From Wiki to Wandcraft, and More
Last summer I wrote an update on my summer projects. A full school year has gone by since then — fall and spring semesters with the students, plus a lot of building in the margins. Here’s what actually got done.
Teaching Through the Year
The fall and spring semesters kept the usual rhythm: beginner tables, historical Viking-age play, crafting, and a class on Minecraft modding. Most of the “project” work below grew directly out of those — tools and texts I needed for the next session, then polished so they could live beyond one campaign.
Vikingworld Wiki: Latitude Campaign History
One of the bigger quiet projects was getting the Latitude campaign history (and a pile of related material) into the Vikingworld wiki. For a long time that story lived in notes, handouts, and my head. It’s much more useful when students — and future-me — can actually find it.
The wiki side of things is less flashy than a new book or mod, but it’s the foundation everything else sits on. Session recaps, places, NPCs, and adventure material are a lot easier to reuse when they’re written down in one place.
Two Books: Wandcraft and Hearthforge
I also wrote two books this summer.
The Atlantean Arcanists’ Guide to Wandcraft is what it sounds like — a deep dive into making wands, written for wizards who want to do it properly. This book is written as an in-world artifact that one of the characters found and has translated.
Hallowing the Hearthforge is the other volume: the campaign story that’s too large to play out at the table, so it lives in prose instead. It continues the tradition forged by last year’s book: Fires at the Fjordgate.
I’ll share download links and more detail in a dedicated post once the files are packaged the way I want them.
Live Villages: a Minecraft Mod
On the sandbox side, I built a Minecraft mod called Live Villages. The goal is simple: villages that feel less like static scenery and more like places that react and change. It’s a natural crossover for students who already think in blocks and biomes, and it’s been a fun counterweight to pure TTRPG writing.
Character Sheets & Card Generation
I kept pushing on the player character sheet and card generation app — the third-build system I described last summer. It’s still the tool I want at every kid-friendly table: a simple main sheet, backstory, and cards for features, spells, and gear so nobody has to flip through a whole handbook mid-combat.
Progress this year has been steady rather than flashy: better output, fewer rough edges, and more of what we actually use in class. The long-term aim is still the same — SRD-friendly characters through the early levels, then a free release when it’s ready for other DMs to run with.
What’s Next
There’s always more wiki to fill in, more polish on the books and the mod, and more refinement on the card app. The through-line hasn’t changed: make it easier for young players to learn, remember, and enjoy the game — and make it easier for me to run the kind of table I want.
Thanks for reading. More soon.