Over the past year and a half of writing on Substack, I’ve been continuously amazed at the creativity, doggedness, and collaboration I’ve seen from other creators on the platform. As difficult as it can be, showing up to write and share your ideas is what makes this hobby (more than any other hobby, in my opinion) special.
Something you write on a Tuesday can impact a total stranger’s game on a Wednesday. A novel way of looking at a mechanic can spin off into someone else’s overhaul of an entire system. A bit of lore shared in an anecdote can translate into a campaign-defining moment at someone else’s table.
This bit of cross-contamination is the magic of RPGs and, in turn, writing about RPGs. It’s been that way since the beginning, when nerds across the globe would send their zines to one another and engage in the hobby’s most time-honored tradition of bickering about rules and interpretations.
Less common—but still part of our lineage—is the idea of a shared world, built collaboratively by many hands. TSR’s Living City campaign, launched at Gen Con in 1987 and centered on the city of Ravens Bluff, was one of the earliest attempts. It laid the groundwork for Living Greyhawk, a massive, RPGA-organized D&D campaign that ran from 2000 to 2008. More than a thousand adventures were published and played by tens of thousands of participants, creating a truly community-driven experiment.
It can’t be overstated how complex those projects were. The scale alone puts them far beyond the reach of virtually every indie publisher (which, let’s be honest, is 99.9% of us here on Substack).
But what if the goal wasn’t to track every action and consequence across a sprawling persistent campaign? What if, instead, the world itself—the foundations, cultures, myths, and places—was the shared creation?
A setting not authored by one person, but assembled from polls, shared stories, and common lore.
A world easy to reference, free to use, and shaped by both you and I.
Introducing Zemaryth
Zemaryth is the name we’ve chosen for this experiment: a sword-and-sandals world of splendor and decay, where empires rise and rot under the weight of their ambition.
Think stone and salt; snakes and rings; gold and death. It is a place where both empire and the ruins it’s built on are ancient, where myths still walk in the flesh, and where behind every marble column lies fortune… or a dagger in the heart.
Zemaryth isn’t a single, established canon or a tidy “setting book” right out of the gate. Instead, it will grow and proliferate like a virus—piece by piece, story by story, contribution by contribution. The shared DNA will be intrigue, rot, and forgotten grandeur—that much will be set in stone before the world blossoms in all of its horrible splendor.
The rest? We’ll have to play to see what happens.
How To Get Involved
This project only works if it isn’t just me.
Zemaryth is meant to be a shared creation—something bigger, stranger, and more unpredictable than any one person could author alone. That means your voice matters, whether it comes in the form of a single suggestion or an entire adventure site.
There are many ways to contribute:
Some will want to draft myths, sketch out cultures, or describe the ruins of fallen empires.
Others might prefer to weigh in on polls, throw out a name for a forgotten god in the comments, or refine someone else’s idea until it gleams.
Artists might doodle a city’s skyline or a piece of heraldry.
Designers might test mechanics for snake cults, mercantile intrigues, or ancient magicks.
None of these is required, of course. Even simply reading along, watching the world take shape, and offering the occasional thought can help guide the overall direction of Zemaryth. Every contribution will ripple outward and add to the larger whole.
To prevent a hodgepodge of conflicting information and messy stories, I will pore over every comment and contribution and curate them into a unified whole. Even with that, however, new information may be revealed over time that conflicts with prior understandings.
The world will become alive, and what we know might change.
Where This Will Live
All of this will live here, in this newsletter.
This isn’t just about convenience, though. Keeping Zemaryth rooted here means the setting is built in public, in real time, with no hidden drafts or gated access. Anyone can read, reference, and use the material as it appears.
If this experiment grows over time, I’d like to explore ways to compile the work into free, community-sourced PDFs: collections that put everyone’s fingerprints side by side and make the setting easy to drop into your own games. We might even look at physical zines or collaborative anthologies down the road.
But the beating heart of Zemaryth will always be right here—an evolving archive of shared imagination, open to all.
When Do We Begin
Right now.
Zemaryth isn’t a project waiting in the wings. To get things moving, I’ve prepared three opening prompts for you to answer. Each one sets the foundation differently, and whichever we choose together will become the first brick in the world we’re building.
Choose an answer for each one carefully—these will set the stage for all future events.
As mentioned before, as curator, I will flesh these out in subsequent weekly posts (in addition to the normal weekly newsletter) and add them to the record. Each new post will build upon the last. In time, dungeon maps and adventure sites will become available—all completely free for the community.
But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. The prompts:
Your decisions—made by voting above, commenting your thoughts, and sharing this with the community—will be the first of many. From there, we’ll layer on myths, ruins, factions, and cultures until Zemaryth grows into something alive, strange, and wholly our own.
Next Thursday, September 11, will be our first check-in where I’ll reveal the results of the above prompts. Until then, thanks for joining me on this crazy ride!🟦
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Once the Calamity has been decided, suggest collecting Interesting Locations connected to that, so that mapping can begin. Where things were/are will help determine what happens next. Different factions will have influence in different places. Having something intriguing on a map encourages exploration and lore. #geopolitics
I’d love to start contributing some art to this.