For about five years now, I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons. I started right away with a long campaign, which I DM myself. Beginning with The Lost Mine of Phandelver and then moving on to homebrew. At some point, I started playing with more people than just my regular table. Occasionally, we played one-shots, and I found myself increasingly enjoying building high-concept worlds for those short adventures.
Not a generic medieval European fantasy world, but a strong theme; pirates, a magical school, modern IT workers in a cyber world. The stronger the concept, the easier it is for players to imagine the world. And the clearer it is for the players where the boundaries lie. The clearer the boundaries, the greater the creativity within those boundaries.
Players interpret the world from their own frame of reference—what is possible and what isn’t—and that makes it easier for them to add something to the world. Instead of passively waiting for a description of what kinds of shops exist in a village, a player will directly ask if there is a specific type of shop. Or they introduce NPCs themselves, like when we played a fantasy Olympic Games adventure. As a player, you immediately have a picture of the world. “I’m going to participate in the games, which means I have opponents. Is my opponent from last year participating again this time?”
This way, as a Game Master, you don’t have to build the entire world alone; instead, playing your story becomes an exchange between player and GM. I give the players a piece of the world, they add something to it, I build on that, and so it becomes a back-and-forth of worldbuilding. This brings the world even more to life.
So don’t be afraid to choose a strong concept for your adventure, and don’t worry that people won’t understand it or won’t find it interesting. Boundaries foster greater creativity!