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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Andor" data-source="post: 6207919" data-attributes="member: 1879">Well it doesn't sound like you need the basic sort of help that is easy to provide over the web. You're experience and equipped to do a fine job already.So really I can only think of three helpful things to suggest.1. Get your players involved in the world building. Have them over for a session of kit bashing. Centre the discussion on your starting town. Depending on your players you can just start the ball rolling and let them run with it, or if they need more direction you can use more structures approachs like going around the circle with each person floating an idea and others suggesting modifiers, or even madlibs. "The town of _____ subsists mostly in trade of ____. The town is prosperous although they've been having problems with ___, and their patron ____. A local religious festival of ____ recently attracted the attention of ____ leading ___ to worry that _____." You get the idea.This gives your players greater buy-in and let's you delegate some of the work. Plus they are likely to give you plenty of plot hooks to build on.2. Theme. Perhaps the local humans tend to have Enligh sounding names, while Elves use spanish and the dwarves tend to have polish names. Then sprinkle a few oddball ones into the mix. A wandering trader with a german name or a strange letter addressed to an oriental name. This let's you do some easy reinforcment of your world-building and depending on how your plot goes you can use it to provide clues. Perhaps the cultists all hail from an area that uses basque names, or they have a habit of addressing people with strict formality.Visual themeing is harder to do, but you can have a few iconic styles that gamers will be familiar with and mention them as they pop up. Things like celtic knotwork or germanic script.Then when you use an off-the shelf -module you can do a quick pass through to retheme the names and visuals to match your world. "The Gnoll leader should be Stainslaw because he took a dwarfish name to ease trade with the Leadhammer clan. We change the black altar to a green torii to match the symbolism of the gateholder cult." 3. Chart your stuff. Whenever the PCs take interest in something or you sprinkle a plot hook add it to your ideas chart. As they build you can draw links until the main plot emerges. Maybe you just added Boris the wandering merchant as a bit of local color but he develops enough links to ongoing events perhaps he becomes a central figure.</blockquote>

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