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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6833644" data-attributes="member: 1465">There's two opposite approaches: "top-down" and "bottom-up".The "bottom-up" approach is more practical, more immediately usable, but it might not deliver enough feeling that this is your own fantasy world until you've played enough. It's about building the world from a small scale, in which case all you have to do is just pick an adventure set in a place that inspires you, and start playing. While you play, pick up hooks (and record them down!) either from the written adventure, your own inventions on the spot, or even steal them from your players. Then pick more adventures and connect them using your hooks....A lot of DMs can't resist the idea of "top-down" simply because it's a lot of fun to start with the bigger picture. For the "top-down":- layout the world geography in broad strokes: continents and lands, seas/oceans, climate areas, wilderness VS civilized areas; draw a sketch map of it (your reference, not necessarily shared with players)- list a bunch of major kingdoms, with a few defining features each, and locate them in the world- define religions, factions, and other power organizations that are widely known- choose the major races, and a good list of famous monsters and creatures- add a few famous individuals to the previous 3(Optional)- connect your world with the rest of a multiverse by defining other planes of existence- make a calendar of important events that everybody knows about (I would not recommend investing time in designing the history of the world instead)</blockquote>

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