I'm a new DM, and I am trying to make my own campaign. I have heard some people online say that newer DM's shouldn't make entirely new things, because of it being to hard on them or something like that. Should I make my own DnD world, or just search the internet for a premade world to base my campaign in?
Sword coast adventurers guide book was great inspiration for me. I am 6 months in to my second campaign, first was 30months, I used Faerun as a setting for a custom campaign. I wouldn’t advise against making your own world, but using existing locations will give you access to lore, factions, maps, inspiration. You can add which factions you want, and if your players want more info on something, then it’s a quick research online for some lore to either use or grab inspiration from.
I’d highly recommend using the sword coast region purely for the amount of lore available with a quick google search, but you have all the control to pick and choose what you want to use. I started running a book campaign, and we deviated from it so quickly because it bottle necked us to a theme, so it’s great to do your own thing. Depending on what the players want, factions or politics, religion, randomly changing scenery with different towns and unexplored areas, you’ll find info you need.
run a starter adventure if you’re new and see what the players want from your world, then you’ll know what to flesh out and what they don’t care about. But biggest issue and reason why people tell you not to create your own world is that you’ll flesh out so much that just won’t ever get mentioned.
The campaign is supposed to be based off the world being covered in darkness, and the only "safe" areas are the towns, but even those are starting to not be so safe anymore, due to people arguing, and causing chaos inside the walls. Would Faerun be a world that would work with that? I still do not know how using premade worlds would affect my campaign.
For me personally, I'd been writing fantasy for decades before I started DMing, so creating plot threads, environments and characters was familiar territory (even though writing books and running a D&D game are NOT the same). I also wasn't comfortable making my ideas conform to pre-existing lore; it seemed inauthentic, and I knew I'd feel obligated to stick to the source material because it was "canon." As none of that appealed to me, I just decided to go the homebrew route. Had a blast, and so did my players.
Is it more work? Yeah it's more involved, but you won't know the difference because it's your first time...and if worldbuilding is your jam, you'll enjoy most of it. Plus, you can always start relying on published content later if you decide pure homebrew campaign settings aren't your thing.
How do you incorporate published content into a homebrew setting? Like you would with a stat block: take the mechanics and run with them. You want a setting that's dealing with darkness and has safe haven towns that are kinda going nuts... Sounds like Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden. Skim the adventure (or read some writeups/watch streams) and see what story beats, monsters, NPCs and challenges inspire you. Then steal those ideas and paste them straight into your campaign, changing literally anything you want to make it suit your ideas better. You like darkness but imagined your towns in a fantasy desert? Boom, it's now Firewind Dale, and all the monsters are sand-based, not snow-based. Like Strahd better as a mummy instead of a vampire? Reskin a mummy lord stat block and call it Strahd. The game world is your oyster, and you can take/leave/gut/reflavor anything and everything you want.
No matter what you choose, you'll learn a lot about DMing and your own storytelling style as you get more experience running games. As long as you and your players are having fun, you can't go wrong.
The Forgotten Realms is the easiest to do because it's been worked on for decades by multiple authors so it's fleshed out.
If you don't believe it is appropriate for your campaign, then start slowly. You don't need to build the entire world at once. Start with the area the players begin in. Expand as the story progresses. There's plenty of empty maps out there, and websites that you can use to create one of your own. So grab or create one and start creating.
The important thing to remember is that any problem you come across has already been faced by another creator. And people put their solutions on the internet. You just have to search and find out if theirs works for you.
I'm a new DM, and I am trying to make my own campaign. I have heard some people online say that newer DM's shouldn't make entirely new things, because of it being to hard on them or something like that. Should I make my own DnD world, or just search the internet for a premade world to base my campaign in?
yeah building whole world is quite hard so you usually progress on the go and using some adventures like lost mine is just easier, doesn't mean that new players can't do own world. Though even wotc adventures often have lack of description, or throw describe shop content and prices in this premade adventure yourself without ******* things and balancing up. So both approaches is viable - just if you make own world make some extra preparations
Unless you're really very keen I wouldn't start off in your own world. The amount of detail needed to make that world feel real, all while trying to get your bearings as a DM is a lot of work. You can really use all of the settings in the Forgotten Realms and make them your own. There are 1000s of NPCs, locations, mythology you can tap in to. Once you have some sessions under your belt you can transport them to your own setting if you really think you want to run the campaign in that homegrown location.
