Worldbuilding Talk Thread

[QED - Iltazyara]

I really, really, don't like to think how long I spent looking for images of the latter of those two. I mean, in the Harpies folder alone I have 182 images; and I'm damn picky. The former is easier to work in some ways, and is what D&D uses as a default... But I much prefer the latter, more akin to the myth, and simply more interesting. I mean, what is all that different between a harpy with wings and arms, and an angel? It's the elves are humans with pointy ears issue all over again.

I went with what TheWombat said myself, and a couple of example images for that sort of thing are these; Dragoart's 'Harpy Woman', SleepingSnowWhite's entry to the 'Monster Girl Challenge' and because I value having images of both genders (harder to pull off than you would think.) Longjunt's 'Bird Boy'.

Links of course, don't have permission to re-post or anything. I'd probably have chosen other ones, but I've found Pixiv to be... unreliable on the SFW front, to say the least.

I just think doing harpies this way is more interesting; both as a monster, or as something to alter a way a player has to think if they choose to be one. And I have to work on the latter, as my guys are... Well, the first thing that happens at a session is the first guy in the room calls dibs on the MM.

[Eldan]

Wings as arms, with pteradactl talons at the top of the wing for gripping.

Indeed. Hoatzin-Harpies are the way to go.

And a side-note: humanoid angels should just go. They are a waste of space.

[Grinner]

Some time ago, I had been playing through a (computer) RPG called Avadon. At one point in the game, the player is forced to navigate a gauntlet of bizarre monstrosities, the product of the very wizard whose ass he has been sent to kick. These monsters, likely to inspire envy in hearts of Frankenstein and Moreau, are invariably the result of magic, despite the fact that they were born in a laboratory.

Leaving aside my distaste for pseudoscientific magic, this begs a question. Suppose a setting was made where the pseudoscientific pretense had been disposed of. Suppose kings there regularly consulted with cackling madmen, and suppose their monsters were made with hard science. How would this spate of deranged geniuses come about? Where would they have learned their craft? From where would their equipment come? How would the state of society, a heaping of mud hovels whose occupants wile away their lives scratching a living from the earth, result in their genesis? What effects would modern technologies (modern medicine, guns, etc.) have on a medieval society? Could a medieval society even exist with access to such technologies?

Inventions like the printing press enabled the spread of knowledge. Scientific knowledge expands when it's spread, putting more minds to work on the same ideas. Didn't the spread of ideas kill the concept of kingdoms, though? Can a medieval society remain medieval in the presence of sweeping technological advancement?

[VoxRationis]

I always try to make sure that there's no 'purely evil' race in the worlds I make. One thing I do with goblins is I ramp up their rate of reproduction. They have litters of children in a few mere months. They're sentient K-strategists. Their rapid reproduction and maturation allows them to spread aggressively and rapidly. The problems only arise when their expansion is checked by some force, such as human communities or environmental factors. In these situations, the villages rapidly overpopulate. The villages struggle to feed all of them, the populations grow rapidly, unable to move out, and it gets grim fast. Soon they live in extreme poverty, having to raid other groups to get the food and goods they need to survive. It adds a layer of depth to goblin raider problems when that goblin is raiding to feed a family of 20 starving children.

Incidentally, that's r-selection right there. K-selection is what elves and dwarves do.

Edit: But I like your idea. In one of my settings, the goblins in the pseudo-Europe part of the setting are primarily refugees from where their civilization is getting conquered by a dwarven empire. When they take to banditry, it's out of desperation, and they don't all take to banditry.

[Grinner]

A descision needs to be made, and I just can't decide:

Harpies with wings in addition to arms, or wings that are replacing arms?

Both are really cool in their own way, but unfortunately they can have only one.

If you've not already decided, what about bat wings?

[Yora]

Wings as arms, with pteradactl talons at the top of the wing for gripping.

Yeah, that seems to be probably the best way to go. It's at the same time more alien and more realistic. There's been a couple of pictures of small dinosaurs with wing arms in recent years.

