Building the campus, part 1

Early on, as I was world-building Deucado for The Ark Lords, I knew that I had to have a general knowledge of what was to be the site of Rome’s library. Further, I knew that eventually this site would grow to become the campus of the University of Deucado. So I had to do a little planning so that I could write intelligently about locations and movement around that site.

I am a horrible artist and I couldn’t draw a tree to save my life. So I used the only tool I could think of the lay out the campus and that was Microsoft’s Excel. What? You ask. That doesn’t seem like much of a tool to me. And guess what? You’d be right. Here is my original Excel drawing. If you click on the image, it will take you to a slightly larger and slightly more legible version.

Here was my thinking: Rome needed to build her library. While it wasn’t in the middle of nowhere, it was fairly remote and would eventually need a commissary, a dormitory and an auditorium. But for now, at the beginning of The Ark Lords, Rome merely need to acknowledge the eventual requirements so that MINIMCOM could excavate the pads. I also had Rome (actually it was Rei’s design) provide a private landing pad for MINIMCOM and maybe some other aircraft down the road.

Tomorrow, I will show you how my brother Bruce turned this dopey little Excel spreadsheet into a photo-realistic campus.