Mallus wrote-
Second, build a world. In my mind, nothing beats a homebrewed setting --run well, of course-- for pulling players into the game. While I'm sure every playable homebrew is full elements stolen, I mean borrowed, from outside sources, there's just a special attachment to discovering a world that exists only for you and your fellow PC's, even if much of it is kinda familiar.
If after your roleplaying game break you decide to do something along the lines of what Mallus suggested, let me make an additional suggestion on top of his.
Do a homebrew. Have each player have the assignment of creating on part of the world and one race. Each players goes into history, culture, magic, religion, weapons, warfare, fashion, geography, everything.
The DM can create a section of the world to as well as acting as a over-all fair handed editor.
Then everyone puts their parts of the world together and you got your setting.
At this point, you can do several fun things.
-Each player can make a character from the area they just wrote about.
-Or you guys can pick whatever part of the world you want to be from, including other player's created regions if you find their creations cool.
Either way, the players have had a sense of personal investment in creating the world. A piece of it is their's. They'll have fun playing characters that represent an area of the world they created.
This might be fun or it might not. If your playing group is filled with lots of enthusiastic creative minds, then I think this would be fun. If the players usually like pre-made worlds so they don't have to work too much on that end, then it might not be the type of thing that gets them fired up.