The campaign is supposed to be based off the world being covered in darkness, and the only "safe" areas are the towns, but even those are starting to not be so safe anymore, due to people arguing, and causing chaos inside the walls. Would Faerun be a world that would work with that? I still do not know how using premade worlds would affect my campaign.
That sounds rad, I'd love to play in a world like that. Honestly, if you think you have a few strong ideas about what the world of your game is like, I think you have enough to build your own setting. Much to do is made about all the things you "have" to make to run your own world, but honestly you can figure a lot out as you go. Ask your players for feedback; if you're not into fashion, for example, ask your players how they imagine people dress in a place like you're describing. Then roll with it.
Don't get me wrong, you definitely can start with an established setting and adapt as needed, but I think new DMs are over-cautioned against world building by default. You can absolutely make it up as you go; that's what most of the DMs who created many of the now-famous D&D settings (like Faerun!) did. If world building sounds fun to you, I encourage you to go for it.
I generally think a new DM, especially if they're new to the game itself, should probably start with some kind of premade adventure just to reduce the amount of work they need to do, but it's not the law, and that's just while they get used to how it goes.
That said, there's nothing wrong with making your own world. In a lot of ways, it's easier than using somebody else's. You will know the stuff you make up much better than you will ever know the Forgotten Realms. Assuming you're organized, you'll know where to find the stuff you don't remember, and when you need to make stuff up on the fly, it's much less likely to contradict other things the players already know.
The main thing about making your own world is that it doesn't need to be anything like as detailed as a published setting. You can, and probably should, start out with only the stuff local to the PCs, and build it out as you go. Have some general idea about the larger stuff going on, but you only need to figure out the details as it impinges on the PCs. If you really love worldbuilding, go for it, but large chunks of it will be unused, and it makes it harder to adapt when the players do things you never expected.
The campaign is supposed to be based off the world being covered in darkness, and the only "safe" areas are the towns, but even those are starting to not be so safe anymore, due to people arguing, and causing chaos inside the walls. Would Faerun be a world that would work with that? I still do not know how using premade worlds would affect my campaign.
in a way icewind dale adventure is this
Cold, dark, human "lottery" sacrifices started in big towns to pleasure evil god, with cultist/s of said god fine with killing cheaters, evil duergars planning to take the cities, not exactly chaos inside the walls but decadent and depressing atmosphere, though if your party make bad decisions in chapter 3 and 4 of adventure there will be chaos inside the walls (and only walls remain) and big "fireparty" on which most of population die
The campaign is supposed to be based off the world being covered in darkness, and the only "safe" areas are the towns, but even those are starting to not be so safe anymore, due to people arguing, and causing chaos inside the walls.
Sounds awesome. I've been wanting to include some similar vibes to my campaign, but still waiting for the opportunity.
As for your original question, remember that the setting and the adventure are completely different, and not necessarily connected, things. Those who say that creating an entirely new adventure from scratch is a huge work, especially for a new GM, are not wrong. Those who point out that an existing setting (such as Forgotten Realms) have years and years of background and extremely rich lore, are definitely right. However, such rich lore may be overwhelming, and for me it was always a hindrance more than a help - what if my player knows FR lore better than me? What if I screw up some geography names or some important NPCs backstory?
Meanwhile, creating a world of your own and playing in it is a very fulfilling experience on its own. So you can do something in between - you can take an existing adventure, and put it in a setting of your creation. Take some ideas, some general plot points, most encounters - cause balancing encounters is the hardest part for a new GM - and make it a story of your own, in your world with the backstory that you completely control. That's an interesting option you may at least consider, IMO.
