Applying your inspiration

In last week's post I talked about the ways I find inspiration when it comes to settings and descriptions in TTRPGs, and today I want to provide a practical example of this, using an idea I had last Sunday.
 
I went to visit Mont Blanc, which with its 4809 m stands as Italy's tallest (and Europe's second tallest) mountain for my and my partner's anniversary (even though we got up to 3466m), and as the cableway was bringing us up we went through the clouds, and as soon as we got above them I saw this:

 
 
Something instantly clicked in my mind.
 
Maybe not the most original idea in the world (it must have been done before, even though I'm not aware of it), but I immediately pictured a world with a few tall mountains, maybe distant from each other, so tall that people from the surface can't see them all, and on top of each there is a city. These cities would not be reachable from the ground just by climbing and would trade with each other using airships (and/or some other forms of flying travel), and maybe have a secret connection with a town or village on the edges of civilization that provides them with the natural resources they miss - which would lead to that town/village being unexplicably rich, or buying large quantities of certain goods or materials, way more than its population would normally need. There's the rumor/hook to lead the party towards discovering this otherwise inaccessible area.
 
 
 
The Skypelago (name is a work in progress) is just a random idea I had while looking at the mountains, it will take much more work to be gameable or publishable, but it's a good example - in  my opinion - of what I wrote about in last week's post: always look around you, and really try to see what surrounds you, because you never know when inspiration will strike you. And if you think you're not good enough to have such moments, well, think again - if you're willing to be a GM/DM/Referee, you already have the right brainset and you have an artistic mind, whether you realize it or not.

This is all for this week, see you next Sunday for my next post!
 
May your dice never betray you,
Kirhon
 
 

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