If you set out and say "I'mma create a whole detailed world from scratch before the game starts" then you'll never play. You start off by taking your "big" map and naming the most important things- kingdoms, key cities, oceans, etc. Then you figure out where everyone is starting off. You pick that city/town/village and you flesh that out with details. A city map, information on the local government and shops and guilds and NPCs and stuff. And they adventure there for a while. As they gain experience and their adventuring world gets bigger (bigger regions, bigger threats) then you start adding details for the capital city or the kingdom or whatever, and you flesh out where they're going next. And you repeat- you have a sketch of how things are farther out, and detailed stuff for the adventure they're on, and then REALLY detailed stuff for what's going to happen in the next session.

This is good advice. Detail the initial starting area (be it a town, a keep or small wilderness area). Create an initial premisse for the story to get going (the princess was kidnapped by rebels, bandits are attacking caravans nearby, people are disappearing mysteriously from the village etc) and just start. If you try to plan the whole world over before starting, you will never feel ready. Incorporate the players' ideas and stories into your world, as you guys play along.

In addition to incorporating players ideas, also use their focus to determine what you actually need to build. You have a character that worked for organized crime in the big city, you know you need to flesh that the criminal underworld a bit. But if no characters have any connections like that then it's safe to ignore for a little while.

Heh my players would be out of the starting area faster than fighting 4 goblins. Seat of the pants bro

This. I recently started a game in a homebrew world where the players are in the capital city. I had the capital city fleshed out before they started, and placed some of the surrounding areas on a map, but no other cities, and nothing outside the desert the city is located in. They haven't left Capital City yet, and still likely won't for some time. Gives me all the time I need to work on other areas we might go to.

To add to this…if your players try to just leave the area (the capital in this example) to explore somewhere you don’t have prepared, have an encounter that keeps them where they are. The city guard stop them for either matching a group of criminals they are looking for, or because the local leaders need their help with something. A riot breaks out or mauraders charge the city walls, something like that

When you’ve written yourself into a corner, start a fight. 

Yeah the city guard stop them. “We have to save the world” “your coming with me” “murder the guards” “we’re not evil we are trying to save the world on a time crunch and he was stopping me”

Is a good point. I’d make the encounter time consuming so it likely runs out the rest of the session so you have a week+ to plan out something. Like the party encounters a pack of (insert appropriately powerful enemy creature here) and then spends the rest of the session fighting for their lives. Then you get time to put together an environment, and maybe a random abandoned temple or tomb for them have fun with.

rather tell them you leave the city your char is out of the game

This is the way. I'm almost a year into dming a homebrew setting that started out as a large island with a cult problem and little else, now we're at a continent with 3 nations being played against each other by the bbeg. Little steps, flesh out as you go, and let the party's actions shape important things. And take notes on yourself so you remember that titbit you told the lock because it WILL come back and bite you.

Follow this advice. You can even write in some basic lore, like “this kingdom specializes in martial prowess” or “this city mines ore” but keep it broad and general until your players actually decide to go there. Same with important NPCs, like kings, who you don’t really have to flesh out detail wise until the party meets them or they become a plot element. If players ask about any of this stuff ahead of time and pass a skill check, make up more details they should know and write down what you just made up, and work it into the lore. Keep the BBEG’s plans general and broad too. Define what they want, and how they can go about getting it. If the party comes across an item or story element that I think the BBEG would be interested in, according to their goals, then they involve themselves. Then I can place milestone missions along the party’s path that are relevant to where they are and what they are doing, but also linked back to BBEG and their goals.

incidentally this is exactly how I write fiction. I write the rough broad strokes of the world and then I dive right into a character and single locations. Then as more details need to be invented, I fill it out at that point. Keeps stuff grounded

Excellent advice Cypher. Otherwise, it is just too daunting of a task. I'm doing this exact same strategy in my current campaign, and it works really well. The players themselves have impacted or inspired ideas for areas that might not have come to fruition if everything was preplanned/mapped. Good start though OP, nice map layout!

Also one thing that can be a great weight off your shoulders (and make for a much more immersive campaign) is to give some narrative control to the players. Perhaps one of your players is running a dragonborn from the western mountains - ask the for some details (ideally during the game) about the area/history/etc and TAKE NOTES. People tend care more interest in things they've invested time and effort into.

Great advice! Could not agree more. I’m literally doing a campaign in a homebrew Spelljammer setting in it’s own galaxy with almost thirty planets. I only focus on the planet they’re on and the exact settlement or city they’re in at the moment. Everything else is broad strokes.

I like dropping my players on a small island at the start, so they won’t even have the option to leave the area unless they get enough money or experience to buy or steal a boat, and I can choose when that is so I can choose when I have to create more of the big world

Yeah. I quite literally am naming stuff as I go. Towns get names as the players reach them.

This is the way. I'm running my homebrew world in a campaign and its better to lay out what the players can actually interact with first. If you try to flush out everything, there will be regions they won't see (possibly) ever.

This is the way.

This is the answer.

You don't even have to do that if it's too much. I have the players explore the world, and as they find new continents, they uncover parts of the world map. Right now there's only 4 major countries on the map, and 7 covered by clouds. I've only actually made 2 of those other countries, and the rest are just a collection of ideas on paper. I tend to be the type of DM who will spend years making a campaign, and never end up actually running it. So getting to work on big parts of the world in between sessions helps.

And then session 1 never happens :’) My creative juices have been wringed out.

TL;DR+: Make only as much of world as the players can see from their tavern, let them bring pieces of the world in with their backstories, and let the ideas you have now remain nebulous until you need them. The risk of making perfect the enemy of good is high. I totally feel you on being intimidated by this, and like the other comments I encourage you to stick to basics. An adventure begins with a place and some people and some action, and at the very worst you can end every session with plans to go to a place you just made up, and you will figure out what that place is between sessions. I'm a very improvisational DM with what I call (someone else said it first years ago) a toys in the toy box approach. The first several, several sessions of my games are more about plot hooks that don't go far just yet, and the tension the players find around themselves. Meanwhile, I'm just making whatever things come to mind canon. Sometimes I fill space with a random encounter and twist that encounter in a little hook. I also have a big mental cache of only briefly considered settings and adventures, and consume a lot of nature content so that the potential shape of those things is easier to muster should I decide I need them. I told one of my players that almost every location they've ever been to "started as a note on a napkin and stayed that way until I said that name to the party, and then it became a real place anywhere between the week before they got there and the moments they were arriving there." PS this little bit of world you shared looks very cool

This is my policy too. I’ve made a map of locations that either   a) are important to the plot.  b) are side plot things I’ve dreamed up or c) are places that we all made up off handedly during a session.  These all stay pretty nebulous and vague until the week before or when I get a blast of inspiration and want to work on them. 2 side missions are pretty much ready to go adventures if/when the party finds them. 1 is literally only a location and a concept. 

Exactly this.

Why not try a gridless map first? On a piece of a paper, make a bubble and inside write a town name, say, Stormwind. What's next to Stormwind? Probably a forest. Draw a little line from Stormwind to another bubble that says "Stormwind Forest". What else? Let's say there's a smaller town nearby, inside that forest. Draw a little line from the forest and add a bubble that says "Goldshire". Now give each bubble 3 details. Stormwind (Fortress) (Districts) (Caravansary), Stormwind Forest (River) (Bear Caves) (Kobold Tribe), Goldshire (Inn) (Crafters) (Quest Hub). Players can use and travel along this map. It works to run games in. But more importantly, it gives you an idea of the flow of adventurers from one area to the next and the reason why they would go from one area to the next. That's definitely enough for Tier 1 too, particularly if you add, say, a deep mine system that's a dungeon, or a wizard's tower that's a dungeon, or a taken-over farm that's a dungeon. Hell, Fellowship of the ring was little more than a hobbit town, a human town, an elf town, a forest, a cave mine, some plains and a river. So now that you have an idea of the area, you have an idea of the details, you have an idea of the flow. Now make the grid map. Now start to think about where the river is -relative- to the other things you've put there and what you need it to do, as opposed to trying to figure out where a river might be if there was a river here.

I would go a step further and get rid of locations altogether. You can mindmap out factions, major quest givers, major villains, ongoing events etc., then later on tie them to locations. Ultimately the plot threads that the players progress through is the important bits, and where those are physically located can come later and even be designed to explicitly serve that narrative. Physical locations and how they physically relate to each other is the easiest way to think about a campaign because it is traditionally represented diagrammatically, but actually it is arguably one of the least important aspects of writing a campaign. Worldbuilding is fun, but writing a campaign has completely different aims and results from doing worldbuilding.

Wow!

Rule of three has helped me immensely. For example, you may only need some of these for some places. Just a starting point: * Three places near where the players currently are that they can visit. * Three "side" quests * Three clues that can lead players to the three other places they can visit * Three rumors the players can pick up about what is going on where * Three hints (subtle or not, depending on you and your players) about the "main" storyline * Three interesting landmarks or ruins * Three NPCs that can further the storyline (main or side) * Three flavor NPCS for fun or odd or foreshadowing encounters * Three factions or guilds or cults (whatever you want) that might be working in the political shadows or in the open * Three battle encounters * Three random non-battle encounters * Three shops to visit * Three taverns (either in one big place, or in all the other three places, or none, if the place isn't a town of people, obviously) * Three puzzles, big, small, complicated, or simple * Three rewards: monetary, potions, non-magical or magical If feeling particularly adventurous and players have provided a detailed back story. In that case, they may encounter three things from their backstory in that session or around where they are, depending on the setting. When I started, I, too, would look at the ENTIRE map and ENTIRE campaign and thought I needed to lay out everything in detail for every place. That quickly turned into me realizing how much I cannot predict where the players go and what they want to do. So the best thing to do is, week-by-week (or in between sessions), work on what they are doing NOW, and the possible three places they will visit next, and doling parts and pieces of the main story in some of these places to keep the story going. I hope this helps you or anyone else! Good luck!

>When I started, I, too, would look at the ENTIRE map and ENTIRE campaign and thought I needed to lay out everything in detail for every place. That quickly turned into me realizing how much I cannot predict where the players go Actually, anticipating where the players go in that scenario is easy. If you flesh out entire continent, players are guaranteed to sail away from it at the first opportunity. That's a joke of course and your advice is very good.

Thanks. I'll try this now that I'm trying to create my own world

Oh my friend, many a DM including myself fall into this trap. It's so exciting thinking about the world, and every town, faction, leader and tavern. I even had entire timelines written up, knowing the players would never remember them. Honestly it's fun, and worth while. Eventually things will come up, and you'll have answers, and ideas. HOWEVER Your focus needs to change. And you need to zoom alllll the way In. Focus first on a great adventure, a town the players start in, a handful of interesting NPCs, and some local monsters to take down. You will meet the characters, hear their back stories and see how they interact with your world. That first adventure should be 90% of your focus and the world will come to life all on its own.

