Phil M.
said: Is there any advice you have on not having a one track mind to where the players going? If you're running a home brew campaign setting, rather than trying to build the entire world and then plopping your players inside it, try just focusing on the local region; i.e. don't try to build the entire Earth just build France, or, at most, Western Europe. This has the advantage of restricting your creation to things that your players are liable to actually get involved in rather than creating a whole slew of far away things that will likely only dwell within your own mind or on paper without the players seeing it (if you just like world building, this is fine, but, as far as the game is concerned, you're not really building the world for the *game* but rather your own amusement). It also keeps you grounded, since your players are likely to be near the stuff you built. Proximity is one of the best ways to strengthen your memory and recollection. In addition, if you're doing homebrew, it often works to get your players involved in the creation of the world. Not only does it get the characters more interested and involved, but it also provides a tangible reminder as you play for the setting of the campaign itself when it's not just you, as the GM, referencing things. When the Dwarven cleric references his faraway mountain home as he charges down a group of goblins because such creatures constantly harassed his familial stonehold, it becomes easier to remember everything else that you built because your players are reinforcing it. Because your players are providing a reference structure for you to interact with, your vision of it becomes stronger since you're going to create additional memories rather than constantly revisiting old ones. You may also want to look into using an existing campaign setting as a basis for your homebrew. You can mess with the geography, religion, culture, etc., but having a well developed existing campaign setting to build upon eases the world building load (especially concerning the minutiae that you're not interested in developing, which you can generally lift wholesale without most players noticing and/or caring) and gives you a strong reference resource when you need to remember what exactly your original intent was. While it might be a bit redundant, look into keeping very detailed notes about the stuff you're building. When you build a city, always include, at a minimum, population, general physical size, government, and economic model (agrarian, industrialist, etc.). Even if you don't draw a map for it, those 4 attributes provide an excellent framework for quickly putting one together.
