A Walk through History (CSC)

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The ruins that adventurers are so fond of looting were once the homes, temples, castles, and strongholds of folk from long ago. While we will go into more detail about such places later in the book, and even provide you with a few samples to base your own dungeons on, take a few minutes now to consider the subject. Answering how, when, and why the worlds ruins came to be in this sate tells the history of the world.
This is a relatively advanced step and can be saved until the OM is more familiar with his world. History is a wonderful tool for justifying the existence of lost cities, mysterious ruins, abandoned temples, and haunted battlefields. It can be used to explain the relationship between character races, the creation or reappearance of monsters, the disappearance of civilizations, and the establishment of new ones.
The basic rule for creating a history is to recognize that entire civilizations do not appear overnight, but grow slowly, ascending through the culture levels. As they develop and sometimes fail, they leave behind the debris of their growth in the form of tombs, temples and abandoned dwellings. Unless utterly eradicated, the folk of failed civilizations migrate or merge with their successors to form new peoples. New cities rise up from the ruins and living cities build over the foundations of their past, leaving bits of history to be discovered.
Work up a time-line for the world (or region), essentially a general sequence of events. Exact dates are not important. Ask the questions "Where did it all come from?" and "What has happened to and be cause of man ill the past?" Focus on local history. Don't worry about neighboring realms yet, or leaving out major events, or describing something that may have to be changed later. History is flexible. The 'truth' grows and changes as more evidence of the past is uncovered. What is accepted as fact by one generation is proven folly by the next.
First, examine the world's distant any races long ago that predate the appearance of humanity and demi-humanity? What artifacts did they leave behind? Have any beasts from ancient times survived into the ClllTent age? Where can they be found? Is there a divine or magical reason for the evolution, appearance, or creation of the major character races? Was there any interference from elementals or other interplanar beings that significantly affected the nature of the world? Also consider the role of dragons in the world, since they are among the most powerful of all the AD&D® game system monsters.
With the appearance of the major character races, recent history begins. Here, we look at the movement of peoples, major conflicts between them, and the rise and fall of civilizations, including those of humans, demi-humans, and monsters.
Decide where each major culture came from and where they may be going. Select a number of the population centers to be victims of history, naught but empty ruins. Give thought to how they became empty. Were pestilence, war, earthquakes, or volcanoes the cause of their demise? Or was something far more sinister to blame? Make some notes about what might live in the abandoned areas.