) & important characters (Settlement leaders, high ranking clerics, ect).
How will the settlement concepts get designed?
There is going to be a period of time in which people can come in and design the framework for the settlement together - Anyone can offer ideas and design directions during this phase. We're hoping that each idea gets roughly the same amount of detail and polish, giving each a chance to shine.
At the end of it, we will collect everything created for an individual idea, and people will vote on which to go for.
How will minor choices be decided?
There's a ton of smaller, every day life elements that need designed for a city. Once the concept of the settlement has been decided, we will open the floor for people to submit anything they'd like. There's no limit to the amount of shops or inns that a settlement can have, and no telling how many festivals they might celebrate!
Disclaimer coming in: We're going to try and use as many idea's as we can. We are also hoping to design this so that it can be slotted within the world of the Forgotten Realms, staying true to much of the worldbuilding within it. As such, we may need to adjust some ideas to have them fit with other designs. We promise we will be fair and kind in this process.
(Thus the choice of having three settlements - If your idea doesn't fit within one, perhaps it will in another)
