I recently decided I was going to throw together a fairly short, pretty much fixed storyline campaign to run online. I don't want to run it in any ready-made setting or one I have already made. Instead, I wanted to design a simple, fairly generic low-fantasy setting designed just for this campaign.
Since I wanted to keep it simple, I picked what I thought were the basic informational elements I needed to cover before getting started. I'd like to know what you guys think, and if there is anything I'm missing.
Location
Geography / Climate
History
Native Life
People
Culture
Religion
Settlements
Conflict
Politics
Dangers
Other Threats
possibles (first two might come under culture anyway): fashion, architecture, military.
It can be useful to know/describe what someone's wearing, what kind of buildings you're in, and, perhaps most important in a game involving any combat, how and with what equipment the players' enemies will be fighting.
Fashion and architecture I would put under culture. I had both of those things in mind but I haven't gone into any real detail with them yet. Good ideas, both.
You're right about military. That could easily be overlooked and then a player could show up with a katana entirely out of place and say, "you never told us we couldn't have them."