What have been some of your more unique sources of inspiration for plots, monsters, treasure, traps, or any other part of a homebrew campaign? Similarly, what are some of your personal favorite ideas you've come up with, regardless of what inspired them?
One of my favorite sources is using music -- titles and/or compositions -- and it recently led to one of my favorite homebrew monsters. The song "Bladecatcher" by the band Mastodon drove me to create a race of horrid extraplanar sadomasochists, children of Zon-Kuthon, who had supernaturally sharp boomerang-blades they caught by letting the blade sink into their heads, the pain sending them into spasms of pleasure, their insane gibbering and giggling causing fear and madness in their victims.
You?
I read the "Death Gate Cycle". I built a world based on that series of books. We played and entire game on floating islands in the sky. I used Virtualscape to build the maps. Travel between islands was by airship or on the back of flying creatures. Most the fauna of the world were bird-like. There were no typical farm animals. They were all ostrich or emu.