What's your most surprising go-to DMing resource?

[Keeper of Secrets]

I resort to an old Paranoia trick. No matter what game I am running I always keep a few random gaming books. If the players ask me a question about something I do not have a ready answer for, I grab one of them, flip through it and then give them an answer as if I found it there. This is particularly amusing if we are playing Mutants & Masterminds and I 'find the answer to their question' in a Ravenloft setting or Monster Manual II.

 

[The Green Adam]

www.conceptart.org

I find endless ideas and inspiration from the massive collection of unbelievably creative people on this site.

It is very rare these days that I get my gaming idea from gaming books.

AD

 

[xnosipjpqmhd]

I keep a printout of JollyDoc's Shackled City story hour nearby. Very handy for what NPCs will say right before the heroes put the smackdown on them.

 

[olshanski]

I find that daytime soaps (like General Hospital and Days of our Lives) are great resources. Primarily for the character names, but also for various plot arcs and especially NPC motivations.

Hey, not everyone is a mad wizard bent on eternal undeath or conquest of the world. Some people are motivated by simpler things like love, greed, revenge, grief, ambition and jealousy.

 

[twofalls]

My players.

Seriously, my players are my largest refrence.

I toss out a lot of convoluted issues and themes in my games, often times without having a solution worked out, or just a half baked idea in my head about what direction I'd like to see the game move in. Then I listen to my players hash them over and see what creative ideas they bandy about.

Even if they don't come up with anything particuarly interesting I can usually find something they are discussing to tie things together with... and leave them feeling as though they cleverly figured everything out.

I find that often they come up with better ideas than I'd first thought of and I just roll with that instead.

 

[Glyfair]

I've gotten a tremendous use out of, of all things, my college commencement program book.

I used the map of my high school several times over the years. Believe it or not, it was laid out in hexes (classrooms surrounding a central area). The first few days could be very disorienting in finding your way about.

I find anytime I flip through a National Geographic, I come away with ideas for my game. Prehistoric sea monsters, historical and modern day cultures, ice age mummies, tons of beautiful photographs; I always come away with useful stuff.

I picked up a copy of Natural Wonders of the World by Reader Digest because of Greg Stafford's Postcards from Glorantha article. It's surprising how many other worldly pictures you can get from our own world.

 

[Teflon Billy]

I find anytime I flip through a National Geographic, I come away with ideas for my game. Prehistoric sea monsters, historical and modern day cultures, ice age mummies, tons of beautiful photographs; I always come away with useful stuff.

Ditto National Geographic.

The cultures our own world has cooked up beggar my imaginative powers

 

[exile]

While by no means a "go-to" resource, I sometimes glean interesting details from reading internet fiction, especially the kinky stuff.

Chad

 

[Hussar]

I'll second Conceptart.org.

 

[howandwhy99]

I've found Columnar Pads like those teachers use (or used) for grading work wonders for keeping track of initiative. We had six separate combats (or near combats) yesterday and it helped enormously. And it only took two pages to cover everything. One combat was 17 rounds long (and is still going on).