Jürgen Hubert
First Post
As Urbis is very much a kitchen sink setting, I get inspiration from pretty much everywhere. It also helps that large parts of the setting are roughly analogous to Western and Central Europe during the Age of Industrialization - thus, there is a lot of history stuff I can steal, and both players and game masters can quickly get a feel for the setting.
The full list of references I have used would be too long, but here are a few that stand out:
The biggest resource I am using right now is the expanded German version of the [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Imaginary-Places-Updated-Expanded/dp/0156008726/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292152335&sr=8-1]Dictionary of Imaginary Places[/ame] - or, as I like to call it, crazy stuff Victorian-era people made up about the rest of the world. It does have more entries than those fitting into this category, but these are the ones of most interest to me since they tend to have an appropriate "period" feel.
The Arcana Wiki also has no shortage of Weird Stuff that's great for gaming, especially now that most entries are actually written by other people than me. Its random generators have also proven useful on numerous occasions.
And speaking of random generators, there are others that have been inspiring to me. Take this massive collection, for instance - sure, most of the generated results were useless, but there were plenty of useful ideas left. Of course, you will have to make them fit to your setting. For instance, there is a Secret Society Title generator and one of its results was a "Savant of the Hallowed Falcon". This in turn allowed me to come up with a cool secret society - the Order of the Hallowed Falcon.
Finally, the inspiration provided by other good setting and gaming books should not be underestimated. I have an ebook reader which allows me to read, bookmark, and annotate PDFs, and whenever I find something inspiring I make a note for later use. Of course, I don't want to recycle existing material in exactly the same way - that would be plagiarism. However, aspects of such material can often me changed and recombined with existing material for my setting in such a way that they become something new and interesting again...
The full list of references I have used would be too long, but here are a few that stand out:
The biggest resource I am using right now is the expanded German version of the [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Imaginary-Places-Updated-Expanded/dp/0156008726/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292152335&sr=8-1]Dictionary of Imaginary Places[/ame] - or, as I like to call it, crazy stuff Victorian-era people made up about the rest of the world. It does have more entries than those fitting into this category, but these are the ones of most interest to me since they tend to have an appropriate "period" feel.
The Arcana Wiki also has no shortage of Weird Stuff that's great for gaming, especially now that most entries are actually written by other people than me. Its random generators have also proven useful on numerous occasions.
And speaking of random generators, there are others that have been inspiring to me. Take this massive collection, for instance - sure, most of the generated results were useless, but there were plenty of useful ideas left. Of course, you will have to make them fit to your setting. For instance, there is a Secret Society Title generator and one of its results was a "Savant of the Hallowed Falcon". This in turn allowed me to come up with a cool secret society - the Order of the Hallowed Falcon.
Finally, the inspiration provided by other good setting and gaming books should not be underestimated. I have an ebook reader which allows me to read, bookmark, and annotate PDFs, and whenever I find something inspiring I make a note for later use. Of course, I don't want to recycle existing material in exactly the same way - that would be plagiarism. However, aspects of such material can often me changed and recombined with existing material for my setting in such a way that they become something new and interesting again...
