Homebrew Worldbuilding - Don't Skip This Step 

*Thanks for watching!* What do you think is the most important thing when designing your own world? Let us know in the comments below! Order your copy of The Practical Guide to Becoming a Great GM here: bit.ly/3EDNbmK Find each chapter of the video easily by clicking on the timestamps in the description.

When it comes to homebrew it's all about internal consistency.

The FEELING of coherency, how things interact, that is what I put most effort into. Second to that, depending on what kind of adventure I DM, how much can my players change in this world.

I feel the most important thing while designing your own world is remembering you're not writing a fantasy novel, you're making a setting for a TTRPG. Make sure you don't write it in such a way that the party is locked into playing out your fantasy novel plot "just so" as opposed to being their own decisionmakers and going where they wish - with your suggestion or otherwise.

Two parts to world building for me, with regards to "epic" sci-fi/fantasy. What holds this world together? What threatens to tear it apart? Once I've answered those two questions, it's between me and my players at the table to riddle out all the little how's and why's.

Most important thing when designing my own world? That there's a place for the players to enjoy themselves in it.

On world building, the most important thing I believe is giving the world verisimilitude. One way to do that is to introduce changes dinamically as the campaign goes, in response to the in-course events and obviously the characters' actions. Guy discussed those things in a video years ago.

My biggest parameter is what sort of characters can be in the game, as the opportunity for creative additions to characters can complicate their unity. I ultimately want to help my PCs make great stories together without struggling to fit into the overarching setting. Probably why we've strained for weeks about simply the constraints of gaming.

My first step is deciding on a theme that I want to explore, and yes that gets then interwoven with all following decisions for the setting.

I created my homebrew world in July of 1983. I've been running games in it, ever since. I've had players come and go, since then. My game world has evolved, but it has always been a sandbox for my players. Together, with my players, we decide where they will go, and what they will do when they get there. I've never needed to start over with a new game world. It just keeps getting better as the years go by. I also invite my players to help flesh out my world: their PC's actions matter, their PC's choices make an impact. They feel as though they co-own my world due to how much time, effort, and input they have put into it. The co-designing, the co-expansion efforts, help draw them into it. My players have told me that they love it, they know it, and it is 'real' to them. Bring your players into it, and they will help design it, they will help expand it. Cheers!

The most important thing in designing a world is to make it consistent. To me I don't care if your world is unoriginal, boring, stupid, and horrendous... as long as you've established a pattern of consistency in some form that staples it together It has an appeal to me.

You are THE best channel for GM's! I finished now to binge all the playlist... ITS GOLD JERRY - GOLD!!!!

Putting constraints in a way that inspires you

Theme is probably the single biggest impactor of homebrewing your world. it's vital. It determines what how you build your world, it affects how your players respond, it affects the messages that come through in your campaign and general play. Every fantasy story we cherish today has a well-polished world theme.

For me, when I have been writing my first RPG, it can seem so overwhelming to try and get a head on things. Everything is connected to one another, economy is tied to culture is tied to people is tied to geography is tied to the world itself. For me, getting a really strong CORE to build off of was the most important 'thing' when designing my own world. It was basically a box of feelings, emotions, motifs, and imagery I wanted to powerfully invoke, and then the rest of the game became about communicating that CORE both implicitly and explicitly. This works well for 'softer' worldbuilding but really I was forced to ask myself about if what I was writing was communicating the details I wanted, and how could I have these overarching details carry from chapter to chapter. When I knew the game was magical soldiers set against a fascist state like in 1984, I needed to convey those ugly truths of the world, I invented a refugee crisis so you can see the callousness of the Empire who offer them citizenship in exchange for military service. A Empire who works their political enemies to death creating mega structures, a Empire that is hypocritical in both obtuse and small ways. More then answering the "why do we take down the government in a punk game?" it helps keep the Empire tonally consistent, they are savvy yet lazy, the glory of the Empire is stretched thin like the borders. It becomes clear such a state would control history, attempt to justify their actions, and mire their own people in hatred. Whenever I am writing to that end, having those clearly defined CORE ideas will help make the world's pillars be clearly defined and synergistic versus a grab bag of your best ideas.

