Pulling World Building Into the Character Creation Session

Welcome to the forums swinefluseth! I recently started a new campaign and engaged my players on this level. They were great and are super invested in the game and the homebrew game world, I think partially because they helped build aspects of it.

I started with a theme and a framework; a few nations, a few nationalities, a few places, a few factions and a general world status. I asked them to give me feedback on their characters based on nationality, hometown, lineage, language, etc. For example, we have a monk in the group. I had no monasteries or monk orders built in, so I asked him questions. Where is your monastery? Up in the mountains, very secluded. Were you born there, or did you join up? I was born there. Were your parents monks? Yes. So both genders are allowed and are allowed to have familial relationships? Yes. Ok, there was a religious purge about 200 years ago; why was your monastery not purged? Because we are guarding something dangerous and secret.

We went on like that for quite a while. We ended up with a monastery high up in the mountains. The people don't go out much. In fact, they have spent so long underground and intermarrying that they have become a sort of subspecies of human. They have nearly translucent skin. They produce a potent liquor made of glowing subterranean fungus, and sell this as a source of outside income and external trade. They guard an arch inscribed with runes in a language nobody knows...recently one of those runes began glowing...

That was all collaborative. He took my ideas and ran with them, I took his and elaborated on them.

To answer your questions:
A) Ask questions. Dig deeper into backgrounds. Ask about the geography of home towns. As about industry; what did the players' parents do for a living? Is that a common occupation where they come from? Questions will make your characters think, and if you are willing to incorporate their answers, this will add to buy in on the world. You don't have to take their idea whole cloth, but you can tweak them and use them as seeds to grow interesting bits of your world.

B) Again, ask questions. If a player has an interesting event in their past, pull on that thread and see where it goes. We also did a great exercise where I had the first player give their background, then the second player gave theirs, but had to create a tie-back connection to the previous player's background. After we went around the whole circle, the first player had to tie his background back to the last player's. This allowed for some great collaborative background building with the side effect of tying the group together into a cohesive party.

C) Again, ask questions. When you reach a new village, describe the feel of the place in broad strokes, then ask the players for details. I like to ask mine for business and NPC names. Also, flavor items. They enter a tavern and order food and drink. Ask the players what sort of food is served and what the house hooch is like. If you asked a lot of questions early on, make sure to ping back to their answers. Players love to see their ideas come to life in a setting.

Good luck! We had a great time building out our world and its inhabitants! Please feel free to ask more questions and please let us know how it goes!

Also you can just run Dawn of Worlds as session 0.2-0.? It produces an entire world of nations and kingdoms with histories and races. Great system. Collaborative world-building fun!