Resources used in gaming, a cross-post.

[mikeejimbo]

Crossposted from: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?p=548193#post548193

Other than your system's rulebooks and campaign setting books or other source books, what kind of resources or references do you use when playing or planning a campaign? I've heard of people who use dictionaries and encyclopedias. I use Wikipedia occasionally when planning, I look for references in my Annotated Alice, the Definitive Edition and I want to get my hands on a copy of the DSMIV (OK, I'm playing a rather odd campaign).

But what stuff do you use? Calculus texts? Newspaper articles? Drafting tools? I want to hear about all the peculiar stuff you use, and how to use it.

[Tura]

The only time I actually sat down to collect resources for a game, it was a disaster. I found tons of stuff, I was delighted for a while, and I gave up when I realized that I was spending more time gathering information than diluting it to something useful.

My personal experience is that the best research is the one you don't do on purpose. It's when you choose something that you're really interested in for your theme - the odds are that you have already studied it one way or another, and have formed an opinion about it. Or when this bit you read years ago suddenly pops up in your head because it totally fits this setting. Or when you open a random page of, say, the Golden Bough, and think "huh, you know, this weird custom would be great material for an adventure".

In short, for me, the best detailed worlds are made when I already have the information in my head, and all that's missing is a creative spark that will combine A with B and set things in motion. Because if I decide to research something from scratch, I'll end up with hundreds of bookmarks on my browser, infinite folders on my hard disk, dozens of borrowed books in my house, millions of notes everywhere, and no game whatsoever...

That said, a few tips:
1) When it comes to mythology, Google and even Wikipedia should not be trusted blindly, at least when you want a more in depth analysis and not just a roster.
2) If you dig deeper, you are bound to find treasures, but there are traps.
3) Never trust a wiccan site.
4) Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page) is your friend.
5) Friends, libraries and bookstores have an abundance of those obsolete paper thingies, many of which simply don't exist on the internet.

Edit- PS: I would have many useful links if I hadn't managed to lose all my bookmarks recently... Damn...

[mikeejimbo]

That's true, actually, however, I also study Carroll for fun, so I daresay some of my ideas came from that.

[FlyMolo]

Umm, my graphics editor program, the D20 srd dice bag, some books on pdf, and occasionally these forums.

Especially the homebrew sections and the kooky bits where people try and design an airship engine using only magic effects. I play over these forums, so maybe I'm not representative. The forums are a great place to find campaign hooks, if you look closely.

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

These forums, for one.

But, in terms of more esoteric resources; I use a few books, mostly on the subject of history. Guns, Germs and Steel is one, and fairly representative; it'd take a while to list my entire history library. In addition to commentaries of that sort, I also use just plain history textbooks- the peccadilloes, mistakes, and wars of the real world make great fodder for a fantastical one.

I'm also fond of using subversions of the heroic structure, so the hero with a thousand faces is well-thumbed.

I have a very old fifties-era book designed for inquisitive teenagers, called 'the way things work'. I'm fairly certain it's got a new edition, too; at any rate, it's full of diagrams explaining the function of common devices- scale them up, make them magical, and one can easily have an artifact.

Because they have good resonance across a broad swathe of humanity, I frequently use religious texts, suitably adapted, as material- the book of revelations has some nice imagery, as do Hebrew and Islamic texts- mostly eschatology.

[Megafly]

We keep an ammo can full of brass. (good for representing numerous identical soldiers on the mat. Dry erase chart for initiative order. silly putty, toothpicks, cigarete packs, tape, knifes, CD cases, etc for general construction of terrain and sometimes even characters.