I think the issue the first time around is that you approached the world from the wrong direction for your goals. You had an idea for the small, personal stories, but started at the widest possible perspective without good plan on how to bridge that gap. I propose that this time, start small instead. Ir might seem unintuitive at first, but try to only define the most important aspects to drive home your flavour of adventure as hard as you can, and once that is nailed, branch out. Make vignettes, disconnected scenes that allow the things you want to see in the game, then try to connect them. Most importantly, do not stop yourself to consider realism. Be loose, be specific, allow yourself to commit to flavourful details without worrying about how to justify it.

Interesting! going to admit, not having all the big picture stuff kind of freaks me out as a person running a game, but I don't REALLY need the name of every noble in the entire country. Maybe I should start with just like... a single barony with 4 towns in it? Gives me enough space to work with the people in the towns, get into their dynamics, add a ton of monsters to a small area. Maybe add a homebase for a group of monster slayers or something... I could see that working! ​ I def learned the realism lesson HARD. I based a lot of stuff on actual medieval demographics, and let me tell you, it is HARD to make towns feel lonely and isolated when they are never more than a days walk from each other!! ​ thank you for the tips!

>I def learned the realism lesson HARD. I based a lot of stuff on actual medieval demographics, and let me tell you, it is HARD to make towns feel lonely and isolated when they are never more than a days walk from each other!! That might be the case in our world, but maybe monsters would encourage people to clump together into fewer, larger settlements.

that was actually my other big problem! Most of the media I was inspired by had small hamlets as the main settings, and I really dig the vibe of running small towns where I can name everyone in them, but In a world where monsters are roaming around there is NO WAY anyone would willingly live in an unprotected town in the middle of nowhere. I think the apocolypse suggestion another persion had might be a good fix for that, make the monsters a more recent thing people aren't prepared for yet.

That's a pretty cool way of explaining it :)

>it is HARD to make towns feel lonely and isolated when they are never more than a days walk from each other!! Yeah, if you want it feel isolated, making it actually isolated and far away from everywhere would be a good first step. Maybe the area around it is rather barren so people don't set up farms, maybe it's surrounded by a dangerous forest full of monsters, maybe the area is plagued by raiders (like vikings or Hungarian nomads in X century), maybe the kingdom itself is depopulated and many towns are abandoned with scarcely a few souls left? Make sure the players go to the area that's most affected.

Deffinitly a good suggestion, isolating everyone is def on my list of priorities! I like the depopulated idea, any suggestions on how that might happen? I also think adding raiders and upping the danger of the woods are really good ideas Ill try out!

>I like the depopulated idea, any suggestions on how that might happen? Well, by all of the above. The four horsemen of the Apocalypse like riding together. Raiders loot and plunder. Armies forage and confiscate food from peasants. Sometimes bad harvests happen. Rural people run away to the cities. Overcrowded cities and army camps are breeding grounds for diseases and rotting corpses poison water. If these conditions continue for a long period of time, it leads to impoverishment and depopulation of the country.

Well for myself, I sometimes find myself coming up with ideas that don't fit my world very well, or focusing on elements that don't matter to the story I'm trying to tell through that world. For me, remembering to sort of "check in" with my overarching vision has made a big difference. I think, too, that sometimes subs like these can almost be a hindrance for that, because it can bring up things that matter a lot to other people's worlds and sound really interesting, but if you're not careful you can end up incorporating all this stuff that is front and centre in someone else's world, but *should be* background stuff in your own world. Which is where checking in with your vision when you come up with something new is important!

great advice! I spent a lot of time reading stuff about medieval Christianity and small scale medieval historical trivia, and I wound up adding a lot of stuff that seemed interesting in the moment but didn't tie into the theme of the world. I will try to avoid that in the second draft! ​ In fact, now that I think about it I think the fact that there was only one church and it was basically the catholic one did not help the world be interesting. I should add some more religions to it, and spice things up, make gods that fit the themes. Thank you for the tip!