I've always felt that using someone else's world was more work and not less. Having to study and memorize locations and history and NPCs seems less fun and more like work than creating my own. I can focus on what's important to me and not bother with the rest.

Verisimilitude. Keep it consistent. Aid the suspension of disbelief for the mundane, within the fantastic. I have kept and added to my same setting for over twenty years. I don't know everything about it, but I keep it fresh by focusing on different areas. Allow your players to discover it and explore it for themselves.

Having fun while making it and being excited to let others run around in it. Even if they might break it because that is when it truly feels like it's alive.

Word to the wise: keep up on your Watch Later! I'm just getting around to this video, and am absolutely gutted to find out Guy was at the UKGE and I didn't even know! Was a great show, but could have been even better if I'd known :O

I always think up of what villains and environments I want my players to find and be pitted against, to explore. That incentive to explore is pretty important to me, along with just always giving them the opportunity to learn more about the areas they're visiting to the degree that we both share the same knowledge of the said location if the player feels the desire to do so. As for the villains, I simply just enjoy a well-written villain. I want to create somebody that makes the players go "Oh shit." I want to give players goosebumps when the BBEG shows their face. I want these encounters to be unique in their design that it calls for "out-of-the-box" thinking.

The most important aspect for my campaign world is that it can be flexible. This is a collaboration, not just me telling a story, so I need to world to work for my players too. This helps them invest in the world because they helped to make it and continue to do so.

Posting this after the question. The most important thing to add to a homebrew world you are creating, in my opinion, is history. It's amazing how much stuff a little piece of history or lore about your world can allow you to add into the player experience. You can answer questions much more interestingly, use it as lures for adventure, tie it in with so many other events past present or future to make them more interesting, ect. Adding history let's you make more history, and really adds depth to to the world you are creating

I definitely agree with a lot of the other comments that coherence/consistency is very important for me. So that even in different regions/cultures it all still feels a part of the same world. That being said, I definitely struggle with getting too deep into the history and makeup of the world. I always want to go all the way back to the beginning of existence and time. Not necessarily a bad thing but I can get stuck in working out all the kinks and histories and never get down to playing in the world. I am planning to push myself into trying out just building one place within a world and leaving the rest semi-undeveloped and seeing where the players take things. Trying to stretch myself more and more to see what I can learn! -Dan

I believe the most important thing is deciding a theme to used as a backbone. Every core design decision will then either reinforce the theme or subvert it, facilitating cohesion. My current campaign's theme is sacrifice, which recurs both in story and custom gameplay mechanics.

A lot of my players through my DM career have been video game RPG veterans who don't really care what the world they are in looks like. Its always been a more of "Where do you want me to be" and "Where do I need to go". So for me, the most important thing in my worldbuilding is to keep things loose and undeveloped until they need to be developed.

Enjoying it! If you make your world for yourself and have fun doing it, you win

I started creating my own world recently. I started with one of the things you mentioned. Why this world instead of an existing one. It has helped me always push a bit farther to more interesting elements.

For me it was putting in a few central concepts that will be coming up again and again throughout the lore. A few most influential gods, a rare but widely known and coveted material with a variety of uses and peculiar properties, a certain tradition that is adhered to across most of he region relevant to the story. Whenever you need an inciting event, or a McGuffin, look trough this list and pick what fits best. You end up creating a vast collection of interconnected lore without even trying to, while avoiding the choice paralysis from having too many options and possibilities when brainstorming why did kingdom A go to war with kingdom B and similar.

