What comes first for you when designing your own campaign...

Those were just some of the initial ideas I had. If you've got better non-traditional cultural ideas or completely new/different races please pitch them to me.

Are you seriously saying you can't tell what sorts of things your group is interested in (especially if you've played with them before) without explicitly asking them? I've never particularly had a problem, it usually takes about 4 sessions with someone to get at least a gross idea of what sorts of things they enjoy.

Ditch the kitchen sink aspect. If you want a primarily political campaign, having too gross a difference between rival factions is bad, because you want the ultimate alliance choice and consequences thereof to be meaningful, and if you have huge disparities of power between them you can complicate the issue unnecessarily.

Also, depending on the level of mobility your system allows, you don't need to make an entire world. You can do a very good political style game within the geographic confines of one city.

But really, start iwth the choice, and then proceed from there. You want a setting that supports at least three, and maybe more roughly equally powerful factions who are in a stalemate at the moment all squabbling over something. There needs to be enough in the way of cracks in the power system that the intervention of your party and whatever skills they can bring to bear has the potential to lead to one faction's mastery. Come up with a conflict, come up with who would be interested in it, and then accrete from there.

Not him, but what I think he's going for is your entire approach is backwards. Making a world to subvert the tropes is creatively sterile. There's nothing it stands for or represents, other than a backlash against popular culture. You can't actually build a world out of that sort of foundation, other than a gag a view "oh look, THIS is different than what you're used to", but even that leaves limited room for the players to interact with it, so it's useless for a game.

What I do is start from the top of the world and work my way down: Cosmology, divine powers, the world / landmass, the continent, the regions, the biomes. Then, I do the same thing with civilizations and simulate their development over time on the empty world I have created.

This works well for me because each step informs the next step. It creates a very internally consistent world. Here is an example: My cosmology and world involve towering pillars of earth upon which the continents sit. I realized that in some situations, the interaction between the pillars and the Sun could create a "Tower Eclipse" due to the shadow of one pillar falling over the top of another pillar. Thus, I have these "Tower Eclipses" that happen regularly every year. I can turn this into a cultural holiday for the civilizations that inhabit the world.

This is what I mean by internal consistency. The cultural holiday flows out of the cosmology of the world I designed earlier. If I tried to design the world in reverse or out of order, I may not have made these internally consistent connections, or they would've been more difficult to write into place later on.

Here's another example: Ocean water that falls over the edge of one of these towers can land on the tops of another tower. This means that sometimes the rainfall is saltwater (including fish rarely) instead of freshwater. It's weather effect that is internally consistent with the world, I came upon it because I designed the cosmology first instead of backwards.

Do you have discord? Id much rather just discuss this with you than type a novel about the different ways of making a setting and a story.

If you've never run the game before don't even bother designing your own world to begin with. Run premade adventures until you understand how the game works.

If you've ran games before and want to now make your own world the best advice is keep it simple stupid.

The entire world of GreyHawk started out with one town and a nearby dungeon. This is a good place to start. You're creating content that's actually gameable for the players.

You don't need to work out all the major players in the world , just who runs the town and a few interesting characters about town.

You don't need to work out an entire pantheon, just the one or two gods relevant to that town.

You don't need to work out every race in the game and how they're unique, you just need to work out the one or two that will be in the town.

You don't need to work out an entire castle complex, just the first layer of some nearby spooky cave.

Etc, etc down the line.

You then slowly build it up from there in both your prep time and organically session by session based on the players.

Also there's nothing wrong with tropes. I understand you're desire to subvert stuff but familiar things are relatable and you need to rely on them to ground your players so they accept the weirder stuff.

I'd say for every 1 thing you plan to subvert have 3 things that are familiar.

>my dwarves are seafaring Vikings, my elves are violent Neanderthal barbarian cavemen, my orcs are desert dwelling traders and scholars etc.
Go back to the drawing board kid because you didn't invert any tropes those flavors of "my dwarves/elves/orcs are different" have practically become tropes themselves.

Remember the rule of three. Get a map, even a shit one scribbled with your off hand in crayon and that nobody but you will ever see. Make three big circles on it. Put three items from your kitchen sink in each one. Don't let shit leak except where the circles touch and then only leak one or two things from each and never more than three. If you fill all that in and still have too much you have to change the map. Zoom out, make the off-map area to the south a whole new area with a new kitchen sink, etc.

Another thing that might help you developed cultures and civilizations is to get more organized about the development of the land that the civilizations live on top of. What is the weather, terrain, the flora, the fauna, the natural resources?

Here is an example: Shatter Coast is a rocky cliffside coastline that is perpetually wet, cloudy, cold. It a volcanic geographic feature that has a lot of mineral wealth. What does this tell you about anyone who tries to live there?

1. They have to eat food. The only source of food on a rocky coastline is fish in the sea. Thus, they are fishermen.
2. They have to have shelter from the terrible weather. There's no wood on a cliff, but they can mine caves. Thus. they live underground.
3. They have to produce some kind of value. The region has a lot of mineral wealth. Thus, they mine and export minerals.
4. There is very little sun. They are probably very pale as a result.
5. The cliff is difficult to navigate, so they probably have racial bonuses to dexterity or difficult terrain.

