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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spatzimaus" data-source="post: 1563598" data-attributes="member: 3051">I usually want to create my own worlds, but this generally has one big drawback.  If you're not really careful, places end up just being stereotypes.  It takes a lot of work to make something as large as a world "new", so shortcuts are taken.  Places start being defined by one characteristic: "The Elf City", "The city on the waterfall", "The evil Human city where anything can be bought for a price", "The city run by religious zealots".If nothing more complex than that is planned in the initial stages, it'll cause problems in the long run.  The primary reason for this is that in the absence of more detailed information, many DMs will just stick to that one theme at the expense of anything else.  For instance, say there's a city located in a desert.  Now, certain aspects of architecture, diet, etc. will be inevitable for this setting, but the culture shouldn't just be a carbon-copy of the Arabs.  But, I've just seen this way too often.  The DM wants to make a city that isn't the cliche'd standard, so he transplants some culture from Earth into his world.  The big problem is, once the players make the connection, there's nothing left; you're now back where you started, with a situation the players are completely familiar with, but with added overhead from having to stick to a theme.To get around this, some DMs will go for segregation.  So, there's an isolationist Elf kingdom in the forest somewhere, a Dwarf kingdom in some mountain range, and so on.  No need to deviate from the norm for the Human towns, and the players will only rarely go to those other places.  But, you're still just avoiding the issue.My suggestion is to distribute the workload.  Allow the players, other DMs, random strangers, etc. to design cities, kingdoms, religions, whatever you want to add; not detailed designs, just basics like geography, culture, landmarks, key power groups, that sort of thing.  With this information, the DM can make up on-the-spot information for players without resorting to the same tired stereotypes, and can plan much better long-term adventures.  The player who designed that place/religion/etc. can tie it in to his own character's history, to help explain why he knows as much about it as the DM.For instance, at one point in my last campaign, I was building a walled city that was supposed to be half "civilized" Elves (as opposed to the near-feral Wild Elves we also had in the region) and half Humans.  This was one of those remote towns you'd hear interesting news from, but never actually supposed to go to, and was supposed to be the place my character's mentor retired to.  So, I wrote up all this information, the players ended up going there, and the DM was able to create such a great place that it became the new hometown of the party.</blockquote>

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