Counterpoint: This is awesome.
But since I already have a species of humanoid with wings and arms, who shot arrows from the air, wing arms it is.

[Eldan]

I'd really go with the "hands on the wings" approach mentioned above. Because Hoatzin are awesome.

[QED - Iltazyara]

While we're still on harpies, I'd like to ask how people reconcile the (traditionally) all female nature of that particular race, nymphs and dryads tend to be glossed over as being rare. And fey, fey are weird.
But how do people here try to handle it? Ignore it completely, attempt to find a reason they can survive, define a strange cultural system which allows them to survive? I try for the third option, but it gets quite awkward to write about after a while.

Although last time one of my players read a mono-gender entry they were giggling madly. Woman scares me at times.

[TheWombatOfDoom]

While we're still on harpies, I'd like to ask how people reconcile the (traditionally) all female nature of that particular race, nymphs and dryads tend to be glossed over as being rare. And fey, fey are weird.
But how do people here try to handle it? Ignore it completely, attempt to find a reason they can survive, define a strange cultural system which allows them to survive? I try for the third option, but it gets quite awkward to write about after a while.

Although last time one of my players read a mono-gender entry they were giggling madly. Woman scares me at times.

Women are the hunter gatherers and men stay at home and guard the nests. Add to that a higher birthrate of women, and bingo. Men are rarely seen, but they exist.

[Grinner]

Women are the hunter gatherers and men stay at home and guard the nests. Add to that a higher birthrate of women, and bingo. Men are rarely seen, but they exist.

Alternately, mammalian parthenogenesis?

Or you could go the non-biological route and decide that they're really the offspring of some weird god. The female traits are just the vestiges of their mother deity's feminine aspect.

Or maybe they're not born at all. Maybe they're cursed humans or something.

It all depends on how you want your setting to come across.

[Everyl]

While we're still on harpies, I'd like to ask how people reconcile the (traditionally) all female nature of that particular race, nymphs and dryads tend to be glossed over as being rare. And fey, fey are weird.
But how do people here try to handle it? Ignore it completely, attempt to find a reason they can survive, define a strange cultural system which allows them to survive? I try for the third option, but it gets quite awkward to write about after a while.

Although last time one of my players read a mono-gender entry they were giggling madly. Woman scares me at times.

Extreme sexual dimorphism? Perhaps the males look so different from the females that they are commonly mistaken for being a different species entirely. Maybe they're less avian, and can be mistaken for another common humanoid race. Maybe they're more avian, and are easily confused for large animals. Either way, cultural differences springing from the nature of the dimorphism result in females being by far the most commonly encountered by outsiders, giving the impression that the entire race is female.

[Eldan]

Both males and females have breasts and share in caring for the young?

[Yora]

Women are the hunter gatherers and men stay at home and guard the nests. Add to that a higher birthrate of women, and bingo. Men are rarely seen, but they exist.

That works for me. Though I think harpies are the only such race in my campaign, that is not outright magical in nature. Nymphs are spirits of the land and don't reproduce sexually at all, and gorgons are super rare and their origin a mystery to everyone.

[Yora]

I just had an idea for a calendar system that is both solar and lunar, but still pretty simple:

The reference points are the days on which a full moon, half moon, or new moon is visible during or after sunset (even if there are clouds). If you want to name a specific day of the month, it is "one day before the new moon" or "two days after the new moon", and so on.
A new month begins at the morning after the night of the new moon.
Every year begins at the morning after midsummer.
This means that the last month may continue well into the next year.

To plan for specific days in the near future, thi works well enough.
For historic records, it should usually be sufficient to date events as being at the beginning, middle, or end of the second or fifth month.
The setting is mostly tribal villages, but there are some cities that would require advanced administration. Could they work with such a calender, where the length of any month is not the same every year, and dates my shift by a who
e month within the year? I think public servants could just get their wage on the last day of the month, regardless of how many days that given month had actually had, and the same for taxes. Since there are no complex tax calculations including percentages and such, and people don't change jobs often, everything should even out in the long run anyway.

