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<blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 345875" data-attributes="member: 1106">As the DMG describes, the two most common ways of building a setting are &quot;outside in&quot;, whereby you paint the setting in initially in very large strokes of entire kingdoms and mountain ranges and gods...and try and fill in details from there......or &quot;inside out&quot;, whereby you start really small and detail a single village or town, and slowly expand from there.&nbsp; For homebrew DMs, this is a recommended approach...but is almost unheard of among publishers.What if a publisher were to break the mold and build a setting &quot;inside out&quot;?&nbsp; By this I mean leaving the most of the big picture and rest of the world a complete blank, but started with a fully detailed village, dungeon, wilderness area of a few miles and built at that level of detail from there.&nbsp; Next supplement might be tens of miles east from the first, with some fully detailed lairs, and villages and dungeons.&nbsp; The next might be to the north of the first, detailing a small city and it's surroundings, and underwater lairs in the bay.&nbsp; And so on and so forth, slowly radiating out from the starting point.As the setting supplements radiated further from the starting point, the status quo encounter ELs would rise in anticipation of the PCs having gained levels.&nbsp; Each DM could invent their own big picture for the setting, and in doing so, make the world their own on that level.Would this framework give you what you wanted out of a published setting, or would you miss the big picture being spelled out?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="rounser, post: 345875, member: 1106"] As the DMG describes, the two most common ways of building a setting are "outside in", whereby you paint the setting in initially in very large strokes of entire kingdoms and mountain ranges and gods...and try and fill in details from there... ...or "inside out", whereby you start really small and detail a single village or town, and slowly expand from there. For homebrew DMs, this is a recommended approach...but is almost unheard of among publishers. What if a publisher were to break the mold and build a setting "inside out"? By this I mean leaving the most of the big picture and rest of the world a complete blank, but started with a fully detailed village, dungeon, wilderness area of a few miles and built at that level of detail from there. Next supplement might be tens of miles east from the first, with some fully detailed lairs, and villages and dungeons. The next might be to the north of the first, detailing a small city and it's surroundings, and underwater lairs in the bay. And so on and so forth, slowly radiating out from the starting point. As the setting supplements radiated further from the starting point, the status quo encounter ELs would rise in anticipation of the PCs having gained levels. Each DM could invent their own big picture for the setting, and in doing so, make the world their own on that level. Would this framework give you what you wanted out of a published setting, or would you miss the big picture being spelled out? [/QUOTE]

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