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Purpose

Each and every place that your characters visit should have a purpose. Places do not just sit around in stasis waiting for them to show up and get the clue they need to solve the puzzle. They have a life of their own. It is important to give places the pulse they deserve when your characters are there.

Hlumnigor, the home of Jormungandr the Eviscerated's temple does not exists solely to give heroes a place to buy a +5 sword of slaying before heading into the temple to face uncertain Doom™ (Well, okay, maybe in a highly satirical game). Why is the town here? Did is spring up before or after Jormungandr built his temple? How does the town sustain and defend itself?

Which is not to say that each and every place your characters visit needs a detailed history and economy. But you, as a Storyteller (or Game Master, or whatever title you prefer to be known by) should have at least some idea that Hlumnigor is a mining community, and Jormungandr built his temple here because the city was already well defended to prevent the local hostiles from running off with all the freshly mined ore.

Opportunity

Just as the location should have purpose, it should also have opportunity. There should be something for the characters to do in the location other than fulfill their particular quest. The potential must exist in every location for the characters to become side-tracked and forget about saving the world.

Which is not to say they always should get derailed. This would lead to a never ending plot of ADHD proportion with half-finished story threads hanging out waiting for the characters to remember they were doing something before they started looking for something or running from someone else.

The illusion of opportunity is frequently sufficient. Your players may thank you for the game session where the characters spent all day dodging through the streets of the market district trying to find the rare and wondrous Olvidian Pineapple which one of the players wants due to its rumored aphrodesiac effect on Scarran women. They will really thank you if they're back to the normal plot-line in the next game session.

But be wary of falling into easy traps. It's only fun to catch the pick-pocket who managed to purloin your fake ID the first dozen times or so. Beyond that and you're going to have a player revolt on your hands.

Life

Settings should be alive. Things happen everywhere you go. No place should be 'just another' anything. Even if the location is 'just another bar' to the characters, the players should look forward to each new location like a kid looks forward to shaking boxes on Christmas morning.

Plan for all the senses. You don't have to drown the players in Joseph Conrad-like detail about a farmer's hut, but you should at least touch on each of the senses. The smell of fertilizer permeates everything and dirt and seed are everywhere. There is a very fine line between too-much and too-little detail - and that line will probably be the subject of another entire essay.

Think about action. What goes on in the place? How do the 'normal' occupants of the factory spend their time doing? How (or will) the characters' presence affect normal life?

Add a twist. Find something about the place that you can completely turn on its head. It will throw the characters a curve-ball when they're expecting a slider.

Don't be afraid of cliché. There's a reason they exist. They work. They give everyone a common frame of reference. But don't stop at just the cliché. Find some way to make the smoke-filled bar in the den-of-iniquity that is Mos Eisley stand out as someplace worth the characters' time. The point of gaming, after all, is to have fun. If someplace is worth the characters' time, then its worth the players' time. Which means the players keep coming back for more.

Signature Settings

Many published game lines have "signature settings." These are places (Cities, Countries, Worlds) that the game creators have decided to use to showcase all the themes, moods, etc they feel are important to the game line as a whole. Cormyr and Waterdeep are signature settings in Forgotten Realms™. Chicago is the signature setting for Vampire: the Masquerade™. Haven defines the Blue Planet™'s Poseidon and Khayr Ad-Din is the focus of Heavy Gear™.

Signature settings can greatly aid an inexperienced Game Master. Someone else has done all the work of crafting an interesting setting for you - leaving you free to work on those all important stories. In fact, most Signature Settings come jam-packed with a significant number of adventures built right in. That is part of the point, after all.

They have a downside, too. Among other things, the players in your game can simply go out out purchase the appropriate book and read up on all the locations secrets. For the experienced GM, this is less a problem, as he will make the setting his (or her) own from the beginning. But deviating too far from the published material may cause problems later down the road - depending on how closely your particular gaming group follows the story line the game designers built in to the setting (the Meta-Plot). It can be difficult, for example, if in your game the Lord Chancellor of Hedgehogs for the Free City of Greyhawk is killed by a rampaging dragon, only to end up being the saviour of the entire World of Greyhawk in a late-published book by the developers.

When using such a setting, it is easy to forget the details. The broad strokes of the setting have been defined for you and it is all too common for the fine lines to get lost in the story. You must be careful not to let this happen.

Custom Settings

The alternative to creating your own setting is, of course, to make it yourself. While many Storytellers find this a necessary part of the creative process, it can prove to be a daunting task. It takes time and effort, and for those of us with only so much juice to give to a project at any given time, it can take away from the creativity of our stories. The most common mistake in designing one's own setting is to provide too much detail. I myself have this problem.

The approach I think works best for this sort of thing is to work from the general to the specific. It doesn't matter the size or scope of the setting. From 'whole world' to 'the local shop-n-rob,' this same process will help to turn an idea into a living, breathing entity that will stand on its own even when it is not fulfilling the role you've assigned it in any given nights role-play.

What do you want the overall mood of the location to be? Dark and somber? Jovial? Suspenseful? Happy? Sad? Once you've decided on the overall feel of the place, start thinking about what makes it that way. Once you determine that, keep adding some specifics. Think about the exceptions to your mood and theme. No place (Except Mordor) is all gloom-and-doom with no happiness. What are the exceptions in your location? Why are they exceptions? How do they survive when surrounded by the larger theme?

Also, remember that you do not have to detail every Bar, business, thief, or place of import within the setting. If you define this all up front, the location has no place to grow as the campaign grows. It will also keep you so focused on minutia that your stories will suffer and the fun-factor will begin to slip away. Don't be a micro-manager!

As you work out the details of your homestead, story ideas will likely present themselves to you as you work. Keep a second note pad (Or Word document, or whatever) handy to scribble notes. Try not to let yourself get too distracted, though - especially if you've got a string of ideas stacked up. Get everything on-paper that you can, because if you don't write it down now, you'll likely forget it. This will sound more critical than I mean, but, when you've completed your setting, a half-dozen story ideas should present themselves to you. If they don't, then I suggest taking a closer look at whether the setting is, in fact, accomplishing what you hope.

The End of the Day

The story is the flesh and blood of any role-play. But the locations within that story are the bones that form the skeleton which holds the story up. Without strong bones, the body will collapse on itself and counter any positive strides that the flesh have made.

Purpose, Opportunity, and Life. Remember these three things when customizing your locations. Without these three things, the imagination suffers, and imagination is much of the point of this hobby. If the imagination falters, then the fun-quotient drops exponentially, and fun is the rest of the point. Without fun, the players will eventually find something else to do on game night. Don't let it happen to you!