Many DMs dream of designing their own campaign world. Some get started and come up with a great product. Others get started and stop almost as quickly because it's "just not working," or it's "too much work." Toothpick the Ferret is in the process of designing a new campaign world and takes a look at the process he's using to make it happen in this multi-part series.
I've designed several campaign worlds over my 25+ years of gaming. Some have been more successful than others. Probably the best one I built was one that came as a result of inspiration at 2 AM while sitting in my living room. I broke out several sheets of drawing paper and quickly sketched out the map of the setting. By 4 AM i had the framework for my world in my head. That world, called Erlandia, has served me well, but it was built around a 2nd Edition D&D basis. Over time I've modified it to fit in 3rd Edition with good result, but, well, it's time to move on. I had started towards the end of last year designing a new campaign world but after a few months of gameplay I was very dissatisfied with it and shucked the players into Faerun. In hindsight I realized that I just didn't have enough time to prep the world to my high standards. I've begun designing a new world, which I've titled Galard, with the rather lofty goal of trying to make it a framework where just about anything WotC came come up with can be plugged in, if I so choose, without a heavy amount of modification or alteration. Can it be done? I think so.
Let's look at what it takes to design a solid campaign world. First and foremost, there must be an idea or central concept that makes the world work. Now, if you're just designing a small kingdom and won't go much beyond that, guess what? You've got your central concept: a single all-encompassing kingdom. Eberron's concept was where magic was as heavily used and relied upon as technology is for us today. That's how you get the warforged, etc.
In my case, I had probably watched a few too many Ming's Quest shows. If you aren't familiar with it, it's a cooking show starring Ming Tsai, where he travels the world looking for fine cuisine. I first saw Ming Tsai on his cooking show East Meets West . That show was about blending together Asian and European ingredients and techniques for a wonderful product. Ming's Quest has a lot of the same ideas. And that became my idea: a world where east and west are very much co-mingled. Where it's not unusual for a samurai to be walking side-by-side with a traditional D&D cleric and there's actually a basis for such a union. If you don't have a central idea, things are not going to go well with your design. Mark that as #1: you must have a central idea, or a concept.
The second most important thing is scope. You need to have a grasp of how big your world is going to be. And it must be reasonable based on #3, time. If you don't have a lot of time, stick with the small kingdom or two. You can create a quality product in a small scale "world" based on landmass. If you have a lot of time, go for that whole world concept like another Faerun. However, realize that as the world gets larger, the amount of time to flesh enough things out seems to increase exponentially. Look at how much information is available on Faerun. And look at how much of Faerun we only have the sketchiest of details on. And look at how many deities there are and how many powerful people and how many different races, etc. The bigger the world, the more planning you must do just to get a framework down. So gauge your time and set your scope.
Concept, scope, and time. What else? How about goals? Designing a world is something that is going to take a lot of work. One giant goal of "getting the whole world designed" is something that will frustrate most folks because it will seem impossible to complete. It's too big of a goal to chew on at once. So break down smaller goals. For instance, one of my goals was to outline the basic information on the dwarven and elven kingdoms and where they were. That's a small goal. But when it's completed, there's still that feeling of accomplishment. It's also a sign of progress. A second goal of mine was to outline the PC races and core classes that were permitted. Given my goal of a framework world that could accept just about anything, that meant going through just about every WotC book I had. That's a bigger goal than outlining the basics on the dwarven and elven kingdoms. But it's still a smaller goal that "design the entire world." And therefore it was more manageable and doable. Got that done, too.
Concept, scope, time, and goals. That's pretty much the going rate for any significant project. And not surprisingly those are key points to successfully building a campaign world. Next time I'll look at some initial goals I wanted to accomplish which are part of any campaign world design, "top down design" ideas to get the bigger picture and framework laid out, and also some "bottom up design" to keep the whole process interesting.
Many DMs dream of designing their own campaign world. Some get started and come up with a great product. Others get started and stop almost as quickly because it's "just not working," or it's "too much work." Toothpick the Ferret is in the process of designing a new campaign world and takes a look at the process he's using to make it happen in this multi-part series. 
