I’ve previously discussed my misgivings about worldbuilding, at least my misgivings about how the (separate) hobby of worldbuilding interacts with setting design for an RPG. Of course, if you are one of those lightly deranged folks who insists on writing a setting from the ground up, you know that you cannot ignore all the brass tacks of worldbuilding, even if said worldbuilding is nowhere near sufficient for making a gameable setting. For what it’s worth I’ve spent most of my GMing time over the past several years engaging with existing settings or games which encourage shared setting creation; the eldritch swamps in which my Apocalypse World game took place are just as attributable to my players as they are to me. Now, though, I’m writing a setting for a somewhat more traditional game, to be run in GURPS. I’m trying to balance two elements in setting creation: First, I am writing something specific, with different assumptions and conflicts than other settings I could bring to bear. Second, even in a traditional setting I don’t want to give up that sort of engagement with my players, who bring in not only interesting ideas but also clear opinions about what they want to interact with in the setting. So, without a system like Apocalypse World that cements that player input, how should we be prepping a setting to ensure that the game will involve “worldbuilding to find out what happens?”