There might occasionally be disagreements between astronomers about any month starting a day earlier or later, but for the cities there could simply be an official royal starseer, who writes up the exact calendars for the next 10 years, and that's the one all city administration will use. Diplomats arranging meetings would be used to "compare calendars" when agreeing on dates, to make sure they both write down the same day. Merchants trading between cities can never accurately predict shipping times, so they wouldn't have to worry about it either.

I quite like this system because it's both simple and intuitive. And I don't have to worry about exact durations of lunar revolutions and leap years and such.

[Everyl]

That sounds like a fairly reasonable calendar system. It's not that dissimilar to calendars used in some real countries today.

The only catch I see is keying the months to the new moon. Since the new moon is basically defined by not being visible, it could be very difficult to tell whether it's the night of the new moon or just too cloudy too see a slim crescent moon. It might make more sense to base the calendar on a less ambiguous point in the lunar cycle, though you've said that bookkeeping oddities are expected, so maybe that doesn't matter.

[Tzi]

How big a part does world history often play in World Building? Like establishing various written histories or general facts? Personally I do this a lot but often wonder if it's ever relevant.

For example I have a few stories for a newer project of mine. Mainly about the Golden and Silver Age of the Elves. Mainly detailing their civilization at it's height, it's fracture into many smaller civilizations and eventually large scale collapse under infighting and mago-climatic crisis leading to their current state. Some of this is done to explain ruins and to some extent the geography and climate of some areas.

For example many Elves became so dependent on using magic to manipulate the weather that when this ultimately destabilized the worlds climate, a few city states simply collapsed and starved since nobody knew how to manually farm anymore and the climate was now to poor for growing.

But to some extent I wonder if these minute details are relevant. Orc's being largely pastoral and being the first race since the collapse of the Elves to heavily domesticate livestock and dogs, while humans early on mainly were agriculturalists and only after Human-Orc contact did the two exchange these techniques. Though mainly the mass prevalence of Half-Orc's which are quickly replacing the old breed are responsible for the Orc's small cities and forays into agriculture. Like stuff like that. Is it useful to have this written down or am I focusing to much on these details?

[Yora]

The somewhat suprising answer is: Very little.

If you are writing a setting for a specific use, like a novel, movie, or game, only the things that directly interact with the characters are of any relevance. Of special note here would be that Tolkien did not create his setting as the background for a novel or a game. Yes, he did have insane amounts of bckstory for his world, but that was just coincidence. But still lots of prople copy him, not being aware of this fine detail. Backstory doesn't hurt, but it doesn't actually contribute much either.

In case of RPGs, you have the added factor that the characters and the audience are the same. If the characters don't know about it, it effectively doesn't exist. If the characters know about it, but it is completely irrelevant for their descision what to do, the players will almost certainly remember nothing of it. If in the end, a player asks "so we should go to that tomb of that guys ancestor and get the family sword?" and the answer is just yes, then the players won't remember anything about the ancestors story. The brain automatically sorts raw data for the relevant pieces of information and discards the rest.
Players will care for a particular tale if tht tale holds important clues to solving their current problem. But they only know that after they have already encountered thr problem. If you just do a story dump on them, barely anything will stick.
To go on my mandatory tangent about Star Wars (seriously, this is probably the most efficiently crafted setting ever), there is a huge amount of backstory that explains how the situation on the start of the first movie came to be. But it all does not matter, and all we get are three sentences that tell us that there is an evil empire, there's currently a rebellion going on, and right now a group of rebels who stole super important plans are about to be captured. That really is all that matters to get into the story and all that the audience wants to know.
Yes, recently there have been video games with massive amounts of backstory, that can be read ingame. But these are not part of the game. These are things that some people chose to read in addition to playing the game. It's information that is otherwise irrelevant to playin the game. As said, it doesn't harm, but it doesn't fulfill a relevant function for the game either, It's not something that needs to be written to have a complete game.