Feel free to borrow from multiple sources as well. Many things when adapted from their original context and rearranged in a way you find interesting can cobble together into something new if you run with your inspiration.
I was a new DM three years ago. I tried creating a campaign by using one of the books, failed miserably. After 3 months I decided to take ownership of my world and create my own campaign. We have the same campaign going and all my plans that i hoped for, when they were level 1 is coming to now. It is so much easier as you create the maps and story and allows you to modify the story and maps as the story goes on. Listening to my players talk and gives me ideas, the flexibility of my own world makes it easy to run with their ideas (players never give DMS ideas).
If you have access to the Dungeon Master's Guide, read at least the first chapter "A World of Your Own". That will give you the scope of world building and maybe help you answer some questions for your self of how much world you actually need. Many think to build a D&D world, they need multiple continents, and nation states, and peoples and politics, and overarching threat, etc. And that's not the case at all. "World" in fiction, and in Dungeons and Dragons, is a very relative concept. Yes, you could take a globe and populate it with geography and cultures, but a D&D World could easily be just one city. There have been in the past D&D settings that were just a single city, sometimes the particular world included adventuring outside the city, sometimes a world would not. Think of Lord of the Rings, yes they're set in Middle Earth, but for many Hobbits, "the world" was just the Shire. So think of the world more as a parameter or structure of your game.
The other thing to think about is what you need to realistically play. I'm a strong advocate for starting small, and letting the world develop as it needs. There are many many world builders who create multiple cyclopedias worth of world info, and 95% of it is never touched on in the game that's actually played. For some that's fine because there's enjoyment in world building; but for others it can be really frustrating spending who knows how many hours creating elaborate intricacies that probably would have been better spent for the game at hand reading up on running combat, developing suitable encounters for their game's specific party etc.
If you're starting at level one, you at most need a modest sized city, big enough that characters of all sorts could have their origins there, and a potential "exotic" far traveller type character would have reason to pass through (making it a port or otherwise a trade hub would give you literally paths and avenues upon which to explore the game world, if it serves your games needs). Create adventure possibilities within that city or in the outskirts and then see what the party wants to do from there.
In your darkened world situation, as the characters are of young adventurer sort, have them press-ganged into the town watch. It doesn't need to be a strict military order. After all, they're press ganging budding adventurers into service. Rather, they're tasked to perhaps rescue citizens or aid caught outside the walls, and maybe serve as peacekeepers and keepers of order within it. From there you can build onto the mystery, is the source of the darkness local? Or do you think your players will be more interested in exploring and seeking a source beyond the walls. This is, of course, presuming you want this darkness to be the chief challenge of your world and a solvable challenge. You could also simply treat it is as your world's gravity and it's just something that's a perpetual factor in the game. The great thing about D&D is you don't have to decide until an answer is necessary, and a good DM is also good at dodging or postponing the big questions.
Yes, world building can be fun, but what many consider "world building" isn't necessary and isn't necessarily fun for many. The game world doesn't have to correlate to a planetary survey. The game world is a setting and just needs enough to suit the sort of stories you and your players want to tell _at the start_, you can always build out when or if the expansion is needed.
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The main problem is that the premade worlds are so big that I do not know what to do with them. They have somewhere around 100 named locations if not more, and it is hard to keep track of it all. Also, if I do decide to create my own world, how big should it be?
The main problem is that the premade worlds are so big that I do not know what to do with them. They have somewhere around 100 named locations if not more, and it is hard to keep track of it all. Also, if I do decide to create my own world, how big should it be?
The answer to how big? is "as big as it needs to be for your story." Look at something like Exandria, the world Critical Role is set in. That started as a single village because they were doing a one shot that needed a cursed village setting. When they kept playing the needed a city to travel to so the world became a village and a city. They kept going and then the world was a village, a city and the surrounding area and they kept expanding from there until they had a continent and then a whole world. Alternatively the official campaigns Lost Mines of Phandelver, Phendelver and Below and Dragon of Icespire Peak all take place within about 10 square miles of the town of Phandalin and you could happily run a couple of years worth of prewritten campaigns without ever needing anything beyond that area.
