[RPG] What information is available for the town Fallcrest

I'd recommend the 5x5 method which discussed on the in detail on the critical-hits.com blog in the context of both adventures and campaigns

The basic idea of this technique, is that you take 5 ideas:

• Overthrow the evil empire
• Prevent the sorcerer from ascending to demon-hood
• and 3 more...

and so on, and then for each idea create 5 milestones that will happen along the way.

e.g. for overthrow the evil empire

• meet up with the rebel alliance
• learn the weakness of the death star
• and 3 more...

and for prevent the sorcerer from ascending to demon-hood

• steal the orb of power from the temple of evil
• kidnapped by the sorcerer's lizard man minions
• and 3 more

Put that on a grid:

Overthrow the evil empire   Prevent the sorcerer from   Thing 3   Thing 4   Thing 5
                            ascending to demon-hood

learn the weakness of the   steal the orb of power      ....      ....      ....
death star                  from the temple of evil

meet up with the rebel      kidnapped by the sorcerer's ....      ....      .... 
alliance                    lizard man minions

....                        ....                        ....      ....      ....

....                        ....                        ....      ....      ....

....                        ....                        ....      ....      ....

And then using that as scaffolding build around them.

One of the nice aspects of this method is that you can give your players control over the paths they take. They can chose to ignore one of the lanes that you have sketched out without derailing you completely. And you can spring natural consequences of their actions on them, that make sense in the context of what has gone before.

critical-hits.com also has a summary of other places on the internet that talk about this idea

It is not. What I believe to be the easiest way is to start from the inside and work outward. Have the PCs be somewhere, have one adventure (see Designing my own D&D Adventure) and be ready with a few things to do when your PCs get out of the path you designed for them. They probably aren't going to discover a world-threatening conspiracy in their first session.

So, what I recommend is: Have the campaign flow out of the characters' actions. Are the players keen on beating up orcs? Then make an orc villain for the next sessions, who plans to invade their homeland. Do the characters like beating up random monsters? Have them battle random monsters for a while before introducing a big plot point.

It also depends on the type of campaign you want to run, and as DM, it's something you probably should experience.

So, to sum it up. Start from the little things, learn from your players, and use those ideas to build a campaign. It is not impossible for a newbie to start that way – I did as well, and I think the DM Guide should have some resources for that. Build the campaign as you go along, and it should work out as long as you spend some thought on that. A campaign is not about the mechanics, it's about the story and the interconnected adventures. And that can be made by any DM, even a starting one.