So the civilization that lives on Shatter Coast are bunch of fisherman / miners that live in caves. They have a pale complexion and have extraordinarily good balance and dexterity. They have a lot of stone and metal crafts, but wood is pretty rare.

Very similar for me, with the exception that I do cosmology last. But my worlds tend to be very secular, with each region and culture having different religions and I often leave it ambiguous as to what, if any, religions are true and which are just silly belief. But that's just me

What I do, and I've found this has really good results, isn't to "subvert tropes" by just doing the reverse, but rather thinking about the sort of common idea about the race and having a new take on that. I'll give the examples of my dwarves and elves.
Dwarves are always portrayed as mountain-dwelling artisans who love gold, usually with a heavy emphasis on smithing and masonry. So in my world I kept them in the mountains but downplayed their smithing to only a bit better than humans but then put a much bigger emphasis on them being merchants. So dwarf-made things are still superior to the finest human craftsmanship (and much better than the average) but most dwarves are involved in trade, using their unique knowledge of the mountains to travel much faster than everyone else who is forced to go around them.
With my elves I decided to make them very elitist (as is common) but I decided to make them almost a race of aristocrats ruling over cities of mostly humans. Humans do the menial labor while the elves spend their time perfecting their art over the course of thousands and thousands of years. Wars between elves are often bloodless because elves are extremely rational, and the war would be two armies on the field maneuvering, taking positions, etc until one army realizes that, should they actually fight they would be crushed and surrender.
My players really like this because it's still familiar but also foreign enough that it gives them a sense of exploring a new world

What in the everliving fuck are you saying?

>dwarves are seafaring Vikings
>elves are violent Neanderthal barbarian cavemen
>orcs are desert dwelling traders and scholars
Use this information to draw a map. Clearly, you have several coastlines to serve as botha home for the Dwarves and to serve as settlements that the Dwarves will be raiding. You have a desert as well. You probably have an unexplored continent or region, otherwise the neanderthal elves would have been wiped out by other civilizations.

>Technology has progressed in some areas to a steampunk level
>while others are trapped in feudalism
>some are pretty advanced magitech societies
The simple answer for why this is the case is isolationism, either as pro-active choice by the civilizations, or due to geographic boundaries. If you're characters are suddenly able to explore all these different technological development levels in a single lifespan, it probably means that an important plot point in your setting is the sudden arrival of technology that allows people to travel huge distances very quickly. Sort of like a Boeing 747 that suddenly arrives in the 14th century.

We need some cryptologists to decipher this post, I feel there may be some real game-changing wisdom hidden in there

if you want to go intrigue and politics, I implore you to house the campaign within a single city ideally, two or three at most. Spreading the campaign out over a vast landscape will diminish the chances for the players to build and maintain their reputation in a single area. It will also diminish the level of detail given to each new area. By focusing on just one city, you can make a truly robust setting with exquisite detail given to every single NPC, including their personalities, ambitions, connections, and all that jazz. It's also much less prep-heavy beyond the initial world-building, as you can pretty much just establish the setting and let it runs its course as the players maneuver through it.

Not him but I see what he's saying. OP is worried about "being autistic and overly detailed." And he is, which is a fine and respectable past-time. But he's new and overwhelmed and has players that want to play. OP needs to simplify. The Rule of Three is a common writing tool that can be used to do that. I think the map/crayon bit is a technique to ensure OP doesn't get carried away. The Rule of Four here, Rule of Five there, etc. Don't put everything in one region. Let the players explore and discover but don't make drastic and sudden changes, blend from the known to the new.

Plus it's easier to keep fewer things in mind during a session.

...

this doesn't really clear it up for me, I feel like I'm missing some metaphors

Three in each circle. Much better than all the trash in one pile.

A concept I really wanna shove in, then I go about justifying it. I guess worldbuilding's in there, somewhere.

The rich and powerful Bananalands are in a tenuous alliance with the Eggshell Empire, yet have established trading outposts with the Spinache Islands.

I think he means put them in circle then remove them. Outline the stains as the landmass
Wholly inferior to the cum napkin method IMO

You've got me hooked. Elaborate.

OK so the Bananaland's wealth comes from exporting their jungle citrus and herbs north along the river and/or coast to the northern Eggshell Empire (famed for it's rookeries and hatching powerfowl avians).
The Spinache Islands however have no "overlap" with the Empire, but are willing to trade their bizare and hypernutritious crops to the Banans. Recent seafaring and preservation advances have allowed these food shipments to become more lucrative.

GM's often attract players based on their worldbuilding skills. Try again.

OMG I fucking understand what he's saying, let me try and translate:

Take three elements you want in the setting.

Draw a map of some geography, then draw three circles that are touching each other over it, and assign one of the three elements you want in the setting to each circle, and have some elements of each circle cross the border into another circle but only where they touch.

So picture western europe, spain is pro-skub, france is anti-skub, mediterranean islands are pro-I Can't Believe It's Not Skub, southern france is fine with I can't believe it's not skub but hates skub itself, french-spanish border area is entirely skub agnostic, southern spain requires you to like either skub or a skub alternative, no skub is anathema.