TLDR; unless you're having a blast creating your world you can get away with a very small focused location so long as there's enough to hang the plot off and to keep your players occupied.
The answer to how big? is "as big as it needs to be for your story." Look at something like Exandria, the world Critical Role is set in. That started as a single village because they were doing a one shot that needed a cursed village setting. When they kept playing the needed a city to travel to so the world became a village and a city. They kept going and then the world was a village, a city and the surrounding area and they kept expanding from there until they had a continent and then a whole world. Alternatively the official campaigns Lost Mines of Phandelver, Phendelver and Below and Dragon of Icespire Peak all take place within about 10 square miles of the town of Phandalin and you could happily run a couple of years worth of prewritten campaigns without ever needing anything beyond that area.
TLDR; unless you're having a blast creating your world you can get away with a very small focused location so long as there's enough to hang the plot off and to keep your players occupied.
Totally agree, and as a follow-on, remember that most D&D characters are not world history experts. You don't always need to know things about your world that the average character wouldn't know. If your players ask you a trivia question that isn't covered by the setting prep you've done, you can always say: "That's not common knowledge in this setting; you'd need to find an expert to ask." (Which gives you time to come up with something)
Or better yet, you can hit them with the classic: "No one knows." That's often a story hook all by itself.
The answer to how big? is "as big as it needs to be for your story." Look at something like Exandria, the world Critical Role is set in. That started as a single village because they were doing a one shot that needed a cursed village setting. When they kept playing the needed a city to travel to so the world became a village and a city. They kept going and then the world was a village, a city and the surrounding area and they kept expanding from there until they had a continent and then a whole world. Alternatively the official campaigns Lost Mines of Phandelver, Phendelver and Below and Dragon of Icespire Peak all take place within about 10 square miles of the town of Phandalin and you could happily run a couple of years worth of prewritten campaigns without ever needing anything beyond that area.
TLDR; unless you're having a blast creating your world you can get away with a very small focused location so long as there's enough to hang the plot off and to keep your players occupied.
Totally agree, and as a follow-on, remember that most D&D characters are not world history experts. You don't always need to know things about your world that the average character wouldn't know. If your players ask you a trivia question that isn't covered by the setting prep you've done, you can always say: "That's not common knowledge in this setting; you'd need to find an expert to ask." (Which gives you time to come up with something)
Or better yet, you can hit them with the classic: "No one knows." That's often a story hook all by itself.
You can also tell them false things, or multiple answers. "You've heard X, but your mother's cousin, who traveled a lot when he was your age, swears Y, and he mostly only makes things up when he's drunk."
One should be careful about stating things as definitive answers, even when they are. If you just say "X", that's an answer from the DM, which is true. "You've heard X" is rumor, which may not be. Of course, the players will conflate the two. Getting the answer "it's X" from an NPC makes it less reflexively trusted.
I began DMing in 1979. I have used Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Krynn, a half a dozen of my own worlds and even played with no set world at all. Every option has benefits and draw backs.
After a recent release, I went back to Krynn for the first time in almost 40 years. The adventure was enjoyable by my players, but they left Krynn (through a mysterious portal) and landed in my own world. You see, every world has a style and a flavor, and war-torn Ansalon just did not feel right for me.
The advantage to having/making your own world is that, it is yours. No other player can tell you that you are running it wrong, or correct your interpretation or facts, because they know the source material better. Being yours, YOU are the ultimate authority. You can wing things or make things up on the fly. You can use the p,Ayer’s to grow the world, the lands, the kingdoms, etc. and you don’t have to spend hours reading and memorizing details that someone else has written. But it means that you have to edit almost any adventure you buy. I have run so much set originally in the Forgotten Realms, that I often wonder if I should return there.
