This set of pages is aimed at helping myself and others move from the background drudgery of laying out the ground rules for a shared world to the fun part of actually making the world. While this shared world is not specifically or exclusively for role playing, much of the discussion on these pages is aimed at the role player.
There are two primary ways to design worlds for fantasy or science fiction role playing. There is the top down method and the bottom up method. For writers there is also at least one more method, plotting.
The top down method is to start with the planet (or local galaxy for science fiction), lay out the world map and then keep zooming in until you get to the village and dungeon where the first adventure takes place. This is the method I personally use. The advantage is depth of the world seems greater. Also, if the players want to leave the initial area, you already have some other areas roughly laid out for them to go to.
The bottom up method is to start with a single dungeon or village and add information from outside the initial area as the party ventures beyond the initial village. The major advantage of this method is that you can start your adventure much faster. All you have to work out is the single isolated village and it's associated dungeons.
For writers, creating the plot first is a viable option. The writer has the advantage of re-writing the world and it's history to fit the end of the story. A role playing world does not have that option. What has happened has happened, and the players expect things they have made decisions on the remain the same.
This site for a shared world pretty much assumes a top down design style. You make the big design choices such as the world map before starting work on specific towns, adventures and characters. When dealing with a shared product, laying out the big picture can have advantages. You won't have people pour tons of effort and time into creating a race or village and afterwards finding out it won't fit into the rest of the world.
The first thing you will need is a way to make decisions. Yahoo Groups offers polls, so that is what we used with majority vote carrying the decision. It really doesn't matter how you make decisons, just that they can be made.
The first poll probably should be genre and the sub-genre's that you are going to design the world around. There is no sense having people work on space travel in a sword and sorcery world.
The second poll should be about rules, or rather gaming system rules that the world will conform to.
The third poll is actually a series of polls that can all be run and discussed at once. This has to do with the physical world or worlds being used.They are world size, shape, and appearance, mapping software, tech level, world creation and world age. Once these have been settled, you can start drawing a map of the world. It could be a collabrative effort or have a very small group submit maps for approval.
The fourth set of polls is primarily for fantasy worlds. They have to do with magic, the gods and such.