A game in which the players portray gods and collaboratively create a fantasy world from scratch: giving you all the tools and advice by which a few ordinary people can set themselves up with ultimate power for an evening, and leave you with a complete, detailed fantasy world. It will, if you make use of it, give you a world with complete landscapes, history, cultures, and characters. And it will be fun, too.
What lies on the table before you is a barren, lifeless world. It is up to each player in turn to begin filling it. One of the most important things to remember is that as players create things, other players are entirely free to change them. This is usually more than enough incentive to set civilizations at war, as you will see in a moment.