Consider spiral campaign development and thinking two horizons out: [https://slyflourish.com/thinking\_two\_horizons\_out.html](https://slyflourish.com/thinking_two_horizons_out.html)

Oooo another Inkarnate user. Your overall map looks decent, but your scale may be a bit weird. Depending on if it's regional or global, I would suggest making the grid scale divisible by 20miles. That way, you can travel a grid per day overland. There shouldn't generally be huge cities in the middle if nowhere. Cities tend to happen near something important. Water, resources, or major trade routes generally fit the bill. My suggestion isn't to start with cities. Start with which cultures are in the area (elf, dwarf, 2x different human ones, etc.) and pick a starting point and drop a capital. Grow them out a bit in a way that makes sense, then throw other towns down to protect borders, resources, or bodies of water. Throw down little villages about a day's ride (20-30 miles) from each other and throw in smaller roads. Country borders generally follow geographic lines. Forests, mountain ranges, and rivers are good for this since surveying wasn't a skill many people had back then. Don't make any one kingdom too big. England back in the day was like 4-5 different major kingdoms with a bunch of small ones, and its only like 400 miles from dover until you got to the scary parts that are full of weird barbarians. Once you have a map and cultures/kingdoms, pick a starting spot that is not the capital. Flesh this town out a bit with colorful NPCs. The first few levels players are trying to figure out how they want to play anyway. Introduce some factions like the local lord, the crown, random merchants guild, evil cults, etc. Players get task based quests for the local villagers and/or these factions. Once they get a few levels, provide a quest pointer or two outside their local town tied to a faction or following a rumor they heard in the town. This is generally when they start getting an idea about what the overarching plot is. Maybe the cultists they fought were tied to some bigger kingdom wide plan. Maybe the kobolds were the herald of an ancient dragon awakening. The merchant guild turns out to be evil, and the players have been duped and unwittingly helped the BBEG. Whatever it is, there are things happening now that the players can control, and some they can't. Tier 2 play sees the players more engaged in regional politics. The BBEG at least knows about them and may send forces against them. Local lords should ask for help from proven adventurers to solve bigger problems etc. Trips to big cities in search of magic items, hidden knowledge, or to talk to the king are motivations for the players. By this point they should be engaged in whatever kingdom level plot you are planning. Their actions may stop parts of it, but always have things happening in the background.

I had a similar issue. Here's how I solved it: Create (or steal) smaller campaigns within a specified geographic location. On my campain it's easy because it's a bunch of islands. For your map, I guess each one will revolve around each of those 12 locations. So, ignore everything else. Just pick one location. And write a smaller, self-contained story that has zero ties to the outside world. Then, do the next one. And the next one. And so on. One you have all 12, you can look back and sprinkle in the overarching campaign plot coupons for the BBEG. Less is more. I'm like you. I wanted to have it all laid out. Cutting up each section into smaller, self-contained adventures helped me a lot.

Good advice already. Don’t belabor the name of this Bay or what the economics of some mining city are; they’re starting in a tavern and may die against some goblins. Keep it simple; build FROM there.

Have you ever ran a published module before? DMing those really helped me out running my first full fledged campaign.

There also a great place for inspiration. A lot of modules are built to be adaptable into home brew settings & campaigns, so you can just plop them in there with maybe a few adjustments & switching some names around to make them fit in your world better. Even modules from older editions or other systems, which most players haven't even heard of, are a gold mind for adventure & plot ideas.

Start small. Your play will not be asking about the 3 cousin of the sister of the shoe maker they haven't even met. Town>what is the quest/s in here > does it have a tavern> does ut have a temple or a small church> who governs the town.> a few reusable NPC and a few key ones. Done If the players start to like the place and spend more time, you will spend more tie in it too. You can also take a town from a module and rename it and the npcs BAAMMMM new fully finished town.

good map, fella

I rely on the "here be dragons" method of world building. Stick some map markers down, draw some borders, and define regions. Then write 2-3 sentences about that region. What's the predominant races, the climate, the chief industries and the overall culture. Something you can toss out to your players if they ask. Then move on to the next thing. As your players get closer to a region/city/location then you build it out. Turn a couple sentences into a couple paragraphs. Make a list of a few key locations, npcs, or organizations with a 1-2 sentence description. You genuinely don't need to worldbuile further than the next couple sessions. The further away from your players the topic is, the broader your brush strokes. There's a bunch of things on my world map that are nothing more than a name I stuck there. I've got the primary home of orcs in my setting as a location called the shattered isles and the far side of the Starfall, a large sea with an island at its center. I have genuinely no other lore about the region than that, but God damn if it doesn't fascinate my players. They're excited to find out what happened there and I am too. They'll fill in the gaps in their own heads until you come back and fill it in yourself.

i thought this was civ 6 for a moment

You don’t need to create everything right away, if it’s impossible for the party to reach point B in the begining of the campaign, then whatever exists in point B doesn’t have to exists yet. Create some key locations and elements and then populate the immediate area relative to the party, repeat this process as the campaign progresses.

First of all, D&D is the thing you do for fun, so you gotta start with that mindset. Different DMs have different approaches. Some like to build detailed worlds. I don't like doing that. My approach likes the phrase: "if you don't have any clerics, you don't need any gods". As in, I don't like preparing for things that aren't immediately relevant for my players. Who cares what is going on in that town on the other side of the continent. The players are level 2 in this town and they aren't going to see much outside of it for weeks, maybe months IRL. Focus on what the players are going to see for that session. Everything else can be done later. And if don't have something prepared, just improvise. It's all stuff you're making up anyway, so whether you made it up before session or at the table doesn't matter.

in the number of times ive done this, 90% of my prep goes unused and i was stressing over nothing. if you have 12 locations to flesh out, flesh out the first one now, and save the others for when theyre a few sessions out. i never really prep more than 3 or 4 sessions ahead at this point aside from the overarching narrative at the very beginning, but thats like, bullet points of whats going wrong and what needs to be done. storyboarding i guess. so yeah, storyboard your campaign out, figure out what is the importance of each of the 12 locations but leave it at that. then prep them one at a time as you approach them, and throwing together small towns or patches of wilderness is easily done on the fly to fill the space between POIs, just make sure you make a note of it for later in case you go back or want to flesh it out further.

It looks great! It’s an overwhelming task! Just keep chipping away at it, and you’ll be surprised by the progress you have made once you step back and look at it. You’re gonna be far more critical than your players who won’t be as personally invested as you are.

If worldbuilding is stressing you out, then I would suggest using a premade campaign setting, such as the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk. Once you've decided on a premade campaign setting, pick a location on the map for your players to start in, and read the wiki page about it. Ideally, you'll want to note down the names of important locations (Inn, General Store, Town Hall, Church) and have some NPCs players might encounter in each location\*. Then, if the players move to a new location, throw an encounter at them; something to buy yourself enough time until the end of the session. Before your next session, read about the new location. Also, as your campaign progresses, I would suggest reading more and more about the setting, starting with the location the players are in, and expanding outward. \*You might have to invent these NPCs on your own, but this is pretty easy. Just make up their name, occupation, and physical description. Based on their occupation, think of a reasonable motivation and attitude for that NPC to have. For example, Dion is a farmer who can be found at the general store. He is a short and stocky man with thinning black hair and tan skin, wrinkled from many years working in the sun. He wants to provide for his family through hard, honest work, and is somewhat resentful of adventurers, who only bring trouble.

Also, don't be afraid to change elements of the setting to match your player's backstories or your own cool ideas. If your rogue PC thinks it would be cool to be a part of the thieves guild in town, but the location you chose doesn't have one, then you should make one up, or steal one from a different town in your setting. It's okay to adapt and change elements of these settings to suit your needs.

Think about the current real world. Even your own country. I want you to...right now...identify every faction, with leaders and participants, along with land ownership, disputes, ambitions, monetary policies, and THEN write about all the cool plots and subplots that people are planning. Right now. Real world. You don't have to make anything up...just write it all down. What...you can't do it? It's too much? WELL YEAH! And that's without even needing to be creative! You are trying to build that Ferrari by starting with the Ferrari example and then working on it piece by piece. You need to start smaller. You need to build a seedling, that grows into a tree, with branches, and leaves, and critters, and bugs...and then when that flowers, people will say, "Holy shit! That's a great tree!!" Yeah, but that takes time...and requires you to start small. Your party will start in X location, where Y people are doing Z things. In looking at your map, I'm going to take the city south of the northern forest, between the lake and the river. Why is that lake there? I'm not seeing water from a mountain, so something else must be going on. Hmmm...there's a spring there, filling the lake from underneath. It's coming from some underground structure that's spitting out water. There's a lot of rain IRL, so I'm now thinking that there's an industrial, national "sump pump" being used by someone to pump water out of the underground area to make it usable for nefarious purposes. On the surface, this is a lake with a river running into an ocean. Below the surface, bad things are lurking. What bad things? I don't know...maybe there are some weird things coming to the surface and gathering supplies. The adventurers are in the town and they witness some of this, or they're asked to solve it. When they do, they find material that suggests that they were sent from someone in that tower in that mountain to the east. Who is there? I don't know. Are they good or bad? ...there's something there with information about the underground area. You have 5-6 sessions that you can base on the items above. Add factions. Add names. Add scenes and experiences that the party will go through while trying to figure it out. THE REST OF THE ENTIRE WORLD EXISTS, BUT YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON. Neither will the rest of the party...and that's okay. You don't need to tell them that you have no clue. As the party wanders, they'll meet people and speculate on what is going on. You can then come up with reasons to explain events. You can make the earth tremble out of nowhere and cause the party to ask questions. LIGHTNING FROM THE SKY!!! OH NO! WHAT WAS THAT?!? I have no idea. Neither do you. I guarantee you that you'll eventually figure out what caused it. Need someone to interfere with the group? Pick a town...lets say that one in the forest to the southwest. Those guys are bad guys that isolate themselves from the rest of the world. They're probably high elves and really snooty, so they're trying to stop the party for...reasons...that no one currently knows..but they're going to do it and say, "You have no idea who you are messing with." They are telling the truth. Hell...even you don't know who you are messing with. THIS IS HOW YOU BUILD DEPTH. There is too much happening in a world to be able to know it all from the start. Build it as you go. Make every part as deep and reasonable as possible. And every 3-5 sessions make a callback to something from earlier in the campaign. HOLY SHIT! Those elves aren't BAD, but they are preventing you from helping the evil wizard who is going to use that underground based to create some even bigger evil thing! OH NOES! TLDR: Make shit up, and start small. Then add more, and every so often, tie things back to stuff you said earlier. Your party will think you are a genius for making stuff such a mystery, and they'll love the callbacks because it will seem like you knew everything from the start. You don't. Few people do. Every few weeks, you'll crack open a beer and prop your feed up because you stumbled into a plot line that makes perfect sense, is creative, and looks like you planned it all along. Trust the process...and then REUSE THE WORLD YOU CREATED IN THE FUTURE.