But there is a certain amount of pride in making your own and it allows you to stretch certain creative muscles. I have my own world with multiple continents, various political structures across the lands, my own gods, a world history, etc. I didn’t build it over night, and it is by no means complete, and likely never will be. I expand as I need to based on the characters and their wanderings.
There is no right or wrong answer here. Do what fits your style and sense of the kind of world you want to play in…and then DM it that way. Good luck and welcome to the labor of love that is DMing. I enjoy DMing so much, I can no longer be a player in someone else’s game. And of course, I started DMing because no one else I knew could do it.
The main problem is that the premade worlds are so big that I do not know what to do with them. They have somewhere around 100 named locations if not more, and it is hard to keep track of it all. Also, if I do decide to create my own world, how big should it be?
If you look at published adventures, most of 5e's run takes place in the Forgotten Realms, but many also give a paragraph or so for running them in other established D&D settings as well. If you pay attention to those adventures, however, most of them don't demand any sort of high degree of familiarity on the DM or player's part on the Forgotten Realms taking place in maybe six or seven distinct locations in a game running from level 1 to levels 10-13.
You want a world shrouded in darkness. Is a small city enough? One where you don't need to map it street by street, just a sense of the neighborhoods and a handful of significant personalities and locations. If your game eventually needs more, you can fill in and define more of the city, or you can start drawing a sense of what the world's like beyond the city.
Heck, many D&D campaigns can start with the party approaching a dungeon with a specific task to perform, and then backfill why the party did that, who they are, and where in the world they are after they run that dungeon and decide they want to keep playing.
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I'm a new DM, and I am trying to make my own campaign. I have heard some people online say that newer DM's shouldn't make entirely new things, because of it being to hard on them or something like that. Should I make my own DnD world, or just search the internet for a premade world to base my campaign in?
Sword coast adventurers guide book was great inspiration for me. I am 6 months in to my second campaign, first was 30months, I used Faerun as a setting for a custom campaign. I wouldn’t advise against making your own world, but using existing locations will give you access to lore, factions, maps, inspiration. You can add which factions you want, and if your players want more info on something, then it’s a quick research online for some lore to either use or grab inspiration from.
I’d highly recommend using the sword coast region purely for the amount of lore available with a quick google search, but you have all the control to pick and choose what you want to use. I started running a book campaign, and we deviated from it so quickly because it bottle necked us to a theme, so it’s great to do your own thing. Depending on what the players want, factions or politics, religion, randomly changing scenery with different towns and unexplored areas, you’ll find info you need.
run a starter adventure if you’re new and see what the players want from your world, then you’ll know what to flesh out and what they don’t care about. But biggest issue and reason why people tell you not to create your own world is that you’ll flesh out so much that just won’t ever get mentioned.
The campaign is supposed to be based off the world being covered in darkness, and the only "safe" areas are the towns, but even those are starting to not be so safe anymore, due to people arguing, and causing chaos inside the walls. Would Faerun be a world that would work with that? I still do not know how using premade worlds would affect my campaign.
Do what seems most fun and comfortable for you.
For me personally, I'd been writing fantasy for decades before I started DMing, so creating plot threads, environments and characters was familiar territory (even though writing books and running a D&D game are NOT the same). I also wasn't comfortable making my ideas conform to pre-existing lore; it seemed inauthentic, and I knew I'd feel obligated to stick to the source material because it was "canon." As none of that appealed to me, I just decided to go the homebrew route. Had a blast, and so did my players.
Is it more work? Yeah it's more involved, but you won't know the difference because it's your first time...and if worldbuilding is your jam, you'll enjoy most of it. Plus, you can always start relying on published content later if you decide pure homebrew campaign settings aren't your thing.
