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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 5599781" data-attributes="member: 8835">Good thread topic.The last campaign world I built (also a campaign) was a D&D version of Babylon5.  However, I followed my same general process.First, I figured out my core concept.  Namely, this was going to be a naval and militaristic campaign.  It was also going to follow the human side of things.  By requiring everybody to start out with humans and be in the military, it basically gave me a platform for getting them started down the adventure path of what the show was about.  I also had to be prepared for them to deviate.  I figured, that I should expect that for the first few missions, the party may follow orders, but if things get wierd, they'll go mutiny and become pirates and be prepared to run with that.Once I have that core nugget of what the game is about (human Navy guys getting involved in big political stuff), I needed a map.  I google up whatever current tools are out for random world map generation.  I found a fractal generator that gave me a watery world with lots of islands.  The ocean represents space, and the islands represent planets.I then mapped out the main races that would appear.  All the PH races got mapped to the show's races (plus a few monster races) and I gave them new names to disguise them for flavor.  I made elves be Minbari, dwarves be Narn, and Gnomes be Centauri (which I thought would be a nice unexpected twist).  I even did a few portraits for some flavor (easy to do with a light table).With the map in place, and the races figured out, I then zoomed in on the things that matter.  Namely the human island.  it figured in the center of the map.  I made up a few places, to show where the various classes would train up.  I documented the kind of government (a monarchy with a senate).  I even took the US Uniform Code of Military Justice and chopped it up, and replaced keywords to build the new law code the military followed just for flavor (took a few hours, but was easy).I made some notes on the religions, namely the human ones, so I could cover what the clerics could worship.For wizards, I made the Human's Circle of Magic, an government mandated organization for wizards (humans had no sorcerors).  This was analagous to PsiCorp.At that point, I was mostly set.  I hadn't built out any islands specifically, I decided to set the timeline to before the earth-minbari war, so the players could level up, experience the world pre-war, and have a big climax at the Battle of the Line. The adventures leading up to the battle of the line were just made up, per what the PCs wanted to do, and what made sense to be happening as missions.  My core goal was to get them invested in the PCs and in the outcome of the war.After the Battle of the Line, I made 5 years pass, and glossed over what happened so they could get to my version of Babylon5, an Island trading and diplomacy post.  Where I put all the PCs in charge of various aspects.And then they played out some aspects of season 1 before external factors killed the campaign.Getting the time line up to match the show is where I had considerable danger.  At that point, I had parallels for PCs to TV characters.  Where applicable, I used that to recycle episodes for hooks.  I also chopped out a lot, because I wanted their experience to be divergent in some ways.Over all, the campaign went well, and in reality, I didn't generate a lot of game material.  Certainly not more than I needed.</blockquote>

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