Commonly missed elements to world-building

[jqavins]

Here are the last things I'll say on the subject. (Until I say something else)

First is something I've said before in a different "I'm a new GM, how do I get started" thread. Think about what other GMs have done when you were a player. Think about what they did that worked and helped you enjoy the game, and also about what they did that detracted from your experience. Then do the things that worked for you; they'll probably work for your players too.

There are a hundred ways to do it right. And though there are five hundred ways to do it wrong, at least there aren't five thousand.

As Dr. Spock said (the pediatrician, not the Vulcan) "Relax, you know more than you think."

[CaptainSarathai]

If that's the case, then what would you reccomend a new GM to start with in terms of world building?

Well, it's actually somewhat rare that I build a whole setting in one go. Usually I run a Session Zero-point-5 and go from there. It looks like this:

Spoiler: Session Zero.5

Show

1. Drop the party immediately into action, a'la
"It is sundown in the forest, and the pack of gnolls is closing in."
This is good because it can actually help to establish the type of campaign. You can start them anywhere - locked in jail, at the entrance to a dungeon, on the run from an enemy, survivors of a caravan attack, in a meeting with the king, etc.

2. Who are you, and how did you get here?
This is when they make characters, and they start answering questions. This is their feedback for the campaign.
Suppose they're being chased by gnolls - why, are they being chased? Let them answer. Often times, this catches players entirely off guard, so you may need to help guide them into a resolution, but they are ultimately the ones choosing.
Perhaps they stole something from the gnolls, if so, what did they steal and why?
Maybe they are survivors of a battle, and gnolls are tracking down stragglers - who were they fighting for, and against?

3. What is your goal?
This is where the players sort of tell you where they see themselves in a few sessions. How big and lofty they set their goal tells you how far out it will fall in the campaign. Again, if they are running from gnolls:
"We're trying to bring this amulet we took, back to the king"
Or
"We're just looking for a place to hide, since our army was defeated"

So now you have an idea of where they're headed after this session.
Typically, I will run that intro scenario and then provide a stopping point. Usually it's a nearby town or city, somewhere with friendly NPCs who can give quests and so on. Based on what the PCs have told me about their new adventure, I can finish writing out the adventure at home and come back ready for the next session. I take tons of notes, and draw from those notes to expand the world as necessary. To do this, you have to be pretty good at improv, as well as time-management at the table. I always leave on a cliff-hanger,
"We should get out of town and head for the king's castle"
- "Alright then, that sounds like a good place to leave off for the night. We have a few minutes left, does anyone need to buy anything in town, or join some patrons in a pub game?"
OR
"Well, they have about another hour and a half left, and I didn't write the king's stronghold yet, so... Sounds like a very descriptive journey and a few 'random' wilderness encounters."

You'll notice that this method doesn't really leave much room for a plot. You don't plan that too much, actually. Usually, I go by the general rule of thumb provided by tiers of play.
1-5 Local Heroes
This is usually just the logical conclusion to whatever adventure they helped generate in session 0.5.

6-10 Heroes of the Realm
You need to set this up toward the end of the first tier, and then spring it on them. It doesn't have to be particularly "deep," but it needs to be a larger threat or villain to deal with. It's very easy to start this tier with local heroes attracting notice of the king and being summoned to deal with a problem that he needs their help with.

11-16 Masters of the Realm
This is harder, because by the end of this, the players should be in charge of their own institutions, kingdoms, guilds or whatever. Usually I escalate the previous enemy. Example, they defeat the threat to the Realm, but discover that she's actually part of a cult trying to summon an Arch-Devil into the world. Now the players must prepare to confront this Devil, and in doing so, must forge alliances of their own. This makes them very powerful, politically, by the end of this tier.

17-20 Masters of the World
At this point, if the campaign gets this far - they're basically attaining godliness. We're talking about threats that can destroy the entire world. I rarely take free-form campaigns this far, and at this point, you're dealing with stuff that the players are giving you for fodder.

You can really only plan about 1 tier ahead, and even then, it's a loose plan.

The other method is to actually plan out the setting, like I did with the Arthurian campaign. In this case, you have some questions to ask:

1. What is the Campaign Theme?
For me, this was King Arthur and his Knights, with the players as Knights.
For you, this could be anything. You can base your campaign on a culture, or on a certain idiosyncrasy, or a feeling, a piece of music - basically, whatever inspired you to start this campaign. This is really easy - if you're starting a campaign and building a world, you already have a theme in mind.