How do you incorporate published content into a homebrew setting? Like you would with a stat block: take the mechanics and run with them. You want a setting that's dealing with darkness and has safe haven towns that are kinda going nuts... Sounds like Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden. Skim the adventure (or read some writeups/watch streams) and see what story beats, monsters, NPCs and challenges inspire you. Then steal those ideas and paste them straight into your campaign, changing literally anything you want to make it suit your ideas better. You like darkness but imagined your towns in a fantasy desert? Boom, it's now Firewind Dale, and all the monsters are sand-based, not snow-based. Like Strahd better as a mummy instead of a vampire? Reskin a mummy lord stat block and call it Strahd. The game world is your oyster, and you can take/leave/gut/reflavor anything and everything you want.
No matter what you choose, you'll learn a lot about DMing and your own storytelling style as you get more experience running games. As long as you and your players are having fun, you can't go wrong.
The Forgotten Realms is the easiest to do because it's been worked on for decades by multiple authors so it's fleshed out.
If you don't believe it is appropriate for your campaign, then start slowly. You don't need to build the entire world at once. Start with the area the players begin in. Expand as the story progresses. There's plenty of empty maps out there, and websites that you can use to create one of your own. So grab or create one and start creating.
The important thing to remember is that any problem you come across has already been faced by another creator. And people put their solutions on the internet. You just have to search and find out if theirs works for you.
yeah building whole world is quite hard so you usually progress on the go and using some adventures like lost mine is just easier, doesn't mean that new players can't do own world. Though even wotc adventures often have lack of description, or throw describe shop content and prices in this premade adventure yourself
without ******* things and balancing up. So both approaches is viable - just if you make own world make some extra preparationsUnless you're really very keen I wouldn't start off in your own world. The amount of detail needed to make that world feel real, all while trying to get your bearings as a DM is a lot of work. You can really use all of the settings in the Forgotten Realms and make them your own. There are 1000s of NPCs, locations, mythology you can tap in to. Once you have some sessions under your belt you can transport them to your own setting if you really think you want to run the campaign in that homegrown location.
That sounds rad, I'd love to play in a world like that. Honestly, if you think you have a few strong ideas about what the world of your game is like, I think you have enough to build your own setting. Much to do is made about all the things you "have" to make to run your own world, but honestly you can figure a lot out as you go. Ask your players for feedback; if you're not into fashion, for example, ask your players how they imagine people dress in a place like you're describing. Then roll with it.
Don't get me wrong, you definitely can start with an established setting and adapt as needed, but I think new DMs are over-cautioned against world building by default. You can absolutely make it up as you go; that's what most of the DMs who created many of the now-famous D&D settings (like Faerun!) did. If world building sounds fun to you, I encourage you to go for it.
I generally think a new DM, especially if they're new to the game itself, should probably start with some kind of premade adventure just to reduce the amount of work they need to do, but it's not the law, and that's just while they get used to how it goes.
That said, there's nothing wrong with making your own world. In a lot of ways, it's easier than using somebody else's. You will know the stuff you make up much better than you will ever know the Forgotten Realms. Assuming you're organized, you'll know where to find the stuff you don't remember, and when you need to make stuff up on the fly, it's much less likely to contradict other things the players already know.
The main thing about making your own world is that it doesn't need to be anything like as detailed as a published setting. You can, and probably should, start out with only the stuff local to the PCs, and build it out as you go. Have some general idea about the larger stuff going on, but you only need to figure out the details as it impinges on the PCs. If you really love worldbuilding, go for it, but large chunks of it will be unused, and it makes it harder to adapt when the players do things you never expected.
in a way icewind dale adventure is this
Cold, dark, human "lottery" sacrifices started in big towns to pleasure evil god, with cultist/s of said god fine with killing cheaters, evil duergars planning to take the cities, not exactly chaos inside the walls but decadent and depressing atmosphere, though if your party make bad decisions in chapter 3 and 4 of adventure there will be chaos inside the walls (and only walls remain) and big "fireparty" on which most of population die
Sounds awesome. I've been wanting to include some similar vibes to my campaign, but still waiting for the opportunity.