Variety! History is different everywhere you go, a dark age for one continent may be a golden age for another. For me having a world that shows how history, religion, culture etc is shaped and changed from continent to continent or even town to town makes it that much more immersive

Knowing which details to showcase and which to gloss over, and how much detail to show. Absolutely, make notes of everything you come up with, but when creating *content* in your world, make sure you are spending your time on what will make your audience or players get a feel for the world, and immerse themselves in it. And the most important part of that is restraining yourself. I bet this video has a lot about both points...

Counterintuitively I think the most important thing in creating my own world is player involvement. Give your player a map, a set of social norms and some dates of historic and tell them that's where their elf comes from and they be like "great, whatever". Let them create a rough (no detail, that's important) overview of places, names, history events, and whatever they come up with, then show it to them as you fill it with life when GMing and they be like "WOW I got goosebumps, this is MY elfs world!"

Thank you so much for all you do!! I am currently…slowly…fleshing out my own Homebrew world. This enabled me to answer a definite question. I want Dragons to be a main focus. Not necessarily scatter the world with them, but they are central to the history and culture.

A balance of Realism and Fantastical elements keeps the world believable but not dull.

I think that for a first-time GM, it is easier to take an existed world and start adding own details here and there. It saves so much time. And gives a confidence boost, as any potential player question is only a few clicks away.

number one most important thing for me: Theming. everything else stems from that. Th little detais are fun, but the 20 second elevator pitch is what sells a world.

I always wanted to homebrew my own world but I was always overwhealmed with all the possibilities. This video was a great input to filter out what really matters to me and gave me a great starting point to brainstorm - thank you so much Guy, this series is incredibly helpful thusfar :)

I tend to make sure I understand how trade routes work, by understanding them I begin to understand the haves and have-nots, where the strife is, and what the power plays and the needs and wants of the regions are.

The most important thing imo is consistency that can be explored by the players and the GM. Damn, this video was motivating, I always get a new perspective on the topics of the video, I'm feeling inspired now.

Some time ago, I decided that my home brew world was actually just a large continent. This freed me up to create new things and have them still be in my world.

The most important thing for me with regards to worldbuilding has to be the low-detailed, large scale map generation and its geographical elements. It helps provide a framework from which I can introduce more detailed aspects, such as geopolitical considerations, politics, where to logically place a settlement etc. That way I have already something consistent and visual to base my adventure on. However, it's also the thing I find most difficult about worldbuilding, so there you have it xD

Most important to me is giving the players room to fit in their own backstory as history in the world

For everything to be tied up together neatly is what I find most important... if I push a rock on one side of the world, I want a chasm to open to the other side. (not literally, but things need to have interactivity together...

The most important part of any wold I create, or even get into as a fan or player, it the zeitgeist; the spirit of the world.

I think everything is important as long as your players and you as the GM have fun.

Most important thing about a homebrew world is what it provides to the game, be it stories or types of adventures etc.

For me, it's most important to have the realism. The one I'm working on is based on 5 or 6 real cultures that I fictionalize. Once I have a "real" world, with real world physics and politics and such, I can add the fantasy elements such as magic and monsters and the like.

My homebrew world started with two questions, "How in 5e do you make every race more distinct," and "How would Elves realistically react to their dwindling population/influence if they didn't have a mystical elf land to retreat to?" A few weeks later and my Elves have combined necromancy with weaponized plant growth and their culture is best described as "fantasy North Korea." There are, of course, refugees and outsiders who can be PCs or sympathetic NPCs. Based on that I tried to give each race some big problem or conflict that can affect the PCs or the PCs can try to solve. Just a single paragraph or even a sentence for each race. This organically generates plot hooks I can use. For example: Dwarves in search of a site for a new Mountainhome find a place with rich ore and try to claim it, but it's already owned by someone else. The big epic problem is Gaia, the uber-goddess and planet is the prison of another ancient uber-goddess The Night Serpent who periodically escapes and ravages the world. However, The Night Serpent is also a popular object of cult worship because she's the goddess of vengeance and outcasts. The Night Serpent's escapes are a source of lost civilizations and ancient ruins, she's a warlock patron, and her cultists make good generic baddies if I need them!

