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Message: <blockquote data-quote="discosoc" data-source="post: 7006075" data-attributes="member: 6801554">I used to be really big on "top down" world-building, but sometime in the last decade I've totally moved away from it.  I've found it's just straight up more fun to tell people only the bare minimum needed for the area they are in, and slowly expand out as the group travels.Take the Lord of the Rings movies for example (from the perspective of someone who hasn't read the books).  You start with a quick flashback that clearly references a major villain in a war from history.  Then it drops you into a nice lovely place where friendly hobbits are being hobbits, and obviously the world as we see it is nothing like the battle fought at "Mount Doom."  As the hobbits travel, the audience gets a better understanding of what the world is like.This style of storytelling is also more flexible on the DM, in my opinion.  All you really need to know up front is the basic size of the known world, the geography of the region, a few important NPCs like the Baron Cragmire or Samstad of the Guild, primary means of travel, and vague distances between major locations.  Beyond that, maybe write up a few dozen bits of one-sentence "lore" ideas and put together a random encounter table for when players overhear local gossip or start roleplaying it up with the barkeep.  You don't have to know exactly how they fit in the larger world, but they can help you in the process of building it on the fly.  Use ideas from random generators to seed your chart, like <a href="http://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/random/#type=encounter;enc-type=Town" target="_blank">http://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/random/#type=encounter;enc-type=Town</a>.</blockquote>

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