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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1299828" data-attributes="member: 812">I do <a href="http://barsoom.hyboria.net" target="_blank">THIS</a> much.Actually, that's obviously not what I started with.I started Barsoom with a big list of "Stuff I Think Is Cool". Literally, I had a sheet of paper with "Stuff I Think Is Cool" at the top, and under that I made a list of everything I could think of. Dinosaurs, flintlock pistols, red guys, ironclad airships, unstoppable crazed bad guys, it went on and on. I spent about a month just on that list -- deliberately refusing to let myself actually start working on the campaign while I just generated as many ideas as I could.I'm a map whore, I admit it. I love drawing maps, I can pore over them for days on end -- so I took one of my favourite maps and stuffed as much of the "Stuff I Think Is Cool" into it as I could. In fact, I made a point of sticking in EVERYTHING. I deliberately, at this point in the creation, didn't bother trying to make it logical and self-justifying. I've run many campaigns over the years and I have confidence in my ability to come up with sufficiently plausible explanations later. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />At this point I had a world, a bunch of countries or cultural areas ("Aztecs over here!", "Red guys down there!"), ideas for wacky sites, and a number of key characters. I had an idea for an initial adventure and found a good place to stick that in and then added in the detail I'd need to be able to run that -- more detailed maps, yada yada.I spent another little while applying some detail to the areas and ideas I'd come up with previously, and started adding ideas to my Timeline. Threw together a quick calendar (but forgot to add in real holidays which I now regret) and got some friends together and away we went. I created the website so they could plan their characters, did some pre-game work with each of them to make sure the characters would fit together, and the rest, while not exactly history, was at least a Story Hour.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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