My most important was "what story do I want to tell" but with room to allow the PCs to experience and mold it rather than just me tell it. I started with geography since all climatological, social, cultural, religious, and economical information can be derived from a basic world map. Even if you want to confine your PCs to a small region, knowing what the world is like gives you access to so much more information for the PCs to learn along the way. So when it comes to crucial element before you start? Story. If we're talking physical components, basic world map. Now that's out of the way, as instructed, I look forward to finding out why I'm wrong. :-D

For me a home brew world need to have some sort of fundamental, primordial and irreconcilable conflicts, this is were i start, the rest is derived from that.

The things that flow from character backstories are the most important.

LOVE THE STACHE! And as per usual the content. Fabulous video as always, thanks Guy!

A bit off topic but I'm so excited about the 3 session Design your own Campaign seminar at the UK Games Expo!! 😃

The most important thing about creating a setting is to identify the typical types of activities that players will mostly be engaging in while playing in that setting. The best worlds have content that is tailored to the gameplay. A really interesting world can still be unsatisfying to play in when the content doesn't support what the PCs are actually doing.

I am still at my own step 1, which is designing areas where I describe what make it special and stand out to the general generic area (or how to put it). After that my step 2 will be deciding how these areas are lay'ed out besides each other and how these areas then affect each other ...as well as the sizes and shapes compared to each other. Over arching all this, I have some story/lore elements I need to fit in as well (what have happened in the world of important events before players started to play in it). You might think "It takes quite some time to make a world that way", yes it does ...but I like it. It mostly takes it time, as I hardly have time to work on it.

Most important thing is your players input in the world. The game and the storytelling is a very long character creator that you play in as a GM.

Very interesting, thank you !

@0:13 Before getting past the intro thing, my guess is that the most important thing when designing your own world is the players (which includes me, the DM is also a player) and what we will all find interesting, fun and engaging. We'll see if that's anything in the ballpark of where this one goes. :P

These chapter videos are very useful and fun. Would love to hear more about creating home brew gods.

most important part....central tension/central conflict. that pretty much tells me much how the people are feeling and thingking in that space and its easier to make factions and stuff based on that conflict.

A good and believable starter town to expand everything from.

Dynamism and coherency. A world that makes sense and is interesting.

I agree with the others below that consistency and coherency are supremely important. I also think that limitations and constraints make for a more interesting, and inhabitable, world. If anything and everything is possible in one world, then it is too overwhelming and difficult to figure out where, as a player, you want to be and what you want to do. The beginning of the story is the creation of constraints. I begin with constraints, but then work with players to gently expand or mold the world to incorporate their backstory and character as much as it makes sense to ensure the consistency and coherency I mentioned at first. There may have to be some re-skinning of their original idea to fit the world, but I try and be as accommodating as possible, or suggest ways to achieve what they want and remain consistent. I am thoroughly enjoying these videos and encourage you to keep going. Thank you.

The most important thing is to make sure that the world is interesting; the players have to want to explore it, be fascinated by it, dig into its history and cultures. If the setting is interesting enough you don't need to create a plot because one will happen along the way.

For me, with the world I am building, the most important thing is to remember that a world is both enormous and extremely varied. There are differences in populace, in look, in magic, in technological levels, in languages, and in history.

Most important What are the players going to be doing in it if I'm designing it for a game; what is its general purpose if I'm designing it for something other than a game, would be my instinct. Very much a believer in bottom-up design when it comes to starting points with world-building, even if the second step is figuring out what grand scale stuff is required to make that bottom level make sense. And watching the video I... Think we're on the same page there, just with me having a bit more of a specific question in mind for game worlds specifically.

I start with a name or a picture first when I create things. One of the first alien fish I created was called the wishbone. I named it before I knew what it looked like. I've also created a lot of things by drawing what pops into my head when I'm trying to sleep.

