So we're still getting things ready to go to hit the ground running in 2023, but in the meantime I figured I may as well at least try to get used to making regular news posts (that nobody is going to read for over a year). You might wonder what we have to post about, if we haven't made new articles lately or any real progress on the Wongery (seriously, we're going to really get going in 2023). Well, there's still a lot we can post about.
For instance: I said a few news posts ago—okay, actually finding the post in question it turns out it was almost a year ago—that we were going to slow down the pace of introducing new worlds in favor of expanding existing worlds. I'm not sure we need to do that. It's not as if we've been introducing new worlds at a breakneck pace (it's not like we've been doing anything at a breakneck pace). Granted, rereading the article in question, it's not as extreme as I'd remembered; I'd thought I'd said we were going to stop posting new worlds altogether, or nearly so, but no, all I'd said is that we'd "maybe slow down the pace a bit", which, okay, maybe, yeah.
But still, instead of or in addition to slowing down the pace of introducing new worlds, there's something else I've realized we ought to do to make the site more useful. Within each existing world, we ought to focus on one or two locations and develop those in depth, rather than just writing scattershot articles about random bits of the world. Consider some existing fictional worlds—not necessarily the settings of stories and movies, because okay, sure, those generally have to be set in a specific locale, but maybe the best parallel is the settings of role-playing games, which may and often do include whole worlds, or even galaxies or broader regions. But even when a role-playing game does describe an entire world, there's generally one region, one continent or country for instance, that gets most of the focus. The Dungeons & Dragons world of Oerth has the city of Greyhawk. Toril has the continent of Faerûn—and within that continent, first the Dales and later the Sword Coast. Glorantha has Dragon Pass. Traveller's Charted Space has the Third Imperium, and within that the Spinward Marches. The world of Earthdawn has Barsaive. Golarion has the Inner Sea region.
These are not the only areas of these worlds that have been developed. There are supplements for each of these games describing other parts of the worlds. But it is these sections that have received the most development, that have the most detailed descriptions, that are more or less the default areas where most—though not all—published adventures take place. There is a reason for this. It makes things easier on the gamemaster—well, and the player, for that matter. The more detail that's provided about a place, the less work the gamemaster has to do to develop it themself (and the easier it is for the player to get a handle on it), so by providing a lot of detail about a specific location and a lot of adventures and source materials set there, the game makes it easy for a gamemaster to set their campaign there with minimum fuss. A gamemaster who finds another area of the campaign world interesting and would rather set their campaign there can do so, but it requires a little more work on their part; it's convenient to have a default area where that work isn't necessary.
The Central Wongery is not intended only as source material for role-playing games. That's certainly one intended use of the material, but it's also intended as potential source material for stories, or computer games, or, well, anything else you feel like doing with it. Still, the same principles apply. It would be a lot easier to make use of the material in the site if there were some areas that were fully detailed rather than a whole world that's only lightly limned. Thus, I figure maybe we ought to follow in the footsteps of those RPG setting and pick one or two areas in each world to really give focus to—not entirely neglecting the rest of the world, but devoting the most detail to the focal area. For Dadauar, for instance, I think I'll focus on the Free Republic of Avelax. For the Dupliverse, Kadis (which I guess I'd already been mostly focusing on anyway). For Curcalen... see, I'm not sure; I haven't really developed any region of Curcalen much, so all the better reason to start doing so.
So. Anyway. All of this is moot if we don't get on writing new articles. So... we should probably do that.