Learning Verdurian: blog

[sasasha]

I’ve been learning Verdurian, and I thought I would make this blog as a place to offer some reflections ‒ and hopefully to gather some resources for learners (e.g. a deck of flashcards I’m making to get the vocab under my belt). For now there are just these ‘definitions’ type of posts, but I have a few other types planned.

Feel free to check it out! And leave comments if you wish, or make any here.

Zomp has cast an eye over the first few posts and given general approval, saying he doesn’t want to affect the ruminations too much, so I have actually riffed a fair bit after that point ‒ let me know if I do state anything badly, I can still edit everything!

(I might, particularly, clean up the images a bit, and try and tidy up where the menu link sits on the page, etc. And I want to do a sticky intro post.)

https://learningverdurian.wordpress.com/

Enjoy! And let me know if you have any cool ideas for it / interesting bits of Verdurian you think I should highlight!

[hwhatting]

I like it!
And is that Zomp's old hand-drawn map of Verduria? I always found that it was a thing of beauty.

[sasasha]

I like it!
And is that Zomp's old hand-drawn map of Verduria? I always found that it was a thing of beauty.

Thanks hwatting! Glad you like it!

Yes indeed it is ‒ “the huge map” of Eretald from 1981 ‒ not as huge, I guess, as the one from the college-room wall, but it is exceedingly detailed. I may be wrong in this, but I think it’s the earliest still-fully-canonical map of Eretald (at least which is accessible publicly?).

It’s a great looking glass for imaginitive mapgazing. I often get happily lost in it!

[zompist]

Yes indeed it is ‒ “the huge map” of Eretald from 1981 ‒ not as huge, I guess, as the one from the college-room wall, but it is exceedingly detailed. I may be wrong in this, but I think it’s the earliest still-fully-canonical map of Eretald (at least which is accessible publicly?).

I think you're right. It's a direct tracing (using a light box) of the blown-up photo I have on my wall.

The huge map of K'aitan is directly based on the campaign maps used in our D&D campaign, but it was traced far later.

[sasasha]

Yes indeed it is ‒ “the huge map” of Eretald from 1981 ‒ not as huge, I guess, as the one from the college-room wall, but it is exceedingly detailed. I may be wrong in this, but I think it’s the earliest still-fully-canonical map of Eretald (at least which is accessible publicly?).

I think you're right. It's a direct tracing (using a light box) of the blown-up photo I have on my wall.

The huge map of K'aitan is directly based on the campaign maps used in our D&D campaign, but it was traced far later.

I didn’t realise you D&Ded in K'aitan! That’s cool ‒ was it with the original group? Were you Verdurian characters travelling there (in which case, how did you go about crossing the Zone of Fire?), or did you make K'aitanese characters? Are there any notes about what you got up to?

That’s also a very lovely map.

[zompist]

I didn’t realise you D&Ded in K'aitan! That’s cool ‒ was it with the original group? Were you Verdurian characters travelling there (in which case, how did you go about crossing the Zone of Fire?), or did you make K'aitanese characters? Are there any notes about what you got up to?

This was the same group, and I have a whole folder of notes, yes. Most of them are not very useful for worldbuilding: maps of castles, stat sheets, plans for particular campaigns. It's not great literature.

The basic idea was that one of our characters, Bennan Tark, turned out to be the rightful heir to a K'aitani barony. However, the country was wracked by a civil war, which the party had to get involved in.

The civil war is canon, but the intervention is probably not, for the reason you mention— the Zone of Fire. That you could occasionally cross it with magical assistance is one thing, but that a party of adventurers could regularly do so is another.

[sasasha]

I didn’t realise you D&Ded in K'aitan! That’s cool ‒ was it with the original group? Were you Verdurian characters travelling there (in which case, how did you go about crossing the Zone of Fire?), or did you make K'aitanese characters? Are there any notes about what you got up to?

This was the same group, and I have a whole folder of notes, yes. Most of them are not very useful for worldbuilding: maps of castles, stat sheets, plans for particular campaigns. It's not great literature.

The basic idea was that one of our characters, Bennan Tark, turned out to be the rightful heir to a K'aitani barony. However, the country was wracked by a civil war, which the party had to get involved in.

The civil war is canon, but the intervention is probably not, for the reason you mention— the Zone of Fire. That you could occasionally cross it with magical assistance is one thing, but that a party of adventurers could regularly do so is another.

Ah, sounds fun!

Was the Bekkayin history developed the same way that you did the Eretaldan ‒ i.e. the visual time chart approach?

[sasasha]

Happy New Year and Dobrî Cuendî, everyone!

I uploaded a new blogpost which explains my rather annoying journey with flashcard apps and building a shareable flashcard resource for Verdurian.

Thing is, I want to share the .apkg file which enables other Anki users to study the flashcards ‒ but Wordpress (which hosts my blog) won’t support this filetype.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how I should share this resource? (And the four further decks I’m hoping will be completed, say, this time next year!)

Currently the link takes you to the file hosted on Google Drive, but I’ve had trouble with access to these files (both re the access settings, and the fact that Drive isn’t designed for lots of people to access your files, so it seems to get a bit janky and occasionally locks people out even if they should have access). So if someone who isn’t zomp (who I know has access to the whole containing folder) could try downloading it, and, especially, try to use it via the Anki apps I link to in the post, I would be most grateful to know whether it works!

[bradrn]

Does anyone have any suggestions for how I should share this resource? (And the four further decks I’m hoping will be completed, say, this time next year!)

The Anki website lets you submit Shared Decks, which would seem like the natural place to put it.

On the other hand, if that doesn’t work for some reason, I’d be happy to host it on my own website. (I mean, for that matter, surely there must be some way to upload it to yours? But I don’t know WordPress.)

[sasasha]

Does anyone have any suggestions for how I should share this resource? (And the four further decks I’m hoping will be completed, say, this time next year!)

The Anki website lets you submit Shared Decks, which would seem like the natural place to put it.

On the other hand, if that doesn’t work for some reason, I’d be happy to host it on my own website. (I mean, for that matter, surely there must be some way to upload it to yours? But I don’t know WordPress.)

That's really kind bradrn, thank you for your offer. But I missed the Shared Decks somehow. I will try putting it there.

[Axas mlö]

The huge map of K'aitan is directly based on the campaign maps used in our D&D campaign, but it was traced far later.

It looks like the site is down. https://www.almeopedia.com/ gives me a message saying

Site Not Found
Well, this is awkward. The site you're looking for is not here.
Is this your site? Get more info or contact support.

[bradrn]

The huge map of K'aitan is directly based on the campaign maps used in our D&D campaign, but it was traced far later.

It looks like the site is down. https://www.almeopedia.com/ gives me a message saying

Site Not Found
Well, this is awkward. The site you're looking for is not here.
Is this your site? Get more info or contact support.

It works for me…

EDIT: actually, it’s more interesting than that. zompist’s link works, but yours doesn’t. I suspect that Almeopedia doesn’t support HTTPS.

[zompist]

Yeah, probably not. However, the only information sent is from the input field (i.e. topics to look up), and nothing is kept.

[Axas mlö]

Oh, I see! Thank you.