When creating my own world, i always make sure to keep things consistent. For me, that's the most important thing. Nothing takes a player out of your world more than inconsistent lore.

I think it depends, but a solid choice per your initial question would be Tone? Of course it'd be possible to make a setting and slant it one way or another; but it could be a great first step to work out the overall mood and feeling you want your world to give off

I think most important would be to have a clear idea of the focus. I been running a campaign that is my own world and I only had a vague idea of the world and now that we're past the start I'm often lost on where to go next.

When last I set out to create a world (universe actually) the things I decided were important to me were: 1) Have a far distant SciFi Milky Way with large numbers of modern physics defying yet self-consistent technologies for the players to explore. (reactionless thrust, infinite energy generators, artificial gravity) 2) Still have newer, even more magic-like technologies for my players to discover. (teleportation in its infancy, non-Euclidean space in the universe, meaner-nastier weapons. I mean, have you ever thought about what it would actually look like to have 1 grid square connect to three or even 5 grid squares if you were actually standing there? Wouldn't a portal to a "pocket dimension" in 4 or more dimensional space actually look like in 3 dimensional space? My answer: a sphere rather than a gate. What would happen if a ship larger than the portal flew through the portal space unaware?) 3) Have multiple nemeses that the party would interact with naturally, yet not realize they were enemies and probably even trust. (I was feeling particularly evil that week. The party still hasn't found out.) 4) Define enough worlds and peoples to feel real and lived in, but leave room for a nearly endless parade of other planets and cultures to be created by myself and my players as-needed. (i.e. leave room for everyone to contribute their wildest SciFi fantasies.)

I'm a beginner beginner GM (yes I'm beginning my beginner debut haha). I only DMed one session years ago using no system, we barely used dice cause we had none. My story was creative but I was too rigid and my players were very new to ttrpg (first or second game), some were not focused at all and one was clearly trolling (played a Troll with 1 intelligence and every thing put in strength). That was harsh... I put only one little enigma that they just ignored. But here I am years later, willing to improve and have fun with motivated players. Anyway, thanks for reading my story, the first thing that concerned me when beginning to create my homebrew world was, and still kinda is, the relation between humanoids and gods. Are gods walking on the material plane, are they being silent, is there a lot of clerics and cults, do everyone believe in them or not, are they mostly forgotten, are they in severe conflict etc etc etc

For me I like to emphasize the history and it's consequences in the setting of my world, as well as the gods and their history with the world as well. Another part of that that's important to me is connecting the history to itself as well and keeping things consistent with each other.

Most important thing when you design your own world? For me it is story, and here is quick examlpe: I could make some cool looking forest that is just somehwere in the world and is just nice, but instead i preffer to think about Story of the campaign as our low lever characters meet the farmer that complains about bandits and PC decide to take care of it. Then Farmer can give general direction and Tell you story of the Forest nearby (here PC get basic info about the cool looking forest without even rolling the dice) as he suspect Bandits living somewhere there. PC go there, perhaps finds Bandits, fight them and soemthing happens, something related to the Forest i came up Making PC simply rememmber the place now and Forest being a Part of the campaign instead of be some "GM nice place he made because he liked it" causing this part of campaign to be simply rememmbered by PCs and giving a Meaning to the Forest in the first place.

