ooooh. TG_Hammer, I wish I had the time to do what you have planned. That sounds beautiful. I also liked Burr's way of taking oft used ideas and combining aspects of them for a new motif.
One of my favourite ways of doing something different is to design a personality, usually with a form of madness, or preoccupation, then designing an area off that person, with various parts being warped by their madness. Or even an area built around their virtues. What of a castle where it is impossible to do certain dastardly deeds without repercussions from the inhabitants, even your own equipment?
My favourite was a Tower in the swamps, home to a Lich who wanted to experiment on ways of making other races into liches, in a bid for the ultimate in immortality. His tower was filled with his successes and failures. Some of them so dastardly that the experimentor had to protect himself from his own work.
Another was based of his rival, who sought immortality along a totally different route. Both eventually ended up damned by their own devices.
I like CSmith_fan's suggestion for the other cultures. My take on that uses the references, then I change the titles, or some of the naming styles to keep the same flavour, but remove the full cultural references. (Mainly because our mud could not really take an Arabian Nights area, but does benefit from one with an Arabic flavour.) Fantasy and historicasl reference works are invaluable, as are the monster manuals for games like D&D and GURPS. Their descriptions of habitats have given me too many ideas for areas.
QS
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