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<blockquote data-quote="Wayside" data-source="post: 540694" data-attributes="member: 8394">For a moment I thought you meant Theophile Gautier, and I was going to mention something about Rilke; now that I realize who you're referring to I actually have nothing to say about that : \I'm surprised that so many people draw their ideas from gamebooks.&nbsp; My list for the world I'm working on now doesn't have any:Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and a wealth of other metaphysical literature from Aristotle to Stroud, Davidson, Strawson, etc.Descriptive books on physics like The Elegant Universe and Hyperspace.Interpretive (i.e. not straight mythological) religious literatire like Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: the One and the Many, any of Joseph Campbell's (mostly the Masks of God series) or Mircea Eliade's books (they don't have to be right about the nature of religion in the real world to work for building a fantasy world now do they?).Straight mythology and primary religious texts, from the Sumerians to the Greeks, Romans, Norse, Egyptians, Zoroastrians, Gnostics, and all that stuff.&nbsp; That's what's sitting on my bed right now anyway, saying to me &quot;ha!&nbsp; you can't go to sleep until you clean us up.&quot;Of course if I was writing fantasy books instead of designing fantasy worlds the list would be far different.&nbsp; I think you could do just as well starting with Vergil and Homer and reading your way through the lot of it.&nbsp; After all, its history that shapes worlds, and people that shape history.&nbsp; Seems to me that the way to build a world, once you've settled the physical and metaphysical realities you'll be dealing with, is through its characters.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Wayside, post: 540694, member: 8394"] For a moment I thought you meant Theophile Gautier, and I was going to mention something about Rilke; now that I realize who you're referring to I actually have nothing to say about that : \ I'm surprised that so many people draw their ideas from gamebooks. My list for the world I'm working on now doesn't have any: Kant's [I]Critique of Pure Reason[/I] and a wealth of other metaphysical literature from Aristotle to Stroud, Davidson, Strawson, etc. Descriptive books on physics like [I]The Elegant Universe[/I] and [I]Hyperspace[/I]. Interpretive (i.e. not straight mythological) religious literatire like [I]Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: the One and the Many[/I], any of Joseph Campbell's (mostly the [I]Masks of God[/I] series) or Mircea Eliade's books (they don't have to be right about the nature of religion in the real world to work for building a fantasy world now do they?). Straight mythology and primary religious texts, from the Sumerians to the Greeks, Romans, Norse, Egyptians, Zoroastrians, Gnostics, and all that stuff. That's what's sitting on my bed right now anyway, saying to me "ha! you can't go to sleep until you clean us up." Of course if I was writing fantasy books instead of designing fantasy worlds the list would be far different. I think you could do just as well starting with Vergil and Homer and reading your way through the lot of it. After all, its history that shapes worlds, and people that shape history. Seems to me that the way to build a world, once you've settled the physical and metaphysical realities you'll be dealing with, is through its characters. [/QUOTE]

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