Odd Sources for Inspiration

[TheAuldGrump]

And for bat friendly game inspiration - the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin Texas has become the Bat Capitol of the United States.

When faced with a bat problem (more than one million strong) Austin called in some experts on how to handle the situation. Austin was told that the bats would be eating between 10,000 and 20,000 pounds of flying insects each night, and that getting rid of them would be a bad idea.... The solution was to turn it into a tourist attraction.

The city put up an observation area, and around 100,000 people come each year to watch the bats explode out from under the bridge. For this the city of Austin has earned my respect, and some day I will find a way to use this in a Spycraft game, possibly during a chase.



The Auld Grump

[Antilles]

Wow, that actually sounds like a neat place to visit. Bats generally don't scare me, and 1,5 million bats swooping through the air would be pretty awesome to watch.

[Mister Andersen]

That bridge probably exists in Gotham, in relative proximity to the Narrows and Arkham...

[Crafty_Pat]

Gonna have to add that to my list of destinations the next time I hit Austin, which will hopefully be sometime in the next several months since I have some Crafty stuff to prep there...

[TheAuldGrump]

And a really odd one, even by my standards... a blog about Canadian drains....

As for inspiration -



And these are not the coolest images there.

The Auld Grump, a Nosferatu at heart....

[Slippery_jim_digris]

Cool Site Grump but the coolest site is linked from that blog. Vanishing Point, You can find descriptions and maps!

One of the cool tales from St Louis is that the River Des Peres  runs through Forest Park underground! Back during the 1904 World's Fair the river was nothing but a sewer so we buried it temporarily. After the fair it was exposed again but complaints and disease caused the city to permantly bury it.

(from wikipedia)
 In 1988, the American Society of Civil Engineers added the River des Peres Sewage & Drainage Works to its list of Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks for the calculations involved, the large-scale trench dewatering methods and the soil stabilization procedures.

It was a large project. The river is still there and mostly cleaned up. This would be a cool lair for bogies and beasties.

James Bolivar Digris

[TheAuldGrump]

Cool Site Grump but the coolest site is linked from that blog. Vanishing Point, You can find descriptions and maps!

One of the cool tales from St Louis is that the River Des Peres  runs through Forest Park underground! Back during the 1904 World's Fair the river was nothing but a sewer so we buried it temporarily. After the fair it was exposed again but complaints and disease caused the city to permantly bury it.

(from wikipedia)
 In 1988, the American Society of Civil Engineers added the River des Peres Sewage & Drainage Works to its list of Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks for the calculations involved, the large-scale trench dewatering methods and the soil stabilization procedures.

It was a large project. The river is still there and mostly cleaned up. This would be a cool lair for bogies and beasties.

James Bolivar Digris

Yep, Vanishing Point is one of the better links, isn't it.

I presented the Blog, because the Blog was the first part I discovered, and there are other nifty links there as well. I had enough fun tracking things down from the Blog that I wanted to give others the chance to feel like internet explorers. (Internauts?) I found it via the Motivational Posters thread on RPG.net. (Where one of the images graced a poster, about the Nosferatu if I recall correctly.)

The Auld Grump

[Crafty_Pat]

Internauts?

Dunno what I'll use it for, but YOINK!

[TheAuldGrump]

And sometimes where you find the link can be almost as odd, this pair of links came from a web comic titled Spike-Haired Dragon, Worthless Knight - which it has very little in common with.



The Auld Grump, tiny, nasty, little undead fey....

*EDIT* The hornet in the above picture is a normal sized insect, the faerie is less than 1 cm. tall....

[spinningdice]

Saw that before, linked to from Neil Gaiman's blog.
He links to some... weird stuff now and then.

[TheAuldGrump]

Saw that before, linked to from Neil Gaiman's blog.
He links to some... weird stuff now and then.

You saw that before and you didn't tell me about it?!! 

Heh, Gaiman does have some nifty links now and again, I really should visit his Blog more often.

The Auld Grump

[spinningdice]

Sorry, I tend to look at things and then forget them quickly, and the skeletal faeries and insects didn't jump out as "post on the spycraft board"

I'll have to remember that theirs some guys on here that aren't purely concerned with espionage!

[TheAuldGrump]

Hmmm, a whiles back I picked up Bryce 5.5 for free (still Available ). Bryce is a pretty good 3D rendering program, with lots of models available. Since I picked it up I make irregular stops on their site, thinking about getting a few items. Some are pretty inspirational-



And for folks like me-


Though the program is free they do charge for the models, but they are fairly tempting....

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* Oooh! And this-

[TheAuldGrump]

Okay, not so much an odd source as just an unexpected one. Reading An Ice Cold Grave by Charlaine Harris I ran across a scene where the heroine was shocked to discover that someone had a website that tracked her cases and appearances as she moved around the country finding corpses.

This would have to be used in a more modern setting than my usual 1880s, but how would a professional agent react to finding a website dedicated to sightings of him? No conclusive evidence of anything, just a paranoid conspiracy site with multiple posters that has articles on some of the more earth shaking events the team might be involved in, and pictures of the PC near those incidents with tags such as 'Who is this man? Why was he there?' Page after page of incidents and pictures, always of the same agent.... Good for when a group makes too many ripples and has too much Exposure.

The Auld Grump
*EDIT* Heh, spelling, who needs it?

[Slippery_jim_digris]

Ooooh I like it.

 

JBD