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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7417913" data-attributes="member: 29398">Another reason in favour of up-front world-building, or at least an aspect of current game design that will tend to force some world-building by default, just occurred to me: the increasing importance of and emphasis on character backgrounds.In 0e-1e days - the era of the various classic adventures we're referencing - character background wasn't really much of a thing.  You banged out a PC and only once it survived a few adventures did you bother giving it any history or background or whatever.Fast-forward to 5e, where character background and history are much more formally a part of the game and need to be determined up front.  Why does this matter for this discussion?Because one of the first questions to arise in any sort of character history or background is going to be "where am I from?"; and the second is likely to be a variant on "how did I get to <where the campaign starts>?"; and answering these questions - likely for a variety of races and classes within your starting party - is by default going to force a surprising amount of world-building.  Also note that the answers to some of these questions can be provided by the player, but will still impact the design of the game world.Let's take a relatively basic starting party:1. Human Wizard2. Elf Ranger3. Dwarf Fighter4. Hobbit Rogue5. Gnome ClericEach of these characters represent some background questions, answering which will either require or achieve - in sum total - a lot of world-building:1. Where did I get my wizard training?  Was it from a formal guild (thus implying wizards have guilds as a thing), or informal tutoring, or self-taught; and if self-taught whose equipment was I using?  Can <campaign start location = CSL> support this or did I do it elsewhere?  Am I from the same Human culture as CSL or a different one, and if different where does that culture tend to live as that's most likely where my family is and-or my ancestry hails from?2. Where do Elves tend to live?  Is that where I'm from, and if not where is my home?  Where have I travelled during my Elvenly-long life, other than from my home to CSL?  How familiar am I with other races (in other words, what else lives near the Elves that I could reasonably expect to have encountered)?3. Where do Dwarves tend to live?  Is that where I'm from, and if not where is my home?  Where have I travelled during my life, other than from my home to CSL?  How familiar am I with other races (in other words, what else lives near the Dwarves that I could reasonably expect to have encountered) or are the Dwarves isolationist?4. Where do Hobbits tend to live?  Is that where I was born?  Where is my home now?  Where did I learn my Rogue skills - on the streets (where?), or from a guild (where?; and this makes Rogues' guilds a thing), or self-taught?  Are there any towns or places I shouldn't return to, and if yes what are they and what did I do there?  If guilds exist, which one(s) am I a member of?5. Where do Gnomes tend to live?  Who's my deity?  If Gnomes are not monotheistic, who are the rest of the deities in my pantheon?  Is my faith represented in CSL with a temple?  If not, where's my nearest temple or other contact with those of my faith?  Is that where I studied to become a Cleric?So, unless a DM wants to end up with something of a hodge-podge game world it would probably make sense to know ahead of time - at least in vague terms - what lives where and in relative proximity to what else.  It could be as simple as "campaign starts here, lots of Elves to the west, Dwarves in mountains to the south, Hobbits kind of scattered everywhere, Gnomes only to the far south so any Gnome's background is going to include significant travel; Humans here are kind of Greek-based, Celts to the north, Vikings to the far north, Egyptians in deserts to the east, ... (etc.)".  Then throw this all onto a rough map to give proximities and vague distances...and about now it's probably also a good idea to figure out if there's any major wars or conflicts going on as that could really impact play at the table - if there's a long-standing war between the Dwarves and the Celts, for example, then no matter what you do it's inevitable someone will roll up a Dwarf PC and someone else a Celt PC. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Having the pantheons somewhat nailed down ahead of time is also useful - it's nearly guaranteed someone's going to play a Cleric at some point and will ask about his/her deity and pantheon; and even beyond that, knowing what sort of deities are worshipped wherever the party might go is handy info to have.Lanefan</blockquote>

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