Excerpt from a forum thread on worldbuilding: "Make a list of all the ideas and concepts I want to use in the setting. Put the list away and go and make a cup of tea. Go through the list and make connections between the items. Leave all the dangly bits, because I'll find ways to connect them later. That's it. Really. You don't want to try to create the whole thing from scratch or, and this is important, it will never happen. Start small, start with a bunch of ideas, build outward as the game goes on. Ideas will occur in play which would never have done so beforehand, and best of all, the players will come up with ideas that you can pinch and include. Here's a (truncated) example of one of my lists: Zombie apocalypse Colony Solo/iconic monsters Adventurers-as-celebrities Adventurers' Guild Shadow of the Colossus So what have we got? Well, let's say the zombie apocalypse rendered the original continent on this world uninhabitable, so there was a diaspora. One of the destinations was a small colony on the shore of a distant land, and now this colony is the main setting for the game. The new continent is vast and unexplored, and with many, if not most, of the fighting types having been killed in the Zombie Wars, probably in some kind of Dunkirk type rearguard action, the taming of this new land is left to the youthful heroes of the new generation (the players). One particular danger in this new land is that it is ruled by vast beasts. These things stomp about causing all sorts of trouble, and generally make expansion rather difficult for the new arrivals, so a sort of Very Big Game hunting culture has arisen, with groups of heroes going out into the wilderness to take down these titans, and bring back trophies in order to improve their standings in an informal league of adventurers. Though it is serious business, this playful attitude is tolerated, even encouraged, as it inspires more youngsters to sign up to pacify the wilderness. (In game terms, each of these giant beasts is a huge specimen of an iconic D&D monster, and there's only ever one of them. So there's one huge hydra, one massive manticore, one bloody big beholder, and so on. They're so big they cannot be easily or quickly harmed by simple sword strokes, and the heroes have to come up with more clever methods of attack. There may be an indigenous tribe of orcs or something, but for the most part, there's only one of each monster.) So there you have a sandbox-type setting, with a base of operations, and a unique feel via the sport analogy and the giant monsters; all that from about fifteen minutes' work." Homework: I need you to make a list of 5-10 things. Don't worry about placing Phandelver in it, but if it's important to you we can keep enough that your pc's' backgrounds still work. Call this a thought exercise for now.
