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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nonlethal Force" data-source="post: 3065223" data-attributes="member: 35788">I've done both the outside in (Start with a big map of the world and get smaller) and the inside out (start with only a small city or what the players need in the immediate future and get bigger) approach.  Inside out is easier in the beginning, but much harder in the middle and the end unless you are very dilligent in the beginning.  This is because if all you are giving the players is just what they need, you don't have to come up with much.  But you must be very diligent to keep track of what you give out because as the players expand their knowledge of the world and their worldview increases, you'll be the one in charge of making sure it all fits together and stays together as their perception of the world gets bigger.  This can be tough it you don't take your job as a worldbuilder seriously.The Outside in approach is much more labor intensive in the beginning.  You essentially create a whole world (I only do continents, rivers, mountains, forests, large cities, and their suburbs - no need to do things like dungeons/caves/etc).  The downside is that in creating the world, you realize you are creating places your party will never get to unless your world is tiny.  Once I have the world, I try to place a few important people and give them alignments.  An LE wizard here that dominates a town through subversive political avenues, a CE orc tribe that keeps another town small in population through enslavement, a NG druid in a forest in one place that nobody has met but who has saved travellers from bandits many more times than once, etc.  That helps me flesh out what the typical alignment in a given area will be.  For example, the people in the town by the CE orcs are much less likely to be happy-go-lucky NG.  And the people near the druid are much less likely to be selfish CE.  This is not a hard-and-fast rule, of course, but it helps.  The next step - and as an earlier poster said this step is much more crucial than people think - is to create a pantheon of gods.  Most of the time the players just want WotC standard I give 'em the Greyhawk deities they desire.  That is easy, of course, but not much fun.  I really enjoy creating pantheons, and this helps me figure out the mythos of the general public.  I thik up a few creation stories from the different perspectives of the gods.  I write up a few short stories as to fights that the gods have had.  Basically, I create a simple mythology.  This is like icing.  It covers the world, makes it look pretty, and helps hide any small holes that might be on the surface.Once I have that much done, I figure out where we are going to start.  I create a simple map of the starting location and create as the pary needs.  Because I have the big picture already done, the small picture stuff comes easy and I don't have to worry about holding it all together because the big picture stuff is already done.Hope this helps</blockquote>

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