Setting from items
Here's a procedure to get some content for a setting you have in mind. The crux of it is to ask yourself questions that provide concrete answers to what your setting exactly is. I haven't figured it out yet completely cause I'm still working on mine but I think in general stuff that's relevant locally is better, but some questions also provide more large scale answers.
Have a rough idea about your setting. Write:
- 3-6 classes that represent people who would do adventure
- 2-3 background for each class before they took to adventure
- 6 monsters representing threats adventurers can encounter (can and often should include people); If you're going for the usual ones from DnD, consider these to be unique to your setting.
- 4 items of great importance, could be magical in nature
- 3 places where there's adventure to be had (towns and dungeons, for example)
- 2 factions/people relevant to those places
This is definitely not original and probably was inspired by Weird Writes sandbox prep post. Feel free to let me know what you think!