A little meta, but I think the most important thing is thinking about how your world is _appealing to other people._ E.g. you might say, “my players love post-apocalyptic settings, some of them really enjoy exploration and lore, Clive loves puzzles, and Sam and Alice are total power gamers”. Okay, so maybe your world features the ruins of a vast and ancient empire, its lands hiding strange weapons of unspeakable power. That could spark interest in most of your players right out of the gate, give everyone really strong incentives to explore ruins and learn the backstory of your world, and give you a lot of story hooks for exploring themes like hubris, war, ethical dilemmas, etc. Or maybe your players are more interested in politics and drama: okay, perhaps flesh out a few particularly memorable cities, each with its own rich culture, society, and power structures. In turn, that thought process may give you insights and inspiration about the history and geopolitics of the rest of your world. Now, I’m not saying you should be a slave to this-it’s your vision and your world, and you should enjoy creating it-but it’s easy to get lost in your own head and spend a lot of time dwelling on details that no one will ever care about, which can be a pretty disappointing experience. This is a reality check, a tool to help you focus your time and effort in ways which are more likely to pay off for both you and your players. Besides which, if you’re planning to invite people to spend hundreds of hours in your world, it’s nice (and probably wise) to give some thought to how your setting can be fun for them, and thereby deepen their interest in your campaign.

The character stories. People can suspend their disbelief and immerse for a lot of crazy shenanigans when in the right mood, but if the characters don't feel alive that's much, much harder. See (in video games), e.g. Trails in the Sky, which, for all its other faults, has some of the most believable character stories I've ever seen in a game. Due to that, in a few hours of play I knew (and still remember) more about the world than any other game before that (well, maybe Dragon Age: Origins comes close).

Along space for things to be came up on the fly and to allow players to be able to add things in as well.

For me the most important thing in the world is theme. Because each major aspect of the world must inhabit that theme. For me, theme is; what is the point of this world? What am I trying to say? What greater message am I trying to convey that gives this world and the stories that inhabit it, power, emotion, value, and meaning? Then I can explore all kinds of different perspectives and theories on that theme, and its opposition, in every corner of that world, in every character, and in every story within it. For me, I love deeper meanings. And meaningful stories that go beyond mere physical obstacle, to translate into something deeper. At least that's what inspires me to create. Because I want to say something.

I focus on trying to make sure everything fits together with some a minimum of a psuedo consistency and psuedo science.

Me and a friend are making a homebrew world for our group to use from now on and we are tasking ourselves to work on different locations! I am making the desert atm and so far the city is run by mages who use their ability to produce water making it artificially scarce to keep the people obedient. There are “skimmers” ships with wind runes allowing them to sail across the sands with desert pirates and monster hunters. Monsters in this desert produced water glands to store water over long periods which pirates, hunters, ect hunt for food and water. Making a dwarf subrace for the desert Also been working on an ancient civilization that fell to its own vanity that delved into dark magic and body modification their kingdom buried under the sands. Also trying to work on a new race of scorpion people that are like dark elves with spiders but a tanned elven race based around scorpions and a scorpion queen who was imprisoned by the other gods for her betrayal after falling for a mortal.

The Prim Mary Stepp what be To determine what are the two primary forces at odds the conflict that splits and also the smaller conflicts is it good versus evil is it Law versus chaos or maybe a new God versus the old god is it different ideologies competing on a cosmic scale ( The alignment system) You need to know the fundamental conflict that lies at the heart of your setting

everything needs 3 options to continue, and inspire players, and heaps of random cool stuff for when they think of something else then those 3. 1best plot that can be feed bite size, in timely fashion totally by wishes of te players, And the plot is a sureplus if it can be placed anywhere anytime!

Have fun!

I feel history/lore in the homebrew campaign is important to me.

It needs to be playable. That's the most important part. If players can't play, then you got nothing. You can form fun around something playable.

I really wish I had watched this video before I started my campaign several months ago. I might be able to slowly implement parts of this (they have not explored much of the world, not even much of their continent in truth), and I may even be able to have the world shift in nature to better fit the ideas of the world, though it's gotta happen slowly. Thankfully, I have much more room to work with fixing my mistakes, as the central setting of the campaign is a Godslayer Drow (Velarin) battling a Divine Council of Quasi-Gods and Demigods. Albeit they are a homebrew pantheon and do not follow traditional laws (hence the problems caused by these Gods, as the laws and rules on the 'Canon' Gods exist for very good reasons). Because of how Gods, Elves, and Fey are influencing the story, it makes it easier to understand if there is any change to the world. Good video! I just wish I had watched it much sooner!

