SoulsFury said:
Thanks for all the input guys. I think I'm gonna start building a world from the ground up and use the adventure path modules.
This is a good idea, especially if you're pressed for time, and can actually be a lot of fun, working to incorporate separate elements into a campaign whole.
Remember too, both for the sake of verismilitude and your time/sanity, less is often more.
Don't include every monster from the MM and MMII. In fact, don't even include half of them. This is especially true of humanoids and demi-humans. Likewise "wierd" creatures - say that displacer beasts (if you have them, I never liked them and don't use them, but for some people, Displacer Beasts are "sacred cows" of D&D, so....) are extremely rare and only live in a small province on the edge of the kingdom. They were created by a hermetic order of wizards to prowl the countryside and keep orcs (for example) away, and the desecendents of these displacer beasts still live there, in the countryside around the wizards' ruined tower 400 years after the wizards were killed by the dragon who now lives in the tower...
Don't include every real-life culture you can think of, especially if those cultures are close to each other and engage in cultural communication (eg. trade or warfare).
Don't even bother to include stuff in the next continent other than a vague idea of what's there.
While it might seem cool to give the feeling of a big, vibrant world where
everything's happening, man, it's both more useful, easier to create and more realistic (given D&Ds quasi-medieval setting and supposed rarity of magic-users), to create an area the size of Western Europe (and surround it with oceans and/or impassable mountain ranges).
Leave the rest of the world uninhabited, if you desire, or full of threats that aren't interested in making friends. This will make it so that nobody will
want to risk engaging in large-scale exploration (I'm talking colonial powers here, not PCs). If the PCs
do decide to explore there (because you haven't been a good DM and kept them busy with interesting adventures), they will soon get bored with fighting armies of stone-age gnolls with no treasure.
Only put 1-3 main cultures in your Western-Europe sized area. Subcultures can be added to this without too much work (eg. the warrior-aristocracy of this kingdom use longsword and shield, while those of this other kingdom use longsword and shortsword). Also, not every social group and nonhuman race needs their own language. If two groups engage in extensive trade or assimilation over a long enough period, their languages will either merge or one will become largely forgotten (ie. the Celtic tongues in Britain).
You can leave history vague (since it's likely that a tiny minority of scholars know the truth, if anybody actually
does). Also, separate what really happened (what you, the DM, knows) from what different groups
think happened.
Recent history (the last 100 years or so) is quite important to most characters, so you'll have to detail that somewhat.
A feudal society is probably easiest to build. In this instance, over 90% of people will be involved in the production of food, clothing and shelter. These sorts of people will know very little about the world, either past or present.
Fill your world with
secrets!!! Players love uncovering secrets, especially if such knowledge leads to power. Each adventure in the Adventure Path series has plenty of loose ends that entire world histories can be built around.
The current political system being built on the ruins of an older, largely forgotten empire is always fun - ruins are automatic dungeons without the "WhyTF????" factor.
You can explain the lack of influence of magic on day-to-day life by stating that non-magic users have a deep-seated distrust of magic. This is why fighter-types are in power and why the "magic-trade" is largely a black-market style affair. Unless you like the idea of a magic-item industry, though most people don't.
If I think of more stuff, I'll post it, but my setting has been in production (and I don't intend to ever publish it) for over 6 years, and it has grown the fastest when I've been actually DMing players through it.
Start with the Adventure Path modules and pay attention to the players' musings. With a little creativity, you can incorporate their ideas into your world with very few rough edges.
