Quote Originally Posted by brian 333 View Post
Are you trying to create a universe? Or a campaign setting?

A universe is huge and will take forever to build. But stars and planets don't make a campaign. For that players need something to do.

A list of characters, planets, and an idea of how or if it is all organized may help add depth to your campaign, or may even inspire you to create new adventures, but without the adventure they can never attract or maintain the attention of players.

On the other hand, none of that is necessary if a solid campaign is built. Details will emerge and fill the blank spaces in time.

Use what you have to build an adventure.

I will use what I wrote as an example.

The players hear a rumor of a diamond moon, but nothing solid. Instead they are asked to deliver supplies to a mercenary group pinned down on a planet involved in a world war. 5 times normal fee.

On the way they get boarded by customs agents who take exception to the ammo they carry. The cargo is legal, but the players come face to face with Imperial authority.

Arriving on the planet they are shot, and a critical part of their ship is damaged. It will take six weeks for a replacement to arrive. They can each earn Cr 1000/day if they join the Red Hawks for the interval.

A Red Hawk infantry sergeant has heard about the diamond moon, and as a former scout, he has heard the name of the man in the tale.

With a temporarily repaired vessel and Cr 45k each in cash, plus the cargo fees, they move on to find a shipyard to permanently repair their vessel. While there a robot attaches itself to the ship. In trying to find its owner the crew discover the robot has forged its own papers identifying it as property of the crew.

When the ship is repaired and refurbished, the crew is contacted by a scientific group which needs a three month charter to deploy sensors then assist in scientific experiments. It turns out they also want protection from unscrupulous competitors who fear the HCC will make the billion credit discoveries before they do. A pirate group hears of the 'discoveries' and wants to have a monopoly on the new tech. When the experiments are done the researchers wipe their files from the ship's computers, but the robot has copies, allowing the players to compile a superior navigation program.

At the local scout station the robot searches for and finds the records of the scout with the diamond moon, and by using the records of his travels, (scout computers are always downloaded before servicing,) it can extrapolate the most likely subsector in which the diamond moon might be.

This results in about eight to ten game sessions. Very ambitious fora starter campaign. If you want a sandbox approach to your campaign you still have to have a place to begin, or your players will look at each other and say, "I don't know. What do you wanna do?"
A good place to begin would be a fight, and when the bad guys are defeated, they leave clues behind, the players follow those clues into an adventure, that's called a maguffen I believe, so the question is who are the bad guys attacking and why, the why leads to the adventure.