When you do write history for your setting, ask yourself why it matters to the audience. My setting has bunch of history, but it's mostly brief. It's already the short summary that the players will remember. "The Vandren came to the Ancient Lands 300 years ago, when elven lords hired human warriors from the plains as mercenaries." That's the relevant part. It tells the players what the relationship between the Vandren and the other peoples of the region is. They are newcomers with a highly influential warrior class, who are respected by some as valuable mercenaries, and by others as a barbarian horde who allied with their enemies and took over some of the land they lost in the wars. Who the elf was who hired Vandren mercenaries first, when it happend and where, and what battles the Vandren fought is irrelevant, as of now. It's not something I need to write.
Another case is the "creation myth". In the distant past, the humanoid races lived in caves and trees, much like trolls or grimlocks still do. Then two races from the spiritworld arrived and build great castles through magic and enslaving the wild humanoids. Eventually they abandoned the castles again and disappeared bck to the spiritworld, leaving their slaves to fend for themselves. These former slaves returned to their wild kin and shared what they had seen about farming and metal, and so they started to try out how they could do it themselves. It's irrelevant to know the personl story of any of these fey or slaves, or that of any of these castles. I can simply drop an ancient ruin somewhere, and the players have the neccessary context to know what their characters are looking at.
A good example here would be Mass Effect. The setting history comes down to five events, that are pretty much glossed over, but help explan the majority of relationships between the species and power blocks. For example, the humans have been having border skirmishes with the Batarians for decades, but since the humans allies have warned them not to settle so close to Batarian space and the colonies are not in official human territory, the humans are on their own regarding what they want to do about it. That's all the historic background you need to understand that humans and batarians usually despise each other and frequently get into deadly fights. no need to go into detail about which colonies got attacked and under what circumstances.
Another great case would be Dark Sun. I know a lot about the setting and feel perfectly capable of running a fully adequate campaign in it. But I don't know anything about its history, and neither would player characters. The world is now a scorching dessert and the few city states are ruled by semi-immortal sorcerers. Acording to the stories, that wasn't always the case, but no commoner knows anything about that supposedly earlier world. And that's all.
I do have one specific individuals story for my setting, though. It's the one of the lizardman slave who started a rebellion against their naga overlord with a group of sun priests, and who became the first king of the lizardfolk empire that still exists today. However, this just now is basically the whole story of his life. It's relevant because it says that the lizardmen still hate naga, that the current king is still a general who fights them, that the remaining naga have lizardfolk slaves, and that the sun priests have a religious monopoly. These four important pieces of information are now easy to remember, because they have an explaination. The full report about the rebellion is still irrelevant.

To repeat myself, detailed history is something you can indulge in at your pleasure. But to get your setting to a point where it can be used for its intended purpose, it doesn't really constitute any progress. A little bit of a general outline of the past is often a good idea, to get some consistency when you place cities, dungeons, and monsters. But usually it's a good idea to consider how much detail you really need for that. Which is only very little.

[Tzi]

[...]

To repeat myself, detailed history is something you can indulge in at your pleasure. But to get your setting to a point where it can be used for its intended purpose, it doesn't really constitute any progress. A little bit of a general outline of the past is often a good idea, to get some consistency when you place cities, dungeons, and monsters. But usually it's a good idea to consider how much detail you really need for that. Which is only very little.

Hmmm I see your point.

Right now I think I have a largely truncated, or at least glossed over series of bullet points.

