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Message: <blockquote data-quote="robus" data-source="post: 7959091" data-attributes="member: 6801558">While I absolutely agree with starting small I think it's also useful to think about tiers of detail.The tier with the most detail is your starting area. The border town, coastal village, dungeon (if you're starting in medias res). And then working out from there what's roughly in the surrounding area. Major towns nearby. What's the name of the region/country you're starting in (don't need to know the ruler, but at least know the name of it <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ). Then what are the surrounding countries on this continent. And then what are the other continents on this world. No need for any history, just the major geographic elements.When I was creating a setting, I immediately got tripped up by the players wanting to know what other languages they knew. (I didn't want to just go with Elvish, Dwarvish etc as then my setting just devolves into a generic mess. But if I'd know some surrounding nations then I could have given them some interesting choices (and perhaps together we might have fleshed out some reason why they know that language, did they grow up there? Spent time soldiering or studying?)Anyway. I like the tiered approach:Tier 1: The local environs - Important NPCs, adventuring locations and local village.Tier 2: The region - major towns and name of the region. Geographic features: Mountain ranges, riversTier 3: The continent - names adjacent regions/nations and some climate info: Frozen South, Tropical North, Temperate East, Desert West.Tier 4: The world - names of other continents and the world itself (at least as it's known to the locals).I love world maps so I start from Tier 4 with an unlabelled map of the world and drill down to the starting area working through the other tiers as I go. If some interesting historical tidbit springs to mind as I go, I'll note that but otherwise the history is left up to organic creation.I think it's important for DMs to have a rough grasp of the world the adventure is in to serve as inspiration when you're reacting to player choices. It's just a couple of pages but much more useful than a blank page IMHO.</blockquote>

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