World Building
Creating settings, whether for D&D or for fantasy fiction or whatever else, can be a pretty hefty task. There's an awful lot of work needed to even cover just geography and a bit of history. That's not to say there's anything wrong with going to all that work, but there's a certain economy of effort that comes into play for a roleplaying game setting that may make going into full details less than desirable.
For the most part, when designing a campaign setting, the only time you will want to be as detailed as you possibly can is when you are writing for publication and need to have as much in place as you can for those who will be purchasing your product--as they desire a complete and fleshed out world for their money. The problem is that when you are working with a home campaign, unlike when dealing with a published and heavily promoted work, your players are extremely unlikely to have the interest or investment of time in becoming familiar with the setting.
What this means is not that a setting you create for your world is going to be inherently less interesting by any means--simply that you can't expect there to be an immediate familiarity with it the way there would be with Forgotten Realms or the like, unless you are yourself a published writer and are setting the game in the same world as your fiction. Since this is not generally the case for most GMs, you can generally expect your players to have only the knowledge of the campaign world that you provide to them in advance.
Neither should this be an invitation to provide copiously detailed notes to your players. Quite aside from the fact that most people, when presented with 50+ pages of details on a setting will generally skim through it at best, the likelihood that your players will require more information immediately to create their characters than can be conveyed in two or three pages is low at best. Ideally you should include only what they need to know for the very basic details of the world in the initial handout, and be ready to answer any questions that your players may have on specific details from there. It's better to have them ask questions if they're interested than to overload everyone with too much information.
In fact, depending on how comfortable you are with improvising, it can be quite rewarding to simply cover the bare necessities for setting, and for any further details, discuss with your players any further details they may require; as the campaign continues this can offer a great deal of freedom to expand on new ideas that come to you as the campaign progresses, to build the characters directly into the game, and to accommodate new rules or setting elements that were not present when you began.
The essential thing you have to keep in mind if you're going to do this is to keep very good notes on the decisions you make. It's more than possible to build on the campaign world as it comes up, rather than plan it all in advance, and by keeping notes you ensure consistency. Once you've got your players invested you can add in details like holy days, myths and legends, and anything else, as needed for the campaign. Coming up with it all ahead of time is nice because you can think of it all but it leaves your players out of the process and makes it more complicated to add in new elements later.
For the most part, when designing a campaign setting, the only time you will want to be as detailed as you possibly can is when you are writing for publication and need to have as much in place as you can for those who will be purchasing your product--as they desire a complete and fleshed out world for their money. The problem is that when you are working with a home campaign, unlike when dealing with a published and heavily promoted work, your players are extremely unlikely to have the interest or investment of time in becoming familiar with the setting.
What this means is not that a setting you create for your world is going to be inherently less interesting by any means--simply that you can't expect there to be an immediate familiarity with it the way there would be with Forgotten Realms or the like, unless you are yourself a published writer and are setting the game in the same world as your fiction. Since this is not generally the case for most GMs, you can generally expect your players to have only the knowledge of the campaign world that you provide to them in advance.
Neither should this be an invitation to provide copiously detailed notes to your players. Quite aside from the fact that most people, when presented with 50+ pages of details on a setting will generally skim through it at best, the likelihood that your players will require more information immediately to create their characters than can be conveyed in two or three pages is low at best. Ideally you should include only what they need to know for the very basic details of the world in the initial handout, and be ready to answer any questions that your players may have on specific details from there. It's better to have them ask questions if they're interested than to overload everyone with too much information.
In fact, depending on how comfortable you are with improvising, it can be quite rewarding to simply cover the bare necessities for setting, and for any further details, discuss with your players any further details they may require; as the campaign continues this can offer a great deal of freedom to expand on new ideas that come to you as the campaign progresses, to build the characters directly into the game, and to accommodate new rules or setting elements that were not present when you began.
The essential thing you have to keep in mind if you're going to do this is to keep very good notes on the decisions you make. It's more than possible to build on the campaign world as it comes up, rather than plan it all in advance, and by keeping notes you ensure consistency. Once you've got your players invested you can add in details like holy days, myths and legends, and anything else, as needed for the campaign. Coming up with it all ahead of time is nice because you can think of it all but it leaves your players out of the process and makes it more complicated to add in new elements later.