A Question for those who have made Mods with Orignal Universes

[St.Louis]

Where do you guys start? Do you start with whatever company is the largest or most popular and build around them? Do you write or think out a history for the universe and start from there? I've just been wondering as I would like to build one for my own personal use.

[FlameSnoopy]

The one I have (and am) making occasionally.. I have just builded up stuff that I come up with in my mind. First, of course, I thought the promotions, then just started adding people I come up with. I build the history all the time when I make workers and promotions, so that I can keep myself interested. Works for me, but it isn't the fastest tactic, and the reason I will never be able to release my mod. :p

[Kobe1724]

Where do you guys start? Do you start with whatever company is the largest or most popular and build around them? Do you write or think out a history for the universe and start from there? I've just been wondering as I would like to build one for my own personal use.

I've been working on mine since mid 2007. I started with the promotion/workers I liked most (characters from my childhood) and built out from there. ^_^

I'll be done at some point in 2010, 1400ish workers. :)

[crayon]

Where do you guys start? Do you start with whatever company is the largest or most popular and build around them? Do you write or think out a history for the universe and start from there? I've just been wondering as I would like to build one for my own personal use.

My original universe is probably a bit different since it pulls from various sources, but I would suggest you start with the foundation first. Be it the back-story or defining (not creating) what key promotions/workers you want in it.

It's not the most exciting way to start out, but it can help minimize the need to have to go back over your data and change everything at a later stage.

When you've got an overview to reference it's a lot easier to work out where the current data you're working on fits in with everything else, in the big picture.

Really obvious example: Say you create your top three promotions, and fill them all with workers that fit the promotion. If then afterward you decide "hmm, I'd be pretty cool if I had a narrative where MMA really took off, and shoot-fighting was now the most popular thing in this era" you may need to go back and alter the popularity of those three promotions, and very possibly the popularity of all the workers you had in it.

Start off with a solid foundation and you'll give yourself more creative freedom.

[dvdWarrior]

While I haven't released any mod publicly, (and have no idea if I'll ever release this one), I have been working on my own universe for quite a while now.

For reasons even I'll probably never understand for sure, whenever I enjoy something, I'm driven to create my own personal version of it. In my life, I've written stories about my own Star Trek crew, my own wrestling wrestling promotions, my own baseball teams, my own military heroes squaring off against a Predator, etc.

My personal universe is spread between TEW and OOTP at the moment, and believe it or not, actually has history dating back to the 1860's.

I'm a big 'milieu' guy myself. The world itself is the important thing, and everything in it - the promotions, the workers, etc. - should be designed to expand that world and really get that world over. Also, I have more than my fair share of TEW-related OCD's and I just can't seem to bring myself to import or copy files or do things like that. Everything has to be created from scratch.

Personally, I'm addicted to being the guy who gets to decide on what is 'canon' and what is not. I've never had such a feeling of power. I'd suggest reading a Harry Turtledove book or two, just to give you an idea of the consequences and repercussions of a world gone differently.

:cool:

Hope I got all that out well enough, these things are so clear in my head, but I get the feeling they might sound completely and utterly foreign to anyone listening, or in this case reading.
:o

[St.Louis]

Thanks for all the advice. I think I'm going to start with a back story for my universe. I'm just afraid it will parellel to much to the real world seeing as that im not that creative. :p