• Elven Golden age, Elves dominated the planet but began to fracture over geographic distance, ideology, religion ect.
• Many of the High Elves developed so far in magic and became so obsessed with it that their population took a nose dive, too few High Elves had children. The increasingly aged High Elves came to rely on magic, other races (Enslaved, Necromantically risen or underpaid) to sustain their cities and lifestyle. Eventually this use of magic radically destabilized the climate and altered the ecology of the world as they tried to use magic to due away with their dependence on others AND the need for manual labor.
• Other races, and the "Outcast," Elves rose against the High Elves, attaining victory over the course of 2 centuries of skirmishes.
• Elves are now a fraction of their former population, with Dark Elves (The former outcasts) being the majority.
• Other races have begun to recover and form their own civilizations particularly in lands not effected by the lingering enchantments of the High Elves, sometimes called the "Elf Winds," that can cause radical weather shifts.

[Everyl]

If you do decide to make a detailed history and the details in it contain hints relevant to the players, it may be a good idea to be sure that the players have access to that history in writing. I once played in a game that had a rich history/mythology, with hints to the significance of major plot-relevant prophecies throughout. The GM printed out the history that our characters knew as we discovered it (we spent a fair amount of downtime in libraries researching our quests) so that we could read and review them as needed. As it turned out, there were also hints about how to overcome the final major puzzle/defeat the Big Bad of the story in there, but no real way to recognize them until very close to the end of the game. If we hadn't been able to pull out those records of what-our-characters-knew, we would never have figured out the solution.

So I guess what I'm saying is, if it's important but not obviously so, it's probably a good idea to write it down for your players.

[Yora]

Right now I think I have a largely truncated, or at least glossed over series of bullet points.

Looks decent so far. But now the next question is, how these things are relevant to the present? Are there still lots of ruins and artifacts of the high elves around, even though they are now a relatively small population? Do the dark elves have any special plans now that they have the upper hand?

Or to put it into a cheesy mystic statement: "Backstory is not the question, it's the answer."

Backstory explains why things are now as they are, and provides context to predict what is going to happen next.
"There are 100,000 high elves in the world" is a fact that does not require any backstory information how that number came to be. However, saying "there used to be millions of high elves in the world, but their conflicts with the dark elves have reduced them to only 100,000 and the process is still continuing" tells us quite a lot about what we can expect to find in the world and what might happen in the forseeable future.

[Tzi]

Looks decent so far. But now the next question is, how these things are relevant to the present? Are there still lots of ruins and artifacts of the high elves around, even though they are now a relatively small population? Do the dark elves have any special plans now that they have the upper hand?

Or to put it into a cheesy mystic statement: "Backstory is not the question, it's the answer."

Backstory explains why things are now as they are, and provides context to predict what is going to happen next.
"There are 100,000 high elves in the world" is a fact that does not require any backstory information how that number came to be. However, saying "there used to be millions of high elves in the world, but their conflicts with the dark elves have reduced them to only 100,000 and the process is still continuing" tells us quite a lot about what we can expect to find in the world and what might happen in the forseeable future.

It depends, Some aspects directly impact the world. The High Elven civilization or effectively the Elven civilization reached a point of such knowledge and capability via magic that other races, including the Dark Elves recorded that they became somewhat narcissistic and obsessed with their own perfection and attempts to build utopia's. In doing so they used high sorcery to radically change the worlds climate. Think Eversong woods from WoW, except the magic necessary for that essentially destabilizes the climate elsewhere. These magically enchanted areas meant the High Elves never had to work or farm or do much of anything. And they became more dependent as their population became mostly aged due to declining fertility (Which many civilization have morality tales about the causes of that).

The Dark Elves, which is mostly a loose term for Elves outcast from the original civilization, are first vindicated because they opposed the pursuit of utopia and were more careful with their use of magic. These "Old Believers," were rather diverse themselves however the fact is the opposed the new ethic among what would become High Elven culture. And continue to look down on what remains of the High Elves, Though active warfare has ceased as the remaining High Elves, save for a very few wish to even continue or recreate their ancient powers.

Some races EXIST due to the events of this time. A race of lizardfolk were bred specifically to be the servants and protectors of one High Elven city that was in conflict with another. As the quest for a Utopia gradually schism into many Utopia's. Catfolk also came about as well, though created by Elves who chose Lichdom and immortality as undead, and mainly for idle entertainment and pets.

