Hello all,

I'm building a new world, I have religions, races, major events (minus the one i'm about to mention,) locations etc. The thought I had in my mind that gave me pause was: Was my world created by gods, or did they discover it and rule over it?

Its an interesting thought, I'd have to think of an event that created it eventually, but it could be interesting to try and think about secrets that even the gods don't know exist on the world. Does anyone else have interesting takes on world creation? What creation methods have you used in your games and how has it affected the way your game plays?

There are two facets of world building at play here: the world building you need to run your game, and the world building you do for your own fun.

Unless the creation method/myth of your world is going to be important to your overall campaign conflict ( i.e. it involves artifacts and/or historical events from that legendary time ) deciding this facet of your world will have almost no practical impact on your game. You could simply leave this a an undecided issue, and give yourself room for deciding later, or leave the issue completely open, with denizens of the world having differing - and contradictory - stories and beliefs about the origin of the world, with there being no objective truth at all. 

This isn't only true about the origin myths of your world. All that you need to create up front in you world is anything the Characters would know, or interact with, and only to the extent that they would know about it. Locations that they are in, travel to, and NPCs they interact with ( both singly & in Factions ), need to be highly detailed. The level of detail that you need to decide upon for anything else drops off the further that thing is from the Characters - although having handfuls of sketchy-not-quite-to-be-believed-but-still-tantalizing rumors about distant people, places, and events makes the world seem larger and more fleshed out than it really is, and gives your Party motives to travel in the world. Under this approach, you are constantly designing and expanding upon the world, as the Characters travel through it, just one step ahead of them - but you need to keep detailed notes, so that nothing newly "discovered" contradicts previous design decisions that you've made.

On the other hand: if you are making design choices about your world, because world building is fun for you ( and it often is ), then choose whatever pleases you. Just be aware that it's (likely) an activity that's related to, but almost completely separate from, your game. It's a fun activity, but taking time to build aspects of your world that have no practical impact on the Characters' adventures is time spent having fun for you, and isn't really taking time to prepare for your game.

Best of luck! :)

Those are some really good points, the world building is indeed mainly for me, but its important to be reminded not to get too bogged down in details that aren't going to affect your players, thanks!