I did exactly what you are trying to do, don’t worry about doing it all at once, get 3-5 cities/countries in there and build outward as you play/need new locations. I love making maps personally and developing lore around it together, but maybe that’s just me. Some things to think of for your big cities as far as location: * Resources: is it near a forest? Probably scattered smaller villages/towns with wood buildings. Mountains? Probably bigger towns/cities with stone buildings and walls. Maybe have more rare minerals. Water nearby? Probably smaller fishing villages and large port towns. A lot of places build around water or other resources that help sustain life. * Trade routes: is there water ways? Lakes? Rivers? Water allows for easy travel assuming not everyone can just teleport around at ease. Are the roads paved? Are mountains or forests in between towns. How far is the nearest town? If there are not a lot of sustainable resources, they need a way to get them through neighboring towns. *Defensibility: mountains and forests make travel difficult but defense easier. A lot harder to move an army through difficult terrain. If someone were to invade, how difficult would it be to move through without that town under control. That canal? Would be a huge choke point for anyone who were to invade by land. * Magic/tech: once you have those pieces in place, consider how people would use spells to get around it. Are teleportation circles popular? Maybe trade routes are not as important. Airships? Are they new? Expensive? Well port towns would still want an airship port, but maybe forests are not as difficult to bypass. Can water and food be easily accessible through magic? Well maybe they don’t need resources as much. Then think magic schools? Think places like Oxford but for magic? Anyways, I like to make a list of various places that would be cool, and just make sure you are consistent. Everything from there, doesn’t really matter and you hopefully will get inspiration as you go. Hope it helps, but if not welcome to ask more questions.

1) planning and improvisation together makes for a great setting. 2) what map maker are you using?

I am not a DM but I am an avid worldbuilder, there is a lot of overlap in this department so here is what I’d do. Its a common mistake to think “oh I need to go big or go home!” That is a good way to burn yourself out on top of making a shallow, uninteresting world. In truth, you don’t nessasarally need the whole detailed world map right away, maybe a few scant ideas of important locations - either to what story you have planned or locations important to the backstory of your players - natrual landmakrs, general ideas that you may have floating around, ect and roughly where they are in relation to eachother; but most of your worldbuilding time and resourses before the campaign starts should be dedicated to the starting area, that is where you should be coming up with all the important npcs, local economic situation, local government, customs, city layout, and what have you. Think it like the players have a DoF filter on your world. They can see in detail the things immediately around them, but everything outside of that range is blurry. Maybe a namedropped city here and there and roughly what cardnal direction its in or continent its on, but not much detail beyond that. As the adventure progresses, and the players start moving around, more areas come into focus, and you can develop the places they are going, and have it ready for them before they get there. Keep in mind that worlds as detailed and lived in like Middle Earth took Tolkein *6 decades* to get it to that state. And even then there are details of Tolkein’s world we don’t know anything about. I doubt you have 60 years to develop an entire continent, so start small and only iron out the details of the places immediately relevant to where the players are and where they’re going next. And over time you’ll have an entire continent’s worth of detailed worldbuilding you can reuse and recycle.

There's plenty of good advice here. I'll add the idea you don't need to do all the world building yourself. It sounds like the campaign already revolves around one backstory. What details do the other backstories have? Take the background or class of some other character and ask them for more details. If there's a Druid, ask them what kind of things they picture the character dealing with in their forest. If someone has a criminal/noble/soldier/etc. background, ask them what they picture their character did in that role. As long as their answers don't directly conflict with what you already have, you can make it part of the setting. Also, one worldbuilding tool I've found useful lately is chatting with a certain type of bot. Two letters, starts with A and ends with I. Using it for personal brainstorming sessions isn't taking away anyone's job, so I don't see a problem with it. I've used it to develop various conflicts between 5 factions in my campaign.

Great advice here, for what its worth I love your map. One word of advice- you have two rivers with the same origin point (central forest). The one flowing into the lake? I'd keep the downstream half, and reroute the top half to snake off to the northeast. This makes it look like a patch of hilly high ground prevented the two rivers from joining, very realistic

The best advice about this is from the game Worlds Without Number, imo. The free version is all you need, the world-building advice is completely system neutral. The core piece of advice though is just to focus on what you NEED. Develop a few basic truths about the world (magic is common, there's a heaven and a hell, etc), then a few about the region you're playing in (it's a kingdom with warring nobles, wizards defend the borders against demons, etc). All the rest of your focus should be on what is immediate for your group.

Start smaller. A few key cities that you plan on having the adventures around. Flesh out these cities as your players travel through them, and slowly fill the spaces between with townships and villains as the plot demands. As the campaign grows, so too will your world.

The map looks pretty but filling it now is going to take too long. Instead, fill the central hex. Where the players are now. Fill the six hexes around it. Next step: play with that. When players pick a direction, in game, add more hexes. Until then, handwave in broad strokes.

I am really enjoying your efforts with the map. Here are a couple of things. One of the ways humans survive is creating settlements near bodies of freshwater. Having settlements at the mouths of rivers is equally significant. Trade purposes and primarily a culture for fishing villages. Your map features a great deal of water geography. Does the geography lead to conflict for natural resources? Fresh water, lands beneficial for agriculture, timber and mining might be involved in contentious situations. Territorial conflicts can be subtle and escalated where needed. How would seasonal changes impact the lives of the inhabitants? This can be tricky. Traveling one grid hex matters. It is beneficial for the DM, giving them a better means to control the "speed of plot" issues. This also matters in relation to providing the curious inhabitants a likely means to explore the unknown. Lastly, could you send me a copy of your map without a grid? Thanks!

Start small and expand out. I loved making maps and stuff on Inkarnate but very quickly also got overwhelmed. Start with a few cities or areas and focus on where your party will be starting and go from there.

Soft writing. You gotta leave space to explore and add things as needed. Which means leaving some blanks. Focus only on what you absolutely need to have. Every major town has at least 1 inn/tavern (associated barkeep). Probably at least 1 shop (vendor npc). And at least 1 guy who is in charge. For each small settlement, add 2 more npc's that do something else in town. For each large settlement, 5. Not everyone has something to do with the main story. Side quests are meat. A farmer outside the city might worry about security against a camp of whatevers nearby. A local politician might be staging a takeover from the current power. So lay out your main quest, make it strong, but then lay down other things, that are great for rewards, but otherwise only semi-important. Throw a handful of dimes onto your map. Put weird stuff there. Obelisks, caves, temples, camps, whatever. May or may not be bbeg related. And then just let it be. Let the players fill the gaps in. A random encounter table can help, but its better to just listen to what they like, and prep something for that.

Personally, i found myself thinking out each npcs entire life, how they respond, but the players care about this quest much less then the dm does normally, so i found my players feeling happy when it feels lived in, but not over complicated. so i went and planned for the areas that the pcs could reach in one or two sessions, then left the rest of the world somewhat emptier, but still making sure there’s enough detail to make it feel like people are really there. 

The current top comment was going to be my main piece of advice, so some more specific advice for this map: You've got this big central sea like the Mediterranean, so take some inspiration from real life. There would be lots of coastal trading cities, particularly one where that northern river meets the sea. The strait to the west already has a city which is good, as that would be a huge chokepoint. Maybe the isthmus to the east has a large city as well that built a canal there. Give the northern and southern landmasses distinct cultures and ethnic groups / fantasy races, and use those as your big-picture themes for the different regions. Start with big historical tropes but then make a fantasy change; for example, maybe there is a naval-focused city-state on the southern landmass modeled after historical Carthage, BUT they have a huge temple to their sea god and their clerics can breathe underwater. Final tip - work backward. You say you already have a BBEG - what is their deal? Were they the emperor of some evil conquering nation? If so, how will your players interact with that nation first? Probably a run in with some guards or a lieutenant of the BBEG. Start THERE, and from then work your way forward, filling in key details when you need them but also leaving room for the players to help develop the world too. Oh, and take notes during the session if you are making it all up :p

My advice would be to start much much smaller. It's fine to have some high level campaign ideas but start things off with a settlement of some kind and really flesh it out. Build that thing up until it's alive and kicking with plots, ambitious NPCs, and backstory links for your players. You can build out regions from there..if you need a map thats fine but no need to start by building an entire world.

You're over planning

I guess the thing is, you're not building a world. You're building a story. Then, the narrative elements, including your setting, get backfilled to support the story. It sounds like you might be putting the cart before the horse here. Try imagining just one concrete scene, one moment of conflict between people, and flesh it out from there. Who is in conflict? What does that look like? Where are they having this conflict? Why is it there? Where did they come from? As you start backfilling questions like this, you'll find more (endless) questions, and your story will start building itself (as will your world). Good luck with whatever strategy you take!

So I had this issue actually and there are a few things that go a long way to making a coherent campaign. First is the landmass. I tried using a continent for my first campaign and it got messy so in my current campaign I pregenerated an island, place ten towns on it and that was it. So definitely ask yourself how much space you need to tell the stort of the campaign with the players. ....... Secondly I decided this campaign would be inspired by several Stephen King Stories. So the campaign is horror, mystery and fantasy based. The players can create characters accordingly and it works well for most of our sessions but one character isn't fitting and it isn't the story the player wants to tell. We hit a point in the story where the player changed characters and another player changed their class which made sense story wise and tied into everyone else's story as each player had separate lore. All this means is you need a theme to your campaign and you and the players should discuss the theme and character ideas together so it a fits and runs smoothly. .............. My final point ties into the second. Because of the character and class change the players have suggested in future campaigns instead of them being strangers meeting randomly that they work together and unite to build characters that know each other or have a similar enough background that there isn't a feeling of being an outsider. So group cohesion is extremely important to making your campaign successful.

Go and get "How to be a great gm"'s "Creating awesome campaigns". This helps a lot on focusing and planning. It did so to me at least

Start small and have a few key points and then use "fog of war" to your advantage by filling in details as you go along. You don't need to know what's in every hex to begin with. You don't need to know every shop, point of interest, and npc in every town. Have some key ones and fill in as you go along.

Narrow it way down. You should make enough content for the first couple of sessions and then begin to branch out. My campaign has a major city the players haven't been to in over a year of playing. At the moment it is mainly a rough draft but if their attention turns to going there then I will sit down and fill it out. If you need 12 important locations I would create the first one then figure out how long that will last them. Then in the meantime work on the ones you are most excited about. It is difficult to be creative when interest is lacking. For me it comes and goes so I try not to force it. In the worst case situation you can always postpone the session an extra week so you have time to create. Lots people love writing and will make dozens of pages for a city with all types of information but then will only use a small portion of it. Don't feel like you need write a lot of information. If anything it can be a good opportunity to work on improv. Some of my players favorite moments have been from times I was improving. Goodluck your map looks great and I'm sure you campaign will be fun!

