This past weekend, I visited my mother's family's old hometown of Panama City Beach, Florida. I got a chance to show my kid one of the landmark's I remembered from my childhood, the kitschy miniature golf course known as Goofy Golf. The firebreathing pink dinosaur that once demanded your attention at the roadside is, alas, no longer there, but the sphinx, giant ape, statue of Buddha, Asian dragon, Easter Island head, and assorted more mundane dinosaurs are still in evidence, along with rockets, windmills and the like.
I feel Goofy Golf is good inspiration for a point- or hexcrawl. I don't mean in its specific set-pieces (not necessarily, at least) but in the way it's basically a spread out funhouse dungeon. I like a good, well-thought out setting as much as the next guy, but I also enjoy the kitchen sink weird lost worlds. I'm thinking of things like Ka-Zar's Savage Land or the world beyond the Bermuda Triangle Skull the Slayer gets sucked into. Hollow World has more than a little of this vibe with cavemen, Rip Van Winkle still dwarves, and gaucho orcs, but there isn't as much of this done in gaming as there could be.
Making it a bounded location to be explored like a pocket dimension or lost world frees it to strain seriousness and consistency in a way than might not work in an entire setting.
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