Today, I stumbled on the excellent  Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque  blog and found this article that any aspiring setting brewer should read: World-Building: When is Enough Too Much? It really spells out and crystalises some of my own thoughts on why 'Brevity is king' In particular this passage: (B) A lot of world-builders are kidding themselves about the uniqueness of the history they've written for their settings. If it fits into the familiar pattern of “In the Age of Fire, the dragons rose and gathered these followers, but were eventually beaten back by the Knights of Gorro, led by the Great King Fajadhul who founded the city of Dahan in the Year 100030” you should realize that the words and dates could be swapped out to create the back story of a million other nondescript fantasy settings. This is sub-Tolkienism. Struck home with me. I have been brutally guilty of this in the past, and still am to a certain extent, though I am trying to condense it on...

Fantasy history is a tricky thing. As a teenager,I remember pouring the timelines and stories of worlds like Dragonlance, Greyhawk, Mystara and Faerun - The inconsistencies were a point of fascination, a sign that the world was not fully 'known'. Studying the history of the setting was a big part of the setting for me. These days, I have to admit I find it less interesting. Mostly because I am no longer as enchanted by the history of a setting in and of itself, but rather what it brings to the present setting. 1st Maxim: Only tell the history of how the present day came to be. This is an important maxim when writing history, that I failed to observe for a long time writing the timeline for Erce. It was hopelessly detailed with my own little vignettes of the ancients, but far too little of it told the reader anything about the present day of the setting.  2nd Maxim: Preserve the sense of Mystery. Writing history with a sense of mystery tends to make for more ev...