This takes me way back, we both wrote dungeons and dragons campaigns when younger and I ran several throughout the eighties, I was programming at the same time, hobby at first then as a job in 1983. The campaigns I wrote were nothing to do with LoS however. So before we started LoS we had 15-20 years of campaign design and coding behind us! I am
that old
The LoS world was a completely original concept, the background world, the history, races were all blocked out before we created a single in game location. The primary and secondary plot lines were created and hidden and embedded into the game, bits slowly being revealed here and there. There are huge chunks of TODO still including the really high level stuff, hence the level 18 cap. It made no sense to have chars who were much too powerful for anything they could battle.
Yes, I do have a lot of notes, but the direction changed somewhat during all the development as it would, input from the other GMs was excellent and helped it down what I have always considered a good path. The current work will make it easier to generate new content so when done I hope to be able to start pushing the database forwards again.