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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 3471606" data-attributes="member: 26473">rounser, you're ramping up the hyperbole a bit, don't you think?I think I see part of the disconnet here. You seem to think that if one engages in more extensive world-building, that somehow adventures aren't considered until the end - speaking for myself, that's completely off the mark. I consider player characters, classes/careers/professions (as appropriate to the rules system), sites, encounters, monsters and other opponents, and adventure arcs (depending on the campaign) as I'm building the world.Let me reference our Traveller game once again. The Traveller universe contains a wide variety of aliens, and the Judges Guild sectors where our game is set add several more. I wanted the players to be able to choose from many potential sophonts as characters, and I wanted many options for non-player characters as well. As I was constructing the mainworlds and star systems, I found ways to include many different alien races, providing the players with options for their characters and developing an internal logic as to why this little corner of the Imperium is so diverse.(The players also have the option of coming from somewhere else in the Imperium or even beyond the borders, but because three of the five players had never played Traveller before, one goal was to make their characters "locals," so that they could have contacts and be our "resident experts" as an advantage - the Traveller universe is really big and tends to be a bit overwhelming to n00bs, so this was a way of compensating and getting them into the setting quickly by giving each of them a manageable chunk to call their own.)Encounters were also considered during world-building (worlds-building, in this case). The game starts off with the four adventurers (one character is introduced later) crewing a small free trader - their immediate priority is to make enough credits to keep their ship flying more-or-less intact while avoid the perils of pirates, trade wars, and bureaucrats. That means that encounters needed to include customs officials, naval officers, pirates and privateers, hijackers, rival traders, smugglers, brokers and merchants, patrons, and so on, and would take place anywhere on planet or in space. In order to make some of these encounters work, it was necessary to give the players reasons explore beyond the mainworlds, so that meant giving some stars companions, working out systems with multiple habitable worlds, developing outposts in outer orbits, placing planetoid belts with mining operations, and so on. And then there were potential encounter sites that had nothing to do with core premise of the campaign, such as Ancient ruins, uncharted brown dwarfs, hidden supply caches, a huge mostly-mothballed space station, and many others, that could still work their way in through patrons or other encounters, or the players simply wanting to explore a bit.It was planning the physical realm that proved so inspiring as I worked out the whys and wherefores of the different worlds. The planets Upsikeria and Zaleris have almost identical physical stats, but the former is an industrial world with a population in the billions and the latter is home to just a few thousand residents - why? Because "cursed" Zaleris is ringed by the debris of a shattered moon that makes a huge swath of the planet uninhabitable due to meteor strikes. That little bit of world-building opened up several potential encounters - a distress call from a damaged trader caught in the ring zone, playing a very dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with a patrol ship or a pirate, et cetera.And then there are cultures, distinct to each world, which provide fodder for intrigue, political maneuvering, espionage, comedic misunderstanding and pratfalls, and so on.World-building for me is as much about providing player and referee options as it is setting boundaries. I think about encounters and adventures as I world-build so that I have all the options I want available, including leaving a few areas vaguely defined so that I can insert new ideas later, and providing the players with depth and breadth to explore and pursue their character goals.The idea that world-building automatically ignores adventure planning is wildly off the mark - in my experience, and in my practice, the exact opposite is true.</blockquote>

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