Also vast areas of the world are difficult to travel in as the destabilized climate creates what some races call "The Elf Winds," with radically shifting weather conditions and sometimes magical storms.

What can be predicted is the Catfolk do not trust and find undead the worst form of evil. The Lizardfolk actually revere their former Elven creators, Humans and many Half Elven societies cling to an existence in the lands were the Elf Winds have dissipated OR are hardy enough to survive in them.

[Everyl]

I like Yora's "Backstory is not the question, it's the answer" approach. It's fine and dandy to have tons more backstory planned or even written out, but the parts that your players will remember and care about are the ones than are relevant to their characters' lives in the setting, and explain why things are the way they are.

So, putting the stuff in Tzi's last post into that format, here are some examples (with assumptions about how they impact the setting that may or may not be accurate, but seem reasonable based on the info available):

The setting is wracked by unpredictable weather changes that make travel and agriculture difficult. Why? Because ancient elves tampered with the climate so much that, on some level, they broke it - hence, the term "elf winds" for these weather phenomena. Reliably arable land and safe trade routes are no doubt in high demand as a result of this, and are a regular source of conflict among the peoples of the setting; people willing to brave the more unstable territories can probably make a lot of money trading in exotic goods, either carried across the dangerous areas or scavenged from long-abandoned settlements.

Several races of beastfolk inhabit various regions of the setting, many of them clinging to the ruins of cities and settlements long abandoned by elves, while others live in safer lands outside of (former) elven territory. Why? The elves, at the height of their power, engineered several races to be servants and entertainers. As the climate broke and elven power dwindled, many of these engineered servants were simply abandoned as elves retreated to safer havens. The elves still have a prominent place in the cultural memories of these peoples, however, with the details depending on exactly how they were treated before and the details of how they became free. Many of the slave races rose up against the elves while their empire was crumbling, leading to poor relations between the remnant High Elves and their creations to this day.

There are two major setting elements - crazy weather and beastfolk races in conflict with ancient elves - explained in short, digestible backstory blurbs ending with how they could affect the setting today. Is that the kind of thing you were talking about, Yora? And sorry if I totally misrepresented your setting, Tzi, it just happens to be the example at hand for this conversation.

This really has me thinking about how I'd boil the histories of my settings down for player accessibility in the future.

[Tzi]

I would say you described it better then I would have. I may have to use that as a good run down of the setting.

When it comes to factions or races and stuff you pretty much nailed it with the beastfolk.

[Eldan]

I take a different approach. I write down as much of the history as I can. Not necessarily because it will come up in game. But first of all, I like doing it and thinking about it. I write tons of worlds and stories that no one will ever play in, in all likelihood. Second, because having more history gives me a feel for the world and culture. Third, because you never know what might become useful at some point.

[Weltall_BR]

I believe that the point of creating a world history is explaining to yourself how things came to be as they are and to provide internal consistency to your setting. To follow Yora's example: the lizardfolk have a warrior king, hate the naga and follow sun priests because X, Y and Z happened in the past. When thinking about X, Y and Z you may realize that it doesn't make sense for the lizardfolk (for example) to follow sun priests. This may lead you to reconsider this particular lizardfolk ethos or the backstory you have created for it, so that things fit better together. Of course, if following sun priests is something you really want the lizardfolk to do and you don't to change the backstory (maybe it would change too many other things), you can ignore consistency, call a deus ex machina to provide this result or simply say that no one knows how this came about (modern scholars believe that initially Tyr was the main god of the norse pantheon, but that at a certain point in history and for unknown reasons (which were probably also unknown to the people of the time) Odin took his place). At least you will know what you are doing. Creating a backstory is not for the players or the readers, it is to the worldbuilder.

That said, remember you don't have to do this. In the "bottom up" approach to worldbuilding you certainly won't be doing this, for example. It really depends on your style...