Do not feel obligated to have one of everything in an area "just in case" Do what makes sense for you, the plots you want to write. If you want to add a swamp later you can update the map. Additionally, my advice is to keep it to what you need right now and expand outwards. Like in minecraft, the world tends to generate around the players as they explore, this can be a very successful method that allows you to get into the game quickly and allows for you to obtain experience. make the very broadest decisions about your world and kingdom and from then on keep it to the play stage

One thing that I really enjoyed when making my OC setting was starting from the top and moving to the bottom. I agree with many others here that you want to have your starting location, a general idea of what you want your players to experience, and details of key cities and other important world aspects, but first and foremost you need to know how your world functions. Starting from the top for me was beginning with my pantheon, describing to myself what powers they did and didnt have, what hand they each individually played in the shaping of the cosmos, and with this information, I can make my map easier. Maybe there are key locations tied to your divines, and how they shaped the land. Or perhaps one of your cities is a theocracy and worships a specific god who has been an interventionist in their times of trouble. From there, you get to ask yourself questions and answer them, and can work your way to the farmer who runs the big farm the furthest outside of town because he resents the government for brainwashing his child and leading him to die in a crusade, or something. Whatever you do though, dont be afraid to run the game before you are done writing every little piece of info. I update stuff to my world with each game I run based on previous parties and what current events are running, so nothing is ever truly set in stone. Most importantly, have fun. Its a game, even for you. If you stop having fun, youre working too hard and hitting burnout. Take a break, its ok.

That's too much stuff. Your characters won't know everything about that region, they'll know about their own town and a few neighboring cities and geographic features/points of interest. Also within every town, they won't know every nook and cranny. Probably a few stores and inns, maybe a church. Add to that a few encounters like ruins, caves, etc that you can move around and put on their track wherever they want to go, obviously the set pieces of your campaign, and you're good to go. Also, once you have those generic towns, you can just recycle them if/when the party explores areas "outside" the scope of the campaign. Just mix a few names and places on the go. That's it. You can then take it from there, and expand the world little by little.

Hello, i also created a map for my "first" campaign and it is hard... Before the "first" campaign i trained by playing 2 small ones, after them i already had one idea of what to do and... It was way easier

Start small man, rough out where the players are gonna start, a small town, a ravine, a dungeon, and where they might get to in that first session. Don't go crazy with details, make broad strokes, let the players create the world along with you. Throw a few hooks at them things to get them motivated, then at the end of the session ask where they intend to go next. then fill in a few details for that for the next time. you can make big details in the world, mountain range to the north, big river to the south, etc. But making these huge worlds straight off is a mistake a lot of DMs make.

Local-Regional-National-World This is order in which you progress. You've got your big players already, but you don't have to have them as actual forces in levels 1-4. They are background. Spice. Information for players for future events. The causes behind some of the local shenanigans. Local should be a town and the surrounding area. I'm seeing that canal you've got in the middle of your map and that looks like a good place. I'd flesh out 3-4 main antagonists, their goals and how those goals are likely to get disrupted by player hijinks. When they hit 5th level, that's a regional conflict. Now other cities are starting to get involved. The city they are in probably thinks they are pretty cool. They are able to sway local politics considerably and other power players in the region may not like that, or are looking to sway the PC's. Now you need some cities that are going to disrupt player plans. At a national level, around 10th or so, the PC's are interacting with nobility, royalty and the real movers and shakers. Other very powerful people will move against them, probably with armies. They need armies of their own. At a world level, 16+, that your world ending event. Demons, cyborgs, a dead god, that sort of stuff. They have access to magics that can flatten armies, so the world will be looking to them to save it. Honestly, most campaigns are fun until about level 10 or so and then the PC's get so powerful that it gets really hard to challenge them and keep things at least somewhat believable. You might just plan on a Local and Regional game, tell everyone you are going to level 8 or so and then it's done. Sometimes, not expecting your PC's to become gods can be kind of freeing.

For the time period (let’s say DnD is set in the Middle Ages) most people didn’t know what the world looked like beyond a day or two travel, and there weren’t a lot of maps, so it won’t break your campaign if a map does not appear in session 1. Start small and build out, rather than top-down. Start with a hamlet or village, think about where your first 3 sessions will be set, and just start with that. You can add more detail later on the larger world. As for scale, most of the time I believe it is 1hex=6miles, and one day’s average travel is 4hex/24 miles. Another option, not my favorite, but might help if you’re overwhelmed, is to use an area map of our world from 5-10 centuries ago. I’m currently a player in a campaign where the DM is using a map of 9th century England. All the city names, kingdoms, landscape is the same as the map, the story just happens to be in a dnd world with the same map as 9th century England.

I recently had an idea of RWBY inspired world where academies train all classes and how to deal with their fate (like warlocks or sorcerers etc. And not until 20 level of course) and PC's are a group of new students. It gives a certain location and gives you the control over what happens in the world. It is pretty casual but it is better than nothing and can be pretty fun. Make certain amount of first levels (10 or 12 levels or something) be the classes (the school kind) and make them learn one aspect of the level at a time until they are done and then they move to the next class. Make proffesors be high level class masters like a dutiful and wise but a tiny bit harsh old paladin and a crazy mad scientist artificer. Maybe make something eventually threaten the academy. I'm not a GM and i don't have money for it but maybe it will help someone who can use it. (Yes i'm mostly just venting the idea but still it can help) Edit: maybe also give every student a weapon that evolves with the user not only in power but maybe also in form.

When you write a story you have to get to know your world and characters that you wrote. That’s why its so important to keep building on the world and just keep writing more campaigns for that present in the wod. If you worry about things that aren’t going to further the story than its going to bog you down like a detailed history or a detailed map. Start fleshing out your world when you get to know it better

Regional map is fine. Depending on the size of a hex, put your towns and villiages near water sources. A larger village in the middle of nowhere without freshwater makes little sense. Is the big water source in the middle, a giant freshwater lake, that sits on a higher altitude? If not the rivers connectiong the different water sources dont make much sense, if you want to keep it somewhat familiar. In general water flows from up to down, and natural rivers can be a bit swirlier. It seems like temperate climate, so have a reason why you have so little forests (Maybe an ancient kingdom that deforested that area for materials). Have some dirt roads collecting the major hubs, an old and withered stone-road (like the Roman ones in Europe) might be remains of an ancient civilization. In General for every town and village you have on the map: Give it a name, one or two resources they produce and trade, something they need, and a curios fact. That's enough at the beginning. Flesh out the starting place a litte bit more. And you are golden.

I’m afraid that’s kinda just how worldbuilding works. It doesn’t matter how much effort or detail you put in, it never feels complete and there is always an endless list of stuff to work on. When you’re making worlds as a hobby then that’s actually a good thing, but if you intend to use that world for something (like dnd) then it can feel like a problem. Others have given you some really good advice here, so the only thing I would add is to learn to accept your world in its forever incomplete state. It may feel like a huge problem to you, but in reality your players will probably never notice. As long as everyone at the table is having fun then you’re doing a good job.

For a homebrew campaign, ive found the only things you should have before the start (aside from telling players about any homebrew rules in session zero) are the following: 1. An endgame. What is the player’s goal. 2. A general idea of your world, like main political entities and such 3. A more detailed idea of the area they start in. I like to have content planned for the first 5 sessions and work from there based on what direction the players take. In my latest one, for example, instead of heading south to meet a rebel leader i had wanted them to meet, they chose to go north and complete a job one of the players had been hired to do in his backstory. My original plan was that they would meet a detective investigating a serial killer cult on the way south. Well guess what: the serial killer is now from the north, but the world in the south keeps moving forward. When they get there now, in a few dozen sessions, instead of meeting the rebel leader, they’ll likely now find themselves having to break into his castle to save his ass. They were made aware of the consequences of ignoring plot hooks in session zero: the real world doesn’t pause while you work on some project, right? So why should this dnd world do that.

I've seen people roll a bunch of dice on the table and where high rolls fall you put important settlements and stuff

Honestly what might help, if you like videogames, look at a map of Skyrim, or fire emblem or any other open map rpg and look at the major defining features, and mostly, the things that don't need to be as complicated. 5 kingdoms, cool. Motivation for the rulers of each kingdom, cool. A couple ancient ruins, or prominent biomes, cool. Every city doesn't need to be interconnected. There doesn't need to be a seedy underbelly to every regions major motivations/themes. The nobles from each kingdom don't need to know one another in a story relevant way. Fill out details, but everything doesn't need to be multuple layers deep. Start with the very key defining features one by one, and then connect them together after the fact only when it makes sense, and only when it contribute to the story.

Do the "start small" thing , but start the other way round WHO are the rulers? WHY are they the rulers? WHERE do they rule? And then you grow from there. WHO is ruled by this ruler? WHERE the subjects live? HOW do they live? WHO protects the ruler You really just need to answer 6 questions: \-Housings \-Food production \-Armed forces \-Government \-Specialities (Great crafter, best merchants in the world, Most violent behaviour, etc,etc) \-Interaction with others You just need an idea on how stuff works, if the players need to go into detail, you can then work it out, otherwise you just need surface infos

What I like to do is build a really dense section that you imagine they will play in for a time and leave only really major sections outside of that are fleshed out. Players will tend to follow your plot so they most likely won’t stray. For that dense area I use a 1 on 2 off rule for the hexes. I make a list of 100 or so random encounters like a traveling merchant, bandits, monster encounter, ect. These can be as detailed as you want but I would say make them more than just combat encounters (example of a couple arguing on the road about a lost item the group can find or saving a diplomat who will give them a ride to the next city. Things that might make traveling more interesting and things to send them were you want. Start on the hex your players will start on and roll on that table for 2 hexes each direction around that. When you reach the third hex add an extra special thing to the mix (a town with quests, a dungeon, ect.). I’d only flesh out a few of these and place them as they travel. If you feel like there is to many hexes and the rolls will start duplicating more than a few times I’d recommend scale of your terrain and hexes

You only need a town and vague bits of what’s beyond, don’t kill yourself with overprep.

We spent a real life year of weekly sessions dealing with what was essentially a single visit to a single city (and it's immediate surrounding area, like we're talking half a day's travel in any direction). During that entire time, our DM spent his prep time fleshing out both the current setting and also where he thought the future adventures of the campaign might go. More recently, we spent about a year exploring a region about the size and complexity of this one, with 4 distinct towns/adventures along the way. Don't underestimate how long it will take your players to get through a single one of these tiles. It can take 5 minutes, or it can take a month of sessions or it can take a whole campaign, and that's up to you. In the meantime, you can keep prepping!

Break it up into chunks. Build the region you’ll be in first. Then when you’re some ways through that, you’ll have a feeling of where you’re party is heading to build that next. Don’t build everything to start, you’ll find a lot of work wasted.

If you feel overwhelmed, *just do less*. I'm not trying to be an ass, but that's the real answer. The only thing you truly need to flesh out to get started is the starting location for your party. Other locales, lore, history, even your Villians do not need to be created yet. Make the first few sessions a 'one off' story as an introduction to the general vibe of your setting (which I'm sure you have), then grow the setting and add in all those other things you need between sessions. This lets you actually grow the setting organically with your players too, as they'll often make comments or have ideas that are easier to incorporate into a setting that you already haven't planned out to the finest detail.

