I: Inspirational sources

I keep my Red Box, etc. next to my computer desk where I can reach it handily. Sometimes it happens to keep company with the RC and a few retro-clone offerings, sometimes it sits there alone with a clump of graph paper trying to escape. So it goes --

Behind me is a glorious 8' tall bookshelf that contains my immediate go-to "library" for inspiration and firing up the ol' imagination (not counting, mind, the shorter bookshelf overpacked with Egyptological textbooks and piled with Transformers and manga on top that lurks in the closet to my left).

Taken as a series of group identifiers, looking behind me I can catalogue my to-hand inspirations as:

- Many many textbooks on space colonization and astrobiology
- Collections of mechanical design works and manga from three different Gundam series + Rockman (Mega Man) series
- Texts on Minoan Crete, the clothing and ornaments of the First Nations, books on ancient warfare and human cultures after 10,000 BCE, the development of Neolithic cultures in Europe, an ethnography of the Beothuk, uses of cedar, medieval usage of spices and scent, and other misc
- A baffling array of books on food culture, preferably of an anthropological bent
- Books on dinosaurs both avian and non-avian, avian biology, and the evolution of felines, canines, equids, artiodactyls (as a group) and trilobites
- Gaming books: Alternity, L5R, Traveller, Pathfinder, Anima and OVA
- Pretty much the entire run of IDW's Transformers, plus a few other TF books
- Guides to edible mushrooms, desert plants, amber, pearls and prehistoric textiles
- Design books and artbooks for many and varied manga, anime and video games

... it's a wonder more mechanical and science-fictional material doesn't wind up in my Red Box games, among other things ~