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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 9352450" data-attributes="member: 6796661">I'm impressed with those of you with the work ethic and consistency to have strong opinions on how to go about world building?  I can't be the only one who approaches world building with manic episodes of creation, sometime at the high level, sometime really zoomed in because an idea grabbed me, followed mostly by panicked prep the night before game day, and lots of seat-of-the-pants improv (sounds better than make s*** up because who could have guess the players would that!?). My last homebrew experience:Spend months creating a world map, giving high-level details of the various Kingdoms, geographical areas, factions, and history. Start creating a number of high-level plot lines and create major factions and NPCs that fit into those plots and the world. Enter it all into RealmsWork and cross link everything. Create the first adventure in great detail, where the party will start the campaign. Between sessions start filling in more details of part of the world based on what the party did last session and what they stated their plans are for the next session. Focusing more on adventure, encounters, etc., but still doing some world building.After a few months of play...Make stuff up, start downloading and creating lots of encounter and plot hook random tables. Update my world notes based on what I rolled/made up. I guess that is "top down", but there is only so much detail I can write up and have a day job. MOST of the world creation is done as part of adventure writing, but that often devolves into some bullet points and improv and taking notes.The best way to world build, I find is to play in the world. The details will materialize through play. But it is nice to have a nice map (a nice map is always nice) and some bullet points or brief paragraphs to give you some guide posts and scaffolding to help direct things and give you something to build on. And, taking this back to the OP, that is why a 15-30 pages of Greyhawk material in the DMG would is (for me at least) a good way to go, especially if it is linked to encounter tables, NPC generation tables, settlement-generation tables, and other tools to help the GM quickly fill out the granular details the day before, or during, the game.</blockquote>

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