Making preparations and setups for a new campaign

[Yora]

It's been a long time since I last ran a Star Wars game, and I haven't run the d6 system yet, and from everything I've been reading it seems to be a common approach to drop the players off somewhere and then see where it is going.
But of course even then the GM has material prepared and some kind of plan. And while I have a pretty good general idea for the overall subject and tone of the campaign, I really don't know how approach the actual planning for the game.

What kinds of preparation and planning do you do when you set up a new campaign? What things do you think are absolutely necessary to have ready before you start, and what things would you consider to be really useful to have set out in advance?
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"Adventure? Eh... Excitement? Eh... A Jedi does not crave these things."

Iridium Moons Retro-futuristic Space Opera

[Grimace]

I think you have already done part of what I usually do:

Have a general layout of what your campaign is going to be...the main antagonists, the general feel and vibe of your campaign.

Then I generally have a few places for the group to go to, as they're likely going to diverge from where I initially intended them to go. So have some ideas of the places before they decide to go there. Just general ideas about each, not a full detail of each world, but enough to not leave yourself hanging there going "uh...um... hold on" as you thumb through books to find information.

Next, have a few cheat sheets of some "likely to be encountered" NPCs and mooks. If you're going to have pirates, have a few stocks pirate stats at the ready. If you think they'll be interacting with a crime lord, have that crime lord or his top henchman stats ready. This also includes ships! If they are likely to encounter system patrol craft, have those stats ready for reference.

Then it usually helps to have some adventure seeds that you've created to give to your players when they decide to go off on a tangent. These adventure seeds could be nice little stand-alones, or they could be short little jobs to kind of loop them back around to the general arc of your campaign. These adventure seeds should only be used when the group hits a stall and seems to be struggling to go anywhere.

[MrNexx]