As for your original question, remember that the setting and the adventure are completely different, and not necessarily connected, things. Those who say that creating an entirely new adventure from scratch is a huge work, especially for a new GM, are not wrong. Those who point out that an existing setting (such as Forgotten Realms) have years and years of background and extremely rich lore, are definitely right. However, such rich lore may be overwhelming, and for me it was always a hindrance more than a help - what if my player knows FR lore better than me? What if I screw up some geography names or some important NPCs backstory?
Meanwhile, creating a world of your own and playing in it is a very fulfilling experience on its own. So you can do something in between - you can take an existing adventure, and put it in a setting of your creation. Take some ideas, some general plot points, most encounters - cause balancing encounters is the hardest part for a new GM - and make it a story of your own, in your world with the backstory that you completely control. That's an interesting option you may at least consider, IMO.
Feel free to borrow from multiple sources as well. Many things when adapted from their original context and rearranged in a way you find interesting can cobble together into something new if you run with your inspiration.
I was a new DM three years ago. I tried creating a campaign by using one of the books, failed miserably. After 3 months I decided to take ownership of my world and create my own campaign. We have the same campaign going and all my plans that i hoped for, when they were level 1 is coming to now. It is so much easier as you create the maps and story and allows you to modify the story and maps as the story goes on. Listening to my players talk and gives me ideas, the flexibility of my own world makes it easy to run with their ideas (players never give DMS ideas).
If you have access to the Dungeon Master's Guide, read at least the first chapter "A World of Your Own". That will give you the scope of world building and maybe help you answer some questions for your self of how much world you actually need. Many think to build a D&D world, they need multiple continents, and nation states, and peoples and politics, and overarching threat, etc. And that's not the case at all. "World" in fiction, and in Dungeons and Dragons, is a very relative concept. Yes, you could take a globe and populate it with geography and cultures, but a D&D World could easily be just one city. There have been in the past D&D settings that were just a single city, sometimes the particular world included adventuring outside the city, sometimes a world would not. Think of Lord of the Rings, yes they're set in Middle Earth, but for many Hobbits, "the world" was just the Shire. So think of the world more as a parameter or structure of your game.
The other thing to think about is what you need to realistically play. I'm a strong advocate for starting small, and letting the world develop as it needs. There are many many world builders who create multiple cyclopedias worth of world info, and 95% of it is never touched on in the game that's actually played. For some that's fine because there's enjoyment in world building; but for others it can be really frustrating spending who knows how many hours creating elaborate intricacies that probably would have been better spent for the game at hand reading up on running combat, developing suitable encounters for their game's specific party etc.
If you're starting at level one, you at most need a modest sized city, big enough that characters of all sorts could have their origins there, and a potential "exotic" far traveller type character would have reason to pass through (making it a port or otherwise a trade hub would give you literally paths and avenues upon which to explore the game world, if it serves your games needs). Create adventure possibilities within that city or in the outskirts and then see what the party wants to do from there.
In your darkened world situation, as the characters are of young adventurer sort, have them press-ganged into the town watch. It doesn't need to be a strict military order. After all, they're press ganging budding adventurers into service. Rather, they're tasked to perhaps rescue citizens or aid caught outside the walls, and maybe serve as peacekeepers and keepers of order within it. From there you can build onto the mystery, is the source of the darkness local? Or do you think your players will be more interested in exploring and seeking a source beyond the walls. This is, of course, presuming you want this darkness to be the chief challenge of your world and a solvable challenge. You could also simply treat it is as your world's gravity and it's just something that's a perpetual factor in the game. The great thing about D&D is you don't have to decide until an answer is necessary, and a good DM is also good at dodging or postponing the big questions.
Yes, world building can be fun, but what many consider "world building" isn't necessary and isn't necessarily fun for many. The game world doesn't have to correlate to a planetary survey. The game world is a setting and just needs enough to suit the sort of stories you and your players want to tell _at the start_, you can always build out when or if the expansion is needed.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The main problem is that the premade worlds are so big that I do not know what to do with them. They have somewhere around 100 named locations if not more, and it is hard to keep track of it all. Also, if I do decide to create my own world, how big should it be?