[Tzi]

I believe that the point of creating a world history is explaining to yourself how things came to be as they are and to provide internal consistency to your setting. To follow Yora's example: the lizardfolk have a warrior king, hate the naga and follow sun priests because X, Y and Z happened in the past. When thinking about X, Y and Z you may realize that it doesn't make sense for the lizardfolk (for example) to follow sun priests. This may lead you to reconsider this particular lizardfolk ethos or the backstory you have created for it, so that things fit better together. Of course, if following sun priests is something you really want the lizardfolk to do and you don't to change the backstory (maybe it would change too many other things), you can ignore consistency, call a deus ex machina to provide this result or simply say that no one knows how this came about (modern scholars believe that initially Tyr was the main god of the norse pantheon, but that at a certain point in history and for unknown reasons (which were probably also unknown to the people of the time) Odin took his place). At least you will know what you are doing. Creating a backstory is not for the players or the readers, it is to the worldbuilder.

That said, remember you don't have to do this. In the "bottom up" approach to worldbuilding you certainly won't be doing this, for example. It really depends on your style...

I see your point, and wish to continue. But I see the value in having a "World History Abridged," kinda deal for the players.

[Tzi]

Returning to the basics of a campaign world, I'm choosing with this project to focus mainly on something simple and locally focused as I can make it.

So the history I mentioned before, leads into a single fairly large region. A veritable fertile crescent river valley and canyon system midst a large arid region and some wasteland devastated by the ancient High Elves misuse of climate and tectonic plate altering magic. The area represents one of the more verdant and abundant areas for farming and thus is both a place people gravitate towards BUT also a fought over region for its a place worth having. The many basins, oasis, and the Great River which is yet to be named, are sort of a "Re-birth of Civilization" type deal were societies akin to the Sumerians, Babylon, Canaanite, Egypt, Persia and India are rising. Obviously there are other areas of the planet with other inspiration. Such as a chain of Islands with a Greeko-Roman bent, a region of Celto-Germanic tribes.

But for the river system, I'm contemplating differing civilizations. My initial idea is various warring city state/kingdoms and small territories, sometimes banded together to fight other areas with only loose "International" law between them. Or maybe even one single Empire attempting to hold the whole thing together, or there was once union and people wishing to claim their place as the new one true monarch of the deserts.

I even had a cultural theme and title. "The people whom first came called it the Vulva of the World, a wet fertile place midst the endless wastes. The people now say the world menstruates eternal for now all fight for it."

[Yora]

I had an interesting idea regarding approaching timelines in settings, though this would mostly apply to published ones.

People always hate it when settings are advanced in continuity, with rulers and deities liked by many people being removed and cities or even entire countries being completely changed, or completely new factions being introduced and given a hugely imporant role.
Though on the other hand, things do tend to get stale and boring if a setting only shows a single point of time and saying "this place is dangerous" or "these two factions are looking to start a fight with each other", but nothing really happens with it.
Being part of a larger ongoing conflict is only interesting when there's a real perception that there is actual fighting going on and it's all leading towards something eventually. Have I mentioned that I like Star Wars? If you would play in a Star Wars game (and are not a super huge fan who knows all the Expanded Universe), you probably would not expect the game to start at the end of the last movie when the Empire seems defeated and the war over. You'd much rather play in the middle or even the beginning of the war and knowing that in the end the Rebells will defeat the Empire doesn't mean it's all going to be a pointless railroad.

