Just thought it would be cool to toss around some of the things that have inspired you in your world building endeavors. Cultural practices, beliefs, myths, or even pieces of art work that got the creative juices flowing.
One thing that got me thinking was reading The Golden Bough and some of Campbell's work was the idea of ritual regicide. I seem to recall them both discussing that certain ritual practices were symbolic of the sacrifice of a king in echo of the common theme of dying gods bringing about renewal.
I thought it would be interesting to see a society where kings were quite literally ritually sacrificed ever so often. I have been working on setting for a while now that builds on some cooler things I have seen in myth, particularly Ancient Near Eastern mythic cycles.
Sometimes, its the little things that inspire me.
Things like the fact that Romans had a sort of billboard which would often include product endorsements from gladiators, Greeks had a type of pizza, Romans had hamburgers and primitive newspapers, heated bath houses, etc.
Little things I can add to an adventure to really make it come alive in the minds of modern players.
My formula:
Spoiler
Book I read recently (not fantasy/sci fi)
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Walkthrough guide for video game I cherished
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High concept stolen from wherever.
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Music mix I put together for this purpose.
=
Sandbox campaign!
So using this method, here's how my current campaign developed:
Spoiler
James Clavell's Noble House (Cutthroat business and espionage in 1960s Hong Kong)
+
Final Fantasy III (DS release) and Warioland (inspiration for visuals, monsters, magic items, NPCs, dungeons, etc.)
+
Intelligent magic items can take human form (taken from Soul Eater/Noragami/Elemental Gelade animes)
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James Bond soundtracks
=
Eberron freelance spies looking for profitable leads and odd jobs in Dar Jin while tracking rumors of a super crossbow with its own agenda. Oh, and the underdark looks like an whimsical horror gallery of Game Boy monstrosities and platformer terrain.
On the billboard thing, I highly recommend the book Ancient Inventions, which is full of stuff you'll be amazed at, like ancient Egyptian snowcones.
Usually reading history books does it for me. Been reading the Country of Streams and Grottoes, which has given me a bunch of ideas. Other times it is pretty random (some local natural feature, something I see briefly in a movie, etc).
The setting for my greatest AD&D campaign from the late 80's was an amalgam of Sanctuary, from the anthology series of the same name edited by Robert Lyn Asprin and Fritz Lieber's Lankhmar. The whole campaign was based on the PC's trying to stop the return of Great Cthulhu, so Lovecraft's works had a huge influence. A planned adventure toward the end of the campaign, which, alas we never got to play, was based on the lyrics to King Crimson's song "Court of the Crimson King". I also borrowed the concept of "hanging spells" from Roger Zelazny's "Amber" novels.
Watching shows or reading books on history and/or science based on research of cultures. Seeing how well ancient cultures really did handle trade and architecture as vast as pyramids and other megaliths, floating cities, fresh water and sewage all across the world shows how expected those things really should be in swords and magic games always helps flesh out details for certain themed cities.
Bruegel the Elder
(http://makeyourideasart.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Pieter-Bruegel-the-Elder-The-Census-at-Bethlehem.jpg)
(http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bruegel/proverbs.jpg)
(http://cdn2.all-art.org/early_renaissance/images/bruegel/0028.jpg)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/09/Pieter_Bruegel_der_%C3%84ltere_-_Landschaft_mit_der_Flucht_nach_%C3%84gypten.jpg/1024px-Pieter_Bruegel_der_%C3%84ltere_-_Landschaft_mit_der_Flucht_nach_%C3%84gypten.jpg)
and in general "world landscape" paintings
(http://www.allartclassic.com/img/Frederic_Edwin_Church_CHF022.jpg)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/Albrecht_Altdorfer%2C_The_Battle_of_Alexander_at_Issus.jpg/640px-Albrecht_Altdorfer%2C_The_Battle_of_Alexander_at_Issus.jpg)
I've been making notes for a hexcrawl setting I think of as Grimm's fairy tales meeting the Hundred Years' War, so fairy tales and history. Unfortunately I've yet to get it as far along as I want for play. :(
Travelling, especially visiting museums, and getting to know different cultures and their artifacts.
TV channels like Discovery, The History Channel and National Geographic had some amazing documentaries before getting dumbed down.
Good fantasy worldbuilding, literary or otherwise.
Current events (w/the serial numbers filed off) make great world building fodder, especially when I'm going for high levels of realism,verisimilitude, or whateverthefuck you want to call it. Players see something happening in the game-world that works the same way they've seen it in real life, it's gonna ring true. It's like "immersion on a stick."