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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 2951240" data-attributes="member: 1106">I mean bottom-up, and a setting which allows itself to be explored by having stuff out there of interest, such that you can stumble upon a lair, or a mini-adventure just by wandering around.  Wilderlands goes some way towards this; my ideal is smaller (about Thunder Rift in size, you can walk across it in a day or two, but there's so much out there it would probably take far longer unless you ignored or avoided all the status quo encounters and locations), and represents wilderness-as-dungeon, city-as-adventuring-environment.  This being D&D, if they're not there to directly support the game like a dungeon is, what are they there for?  Usually the answer is verisimilitude, something which is held a bit too sacred at times, IMO.You don't need that much space to get to level 20...I think this is borne out by the limited scope of adventure paths and "single city settings" like Ptolus.  The payoff is that it doesn't come across as epic when there isn't hundreds of thousands of miles and people.  On the other hand, keep the scope smaller and you might get a detailed world for PCs to explore.IMO, setting should come about as a side-effect of something like this:What encounters and NPCs/monsters/traps/puzzles/areas of interest do I want to run?What adventures will support these encounters?What campaign arc will support these adventures?What setting will support that campaign arc, those adventures and those encounters?IMO, that's the correct order to do things in, and by the time you get to thinking about the setting, it's probably already made for you from what the encounters, adventures and campaign arc imply.  The default of "top-down" can be nice for purposes of inspiration and keeping a cohesive theme, but I think that it hinders by imposing restrictions (i.e. this city goes here, just because, not to serve a game need) more than it helps in those ways.</blockquote>

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