World building is fun. And necessary, for quite a bit of sci-fi and fantasy writing and practically all role-play gaming. Unfortunately, it's too easy to get caught up in building awesome worlds, and lose track of what it's all there for. I suffer this, pretty badly too, and it's the main reason why I don't get much writing (or game mastering) done. My lone attempt, so far, to avoid building it all up-front, resulted in my abortive attempt for NaNoWriMo 2007. (Read it, if you dare.)

Anyway, I'm making another attempt at bucking the top-down approach to world building. I want to run a fantasy campaign for my friends, and that won't happen if I keep creating the entire world before I design one little village for the player characters to call home. So that's where I'm starting.

If you've ever played original Dungeons & Dragons, you probably remember the B and X series modules, and how they grew into the Known World (aka Mystara). It's something along those lines that I'm thinking of; start off with a community with little adventures all about, and from there, develop larger, more world-affecting events, places, and characters. Perhaps even let the players get into it and design parts of their own.

This isn't just for gaming, either. I want to be able to use the world for writing fantasy stories as well. From my wee community and its disproportionate number of adventurers, I should start growing enough fodder to keep me up to my shoulders in digital ink.

I can always dream this'll work out…

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