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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 8911761" data-attributes="member: 20564">Worldbuilding for me is in a bunch of phases. Here's a "standard" D&D-type campaign, though it can (and always does) vary based on other aspects, like I'm currently running a frontier/exploration game that definitely modified this.First phase is very broad strokes, view from 50K feet sort of thing. What I want is things made of plot hooks and awesome. I want players to hear about this without being overwhelmed, and be able to go "I want my character to be from there" or "I want to adventure there". Just enough of a framework for them to hang ideas on. Details are my enemy at this stage.Then session 0 with the players. Where we discuss the world, what they are interested in, and make characters. I give my players a lot of narrative control around their characters and other things. Start of one of my current campaigns, one player wanted an order of knights that guarded these netherportals where you left behind you old life to join. Easy, even if pretty derivitive of GoT. Another, a druid, wanted the moon to be the skull of a decapitated god and the land to be their body, so that druidic magic literally was a connection with the divine flesh. A little bit of thought if this interfered with anything else, and then sure, why not.  Huge change, but it impacted nothing that I already on line, so why not incorporate it? Player buy-in on ideas they come up with is very high.  Having engaged players at this point is a blessing.This gives me big vision ideas about the direction the campaign can go.  I make sure to tie in what the players suggest, as well as specific character arcs.As part of that I'm thinking about what types of questions the uniqueness of this setting is good to answer, stories that fit better here then a generic world, especially giving the nature of our protagonists. I want to lay out story elements that the players can pick up that wont' be found in a generic setting.  Eberron and Dark Sun are good examples of published setting where you can tell stories you can't elsewhere.I start to work out some ideas for those stories, but really just ideas into "Act II" - none of it will be true until it hits the table anyhow, but I do want things I can foreshadow and have reasons for why.  I really do Schrödinger's plots, where until something is established by play I feel free to change things, and I'm not afraid to kill my darlings - in other words get rid of NPCs, plots, scenes and the like that I envisioned but won't serve the purpose of the game as it progresses.  I do want things I can foreshadow and have reasons for "why" things happen - even if that reason ends up having been replaced and "never" been true later in the campaign.Since I have an idea of the group and how (/if) they know each other, so I can figure out where they are starting. I flesh out the area, adding some details on a moderate-big scale, then more on a smaller scale, and so forth until I have a well fleshed out starting area.So then I work out some starting adventures, flesh out the world for what I need for those, and work out some character arcs to weave in around everything else which also often requires making organizations, understanding politics and tensions, and otherwise adding details to the world.Then, as the group adventures I pay attention to what the players seem most interested in. I make sure to seed that liberally into adventures, and further flesh out the world both to deal with their explorations and travel as well as to support stories about their goals and to further their character arcs.In the end, I may have parts of the world untouched, and others crafted in loving detail. But it really happens over the course of campaign, directed by player interest, character actions, and the consequences of them.</blockquote>

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