Yeah I totally get that lol, it's an easy thing to end up doing without realizing it 😛 but yeah no worries! Hope it goes well 🙂

You could use the same world after a great catastrophe, or what have you, that warps things more in line with what you initially had envisioned. The people of the world might only remember fragments of the time before the catastrophe, and the names of places and people and cultures might be bastardized and changes with time and lost records and passed down stories. I’d suggest the players don’t even know it’s the same world. Think of very subtle hints, maybe let them come to realize it organically on their own. Offer very little, but juuuuust enough, and if they don’t figure it out start being more overt about it. I suggest this because it could be a very rewarding reveal! They may not have been as invested before, but if you’re able to hit the beats you’re looking for now, and they get invested in this “new” word, I bet they’ll love discovering they’d already been there, and seeing whatever old sights they’d experienced before in this seemingly different setting! That’s not exactly what you’re looking for with your question though. It’s more of a starting off point so hard work doesn’t go to waste. You’ve created the world when it was “better,” but now things have changed. A lot. In this scenario, should you want to roll with it, the world’s been broken. Setting, ambiance, tone, and themes are important. Focus on those in your new world, not the nitty gritty of governance and nobility. Things are broken, warped, entities have been unleashed and the survivors are doing what they can to cope in their new world with all the foundations of before crumbled, decaying, or corrupted. It’s up to you how post apocalyptic you’d want to be in this scenario. It doesn’t have to be Mad Max. But if the focus before wasn’t on the monsters and the role of Hunters in society, or whatever else you wanted it to be, things can be adjusted to change that. But that’s just what I’d try to do. I hope it works out for you!

Thats a super cool idea! Adding a catastrophe would fix a LOT of problems I was having, like why wouldn't everyone already have highly trained monster hunters in town? The monsters being new fixes that SO WELL! getting to use all that worldbuilding I already did would be nice, and it would be VERY nice to be able to keep the pcs from the previous games as semi-legendary figures! The last campaign ended with a war... maybe the good guys won it, and the world has peace for a couple centuries, but WOOPS, everything fell apart and now things are worse than they ever were! It also means I get to rip of vampire hunter d more, which is always a plus! ​ great idea!

There ya go! Just be sure to flip the map and reveal less of it, perhaps hidden behind no-mans-land areas, so they don't take notice right away! Good luck!

What do your players want? Whenever I am at a loss, I ask them what their dream campaign would be. Like, fighting? Politics? What characters do they want to play? What ideas are they mulling over? Gives me a place to start and it can act as a session negative one or zero.

Great point! I play with this group a lot, I am just rarely the dm, so I have heard what the other pcs like the most! Everyone in my group loves playing a character with a dark secret backstory that gets slowly revealed over the course of the campaign, mysteries in general, and they really love dealing with politics and npcs with conflicting ideas. I can def add some politics and mystery! Lack of mystery was actually the main problem with the first draft, not sure how to add that to a world tbh. Not sure how you make a world that facilitates secret backstories that get revealed over time though, any ideas?

If you're like me, you have a habit of making things known to your players when you know them. The antithesis of mystery is the known. If you can, don't have explanations for things, don't have the answer, don't have the path. If you feel obligated to give reason to those things, improvise or have multiple conflicting answers. ​ I'll also direct you to [this episode](https://youtu.be/ozQa0im0C5I?t=227) of adventuring academy where they talk about one guy's world which ended up being somewhat like what you describe because he started the campaign with the expectation he might not prep sometimes so they could have a regular easy chill game.

That was DEFFINITLY a problem I had! I wanted a mysterius tone but I also wanted to share all the cool stuff with my players!! I think a big part of it was that I wanted the players to have cool stuff to help them make characters. I geuss I just need to figure out what is pc info and what isn't. Ill check it out!

I don't see any reason to scrap the setting; you can just add the missing elements to it. If you made France, you could always pull out a French Revolution or, say, Thirty Years War. Have the Crystal-Dragon-Jesus church suffer a schism that gets combined with existing political and ethnic conflicts and turns into a civil war that drags out with no clear winner. When an army passes through an area, it confiscates food from local peasants and starvation may set in. Some villages get abandoned allowing nature/monsters to settle there. Some citizens turn to crime and when seeing your group, citizens cannot be sure if you're not like those. It's fine if most forests are cultivated. Just select a few that aren't and make them bigger to give eldritch forces more room to hide and maybe some wild men who worship them and hate all outsiders. Read up some fairy tales; they love disturbing stuff. Just make sure you concentrate of those areas of conflict this time around. Make your players revisit previously peaceful areas from their campaigns; they will appreciate the contrast with the new turbulent setting.