2. Start where the players begin, and work outward
This makes life easy. You only need to really detail out the areas that they will see first, and in doing so, you will come up with ideas for extending the map beyond this area.
In my Arthurian campaign for example, I started by fleshing out "not Britain," where the campaign will take place. However, because of certain aspects of that realm, I know that there are other regions and cultures elsewhere on the map, and can flesh them out as necessary.
Your starting region doesn't have to be large at all - a single kingdom is big enough, really

2. Consider Magic
This can be as simple or as complex as you want, but it needs to be decided.
In my Arthurian setting, magic is old and misunderstood, and only Divine magic is particularly common in the current era. Druids and other Arcane or "Old God" magic is considered witch craft and punished. At least in the starting realm.
You could rule that magic is a major component of your campaign, like in Eberron. You could rule that it's wild and untamed, or that it works in some unusual way, like in Darksun.
Usually, your handling of magic will be consistent for the entire globe. However, it's possible that your particular kingdom treats the knowledge of magic differently from their neighbors. Consider this.

3. Think about your races, and who lives there
This is where you start getting the neighboring regions, because you will usually have "immigrant" races. For me, Elves, Dwarfs, Goliaths, and Humans all came from elsewhere, and have their own homelands beyond the starting map.
Think about how these races will interact. Are there any races that don't fit in the starting realm? If so, will players be able to play them as Outlanders, or are they banned from play in this setting?
The major concerns are usually the Elves, and the Uncommon Races like Half Orcs and Tieflings. Half Orcs are important, because it answers the question of what Orcs are like in your setting, and if there are any truly "evil" races. Elves are important because they are a staple race, and messing with the Elves is usually a good way to set yourself apart.
Because you're confining yourself to a single kingdom, most of these races should live peacefully. There might be tensions, but they will rarely be a full-on war, as you see between kingdoms across borders.

4. What is the biggest threat to the region?
This is usually not the villain of your campaign. In my campaign, Mordred is the BBEG, but he's a surprise arrival - the kingdom is usually just fighting against the Orcs and wild human tribes in the north.
Are there wild beasts in the dark forests of your realm? Is there a strange plague which turns whole towns into mindless undead? Does magic roil across the landscape in devastating arcane storms?
How do people deal with this threat? Is there an army to stop it? An Inquisition?
This threat could be another whole kingdom, but I prefer to keep wars for use as a plot-point for your campaign. Stopping a war is an adventure in itself, so we're limiting our scope to day-to-day hardships here.

5. Who are the Quest Givers? What do they want?
This is where you start getting into your factions. You want several of these, and it's a great place to manufacture conflict.
Again, these factions are the day-to-day people of your world, not necessarily the campaign-specific cults or rebellions. These are your kings, your guild masters (and their guilds), tribal leaders, religious figures and so on.

6. Begin your campaign
Your setting is mostly done, so now you start your campaign. Introduce a situation that needs resolved. If you do a good job with making an interesting campaign, you should be able to control your hooks so that the party never strays into uncharted territory beyond the borders. If they do, then you need to tie those areas back to the campaign, which will result in necessary shifts to how you answer the above questions. Every time you flesh out a new region, you have to ask yourself those questions.

Eventually, as you play enough campaigns in different regions, and weave them all together, you'll create a vibrant world with several detailed realms to adventure in.

[Crazy Author]

I think I understand what you're getting at? You refer to the idea that some lower level spells, such as Create Food and Water could theortically be used to end hunger everywhere. Or how True Polymorph and Wish can be easily used to destabilize a market and are pretty much MAD by their very existence. (MAD, as in Mutually Assured Destruction). D&D doesn't seem to really resolve that claim itself. A lot of artwork and modules seem to imply that Adventuring is a common hobby, and that clerics capable of casting those spells should exist in pretty decent numbers.

Any suggestions?

The core books offer number assumptions based on city size of % of casters in a given population, from which calculations can be run to show how it's not really feasible for the casters in an assumed standard setting to be providing such services to a large degree and still be semi-to-full-authority figures in the community, rather than public servicemen/women of some kind. I'm not going to re-hash that, it's been done, and I've stated the point.

More relevantly, my suggestion is this: don't forget motivation (for this, or any other purpose). Any given character could do these things, but they have very little driving purpose for doing so, unless the GM/setting gives them that reason. There are realistically only a comparative handful of capable True Polymorphers/Wishers around (again, assuming standard population spreads), and they can already handle their own wealth/resource concerns; what motivation could they have for trading for mundane currencies and supplies to the degree they destabilize an area?

Yes, there is the possibility of world-altering, but standard mortal motivations make it unlikely for NPCs to carry out the feared actions listed unless they are one-in-a-million plot-driving NPCs, in which case the PCs will likely get opportunities to have an effect on how events are unfolding.

A note on what I do in my own games, which can be taken or left as you like: I inform my players at the outset that while I won't railroad them, they should remember their characters exist in living world, which will react to their presence or absence. In this instance, if they want to ignore the obvious(and not-so-obvious) hooks leading them toward a confrontation or alliance with the elderly wizard who's decided to corner the salt trade single-handedly, and instead chase rumors of weak dragons guarding hoards of treasure two kingdoms over, that's fine. But they don't get to complain about the setting itself or sale prices on their loot changing down the line, when they might have been a sneaky deity's pocket ace to foil the resulting market shift.

**********

Apologies if this is effectively a necro. I felt mostly confident it was recent enough that a response might still be of some small value.