The answer to how big? is "as big as it needs to be for your story." Look at something like Exandria, the world Critical Role is set in. That started as a single village because they were doing a one shot that needed a cursed village setting. When they kept playing the needed a city to travel to so the world became a village and a city. They kept going and then the world was a village, a city and the surrounding area and they kept expanding from there until they had a continent and then a whole world. Alternatively the official campaigns Lost Mines of Phandelver, Phendelver and Below and Dragon of Icespire Peak all take place within about 10 square miles of the town of Phandalin and you could happily run a couple of years worth of prewritten campaigns without ever needing anything beyond that area.
TLDR; unless you're having a blast creating your world you can get away with a very small focused location so long as there's enough to hang the plot off and to keep your players occupied.
Totally agree, and as a follow-on, remember that most D&D characters are not world history experts. You don't always need to know things about your world that the average character wouldn't know. If your players ask you a trivia question that isn't covered by the setting prep you've done, you can always say: "That's not common knowledge in this setting; you'd need to find an expert to ask." (Which gives you time to come up with something)
Or better yet, you can hit them with the classic: "No one knows." That's often a story hook all by itself.
You can also tell them false things, or multiple answers. "You've heard X, but your mother's cousin, who traveled a lot when he was your age, swears Y, and he mostly only makes things up when he's drunk."
One should be careful about stating things as definitive answers, even when they are. If you just say "X", that's an answer from the DM, which is true. "You've heard X" is rumor, which may not be. Of course, the players will conflate the two. Getting the answer "it's X" from an NPC makes it less reflexively trusted.
I began DMing in 1979. I have used Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Krynn, a half a dozen of my own worlds and even played with no set world at all. Every option has benefits and draw backs.
After a recent release, I went back to Krynn for the first time in almost 40 years. The adventure was enjoyable by my players, but they left Krynn (through a mysterious portal) and landed in my own world. You see, every world has a style and a flavor, and war-torn Ansalon just did not feel right for me.
The advantage to having/making your own world is that, it is yours. No other player can tell you that you are running it wrong, or correct your interpretation or facts, because they know the source material better. Being yours, YOU are the ultimate authority. You can wing things or make things up on the fly. You can use the p,Ayer’s to grow the world, the lands, the kingdoms, etc. and you don’t have to spend hours reading and memorizing details that someone else has written. But it means that you have to edit almost any adventure you buy. I have run so much set originally in the Forgotten Realms, that I often wonder if I should return there.
But there is a certain amount of pride in making your own and it allows you to stretch certain creative muscles. I have my own world with multiple continents, various political structures across the lands, my own gods, a world history, etc. I didn’t build it over night, and it is by no means complete, and likely never will be. I expand as I need to based on the characters and their wanderings.
There is no right or wrong answer here. Do what fits your style and sense of the kind of world you want to play in…and then DM it that way. Good luck and welcome to the labor of love that is DMing. I enjoy DMing so much, I can no longer be a player in someone else’s game. And of course, I started DMing because no one else I knew could do it.
If you look at published adventures, most of 5e's run takes place in the Forgotten Realms, but many also give a paragraph or so for running them in other established D&D settings as well. If you pay attention to those adventures, however, most of them don't demand any sort of high degree of familiarity on the DM or player's part on the Forgotten Realms taking place in maybe six or seven distinct locations in a game running from level 1 to levels 10-13.
You want a world shrouded in darkness. Is a small city enough? One where you don't need to map it street by street, just a sense of the neighborhoods and a handful of significant personalities and locations. If your game eventually needs more, you can fill in and define more of the city, or you can start drawing a sense of what the world's like beyond the city.
Heck, many D&D campaigns can start with the party approaching a dungeon with a specific task to perform, and then backfill why the party did that, who they are, and where in the world they are after they run that dungeon and decide they want to keep playing.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.