[whswhs]

(a) My worldbuilding varies between different fantasy campaigns.

In Manse, I created a single large fortress with six towers linked by thick walls, and with an adjacent farm village. This was all the defined world; it was a premise of the game that more than a thousand years ago, a mighty empire had disintegrated, and the world had lost its coherences as freed spirits and wild magic swept across it—but five skilled sorcerers had worked magic to preserve a domain suited to human life, and had founded noble houses that preserved their magical arts. Each of the players got to make up a magical house and create a character from it.

On the other hand, in Tapestry, my current campaign, I started out by sketching the tectonic plates, the ocean and atmospheric circulation, and the climate zones, and then distributing seven human races into climate regions that suited them, with the result that each race had several distinct culture areas. I figured out a key deed of enchantment several hundred years back that had been transfoirming the world ever since, and I wrote up the magical arts typical of each race.

The curious thing is that three of the four players in Manse went on to be three of the six players in Tapestry.

(b) In general, though, I don't work out history in much detail; I look for broad trends and not charts of royal succession or lists of wars. The detail I work on is often largely full character sheets for any NPC who is likely to be substantial.