Short Circuit's Journal: D&D: Inspirational places

I happened on something over at Fark today, and it made me think. When you DM, you frequently need to come up with unique places for campaigns to occur. Photos offer inspiration, and can serve as visual aids.

So here's some assistance:

• Google image search: Temple
• Google image search: romanesque
• Wikipedia page: Romanesque architecture (Be sure to check the articles linked to from there

bookstores

[lithron]

Disclaimer: I've never DM'd a game in my life.

Bookstores are great for this sort of thing. Boarders often has cheap $5 picture books out front and often they have English or Scottish castles or Celtic scenery books. I believe Books A Million also has an few tables like this.

Most DM's I've played with also have a large library of books, modules, and old Dragon/Dungeon magazines. A few different games I've played in have had entire towns ripped straight out of a module that was just laying around.

Blueprints too

[SeanDuggan]

If you're playing a more modern game, keep hold of those programs for conventions. The maps they give of the area provide an excellent source of free maps for urban assaults and the like. One of the more memorable campaigns I was on involved an assault on terrorists at the Hyatt, the place where we held the academic team meets. We knew those halls, so it added a real personal touch.

Of course, these days I'm sure someone would take one look at that and assume we were planning our own IRL terrorist assault.