So my idea is this: When writing a campaign setting for an RPG, the setting comes with a timeline that covers the general outline of major events for a reasonably range of years, say 30. But the setting does not expect every campaign to take place in the year 30, instead it's even assumed that it starts in any year but 30.
From the very beginning you know that a certain city is doomed and will be razed by dragons in the year 7. One kingdom will be devastated by a zombie horde in the year 12, but the infestation will eventually be cleared in the year 19. And the king of another kingdom will be assassinated in year 23, leading to a civil war for succession. When these places and characters are created, it's already under the premise that they are doomed and it is made clear to GMs and any players who care to read up on the setting from the beginning. If you fall in love with a doomed city or doomed lord, you do so because you like the story of their doom. You basically start the setting with the complete Metaplot in place.
However, the important thing about all this is, that the official timeline is kept general and with not too much detail. You know that a city will be destroyed and it has something to do with dragons. But except for a few major NPCs who still appear later in the timeline, you don't know who will be involved in the fighting and who will die. One of the greatest ideas I have for a Star Wars adventure begins with the players being low-ranking Rebell agents who get handed a data disk with instructions to deliver it to Princess Leia at any cost. If you have seen the movies, you know from the start that this disk will eventually be delivered successfully. But you don't have the slightest clue what ordeals you will have to go through to reach her, what sacrifices you will have to make, or even if anyone of you will survive. The whole premis of the video game Halo: Reach is that you are on a planet where the human forces are almost completely annihilated and only a single one of the super soldiers will survive. Which is not the one you're playing in that game. The point really isn't to find out if you will win or lose. And frankly, in almost all fiction the answer to this question is pretty much a given.

Or if you are going to watch the movie Alien, you don't go into it completely blind, wondering what will happen to this space freighter and if the crew will make an interesting discovery. You watch the movie because you want to know how the disaster does happen and which of the protagonists will survive. And in an RPG, the protagonists are always the player characters, not the major NPCs of the setting. There is indeed some degree in which such a setting would lose freedom and mystery. But I think the gains might be worth it.
Right now, one of the best ideas I have for my setting is a small colony deep inside an ancient forest that is almost unexplored and feared by most people for the creatures and spirits that inhabit it. The colony is established in a ruined city and does do very well for four years, until an old evil is awakened in one of the ruins and the whole valley gets overwhelmed by a horde of undead, forcing the warrior order who founded the colony to fight a battle they can not win to protect the settlers fleeing back to the homeland. Half a year later the valley is once again abandoned by the living. I think this is so much more interesting than simply giving a snapshot, telling only that there is a settlement in the forest build on some ruins, which are being explored by the warriors. A town is just a town like any other. A doomed town is a rich source for all kinds of adventures. By picking the point in the timeline for an adventure, it can be about exploring a ruined city in a remote valley; establishing a new settlement; exploring overgrown ruins; dealing with a zombie outbreak; or dealing with the aftermath of a zombie outbreak. I think exploring the empty valley to search for a settlement site even gets much more interesting when you know the whole enterprise is doomed. Going blind into a story is always nice, but I think almost all the time with fiction, you pick up a work with a general idea of it's theme. And I feel this isn't much different.

[VoxRationis]

I don't know about that. My players and I both like a fair degree of agency. If we devise some way of altering the flow of events such that Reach does not fall, or the Rebels move their base to Coruscant so the Empire can't destroy it with the Death Star (or even move it TO the Death Star, as in Irregular Webcomic), or something to that effect, we want it to "stick." Having the future planned out in such a timeline will put a damper on any feelings of agency, especially if the group has powerful characters that could conceivably alter history through their direct intervention.

[Everyl]

The timeline thing is an interesting idea, but it seems like it would be difficult to execute in a setting made specifically for gaming. It works well for settings like Star Wars because there's already an established, well-known story that spans a matter of decades in that setting. People know and care about that timeline. It's not easy to get that level of investment in fake history in your average person.

The Trinity Universe games from White Wolf tried something like this - it had three games, set at different points over a 200-year time span in the same almost-real-world setting. To a hardcore nerd like me, it was awesome, but the games never really caught on, and have now been out of print for quite a while. Part of the problem is that there's a degree of information overload, requiring players to not just understand the time and place their characters live in, but also understand the recent history and pretend to not know the not-yet-happened "history" that they had to read through to get into the setting in the first place.