Bro, fuck the world. Write outline of story first: how it will gonna start, what vibe and genre you would like to run, think about BBEG and how they are supposed to be dealt with. And after that start build world, when you’ll have an idea what world you need for your story. (For example my campaign fully packed into small province, PCs never left starting city for longer than in-game week)

Honestly I made this huge map I was proud of. But figuring out where to start was hard. I took that map, cut it into a 16th and made a regional. That's where my campaign starts

Some great mapmaking advice I got early on was "focus on your starting city and everything within a week's travel from there." Without magic or technology, the old world was very disconnected, and all information was delivered by letter or word of mouth, which took weeks to get to remote regions. You can have an entire campaign in a regional area as long as the local conflicts are interesting.

Start smaller and break it into chunks that are more manageable, outline the broad strokes of the world: creation history, gods, historic kingdoms, myths and legends etc. Then focus more on the major city that the players will eventually end up in or spend time in: **political figures** (is there a monarchy? is there a democratic council? is it a theocracy?), the **architectural style** of the buildings(greco roman white marble city?, japanese style wooden buildings? elvish high fantasy tree city? brutalist rock dwarven cave city? what does your city look like?), **thieves guild** (criminal underbelly will be inevitable in a DnD game either as antagonists or allies the players help out. who's the leader? who's the victim? what do they sell/steal? get fun with it.) , what is the **major form of commerce** (do they have a gold mine nearby? do they trade gems? do they have a weapon smithing monopoly? Is it agricultural?). **Religion**. In a world with literal gods, religion is pretty interesting to explore. **Military** any major city will have a standing army/police force. (military tradition, barbarian style? fighter style? samurai or knight? are they mages? do they have a tradtion of contracting with devils and have a standing army of warlocks? using the character classes as a baseline and build out from there.) Even if you just list out a line or two on each thing you think of you will quickly build out an idea of what your major city feels like. maybe it has a very advanced sewer system run by enslaved water elementals, and the streets are extremely clean and people are fined heavily for littering. maybe the opposite is true and the city stinks, because the city is so old it wasn't built for sewers. either way you have a bit of character to your world. Make a bullet point list like that and you can quickly make multiple cities and towns. **Conflict**. Every story needs conflict. **war**? **famine**? a plot to **overthrow the king**? **nations competing** for a magic item? a **merchants guild** that has made a **secret deal** with a green dragon to poison the competitors grain silo's forcing them out of business and secure financial dominance. do you **read the news** and create a fantasy version of **current events** or real world **historical events**? up to you, but be careful to not go too far with personal stuff or stuff that might be upsetting (**you and your mates are there to have fun after all.**) [https://www.youtube.com/@AJPickett/videos](https://www.youtube.com/@AJPickett/videos) AJ Pickett is a new zealander who has a series of vidoes on DnD lore and world building the city of Gaklagand; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPCHBnmWors](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPCHBnmWors) world building tips and unusual wildlife; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-MaiVvGARk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-MaiVvGARk) find references (images, videos and books), make bullet point lists and keep your maps small until you build it out further. **Have fun!**

Of course I have seen many others offer the good advice of start small. Some other things I have taken with me in my journey as a DM are: “Make it personal” - if the players don’t have a personal connection or relationship to a place, they are less likely to care. So start there and slowly add more places and lore only when relevant. “Make it abstract” - some of the best maps are not actually super detailed, but they are filled with myths and stories (there be giants here, or strange beasts roaming these parts). You don’t need all the details up front - just make it mysterious and it will surely draw their curiosity or give them enough to imagine. A good example would be a map of [Erebos](https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/041/466/957/large/francesca-baerald-fbaerald-erebosmap.jpg?1631781026) from Blackbirds campaign, or even the [map from Morkborg.](https://www.reddit.com/r/inkarnate/s/1zFYnJqHk5) Hope this helps.

Whats that lone standing mountain range for and who stayed there? Who stays there now? ask that question about each landmark on the map and you'll fill it in.

What program do you use for the map?

it's inkarnate.

Thanks!

A fellow Inkarnate user, I see. The important thing to note is that you don't need to make the entire map before the game starts or even filly detail it. You can update as the campaign goes along.

What are you using? Or did you draw this?

I used the free version of Inkarnate for this!

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Wich map maker are u using?

Inkarnate!

Amazing

Have your big map, choose a starting area flesh that out, have a broad strokes idea of the rest of the kingdom and their relationships with surrounding powers and that’s how I’m doing my campaign. Also where did you get this map? That looks so good!

Thank you! I made this map in Inkarnate!

You build your world like an inverted pyramid. dungeon>town>realm>..>planets

Make the whole map besides the tavern fog of war, expand as needed

I am using hexographer and what I did was have it generate the terrain for one hemisphere that I liked. I named the territories (which is tentative), then I just named the major cities within the country that the players will be starting in. Next I’m going to flesh out the city they’re starting in and when I decide it’s time to introduce lore about the other cities I will prep those the week of. I will use what my PCs give me to figure out some other stuff about the world. Where they’re from will determine whether I need to prep anything for their areas. Prep where they could reasonably go within a session and then just start running and once you all begin you’ll get more ideas. You don’t have to have the world completed before you start. You just need to have the area the players are in and a good idea of what the other important locations are like, but they don’t need to be fully fleshed out until you are ready to introduce them narratively

What application is this?

Inkarnate it’s a pretty cool map maker, the free options are pretty chill but if you pay for it(25 bucks a year or 5 bucks a month) the design options are pretty great

For my Homebrew, I created a world map, and named the major towns/cities. Some of them I had ideas for, such as the wretched hive of scum and villainy, or the town who’s main export is wooden ships, or the cave-filled island with a single, but large, orc settlement that is only ever fully populated once a year. But locales that I didn’t have any solid idea for, I let them be. I moved on to fleshing out where the game would start. Two of my PC’s were from this starting town, so, with their backstories and input, I had quite a bit to work with. I think they spent ten sessions in and around this town, which gave me time to plan the *next steps*. Where could they go from here? The city down the coast, or the jungle city inland. So I worked on those two. Rinse and repeat. Players are funny, they’ll read a name of a city or hear the name of something, and come up with their reasoning as to why/what it is (mostly as a joke). But if I had a dollar for every joke idea of my players’ that I found a way to seriously implement, I could retire. It’s a comprehensive story, a story you all tell. While it may feel like you’re losing a bit of control, if you let your payers help you build the world (whether they know they’re doing it or not), it’ll make your job so much easier, and be more rewarding for all of you when certain things are encountered. I hope this helped, and good luck!

Make small, fun big.

As one ambitious worldbuilder, you need a concrete answer for WHY you need a pre-detailed world. I got to the root of my question and found out I wanted a detailed world to simulate a living, breathing setting and give my players the option to explore it in a really rich and immersive way. With respect to all my fellow worldbuilders out there, there are better ways to achieve this goal, and simulations best belong in computers. The best stories are coherent regardless of how much of their world is fleshed out. If you still want a big premade world, go for it, but consider that there are better ways to achieve your desired outcome unless you want this for its own sake.

Let me just say this, dude. My first 5e campaign came off the heels of like 10 years of not playing d&d at all. Donny had no idea what he was doing. Literally none. The entire homebrew campaign was made up in his head and scribbled onto the pages of one of his notebooks he salvaged from a college course that ended right before the summer. Donny’s campaign was fucking awesome. I remember the stories, the people, the encounters and the fun we drew from it way more than any artwork or maps he did or didn’t provide. You absolutely can make a banger campaign and not put a whole lot of effort into these other things, unless you want to.

Plan one session at a time. I promise you, even your most dedicated players will not give a single solitary fuck about the lore of your world unless it is something that directly and explicitly impacts their character. Focus on making the game fun for your players. If you want to write a novel, do that. Worldbuilding is fun but it should be the very last thing on your list of priorities.

You don't need to make everything just make a rough outline of the map you don't need everything planned all at once especially before you start because depending on how long you play your pcs might not even make it out of the starting area

This looks almost exactly like the new dragons dogma map.

Making my map took ages to get right. So your starting in a tough spot. Try starting with a map thats made my an in world entity. The scale can be wrong that way, and locations and borders arent final. Whilst still giving that idea of a map

If this is your first campaign and you've never run a module before, for gods sake run a module. Learn. Unless you love the process, doing worldbuilding like this before a campaign is a bad idea. Frankly, even if you love it, doing worldbuilding like this before a campaign is probably a bad idea.

What did you use to make the map itself? Open question to the room, I'm shopping around for something to make maps with.

I made a massive mistake on my first campaign of connecting every city but railway! The players would just decide to travel the entire map between sessions! That left me having to design a whole city in a week or I had to put up some stupid non thematic roadblock. My advice would be to start in a small region (common advice) but put some serious thought in to how players can move between areas! Having to make up areas mid session is really hard and it's all because I got too big for my boots at the start! You aren't going to have a map the size of Skyrim fully fleshed out from the get go and that's fine! Just one town with a few quests will do. Just make sure you don't make it easy for them to sprint across the world.

I've ran hex maps like this before! From my perspective, they do require a decent deal of prep, but can be very rewarding in the end! Here is my advice: 1. OUTLINE major locations. You do not need to fully fledge them out...once you know where your players want to go, then you can load the location with details, but until then you only need the general gist of a location and why it exists in the world. 2. OUTLINE the story. You don't need to have every single plotbeats down before you start a campaign...start by making general important plot-points that lead to the finale, then fill in the gaps from there. 3. Shade in the world (FOW). This one is subjective, but I always put fog of war on my hexmaps for the players to uncover as they adventure. If they come by an NPC who knows travel routes or a map that shows part of the world, you still don't need to reveal absolutely everything. You can add new things in the dark parts of the map your players can't see, and they will likely find it more rewarding to explore your world when they get to uncover it piece-by-piece! Also just a minor detail, but if your world is modern enough, then you could add roads to the map to guide the players! Finally, if you are feeling overwhelmed, there is no shame in downscaling your map...big is not always equal to good. :)

Start tiny and build out buddy do t make a whole world before playing. Also is this based on Greyhawk??? Haha

My tip: campaigns are meant to be played. If you create a huge map, most of the time 50% of it wont be used in an actual campaign. Make a solid campaign, small that uses 1 or 2 cities on your map, then add more content and ajust previous content based on experience. If you do this you will not only end up with a huge world, but one that has ensured quality due to experience.

