Recently I watched a video by Tale Foundry called " Lovecraft’s Dreamland: The weird setting of Lovecraft’s psyche — HP Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle". It’s a discussion on some of Lovecraft’s earliest works where he basically built out a setting through chronicling the dreams he would have and organizing them into a sort of setting. This video goes into the detail about the history and circumstance surrounding Lovecraft’s first world and writing.
I found this interesting and applicable to OSR play since later in the video, it describes taking the Hopes, Fears, Likes and Inspirations of a writer and using them as a basis for a setting or world. In some sense it seems like this is the very basis of creating a setting when one doesn’t have a frame of reference to work around (like what is found in Appendix N or what is seen in adventure modules) or if you want to go for a completely raw approach to one’s own worldbuilding.
Maybe it’s the absolute kit-bashing style that is generated by letting your own imagination run wild with only what it has been fed and able to digest through the years, but it just seems interesting to me to go back to basics and not focus on what is tied into a particular genre or style (not to disregard genre games) without worrying to try and justify the inclusion of something not seen in a particular genre.
I just wanted to share this since I figure this was interesting and might be helpful to someone here.
Link to the Video here: https://youtu.be/JcG7QTSF96Q