A Big Job Made Easy (CSC)

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Even for an experienced DM, starting a new world is a. daunting, even personally threatening prospect. So much work lies ahead that one wonders if the eventual :fun will be worth the effort.
While it may merely daunt an experienced DM, the project can overwhelm the novice—so much to do, so much to know. Yet the tasks can be scaled down and made to fit a DMs available time, energy, and ambition.
The good news is that all the work of world creation need not be done before playing out the fIrst adventure. The guidelines that describe how to create an entire world can be scaled down to apply to something much similar, to a small kingdom off the beaten path, a little barony that needs the attention of a motley band of heroes, or an isolated island with access to places of mystery. If the players' characters begin as local folk, they do not need to know more of their world. In fact they probably will not know much more than the fields around their own village or keep. Thus, at first, the DM can limit his world design to a mere microcosm of that world.
The very important aspect of history need not include much more than the last few generations of local lore and at least some idea (if only for the DM's benefit) of why those old ruins are slowly crumbling out there in the woods.
A great campaign can begin as simply as just described. As the DM's time permits, his world can grow outward from a core of these first little kernels. The backwater barony turns out to be a small fief in a larger kingdom, the local temple is revealed as a heretical branch of the primary religion in the area (causing some hot water for any cleric characters when they leave the shelter of their home town), the cherished and respected local lord is found to be a pretender, a local bandit chieftain turns out to be a large scale international criminal, and so forth.
By beginning small, the DM can also test his pet ideas and keep or discard them as he finds they work or fail miserably. A general guide for deciding if something works or not is to ask yourself Was the concept easy to understand and were the players excited or intrigued by the idea when it was presented to them? If the answer is no to either part of the question, then it may be a good idea to discard it and try something else.