On 12 February 2018 at 03:01, Rusty Witherspoon <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

Depends entirely on the scale you're writing at.

yes, I'd entirely agree.

Are you producing something on the (perhaps middle) scale of, say, Reign of Discordia or Babylon 5 (for Traveller), where everything fits into a normal sized book or maybe two. Something as delightfully brief as Michael Brown's gem of Omega 99 (a Space: 1999 setting in just two pages). Or something like Mindjammer or Clement Sector which run to multiple (large) books...

How much do you think you can do in a reasonable time frame?

(I've dreamed of doing this but the logistics and time required have scared me off for years....)

Which is not very helpful really, but you need different levels of detail at different scales.
However, make sure to leave enough room for exploration and for referees to make it their own.
Most published settings fail at both.

Agreed.

Also, given the number of settings that exist, I also fail for myself at adequately answering the question: why reinvent the wheel? How is this going to be different/better than near future harder science (2300AD), 'cut-off' near future (Clement Sector), slightly space operaesque but not Third Imperium (Reign of Discordia), well known tv (Babylon 5), very near future gritty realism (Orbital) (and Hostile), comic book fun (Judge Dredd or Strontium Dog), horror (Cthonian Stars), military (Hammer's Slammers), or even for that matter Third Imperium where I can do exploration, merchant, science, nobles, mixtures of those... etc.