The Campaign Builder's Guild

I guess my method is based on two principles:
1) Never throw anything away.
2) Do very little organization or housekeeping of your personal space and thus lose a lot of things.

Some of the things for Tera can trace their descent back to my middle school years.

I have tried to collect some of the random notes and put them into one binder and then organize that binder, but it can be difficult because of the randomness of the notes.  For example, there's at least one page that belongs in two different places in the notebook because one thing is one side (like part of my lists of Gods) and something else is on the other side of the paper (like a part of the timeline).  

My working method for creating new bits of my world is to take one of my idea notebooks with me when I have time to myself and decide to head over to a fast food place that offers free refills on soft drinks.  My muse likes caffeine and sugar.  Then I get a booth to myself, spread out my stuff, and camp out for an hour or two and maybe write one or two pages of campaign material.  I think the timeline for my world of Tera (linked to in the sig) is the product of a few of these sessions at Quizno's.

Well, specific suggestions would depend on what you have so far - world map, one or two countries, religions, races?

I tend to develop most things, projects (of any sort) somewhat top down. That is, I start with a big-picture overview. However, once I have that general framework in place I usually go down to the small local detail in some particular area that interests me - flesh that out rather fully then move back up - looking at how it influences the big picture (if at all significantly) and then how it shapes and is shaped by it's immediate surroundings - expanding alot of what could be considered the middle level. This reflects more my personal thought processes than any formal design rubric though.

Generally - just start with what interests and excites you most conceptually and follow that for a while - it will suggest a lot of related tangential material during the process.

If you're wanting to have something playable quickly (and your group doesn't really need a big picture of the setting right of the bat) then a bottom up approach will serve you better. Focusing on one or two nations and some adventure plot lines within them can have you up and running quickly. If the characters don't know a lot about the world at large this can be considered a rather realistic perspective - and if you decide to change some things about the larger world from what you initially tell them then finding out that what they believed was incorrect is likewise realistic. (Believing the world to be flat and circled by the sun did not prevent a great deal of culture and history from developing in spite of such a huge, glaring fundamental error in cosmological perspective. . .)

If you have the time, working top-down can speed things up in the long-run as most of your initial work will remain in place at the more local levels, or help clarify the reasons for the local variations, helping to see how the pieces fit together as you shape them.

I prefer working on computer since it allows cut and paste editing and rearrangement of material on the fly - I find it easy to keep the info organized as I develop it. Before having access to one I had done a lot of writing long hand and ended up with a lot of repetition and poorly organized trains of thought that required extensive editing when I finally typed the material up (flipping through and scratching out various paragraphs as I went so I could see what was done. . .) I take basic notes longhand but once thought development moves from keywords and a few complete sentences into building paragraphs I pull up the word processor. I haven't used Free Mind for my setting but will probably experiment with it some in the future.

Quote from: Elemental_Elf

Quote from: KindlingMy technique... write nothing for several months, mulling the setting over in my head in odd moment now and then. Then write a small section. Repeat.

That IS a good method but its inherent problem is that the method is rather slow :(

You're telling me! :P

Quote from: Kindling

Quote from: Elemental_Elf

Quote from: KindlingMy technique... write nothing for several months, mulling the setting over in my head in odd moment now and then. Then write a small section. Repeat.

That IS a good method but its inherent problem is that the method is rather slow :(

You're telling me! :P

I have to admit that this is the only way I can write anything work keeping. Everything else seems to come and go.

thanks for all the posts its helped me work out a rough system that i might be able to make work >.>

yeah currently i just keep a folder titled rp shit. and i dump everything in there...atcually half the time i cant find anything in there.

thank you midgard for letting me know about that program and i now plan to purchase it. btw there is a trial version so i would suggest using it becuase you will like the program.

I attempt to spread my notes out as much as possible. I have ideas in paper in many many places, in a wealth of documents, in several folders, on three different computers (plus two USB flash discs), a few on various wiki's I have been playing around with and the rest stuck inside my head.

Obviously I can't suggest my method to anyone.

Midgardsormr: I used MyInfo long ago and it worked quite well. Only problem is I don't remember where I put those files now.. It's on some harddisc, somewhere.