Relic Hunters Inspirations: "You Call This Archaeology?"

Relic Hunters, like any setting, came in part from everything I was watching, reading, or taking in at the time.  I've tried to identify some of the major influences here.

Inspiration: Science Fiction Edition

Radoxist: "Worth enough"

Do yourself a favor and click through to Radoxist's site and look at this full size.  The level of detail here is amazing.  (Check out the alternate views, too - a couple of them are top-down views of the low-tech area, and could make for excellent battlemaps.)

What is this place?  I picture a Traveller game where someone randomly rolled a Class A spaceport and a low tech level:

Review: Inception

Maybe it's bad form for me to start off my first review on this blog like this, but if you have not yet seen Inception, then you should stop reading this review and go make plans to see it.  Don't look for other reviews, don't try to find out what it's about, just go and see it.  Not only is it a great movie in its own right, it's got a lot of inspiration for gamers.

Inspiration: Gunkanjima

If you're looking for inspirational images for post-apocalyptic games, check out this article on Japan's Gunkanjima ("Battleship Island").  The island - properly named Hashima - was centered around coal mining, and was abandoned in the mid-70s after the country largely moved to petroleum for its energy needs.  

The pictures of the decaying ruins are brilliant and evocative, bringing to mind Fallout-like scenes of devastation.  (Check out the picture of the discarded doll.)  It also underscores how fragile human construction really is, if it's not maintained.

Inspiration: Zhangjiajie

This striking photo proves that the real world can be as amazing as any fantasy painting.  The location depicted is Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in China.  To me, it looks like some sort of lost world begging to be explored by pulp adventurers: can you honestly say that a pterosaur would look at all out of place gliding between these stone pillars?