I think the most important thing is making it all cohesive

making it believable. having several events on all tiers of importance from petty village drama to international conflicts or world ending events. as long as there are at least some hints about these which could be developed later, the world will sooner or later fill itself up. but if all there is to a game world is a singular adventure with maybe 2 maybe 3 subplots with neglectable outcomes and a white wall of nothing surrounding it, that kind of world is hard to run as more than just a simple one-shot

The most important thing designing my own world was... Structure. I wanted a solid structure to build upon many adventures to come. The world should work predictable so Players can themselves make choices on where to go. If they wanted to find a master warrior, they know from the worldstructure where they would search for someone like that without me telling them. Because the world makes sense. It is a world, not just a nation or a continent. Things like traderoutes, political borders, brewing conflicts. All those things give the world structure. The players can then decide what kind of adventure they want. Or the DM can do that too. Want an intrigueheavy political assassinationcampaign? go there. Want open warfrae? go there. Want to hunt bandits and collect bounts? go there. Want to dive into a religious conflict that can escalate into an allout war? go there. Structure makes decisions easy, as one knows what to expect.

The history of things

I'd say the most important element of a world is the "theme" or themes. What is it about the world that characterizes it as a whole. Like "high fantasy" or "space opera" or "swords and sandals." Perhaps "cthulian horror." Maybe you want it to be about civil war, spy wars, epic battles, or perhaps mystery, intrigue, exploration... Regardless of what it is, the world needs to work with the central theme(s). It can touch elements of others, but those tastes need to branch out from the central theme(s). How does this swords and sandals civilization remain isolated and untouched by the high-renaissance level of culture, technology, and influence of the larger nation-states nearby, and things like that. How does this political infighting lead to the civil war, and what impact does that have on the availability of resources in these outlying towns on the edge of the wilds your party is exploring? It feels like once you've established the central theme(s), the rest has a core to build off of, regardless of what direction you go from there.

I think the most important part of your world is the people in it. You can have an amazing map, but if the people inside it are boring, your game will follow that route.

History and theme this are the bedrock that great worlds are built

Personally I view magic as a form of technology, like language can be seen as a technology. This idea is reinforced for me in game systems that emphasize a verbal component to casting (eg, D&D, Pathfinder). It can be interesting to explore the secondary effects technologies can have on the world. Therfore, I am intrigued by magic when it contributes to exploring themes, ethics, and fleshing out a story. Game mechanics are just tools to facilitate that story! Even in a story where magic has become mundane, it can still be interesting when the reader gets to discover how it influences character lifestyles and cultures. What happens in your high-magic Elf city when that everflowing magic spring that your entire city depends on stops flowing? They are likely quite dependent on it.

verisimilitude and consistency

I don't know if I'd call it the most important, but do bear in mind that it is easier (and less embarrassing) to add something to the matrix than to remove it. Especially true of that nebulous yet persistent creature, player expectation. Especially the expectation you are (almost) certain you had no hand in suggesting (but, yeah, you probably did - go back in your mind and think about it, if -you- were paying attention, you'll probably remember the moment).

Only been GMing for like a month but I've made 2 worlds and the first thing I make is a solid name and the second thing is how the industry/economy works which maybe isn't interesting at all nor is necessarily relevant to anything in the campaign but i feel it provides a framework for conflict motives. And everything from there is silly lore I make up on a whim. Probably not a good stargety tbh, but I'm having fun

Adventure and things that stimulate it takes te crown placement for me.

An internal logic that creates the structure in which the games will be played.

I'd have to say making it a fun world to play in

Most important thing to consider when building a world: VIBE What emotions, themes, feelings, thoughts, etc. do you want to evoke with your world. This all starts with Vibe! How does your world set the stage for the story you want to tell? Sure your complex magic system is cool, but no one is going to care if the vibe does not engage the players or compliment the story you want to tell.