“World building is about giving enough detail to make a setting feel alive, but not so much that it overwhelms.

Erik builds from the inside out—starting with the characters’ perspectives—letting theme, magic, culture, and scale grow organically, while keeping the world playable, coherent, and full of story hooks.

Robert Builds From the outside in—starting with a grand struggle and theme of a setting—and then notching down to how the players influence the story.

Purpose

1. What is the purpose of your setting?

   Is it designed for a single story/adventure, or to support multiple campaigns over time?

   • Single Story → Micro-World Built Around One Theme
   • Multi-Arc Campaign → Region Built for Growth
   • Long-Term Sandbox → Open World with Modular Regions
   • Personal Project / Novel Setting → Interior-First Worldbuilding

2. Who is your setting for?

   Are you creating this as a personal project, or will other players and GMs contribute to its growth (e.g. home game, Westmarches).

   • Personal Project → Build for Your Own Storytelling Needs
   • Player-Focused → Build for Player Experience
   • Multi-GM Shared World → Build with Rules and Tonal Consistency
   • Collaborative Sandbox → Leave Room for Player and GM Contributions
   • Publication or Public Release → Build for an Audience You Don’t Control

3. What scale do you want to explore?

   Are you focusing on a local village, a regional power, or the entire globe?

   • Local Village → Micro-Scale, Intimate Stories
   • Single Region → Medium-Scale, Modular Expansion
   • Multiple Regions → Macro-Scale, Campaign-Ready
   • Global → Full Worldbuilding, Long-Term Sandbox
   • Mixed-Scale → Layered Focus

Theme

1. What core theme drives your setting?

   Is it a major theme that shapes everything, or a minor motif that appears occasionally?

   • “Power always has a cost.”
   • “The wilderness pushes back against civilization.”
   • “Memory is unreliable, and history lies.”
   • “Hope lives in the cracks of broken systems.”
   • “Transformation is inevitable, but never painless.”

2. What Three Micro themes influence your setting?

   1. Central Theme: Power always has a cost
      1. Those who seek power are tested morally as well as practically
   2. Central Theme: The wilderness pushes back against civilization.
      1. Micro Theme: The Land and its creatures force adaptation.
   3. Central Theme: Hope lives in the cracks of broken systems.
      1. Small courageous actions ripple undermining oppression

3. What real-world or pop culture references inspire your setting?

   How will these influences shape tone, style, and player expectations?

   • Historical + Real-World Influence
   • Pop Culture + Media Influence
   • Mythology + Folklore
   • Genre Fusion
   • Personal Inspiration / Obscure Media

4. Do you want your setting to be “kitchen sink [dispersed] or not-kitchen sink [focused]”?

   Will it include every genre trope imaginable, or stay tightly coherent?

   Kitchen Sink examples:

   • GURPS (Generic Universal RolePlaying System)
   • Rifts (Palladium)
   • Dungeons & Dragons, 4e / 5e default cosmology

   Non-Kitchen Sink examples:

   • Ravenloft (Flavors of Horror)
   • Call of Cthulhu (Classic Lovecraftian)
   • Vampire: The Masquerade (World of Darkness)
   • Blades in the Dark
   • Star Wars RPG (FFG or d20)
   • Shadowrun (Cyberpunk + Fantasy)

Magic exists globally, but here it’s rare, feared, or restricted.

Example: A rural frontier where only hedge-witches and wandering clerics display magic—and even that draws whispers.

Details:

You don’t have to use ALL the rules in PF2E , they even say so in the book. But if you decide to, there may be some hand waving or restricting needing to be done in PF2E to make the game believable.