Quote Originally Posted by pendell View Post
Maybe, but it occurs to me that a well-developed setting can generate more than one story. Consider Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance -- if the setting is developed well enough, it can spawn not only multiple stories but even a franchise with different authors and modules.

I'm not a professional author. But I have to wonder whether the "leave it undefined until I absolutely need it" school provides the greatest dividends when you're writing a single one-off work, while a "define the setting first" approach allows greater opportunities for revisiting and expanding on the earlier work.
You may not have noticed, but the OOTS world is the most ridiculous paper-thin placeholder for a setting possible while still getting a large-scale story told. It's intended to be Everysetting, to a degree; default D&D with no particularly wild deviations. Because the setting isn't important to me; the characters are. I don't care about nitpicky political details or cultural quirks or any of that stuff—I just need places they can go and do their stuff. If I want to write another story, I'll make another world—one that fits the tone of that story as well as the generic vanilla world I'm using in OOTS fits for a comedic satire of the fantasy genre.