How do you build your campaign worlds?

[Pants]

Do you start with a single site and expand on it? Do you start with a villain and give him a land to terrorize? Do you start with a pantheon of Gods? Or do you start with a more general idea and flesh it out as you go along?

Consequently, do you know all their is to know about your world when you start DMing it or do you leave everything vague so that the players can fill things in on their own?

I'm interested in seeing how everyone does this. I'm working on a new CW right now and while I have some general ideas, I'm having a helluva time drawing the maps.

 

[Crothian]

I came up with a mapo of a section of the world. I had a few coutries in mind and then I started placing things.

 

[Nifelhein]

I usually start with an idea: What is the campaign supposed to be? From there I expand on whatever is needed, usually I start a game without knowledge of almost everything around the world, but the players are great when giving us idea to what "shouldn't" be around...

 

[Nightfall]

I use Legos.

 

[Pants]

I use Legos.

Must be a lot of legos.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Start small, work out.

Other than that think in terms of recent history. I have a pet peeve against worlds where the author has a 5,000+ year history and has nothing happen for half that time. I mean, what's the point?

 

[Nightfall]

Must be a lot of legos.

I got plenty to use.

 

[Jeph]

I wait until I lose power to build a campaign world.







Seriously. I started a game Sunday that I designed the world for when I lost power during the aftermath of Isabel. It drew heavily from Blake and a weeeeee wee bit from Tolkien, centered heavily around the conflict between angels and demons. I gathered up some colored pencils and worked on a geopolitical map while the sun shone brightly, and read Jerusalem and The Book of Thel and Songs of Experience and Innocence and the songs of Los and Urizen and Ahania and Milton by candlelight when it dropped beneath the horizen.

Truly inspiring.

I wish I lost power more often...

 

[Jeph]

And I made custom minifigs for all the important NPCs, and later the PCs.

Go Legos!

 

[Umbran]

I develop campaign worlds... haphazardly

I don't follow a single, set method. Sometimes I simply start with a single location where the first adventure is to take place, and build outward. Sometimes I have a pantheon idea, and want to develop teh world those gods built. Sometimes I have a few unconnected ideas I want to see in a world, and I start with those concepts and fill in the spaces between them.

I build a word in the manner that suits my needs, and the needs of teh game I plan to run. Which, of course, isn't terribly helpful