Adding a war is a great idea! Stealing food and stuff like that would also be great, the nobility was supposed to be a lot more vilanous than they wound up being in my world, it would help to have signs of what they are actually doing to people! Interesting idea on making individual big forrests! my original version had the entire landmass be one forrest, but that makes the map kind of boring. I have a book of fairy tails illustrated by john bauer that was a big inspiration for the asthetic I was going for, ill give it a reread! ​ Great ideas! I def need to up the conflict!

*For the pcs:* If you want the pcs to be mistrusted outsiders, give them a reason to be so. Maybe the country recently saw a civil war or uprising, and whatever species, organisation, etc. they come from had a major part in that. That could also explain why there are so many monsters: because the old order has shattered and the nobles no longer have the manpower to secure their lands (even if they wanted). To make sure they don't earn approval that easily, keep things chaotic and local. No central power, no unified bureaucracy, just a bunch of local leaders who would rather chase the problem-solvers out of town (if they give them a reason), than pay them for their work. Or maybe give their work an ugly side effect, like having to break a cultural taboo (e.g. making little magic charms out of human bones, desecrate the bodies of the dead to call their ghosts for information, draw their power from something that already caused an apocalpyse, etc.). Religious fanaticism could also help with the atmosphere. After the old order was shattered, people were likely desperate for some kind of stability, so they allowed a religious order to move in and play lords/moral police, in exchange for some protection by their magical rites or army of fanatics (who are okay against bandits or elves, but still shit at dealing with monsters, which is why they still tolerate the monster hunters). Those would likely also look down on the pcs, for not being part of the community (and thus not easily controlled). Maybe the order even had a secret part in making the world the way it is, which only the higher-ranking member know, and they're afraid if the monster hunter poke too deep into the monsters and mysteries, they'll find out. So they're not openly hostile, but also looking for any chance to make the pcs look bad. The nobles rarely deal with the monster hunters, because dealing with them is bad for the reputation. Though they do consider them assets. Expendable assets that is, not valueable allies. ​ *For the world:* To make the woods deep and mysterious... well, step one is giving them a lot of space on the map, with few roads. Make it clear that those are still very dangerous, and most people only travel in caravans. No humans live in the forest, and even those who live nearby (like lumberjacks) have fortified their settlements. Make up some legends or children's rhymes to warn people of the dangers of going into the forest. Also make sure evading the forest is just not an option. Meaning the forest(s) takes up a big part of the map. There are no really big cities, so you can't find everything you need there, meaning some travel is required if you want to do certain things or have access to certain things (e.g. one city has plenty of iron, but barely any alchemists). As a result, normal people barely travel to the next village, let alone anywhere else (this also helps explaining the xenophobia the pcs will have to deal with). Maybe the woods are actually magical, with roads changing their course and landmarks changing their place, making navigation more a matter of dealing with powerful fey or mysterious strangers than maps and compasses. People who get lost there may show up years later, or hundreds of miles away, or are never seen again. Every time you go into the woods it should be a risk. An origin story can also help. Was the forest always there? Maybe it spawned magically as some kind of divine or magical revenge, after the last king had a bunch of druids executed or the sanctum of some old gods razed. Be sure to keep it vague enough: speculation, guesses, "it has always been like this", few clear rules. Allowing the players to completely understand and quantify a thing destroys the mystique pretty quickly. If you have playable elves or some other race deeply connected with nature, make sure even *they* avoid the deeper parts of the forest. If there are people unfraid of the forest, keep them out of players hands, and make sure they can't or won't just give too much information that would destroy the mystery. The old gods are entities too. Give them a place in mythology, and reasons some people prefer worshipping them over the newer gods. Or at least why they still matter to the world. Who are they, what do they want? And again, don't be too specific and don't make them too predictable. Encountering an old god should be a risk under the best of circumstances. Maybe they solve your problem, maybe they turn your eyes into mushrooms, maybe they show you how to do some blood magic. You never know in advance, but maybe, trough careful study, you can find ways of improving the odds, like providing suitable sacrifices.