Maybe there are some players who are totally passive and will accept anything the GM gives them, but I think most people who play RPGs have at least some creative impulse and want to have a hand in defining some aspect of the world, even if its as far as their PC backstory.

Bottom line is if you are worldbuilding for a real game to run with your friends, better to get their buy-in earlier, rather than cooking up elaborate ideas solo, and then having to backfill lots of details to the players after the fact.

>Spinache
>Banans
>Powerful avians

Did you just create the best refrigerator-based fantasy setting of all time

Yes! But maybe circles don't all touch. Maybe like ooo. Still works.

>powerfowl
Bravo user, this pun is going to be directly stolen for a variety of purposes.

I like to start with a story that can be summed up in three sentences. If after the third sentence I can say “and then shit goes down” and it sounds fun, then it’s time to pick a world, build it just a little, design some throwaway NPCs, chart up some shops and encounters, and then ask my players their opinions.

If they hate it, I still had fun putting it together and I can always cannibalize the parts I loved the most later on.

>The grim north is just the freezer

So this thread is rapidly becoming worldbuilding for a food-based world.
I think it is obvious the oceans are the sink, with a massive waterfall filling the seas with water. The sea floor is covered with the ruins of ancient civilizations

Making the garbage disposal none other than the mighty Charybdis, devourer of leftovers, reeker of family meals long gone.

Hey, take to heart this much OP. Sometimes it’s fun not to have a defined start for a campaign design, but instead just shoot the shit with your players like we are here. All it takes is a spark, and the rest will fall into place.

Can you give an example or two?

Define a basic setting with your players, taking some of their advice. Come up with a basic starting premise, then let them create characters, then build the rest of the world based on what they give you to work with. Expand on it and digress when necessary, but don't build a world that's not meant to interface with the players. No point in creating a village of goat herders hidden in the mountains if the campaign never goes there because all the PCs are sailors. Do everything in stages.

I've had two relevant experiences, both completely different. As a GM, I once decided to run a side game because a player couldn't make it to the game for a while. The side game turned into the main game pretty fast when the player quit the group because he had to move for work.

At the time the idea of a side game started taking form, I had no clue what to do for a setting, so I just asked the rest of the group. Some of them showed images they had saved from the internet and such, and slowly we built up something that made sense (with me dumping justifiglue on it to fix all the inconsistencies). The setting ended up being this particular city that had been taken over by a dwarf kingdom and dissidents and political opponents had been sent to a prison camp in a mountain. The starting premise of the campaign was that all the PCs were somehow connected (some unwillingly) to the resistance, and had to get back to the city to carry out a plan before it was too late. Some of the setting details from the initial planning session were a mythology of giants, of which there were skeletons out there in the world, drawing from Zoroastrianism and the cow-slaughtering origin myth. The dwarf conquerors were literally a joke about short people taking over because they hated the religion of the taller races or some bullshit. It was fun, overall, and a good game.

Cont.

I should mention I'm not that user, btw.

My second experience was as a player. I joined this game run by a guy I barely knew, and asked what we were going to be doing. He gave ridiculously vague answers about the premise of the story, only telling us that out first quest was going to be to rescue the daughter of some guy who had hired us, even though he didn't want us to have a shared backstory at all. In the end, I decided I wanted to play a young Kenku who was copying the behavior of a fairy tale hero nobody believed really existed. My plan was to play up the fact that the Kenku couldn't come up with his own ideas, but still have free range because I could make up the stories at will. Now, the GM seemed to be totally into the idea at first, but then the problems started.

"In my setting, Kenku are creative."

Well, there goes half my idea.

"Nobody would tell that story in my setting."

Then why did you tell me I'd have free range?

Eventually I told him I didn't want to play the Kenku anymore, so I'd come up with something else before the game started, but the guy was insistent that I play the cool Kenku idea, despite all his whining about details that would've made it completely unfun.

On the day of the first session he announced he actually didn't want to GM, but that if someone else wanted to do it, he wanted in as a player.

So right now I’m running a super fun Super Mario game. It all started with this:

“One of the world’s richest women, Sarah Notherway, runs a television station conglomerate. But the one thing she’s always wanted was to find her child, who was stolen by the biological father. Since the father happens to run a monumental tyrannical empire and stamps out any attempts for her to get the truth out, she employs a few random do-gooders to track down and bring back her kid.
“And then shit goes down”.

After that, I started thinking about what the party would need to do to find this kid, from breaking into castles to steal documents all the way down to literal domestic terrorism. Throw in some encounters (a file cabinet full of Paper Goombas, and one of them has sensitive data written on his tongue), bosses (A gargantuan transforming castle with boxing gloves that the party named Mista Fista), NPCs (Becky, the ever-trolling personal assistant to Ms. Notherway who always draws the party the worst maps but helps in her own roundabout way), and a small shop/item/town list.

THEN you give your players a basic pitch of the game idea, and let them flesh out their ideas or see if they wanna do something else. We’re having a blast so far. ...At least, I am.