The Rolling Carpet

If I were to start a new world today, from scratch, knowing what I know now, and for some reason deciding I didn't want to run the Earth any more (though I can't imagine that), then I wouldn't start with a map.  Oh, I'd get to a map by-and-by, but I wouldn't start there.

I would start with a climate.  Of all the things that define a setting, I think the elements are the most powerful emotional consideration.  I would pick a climate and a specific season in that climate, knowing that I was going to run that season for at least two months of game time.  Thinking that, my mind goes to the setting scenes in films, with snow blasting across the landscape; the branches of trees as soaking rain drips under a dark, leaden sky; the raw, blazing sun cutting through a jungle canopy, so hot that steam rises from the surrounding waters.  I'd decide for myself, what sort of introduction do I want to give the players ... and then I'd build a settlement, or some obscure place, that matched the season.  A place on the edge of an enormous ocean, with the party waking up to find their ship's boat is floating in a lagoon; that the storm has subsided and the ship they had taken passage on is gone ~ sunk or lost over the horizon.  They don't know what this is; a beach covered with dead trunks and fronds, a forest of sago palms, the crystal blue water of the lagoon and nothing in their possession but a few trinkets hanging about their necks.

Is this an atoll?  A continent?  Should they wait to be rescued?  The sun is short of zenith; it's morning, and yet the air is so thickly humid that it suffocates.

I don't need more than this.  I don't need more story.  The tale of shipwrecked peoples, forced to explore their surroundings, survive, make their own technology and wrest themselves from their struggles is as old as time.  There are still beasts to fight, still peoples that can be met; there are still tales of Conan to be played from this beginning, or Tarzan or the Swiss Family Robinson.  The scenes and strangeness of the land beyond the palms could rival Mars, with the party playing the part of John Carter, adapting themselves to the rules of culture and mystery they discover.  As they cut their way further and further into the wilderness, looking for emancipation and a return to civilization, they meet more and different peoples, some friendly, some not.  The party collects weapons, riches, allies, greater skills and mastery of their character classes ... while I design the world like a rolling carpet in front of them.

I have been asking folks, what is the purpose of the setting?  What function does it serve?  And the answer I receive is a mixed understanding that the setting feeds itself, it develops a life of its own ... and it serves as a place where adventures happen.

I don't believe the setting provides a place for adventures.  I believe the setting is the adventure.  And that it has to be designed that way in order to achieve its full functionality as a game structure.