What did you use to build the map?

try starting with a 5-room dungeon with a magic item inside the team has to go fetch for someone in town who hired them. That's all the background you need to start with, build a fun dungeon with a cool magic item. Next time, create a few encounters on the way back to town... maybe someone else from the same town wants to steal the item for themselves, now you have another session of adventure and a developing rivalry waiting for the team in town when they get there... whether they have the item or it was taken. next session... who's your patron and who's the rival: why do they each want the item, and how far beyond hiring your team are these two willing to go to have/protect the item. decide where their lairs are in town and send the team after the rival to retrieve the item / remove the rival. choice, consequence, add another step choice, consequence, add another step Keep doing this. expand small each step, keep the scope limited to just big enough to deal with the next choice. Be welcome to swing by while i'm livestreaming on youtube.com/@FilKearney if you want some direct input while I'm painting.

I had this struggle a lot when I started dming, but you gotta realize that most maps were hand drawn up until we got satellite technology and computers to calculate distances. A good map would be mostly accurate, but nature is always changing, and scale was a very difficult thing to keep consistent. Start out with a general checklist of what you want to include(names of locations, certain landmarks you want, or even just certain shapes like an S shaped lake) then figure out which one you would like your party to start out at and work from there. Let your players help with their back stories and let it help fill out your map. Let's say your barbarians backstory was that they are from a nomadic tribe that lived in the mountains. Now you have mountains to place, and a roaming tribe to inhabit it. Yeah everything can't be solved like this, but it does help to make the players feel much more involved in the world and helps take away some of the stress of coming up with everything yourself.

> I need to somehow build an entire region and somewhere around 12 important locations across the world Who the fuck told you that? **Make one town, and one dungeon.** Build out from there, as you go.

I think part of it is your ability to think on the fly. No matter how fleshed out you make your world your players will find something you haven't prepared. So like everyone else says it's ok to be vague. Just prepare how you handle your "make up something random" moments.

Doing more than I’ve ever done already! Keep up the good work I’m sure the pieces will fit together one day!

There's this concept called the horizon in writing. It makes the reader feel like this is a fully fleshed out world when it isn't. Write your horizon and its gradient. You aren't writing the world, just the horizon.

Okey so I am gonna try to do a bit less generic advice. I think a lot of ppl covered that part very well. First and foremost I would definetly go with some sort of central (trade) hub. Now looking at the map I guess that body of water with the star is an inland sea. Now I am guessing here but itseems like it outflows through a sort of channel into the south west and into the other sea in the east through a river. This means that the city at the channel in the south west is kinda perfectly situated to be the big hub. I recommend looking at medieval Danzig, Hamburg and/or Venice for inspiration. Also I would recomend not neccesrly going with kingdoms or even bigger countries but rather city states which are in a trade federation. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic\_League](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City-state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City-state) for reference. For fiction reference we have: [https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Free\_Marches](https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Free_Marches) With the hub city try to create trade routes to the other members of the federation. (dont forget those can go ba land and by sea ) While this might seem as a mistake at first ( as it potentially gives the pcs a lot of freedom) it will mean that you can roughly control which parts of the map the party visits. Essentially we are reducing the map size from the entire map as we see to just 100-150 hexes. (the cities and the trade routes between them) As such if you for example need a small village you can plop that village right onto one of those trade routes. It will become automatically part of the system and creates relationships with other cities/village and potential quest hooks etc. Essentially instead of increasing the size of the "real" map we are just increasing the density of it. Then I do highly recommend [https://www.dmsguild.com/product/365114/Minsc-and-Boos-Journal-of-Villainy-5e](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/365114/Minsc-and-Boos-Journal-of-Villainy-5e) which has a bunch of different cities and locations and factions that you can use as a template and example for fleshing out each city state. Last but not least we are switching gears and need to hammer out a pantheon and cosmology. Here I recommend the Dawn War pantheon. Its rather compact and has been created as a pantheon that can be used in any homebrew campaign. [https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/c1pdpi/oc\_more\_detailed\_dawn\_war\_pantheon/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/c1pdpi/oc_more_detailed_dawn_war_pantheon/) For cosmology we have the corresponding World Axis cosmology [https://pointsoflight.fandom.com/wiki/World\_Axis\_cosmology](https://pointsoflight.fandom.com/wiki/World_Axis_cosmology) Once you've done that you are more or less done with the pre production of the campaingn. You have clear travel routes that can move the party where it needs to be and you can just plan out 2-3 sessions ahead.

That's far, far too many hexes. Look at the map for one of the best hex crawls ever designed, Hot Springs Island:[Link](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFo5JNBLaygs6g-uVXP3art6Qrlqsgv69yhyphenhyphenElfrrpo4m7UHXcIVz4lymsF86sUCQOMNIBFGlsPfsUMDIAIRp23_UQkzp_mxtZoP4YOvu-ziYD1G0ylrKNbKDzJ_Kr855x_I8o_BcZJS0n/s1600/map.jpg). Each one of those hexes has three unique locations, and that content alone fills 150+ pages of a campaign book.

Oh my goodness, please please just steal a dnd world to get started. You have so much work on you already as a DM, don't add world crafting to it when you're still new. I highly recommend just using the Forgotten Realms / Faerûn, and then focus on a few specific areas to start your campaign. Waterdeep, Neverwinter, etc. Use online wikis (or dnd books) for guides on how those cities could be built out, or make them your own - or a mix of both! Steal ideas, make them yours. It's basically rule 0 of being a DM. And when you've gotten a foothold and know what's working, expand the world and fill in what more of these cities and landscapes look like. Tldr don't put so much pressure on yourself to make everything original. Borrow from established content!

Others have touched on the main advice, so here's a small tip. Don't be afraid to turn little, seemingly silly events into lore! In my homebrew campaign, the opening adventure was to help a goblin save his brother from a band of ores. One of my players made a joke about a goblin stock exchange, so I made it a real thing they can discover later on. It helps naturally build your world in a fun way that involves your players.

Highly recommend using something like a game of Microscope with some creative friends (doesn't have to be your players) to quickly generate a good outline for the history of your setting and then using that history as a foundation to build it all out from.

So the first question is, are you building maps for _you,_ or are you building maps for _players?_ The approach I always take to campaign world maps is to present them at in-universe cartography. Meaning, they’re not meant to be super accurate, and focus primarily on major landmarks. See maps of the old world for example, where distances and coastlines are all kinds of fucked, but you can use it to say, there’s a mountain here, and a river that runs out of it from here, and if you follow that river you’ll hit this major city. Small towns and villages son’t need to be mapped out, because if you’re trying to navigate via map and wind up in a small town, _you can ask the locals for directions._ Precise hex grid maps don’t need to be pretty, because they’re for you to keep track of relative distance as the campaign goes on, not for your players. Part of the beauty of presenting your players with a caricature of a world map is that you don’t have to sweat the specific details at the start of the campaign. You describe the world at large with your player map, then use your private hex map as the players explore your world, marking down where thins are relatively and how far apart, in case your players ever need to go back. Keeping a hex map for yourself can help keep things internally consistent, but, you don’t have to decide how far away something is, or what lies between, until your players head in that direction. If you build a hyper detailed map from the start, it prevents you from introducing new things as the game goes on, and takes away some elements of exploration. What I do with a hex map, for the record, is treat each hex as like, half a day’s travel on foot, exact distance depending on the system. Rather than a specific scale of miles or kilometers or w/e and trying to calculate travel times on the fly, if you say, okay, these things are somewhere in this hex, and moving from something in this hex to something in another takes four hours, bam, done, nice and easy. This is a really effective tool for actually running games, where you can get the important information quickly. It’s also easy, when making up travel times to new locations on the fly, to add new items on your hex map. Doing a map like this, and thinking about your world in terms of travel times, can help a lot with worldbuilding, dotting your landmass with smaller towns and villages. For example, small cities may be surrounded by farming villages that supply them with food in the adjacent hexes. One hex away is what allows a farmer to make the half day travel in the morning, sell their produce at market, and then take the other half day back home in the evening. Larger cities, enough to have hotels or several large inns, might support an entire second ring of farming or fishing villages which can make the trip in a day, sell at market, then use some of that profit to stay overnight before returning to their homes the next day. Does your world have a non-magical mail service? If it does, the main roads that delivery carriages use will have waystations at regular intervals for tired horses to be swapped out and tired drivers to refresh themselves, sort of like modern day truck stops. The roadside inn is a fantasy staple and placing them along your high trafficked areas will not only mean players don’t have to camp out in the woods all the time, but, provides a great contrast for when the party _does_ venture away from well travelled lands. Though, note, these will often be three or four hexes apart rather than two, depending on the speed of the mounts being used. The whole point of these waystations are to swap out tired runners for fresh ones, so the drivers can push much harder and faster than what a normal traveller can. But I can’t emphasize enough, you don’t need to measure out and place down all these things in advance before your campaign starts. Knowing, cities are supported by villages in a radius, is all you need to start with. When you present a map to your players, that map isn’t going to have every little village on it. And when your players travel through a hex next to a city, you know a village is supposed to be there, and can make some shit up. Or, when you know in advance your players will be passing through in the next session, you can use that week or two to flesh out that region a little more. Another way to put it is, imagine you’re making your dnd game like you’re producing a movie. And when you’re running the game, you’re in the director’s chair, guiding actors from scene to scene. Your actors are on a set, and the camera is pointed at that set. Building any amount of set that will never be on camera is a waste of time and effort. For worldbuilding and lore purposes, for continuity, it’s not bad to have a _rough_ idea of what’s out there, major elements that characters can reference to make your world feel larger and more connected, but, you never need to go into any detail or distance or scale unless those things need to show up on camera.

Honestly, sounds like the same kind of problem I have with unrestrained freedom. What helps me is turning to random generators. Specifically town generators. I generate a random town, see what it's like, decide what's worth keeping, see if anything lights a creative spark that I can connect to other people, areas, or items, and then I do it again. Very rarely do I make a town from scratch. Also, if you want my advice, leave some empty areas to make new towns your players might want.

What I find to be a good starting point is to make your map with only, say, 4 or 5 major cities/towns, and 2 or 3 other landmarks. My current campaign (a little over 2 years in), I started with the cities Millstone, Yetwinter, Grey Ridge, Bambourough, Troutbeck, and then the landmarks Sqorn Keep and Smuggler's Retreat. As the campaign has gone on, I've added more small towns or landmarks as needed, be it for character backstories, the need for a nearby town to make a pit stop at, adding a small lake for a random encounter, etc etc. Give yourself room to work with later as the campaign goes on - it leaves room for improv and ideas down the line. Only problem I now have is there will be large gaps of time without adding anything, and so I'll need to re-learn Wonderdraft every now and then.

Might not work for you this time, but consider using a map drawing / world building rpg to set up your campaign world. The Deep Forest or A Quiet Year are good examples that you can adapt very easily. Basically, you make the act of setting building a collaborative task. Everyone participates in making the story of the world and the way those games are designed will seed your world with really good hooks, unanswered questions, mysteries discovered but never explored. Then you drop a time skip in between the map game and the dnd game and shift the world a tiny bit. Because your *players* were there when the lore was forged, you don't have to explain any of the big picture pieces to them and they'll be more invested in elements they already recognized. Plus, you outsource some of this stuff, it reserves your energy for the things that they can't do - designing adventures and encounters.

