NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nyeshet" data-source="post: 2444178" data-attributes="member: 18363">I work mostly top - down. I start with a general world map, decide the radius, determine where the plates and fault lines are, determine air and then ocean currents, climatic zones, biome regions, etc. After this I zoom out and determine planets and at least the names of the more readily seen constellations (and where they are in the sky). I also determine how many non-stars can be seen by the eye; this gives me an idea as to what numbers might be important to the resultant civilizations (such as 7: sun, moon, mercury, venus, mars, jupiter, saturn; or 5, if only the planets are counted). I also, at this time figure out the general planar setup. Then I zoom in. I determine where the races arose (if more than just humans exist). I determine how they spread throughout the world, assuming ice ages for jumps over small gaps between land masses. If the gaps are too large I assume little or no habitation. Once I have this in place, I'll look to where major rivers might form and find the ones in the most hospitiable zones that have been habitated the longest. Here I'll place the early civilizations. Civilization will radiate out from these points. I'll decide where the Iron age will occur (if different from the Bronze Age). Now, once iron is firmly established over bronze in most areas, I'll jump ahead a few centuries and decide which areas look most interesting. I'll highly detail those areas, leaving the past and the other areas with only general coverage. The areas will often be in different parts of the world and will usually have very different cultures. I'll likely assume these areas became - or are becoming - empires. Perhaps I might jump again, allowing an empire to form or collapse. Then I will work out a few typed pages, detailing the few major areas and lightly touching upon the culturally similar areas nearby. The past will be given a brief overview, limited (on purpose) to what is commonly known in those regions. Differing areas will have different pantheons, but other than the core dozen or so deities, I will only briefly touch upon the others (brief description, portfolio, rank, and little else). If someone is interested in the deity I may make up more info. I would do the same for regions only lightly touched upon. I would also make up a local world map for the players (once they have chosen what type of area they are interest in - from the typed descriptions). They will know that other areas exist, but they will not know where they are except in the general since. (Most middle age scholar could have told you China (or whatever they knew it as) was to the east, but they would not have been able to tell you much about australia - or the americas, for that matter.)After that, local design increases as adventures occur and on the fly creation of NPCs, villages, etc are needed. Whenever curiosity and interest hit I might go back and add in more details to the generalized areas of the world even if the adventures had not headed in that direction, although if they were I would work to create at least a basic level of detail prior to their arrival.</blockquote>

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