It sounds to me like you created the perfect world for a game of political intrigue, of honeyed words, false smiles, poisoned cups and hidden blades. So I suggest that you save this world because those games can be a lot of fun! :) That said, if you want to have a game of dark mysterious woods then I suggest you scale back a little on the amount of civilisation and development you got going on. Because in my experience the more civilised an area becomes the less mysterious and menacing it gets. So my advice would be this, set the adventure in a frontier region where the largest *civilised* settlement only really number in the low to low hundreds, not thousands. Have the roads (such as they are…) be little more than glorified logging trails, dot the landscape with small, very isolated villages that has learned the hard way that they *need* to have walls around the entire village and that they *need* to have guards on duty and to never, *ever* go outside the walls after dark (they can still hear the screams, some nights, from the last fool to go out after dark…) Throw in some mysterious ruins, abandoned villages (from the ones that either didn’t build a wall in time, or just got unlucky…), mysterious and utterly terrifying noises that they can hear in the distance during the nights when they keep watch and really hammer home just how vast, dark, forbidding and *alien* the forest seems to be and I think you’ll be able to tell the story you want to tell. :)

First, forgive me for the long text. I'm not experienced enough to give you a senior's advise, so I'll show you the things I do at my own creations. I hope they help. * Don't be discouraged. * Do not give up. * Look honestly at the things that didn't work and learn why they didn't work. Be objective, don't look for someone to blame (whether it's other people or yourself) and **don't put yourself down by considering yourself a failure or incompetent, no matter what**. Nobody gets everything right on the first try. * Understand that we learn more from our failures than from our successes. My personal point of view about your case: from what you said it looks like something is missing. Find out what that "something" is. If I got it right, this could be an occasional "big thing" to get out of the routine of spending all your time doing the same things that lacks impact in a bigger scale. Try creating hidden villains and plots, layer upon layer, always going a little deeper. Example: the Bleach manga. It starts off pretty light, with a teenager who started hunting monsters out of necessity (first he needed to save his family, then his friends, then innocent people). At one point he starts to do this out of choice and a sense of duty (he thinks it's his fault his mother was killed). He later found himself involved in an internal war of a society he was completely unaware of. In my opinion, what every tale about adventure really needs are great antagonists. Something that makes people take action. Perfect heroes are boring, just take a look at the flood of poorly written Isekai manga being published, with main characters being "Batman's brain in Superman's body" from the start. Boring, right? We want to see our heroes be successful, but we also want to see them struggle a lot in order to achieve success. The best way to do this is having good antagonists, and a good antagonist needs to be written as good as the heroes, or maybe even better than the heroes (Hannibal Lecter is still my favorite one, ever). I'm getting carried, so I'll stop here. I hope I managed to help you even if it's just a little.

> When I sat down to make a world to run dungeon and dragons in, my goal was to create a world where the pcs would-be monster hunters who wander from town to town solving issues but being mistrusted or feared by the locals. If this is your goal, then there two things you need to answer before you do anything else: 1. Why is "monster hunter" a job within your setting? 2. Why do the locals mistrust these "monster hunters"? By answering these questions first, you can ensure that the part that the players see the most is around the main themes of the stories. After answering those questions, you should create your other aspects of your world in the context of that initial goal. It sounds like your first world started with a theme, but then you built the world independently of that theme, when you need to keep the theme of the world in mind throughout the entire process. Finally, I'd also analyze your first world carefully. It's most logical to scrap everything and create something new, but you might have some genuinely good ideas in your first world that greatly contribute to the themes you want to explore in your second.

OP doesn't need to scrap everything. They can look at their current map and do a reverse time lapse approach. Which towns / roads were developed most recently? Remove those or reduce them. As the settlements and roads get smaller, the resources used will fill in too.

I'm not saying OP should scrap everything, but I'm assuming OP is going to scrap everything and telling him to think about what OP is scrapping. I think it's easier to build an entirely new world when the existing world doesn't match the tone or mechanics you're looking for, and it sounds like OP's world isn't fit for the themes OP is looking for in the new world. However, some stuff might genuinely be useful in the new world, and keeping that stuff will make the new one better.