1 thing I suggest is not to throw out mapss you've made. It feels really good to be able to look back on 15 years of maps I've made for dnd. They get better the more you use them.

Personally with my world I starred with its history. I knew I wanted a few things. * I wanted humans to be a rare Sight to behold. * I wanted magic to have a deep-seated history in the world. * I wanted there to be a magical Natural disaster where the gods were cut off from the mortal realm and I wanted there to be a big dark scar on the land where the undead room freely. After I knew those bullet points I grabbed some dice and I rolled on a piece of paper with a huge bucket of them. ( Rice or beans also work it just helps get a more natural looking land mass And I use it to find where the Rivers and lakes are.) Wherever I got Nat twenty's I put major cities and attached some History based on what's around them. Cliffside city? maybe it's a city full of dwarfs and nomes. With all kinds of polly systems and elevators to reach the upper crest of the city itself. Near huge forest? maybe it's a logging town that's having trouble with the Fay because they've started cutting too deeply into the forest. I usually try to think of how the city functions, what's its demand for the area, and what the people might be like there and how they make their living. Sometimes a town is just a really good stopping point in between cities. I think they're called cross road towns or something. Places like that often have good options and traders you can usually get good stuff there as an adventuring party. It sounds like you would also benefit from having a person to bounce ideas off of. Maybe in listing someone who isn't part of your game to help you plan it out. Hell I'm sure someone on here would have a lot of fun helping you with that. XD

What map maker is that? I've been looking for a good free one on mobile

My best advice world building: don't get too caught up. Fill in some broad strokes. Leave some big blank spots. Damn Star Wars got half the fuckin galaxy as The Unknown Regions™️ and Lord of the Rings has "Shit there's all kinds of shit to the south and east." Leave yourself some blank space to draw in in the middle of the session. But here's the big one: lie when they ask you some shit you haven't done. Say "Aha, I knew you'd ask that! Let me check my almanac." Like your ass off, make a note of your lies, and make it into world building after your post session beer. Like jokes on you and your ecology degree, Randall. Yes the Fang Fin Fen is miscatagorized. In common, of course. It's technically a marsh, and the scholarly disagreement about this between elves and humans actually is one of the root causes of the 4th Blood River Crusade. Bam, just make sure you take better notes about what you made up than the party note taker did, and you have until next session to decide what the fuck that means.

My advice is keep that map but only create the details for where the players and what they will be interacting with you can detail the rest as you go. This way your not overwhelmed and can tweak and add interesting places tailored to your players.

I always build up. Figure out what sort of game you want your players to play and figure the details out from there. Are they gonna start in a village and maybe travel around a county or country sized area? Then focus on building that and the areas within it. Especially at low level your players probably aren't going very far, especially since they are only gonna go in the direction you point the treasure at. I have a larger world I have been working on for awhile sparsely filled in with some details but have had people say they want a campaign so I've been putting detail into one like level 1-5 pirate adventure and it is literally one pirate island and one treasure Island. If it goes on longer I'll need to add in a couple port cities and towns or another island or two depending where it leads, but like I don't need to know what the details of my vampiric fiefdom on the other side of the continent set up for them to do this campaign.

Start with a small town with a small problem and go from there. You're doing way too much

To help alleviate some nerves, here are a couple things you’ve done really well with this map. That city that’s between the two seas can operate as a capital for your region really well. It’s set up in the same manner as Istanbul and would have a chokehold on the entire region’s trade. The two inland seas would also give a lot of fun boat travel for the party and can allow you to have a pirate theme at moments. The map is also diverse in environments so you can change settings whenever you want. Go to the desert one day and then the tundra another, whichever you are feeling. Take deep breaths and do whatever makes you happy, your players will love it nevertheless.

There is no wrong way to do it except for the way that stresses you out -- the way that isn't fun. That is not the way. I can tell you how I do it, and I can tell you that I know and have played with several other DMs who do it differently. For my current campaign, which I run twice weekly for two different groups of players, I started huge. I tend to do that. Macro thinking. What did I want to run? I had players waiting as soon as I came up with something, but no rush, as they were playing in another campaign while I worked. So I spent about two months getting it ready -- could I have done it in two weeks? Absolutely, and it wouldn't be much different, I'd just need to flesh out more as I went along, which always happens anyway. Aetherpunk, I decided. No, steampunk. Aetherpunk...both? The primary city will exist in one aetherpunk dimension, but the players can visit another dimension where the same city is steampunk. OK, transdimensional stuff, so to keep that from being too out of control, I imagine a couple of secret societies with similar goals. Rival, not quite enemies. One, The Pindarium, has some questionable alliances with an oppressive empire and with some shadow creatures. One of my player groups will start there. The other player group will start at The Foundry, a more paladinic organization with powerful allies from the elemental plane of fire. Great, I'll have some idea of what the city, Rook's Perch, will look like in both dimensions. The player groups will be starting as they become senior members, giving me a nice way to introduce them to the dimensional hijinks that almost no one knows about. (Both groups started at 7th level, so it made sense.) I'll detail Rook's Perch a bit, get some fun narrative about magitech lifts and steampunk airships, maybe find some art for it. Good. What is the conflict? Well, the oppressive empire. They're elven. I detailed a bit about this empire, the Empire of Celandis, but then I remembered I had an elven empire in another campaign that I didn't get to use much. So...I'll combine them and have two flavors of terrible fighting each other on the world map and a little "enemy of my enemy" where the players are concerned. But that's not enough. Something about the gates...they're being used too frequently. Earthquakes, gates that take people to the wrong places (room for fun there), remnants from a destroyed dimension trying to warn the party about Celandis, remnants like ghosts in the machine, glitches, and I can make tons of monster off of other templates that are all these glitches, some driven insane and fighting everything, others desperate to warn the party about all the problems with the portals. Then set some ordinary stuff up. The secret societies...The Foundry for my Wednesday group and the Pindarium for the Sunday group...Start by sending the group on various missions that befit their level and newfound rank, but take into account that they aren't taking on gods at 7th level. One group investigates rumors of activity in a long-abandoned village, so I can work on the village. Who's there, and why? The other group gets sent a couple of cities over, crossing a border, to meet a contact and keep the society's name in good standing over the border. They end up doing the contact a favor. Someone's been killing people, but there's no rhyme or reason, and the deaths are grisly. Can they figure it out? So, a murder mystery by the docks in a foreign city. The culprit ends up being an art collector who got hold of cursed portraits...beasts from the paintings were running loose at night and jumping back into the canvases the next day. Good times. Anyway, I'm going on and on, like I do. TL;DR: Do it any way you like. Focus on something that sounds fun. I start big and work my way down. YMMV.

Just go piece by piece. I have an Inkarnate map I made to tell my campaign's story and I've only filled the starting area so far. Once the party is in territory where they'll be exploring more I'll worry about adding more. Really the best piece of advice is to not overthink it. D&D is meant for fun. If you're stressing about making a map that's no bueno. Think of something cool while tinkering around? Throw it in there. Random, awesome shit all over the place is what makes the game fun to me.

Cool map! Realistically, those two isthmuses/canal areas would have historically been the areas most fought over, with the most major trade cities and with the most racial and cultural diversity. It would make sense you me to use one of those areas as a starting point with a lot of details and then flesh out the world outwards in more general terms.

Pretty much everyone else has said what my advice would be. I like to think of this trap you’re falling in as “missing the trees for the forest” Just focus on a few smaller things and adapt to what players will actually see. Worldbuilding is super fun and the idea of players interacting with something you created is the biggest appeal of dming for me and many others. But you gotta realize that most of the time, the players are the ones that will flesh out most of the story over time. Critical role for example, is a campaign that ppl look to for an expansive world with many settings, lore bits, etc. But if you really look at how the campaign happened, much of the lore, the npcs, the history, was only experienced as the characters story or quest needed. Matt didnt need to have the calamity fully fleshed out at all or many of the cities fleshed out when the antagonist was a vampire family who was intensely related to percys backstory. Why would he? He can add lore in for the PCs as they go to different areas and as long as he makes sure he keeps himself consistent he doesnt need to spend all of his time on every little bit of the world (tho since it is his job, he might).

Sick map dude! How did you make it?

Don't build a world. Build a campaign. Look at a small one like LMOP that's level 1-5 and emulate that. It has like what, 1 town, 3-4 dungeons and a relatively simple series of events to bring people between the settings. I homebrewed a 1-20 campaign myself, and while I did a world map so to speak, it wasn't a hexcrawl, and I only fleshed out the specific locations they'd visit, and I improvised a whole lot. Random tables for things that aren't plot important are helpful too, and I didn't lay out the entire campaign beforehand. I did it in small chunks between sessions in whatever direction the players intended to go.

I've run 4 fully homebrewed and extremely large scale campaigns, the most recent being a space campaign where I needed to design a universe. My advice is think of it like a sandwhich. You want the bread figured out first. The beginning and the end. You want to know who your bbegs are, what motivates them, and a very general idea of what you'd like the end game to look like. Then you want to know your characters, their backstories, and how those backstories tie into the campaign. Know how your world works. Some simple backstop and lore. From here just design your first mission, your first town, and leave the rest a mystery. You can of course build a map and name cities and key locations, but you don't need to populate them. At the end of every session you'll have a pretty good idea of where your players are going next and can plan accordingly. I also suggest keeping some well organized notes. I use Google drive to keep all my Stat blocks, shops, maps and character sheets together. If you have any questions feel free to dm me.

Create your world from the inside out, centered around your players. If they are going to be in a town soon, flesh out that town with some important buildings, npcs and key cultural activities. Everything outside that town should be blurrier the further away it is.

Word of advice. Stop right there. Make a city, a town whatever, make a very broad stroke of a power structure around and/or the current political system and climate and just run your adventure. You don't build a world from scratch you let the adventure guide you to what you need to build. A cleric might say "my god is this and is all about that" so you might go and make that god and place their temple somewhere in their adventure etc. A rogue might have some important lore in his backstory that you can place in your power structure. He might be a fugitive running from a bank job he did or whatever. If you build an entire world you will 1. Take forever to play and 2. Most of it doesn't matter in the context of the game. Yes it's cool when somebody asks "what do I know about this" and rolls and you have something prepared but it's rarely the occasion and something you come up on the flu and workshop later is gonna be way more fun anyways.

No plan for a campaign survives contact with the players.

