What's your personal worldbuilding pet peeve?

"Your creativity should amplify what your players already enjoy, not educate them about what they should enjoy." That's golden.

Tricks for the first one: Write 10 info about the tower. Scratch off 1 as impossible for anyone in the world to know. Scratch off 3 as being very difficult to uncover (require you to investigate thoroughly the tower and/or use advanced divination). Write 3 as rumours with accompanying false claims. The remaining 3 are known informations. You can scale this (1, 1/3, 1/3, 1/3) with either more or less information. But 10 is an easy number to split off.

Number 1 isn't a worldbuilding sin, but an exposition sin. You as a GM kinda need to know where the tower was built and by whom, unless you intend to just wing it. But you absolutely shouldn't have some NPC just loredump all the info unto the players.

1. NPCs Knowing too much, use rumors!
2. Give clues, draw attention, discovery not exposition.
3. Living world, have NPCs move/have their own goals.
4. Tourists ... Have players take over a scene once and awhile.
5. Small sandboxs/3 plots, quick locations/encounters
6. Record keeping and Consquences
7. Group A wants X, Group B wants X, and Group C wants X and Y. Are we the baddies?

"You walk into the tavern-"
"Wait. Didnt we burn it down last session?"
"Yes. You did."
"Why is it..... back?"
":)"
Quest hook!! The tavern is an illusion!! Or something. I didnt think that far ahead before typing.

A word on the fourth sin. It took a long time for my players to actually understand they could help me build the world they play in, even though I told them many times. Some of them even wanted me to write their backstory because they thought it would be easier for me to run the game! Some other players straight away told me "okay so this is my backstory, but I have no interest in going back to the places mentioned or meeting the people I named".

Sometimes, your players are making your job harder.

But in the end the dwarf met her parents, the ninja fox met his interdimensional creator, the cleric met the god she never knew about, and the cook... well... he's cooking better now.

I love the format of identifying the problem, why we're likely to fall for it, followed by some practical tips for avoiding these trappings. And I love that railroading isn't listed as a "sin", but is discussed as a consequence of things like linear prepping and ignoring the consequences of PC actions. Great job.

2:37 Matt Coleville recommends “What everyone knows, what is known by some, what only few know, what no one knows.

Just be honest: "Oh, you went back to the SAME town you burned down the tavern in? Sorry, I gave you more credit than that. I forgot your combined IRL INT is 4! OK, you're all surrounded by guards about to arrest you for arson, what do you do?!"

This is all great advice; the only problem is that these aren’t problems with how the world is built, but rather with how it is communicated — in other words, with basic DMIng. But that’s OK. Being a good basic DM is a lot harder than being a good worldbuilder; I’m a good worldbuilder, but at best an average DM. This video helps me see how to be better at the table, which is more important than being good at the map and the word processor.

As you say, the players must see that their actions matter, so, wherever possible, give each quest a “failure option,” allowing the players to fail in their goal and still keep the campaign going. I did one adventure where the player’s mission was to stop a drow plot to provoke a war between the elves and humans by assassinating the elf queen’s daughter and framing the humans for it. Unfortunately, the players didn’t see through the plot, the assassination was successful, and the players inadvertently helped kill off the only witness. I made one of the few really good decisions I’ve ever made as a DM; I let the war begin, and built future adventures around the war.

I had expected this to be one of those "stop worldbuilding your players don't care videos" this is excellent advice

These tips are golden. And the video quality is super well made. Not to mention the free story blueprint. This guy is a legend.

One thing that can add to the mystery is when you have an NPC sharing information for the players and not just telling them yourself, because you can pull on the literary tool of the Unreliable Narrator. (You can also use it if you're talking about what a player has heard or in-character would most likely assume)

You don't wanna be too egregious with it but it helps to get players to question everything which can really help enhance the mystery.

12:47 all of this maybe you all think is just a comedy, but as a DM, i guarantee you it's actually happened at the table

I went through all of the stages of grief during this video

A lot of this advice is good, but it's phrased in a way that ignores one thing: the GM's fun. While you definitely need to present things in a way that connects with the characters and their immediate experiences, the idea that you need to aim your worldbuilding exclusively at the players' interests is a step away from saying that you are just there for their fun. You're a player too, and you get to have fun with things other than entertaining others.

As a improviser mostly, I like to add stories and weird locations into the game. For example they meet an old traveling merchant on the road and just chat. No plothook,, but they usually ask him, what he saw on his journey, or just chat with him. So I just pull out of my... a few interesting stories he tells them. Some are truth, some are not. Just like in a real life. And I usually locate them somewhere a bit farther from this location, after all, they ask about his journey, not this place. It (in my opinion) make it sound like there is a bigger world out there. And sometimes, they got interested in some of the stories and make it their mission to visit that "weird enormous statue, that has no head" and travel there. Yeah, I now have to prepare adventure about that statue, but it is adventure they are really interested in.
Other metod is when they flip randomly through a book in a library or something and ask if they found something interesting. I like to make up some legend, maybe about a knight, that sealed away a specific monster with his magical sword, only to dissapear later, only rumored that he died in a mines somewhere. Guess what monster will reapear a while later? And believe me, if you made that story even just slightly interesting, they WILL remember about the magical monster sealing sword. (Or maybe they will go after that sword right away, good enough)

Sin 1 is something I think the official campaign Dungeon of the Mad Mage does quite well occasionally. So in my own games, I added environmental story telling elements to many other rooms, gave the existing ones even more details. This way as the players crawl through the dungeon, they gradually gain more slivers of insight on the whole picture. What happened on these ruins. Who lived here, why did they leave, who replaced them etc. and I never have to exposit anything in long paragraphs. Just describing the rooms is enough to let the players know there is history here. But what history? You pick up a left over plate and imagine, kind of like archeology… which admittedly sounds boring? Or crime scene forensics. Yes that’s more interesting.

One of my favorite ways to communicate lore that’s important or complex to my players is to give them lore documents.

I can pack a lot of concepts and nuance into my writing that would have made my players bored if I had told them through spoken word. I can also use fonts, font sizes, colors, bolds, italics, underlines, and other such things to my advantage in that format.

While I’m working on resolving some things that some of my players want to do, other players can look through the lore document to help them hunt down the monster of the week and to figure out what the bigger picture is. So it can help players engage with the mystery.

And, of course, if I give my players a lore document, somebody is going to read it out loud (usually dramatically or with a silly voice), and that is always delightful.

I once had a player read a document while impersonating Toad. I think everyone was dying from laughter for the entire time it was being read.