So here's a little story about being overly ambitious:

Quite some time ago I had an idea for a one-shot Dungeons and Dragons campaign. It was all about a city which had come under siege.
So I started with a general story I wanted to tell. Then it needed characters, so I made some. And then I drew a small map sketch to get an idea for what would happen where. Then some more characters popped up. Then some history behind the city. Some more characters. Street names. Shops. Shopkeepers. Alleyways. Caves. Houses. Their gardens. A guild. A second guild...this was getting out of hand.

But not out of hand enough.

Why not make a full map for the city? Okay.
But what would be the history behind it? That would inform the design, make it more grounded, and also make for a neat second map I could make!
Oooh, but what if we go back in time one more step? Three times the groundedness and history. Yeah!
Okay, okay, okay. But what if we go back even further?
How much further?
How about iron age far?
Heck yes!

...

So here I am. And here is the first in a line of hopefully many, many maps:

Tirgelan - The Story Circle web.jpg

Somewhere on the continent of Tirgelan lies the Broken Mountain.
Once a year druids, wizards and other scholars of magic make a pilgrimage to the stone circle to exchange stories, learn and experiment in the ways of magic. It's all centered around the eight stone monoliths, each larger than life and towering over everything nearby. They're studied, memorised, written down and recited. And at the end of the day beds are set up in the nearby caves where the stones are dreamed about.
It's a week long festival, a celebration of the wondrous, and everyone leaves wiser for it.

But some drunken bugger started writing his own magical theories on the cavern walls.