Day 1 Prompt: Discipline
Week 1 Prompt: Drive
Weekday Prompt: Works Hard
August 1st is here and it’s time for the RPGaDAY 2026 Challenge. I’ve been participating in this community event for a few years now (click here for my past entries) as I’ve found it challenging and rewarding. As you can see from above, there are some… unique prompts this year with a couple of side-prompts that were recommended by the organizers. I’ll try to see if I can work them into my blog posts, but honestly I’m not really feeling inspired by them. I even waited for a few entries to hit the interwebs to see if I missed anything and… I’m seeing subjects all over the place.
Now one of the suggestions strongly recommended by the organizers is, create 31 characters to use as NPCs in this challenge. That’s a little too close to the annual Character Creation Challenge that I run every January (New Year, New You). I really have to get myself pumped up and prepped for months to get through every January (and keep up with other responsibilities in my life). Especially since I’ve added two new ones recently. I’m also getting ready for SaltCON End-of-Summer coming up on the first weekend in September.
So I’m going to use an idea I keep wanting to use for the #CharacterCreationChallenge, but never get a chance to since I usually end up with some new games I want to create characters for. Gene Roddenberry said that the USS Enterprise was just as much a character in the show as Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. As much detail had to go into the ship as it does in the cast of the show. I’ve been wanting to make a Ship Creation Challenge in honor of this. Then as I thought more about it, safe houses (espionage), sailing vessels (pirates), castles and towers (fantasy) and other locations basically fit into this same category. Batman had his Bat Cave with it’s unique features. Sherlock Holmes had 221b Baker Street where he could be found playing his violin. Han Solo had the fastest hunk of junk known as the Millennium Falcon. A Starship is a unique location like these that added to the story. So my entries for 2026 will be unique locations that may or may not be mobile. Some entries may be brand new, others may be recollections of past games. I’ll try to get the prompts listed above in the entry, but that’s not always going to be a guarantee.
My loyal readers will recall my many blog entries about the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 campaign that my friend Jeff ran for several years. What they may not know is that he had ran another campaign before that one (early 2000’s) that I had the pleasure to participate in. I had introduced Tirik the Archer in an entry to the 2024 RPGaDAY challenge. What I didn’t mention then was how Jeff was having us roleplay (and plan) what would eventually be our strongholds in the game. I told him that I wanted to put together an Archery Academy. Jeff said sure, but he wanted plans before letting the construction start. I had an idea in my head and I had to get it down on paper. A paper that I just spent time going through my book of characters to see if I still had readily available. So, here is a quick re-sketch from memory.
When I showed the original to Jeff his response was “Oh Cool!!!!” Later I remembered that I could have had a basement put in for probably more room. But by the time I had remembered this, Jeff stated that the workers had already started on the construction. After it was completed, apparently a dragon flying overhead was intrigued with the landmark and had mentioned it to his fellow dragons (according to the DM, we didn’t get a chance to roleplay that out).
So I guess the students would have to work hard to get into the academy and be diligent to graduate if they had the drive? Yea, I think I forced that one a little too much.
Oh, additionally I’m open to suggestions for future unique locations or vessels that are characters in their own right.
Did you have an RPG campaign that made it to the stronghold level? This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.