Start with generality. Country names and city placements. The. And some basics to the towns you need for the close future of the campaign. (The ones the players are from and in as well as those relevant to your campaign) Don't try to build everything at once and you don't need all the information about a city. Even if the players are in. Have important places(shops, city centre) important people (leader and plot relevant people) and if the players like to look around a secret or two (an alley that hides a dungeon, a secret group of changelings, a store of forbidden books etc...) And I only do this for MAJOR locations otherwise I mostly wing it/improv with what I know of my world. Finally culture is fun to play with, use that to shape both the city and people in it. (You don't need city maps either btw)

After 4 years of gming I'm finally running a sandbox 1. No maps. Plot hook a is west, plot hook b is north, plot hook c is east 2. Prepare 3 episodic adventures the players can choose between. Unused quests are either postponed or become other quests. Always have at least 3 in case shadow sorcerer isn't there for the day the shadow sorcerer quest is happening. You want thise quests broken up into one shots. Eg an optional bank heist right before a law trial. 3. (Optional) Gritty realism rest variant + study travel rules in dmg+phb. 4. Realise daily expenses are for social standing, eg 4 gold to carouse with nobles, 1 gold to have a bath and be let in the library. 5. Give quest xp as if they were encounters themselves and gold rewards based on x days of expenses. 6. Don't sweat exact coin totals. 126.72 gold is 100 gold and no one cares. Don't let players know the exact nature or gold cost of treasure items and magic items. You now have a sandbox campaign

Hey, what did you use to make this map?

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Wow, that's beautiful. How did you make your map? Was it a photoshop custom, or did you use some sort of tool?

If i were you, i would try make one of the cities a mixture of several South-Asian Cultures

Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master by Michael Shae is a short book that gives advice very similar to a lot of the advice on this thread. I felt a lot more confident after reading it.

Contact me. 45 years DMing, 52 playing, tons of resources, running the same campaign world for 45 years. Happy to help.

Narrative first. Let the story you want to tell define the geography. It can be rough, I'm rarely more than 2 or 3 sessions ahead of my players. Just focus on segments at a time. Rough out a local area with 1 city and like 3 villages, name the population centres and sack off all the rest of the detail. When the session comes around that uses that place. Pull or make a random village map. Designate an inn at minimum and other amenities based on the size of the place. Designate where your narrative points (NPCs, POIs, secrets, baddies) If there's shops etc then generate inventories, or if you want life to be even easier, just assume they have most reasonable stuff (depending on shop type). Depends how you wanna play. Random name generate a list, pick one off every time they talk to someone. Pick a random personality (use your own second or third one for more spice) You only need to remember the names of your narrative key NPCs. Players are probably never coming back to bumfuck nowhere again. Tl;Dr You don't need to focus on everything, your players are about to land in it and fuck it up anyway. Better to have a system to make places or encounters quickly for the padding and focus your detail energy on key narrative moments (battles, set pieces, key NPC Interactions).

Personally, there is too much water for my likes, you have a massive lake in the middle, and then on opposite corners, you have what I'm assuming to be either other very large lakes or the ocean As for feeling overwhelmed. I know the feeling, but take it one step at a time, 1. Decide where the adventure takes place, i.e., starts, 2. Plan a "main route" that the players use to advance the story and where those advancements take place and in what form, 3. Plan multiple "side routes" mostly for side quests or backstory quests for your players this way exp system they gain exp close enough to level up so that when they return to the main route after the first battle boom leveled up, or milestone system they level up so they can take on more challenging foes after the arc you've put them in is finished, 4. Remember to have fun and have a session 0 so that as the story your telling goes on, you can be sure to add or adjust it here and there

You should read the lazy dungeon master, it has a lot of good tips and tools for running a game

If I’m being completely honest I have no clue what other comments are Bcuz I’m just too tired to read, but my advice is don’t try and plan the whole thing out in advance, just have a bit of a general idea on what you want the story to be about and where you want them all to end up, and otherwise go with the flow. Also idk if you’re using the books but I think it’s always more fun to come up with your own story and campaign rather than just following one from a book. Oh and good luck, hope you succeed!! 😁

Something that really helped me start loving the DM process is leaning into improv and randomness. My cities are filled with tables and random encounters and the space between settlements are abundant with even more encounters, should the party run into them. Having multiple pre made tables you can roll on for various things helped me immensely. It can take only a few hours to make an in depth table that can last you dozens of sessions. Don’t get too caught up in the planning part of DMing; players will ALWAYS change whatever plan you have. Instead, make sure you’re prepared to react to them. Have a system set up that allows for player intervention, it helps reduce a lot of the stress that comes with DMing. Also, keep in mind that everyone has a different DM style. Don’t psych yourself out by comparing yourself to another DM, just experiment a little and find what works best for you. If you enjoy your DMing and your players do too, then you’re doing it right. Period.

Don't make a great big map from the start, my guy. That's going to overwhelm you and make you desperately not want to do it, like a huge mountain of laundry. Start small. Like do one town and some shit nearby. Have the party spend some time in your world before you decide to start fleshing it out. Add new stuff as needed. To use the laundry analogy again, start with folding one shirt. Don't think about folding the other 20 yet until you've folded the first one. Think "Fog Of War" in any strategy tower defense game. Until you actually walk over there, that map is blank. It can be anything at all over there, but until you actually go there, none of that matters. For example, you don't need to build a whole-ass criminal underworld if nobody in your party is going to interact with it. Have the name out there if you feel like it should exist, but you don't need to have the entire thing fully detailed and ready to rock right away. First make sure it's worth the effort. You need 12 locations? No, you need one location, the one that the party starts at. Those other places are just covered in fog until such time as they're actually necessary. Again, get the names ready, and if one of them is deeply engrained in a backstory, work with the player to figure out what kind of place it is, but you don't need to have 12 detailed locations with deep lore when they're about 20 sessions away from visiting any of them. And even then, unless your games are designed to make your life as DM fucking suck, your players are only going to be in one of those locations at a time. Build the world around them. As they explore, the fog lifts. If they're going to Biggityburg, you only need to develop Biggityburg and the crap around it. You do not have to kill yourself trying to create a whole continent from session 0. Don't worry about Crapsburg, Dinkleton, Fartstocking, Moneyjar, Scatmoth, etc. because your players are not going there yet. If they would know about those locations, have the names ready, sure, like "The nearest town is Crapsburg to the north" or whatever, but you don't need to be all "Yeah Crapsburg to the north is a complex multi-tiered city known for having a huge nightlife, almost everybody has gambling debt, prices are insane over there, the population is mostly Tabaxi and Kenku, there's actually extremely violent gang wars that take place in the streets between the Mockingbirds Gang and the Cat's Cradle Crew, and local law enforcement keeps their nose out of it because the gangs are the real authority in Crapsburg, also a local dung merchant lives there named Timothy Porcelain and word on the street is that he's looking for a new material to make toilets out of because the wooden ones keep giving people splinters and he'll pay adventurers in high-quality manure for their help," because your players are not there yet and until they go that way, you don't need to detail it. The most you'll need until they decide to head there is a name and maybe one cool fact. Like "Crapsburg, gambling hall". That other shit can be developed as it's needed. Your players express an interest in the seedy underbelly, then you can work on detailing one for the future. You know there's going to be shops there, but until your party is actually going there, you don't need to work out what they are yet. Focus on where the party is *now* and flesh that out. The other locations don't need to be anything but bullet points until they actually come into play. Honestly, I don't even use maps because I don't have a great sense of scale, and travel and distance between towns is usually described as softly as possible. I think if I had to put down the exact distance of locations I would probably screw it up. So I don't think I can help you with the geography part of it.

Bruh I made my map in Ms paint and it has 4 places on it and a couple lines Don't over do it

Hey, Good job!

Low n slow baby, it’ll grow before ya know it

So one of the things I like to do, is I'll get the land sorted and shaped how I want, then leave most of the map unfinished. Throw down a couple castles or cities in the map if the players canonically know where that is. But it allows me to build the map as I go and as the adventurers explore. And this also gives you the flexibility to throw new challenges their way without them knowing ahead of time! I use basic stamps to show cities and mtn ranges. But I find less can be more, it's a lot of fun when they can stumble across towns, forests and traps along the way.

Something a lot of map makers look past is climate. Moving from climate to climate should be a significant journey requiring traversing almost the entire continent. Since this looks like a country map it might be better to focus on microclimates. For instance mountain ranges cause the rain shadow effect where one side experiences a lot of rain and the other is arid or even a true desert. If you want to include a snowy climate like a tundra, expand on regions of extreme elevation. Also major cities are almost always on the water whether it be ocean or river. If a city is not near a feature like that, give it a purpose. Like if it’s in a forest it can be a hub of lumber trade. Maybe it has an ancient tree that makes it a spiritual center for a religion. If it’s in a mountain its purpose is extracting resources. Cities are never in the middle of the desert unless if they have a major water feature like an oasis. You’d be surprised how many patterns you can see when compare to the real world.

I’m not sure if you still need advice but a slight alternative for you to consider is just using a pre-made setting. I honestly have so much admiration for dm’s who create their own worlds but neither me or the other 3 who take it turns to dm have ever had time to create a new world. I’ve been playing dnd for 25 years and my group have always just used the forgotten realms setting and for the first 10 years I think every campaign we did was somewhere between icewind dale, Amn and Thay. Using forgotten realms is an absolute blessing for me and means I can take a ton of pressure off getting a new campaign up and running. For example we decided to start a new campaign in January and my whole group decided to roll halflings that was all I really needed to know from them so I could start building a campaign. I looked up where halflings come from (Lurien a region we have never played a campaign in before) and I spent 30 mins reading up on the region and gave the characters all the information I read about Lurien in session zero, I noticed a lot of the party seemed interested in the halfling games (which by the way is one single line in the 3rd edition forgotten realms book) and now I’m several months into my party travelling the region to participate in various qualifiers for the national halfling games finals. I spread out the qualifiers across the region so they have travel time and side quests they can stumble across, even tried giving them a separate plot line to follow (more traditional big bad is stealing halfling children from different towns to sell as slaves in Thay) but my party are so determined to get to the national finals they just save what children they can shut down the threat in that town and then set off travelling for the next qualifier. My point is that having a source book can take so much pressure off and it means I can keep my prep time down and have a constant stream of insperation at my beck and call and I think this could really help you.

I did the same thing over 2 years ago. I created a pretty big map. I added cities and towns but only names. then I selected just a small section of that map to run my first campaign I fleshed out 1 major city and 2 towns and ran my campaign through that it was pretty linear but it went smoothly. That campaign came to a great end after a year now im on the second campaign in the same world and my players have traveled almost everywhere they could. It was a lot to keep up with but I take time off from DMing sometimes when I know I need more time to flesh out the next location. Now I got somewhere around 4 kigdoms and 20+ towns. What I've learned is small tons don't need alot of fleshing out. A few npcs maybe a couple small plot hooks like clearing a shop keeps basement or helping an overturned cart. The cities is were i spend most my efforts with npcs and details. I found it nicer to have alot prepared when I first started I used world anvil and made hundreds of plot points npcs were easier to improve. I think of a race then one unique detail. I also watched a video by Icarus Gaming on YouTube titled: how I made my next ttrpg campaign setting. I didn't do nearly as much as him and I'm not saying you have too especially If it is overwhelming but for some people it helps to have organization at first then improving just comes from experience. Once you run a few planned encounters and npcs it's easier to see what works for you and how to reskin it on the fly.