I get mine from a mixture of reading, playing games, watching TV and movies, my imagination, and talking to my friends. It's mostly the last two, but gaming and reading have a not small part of it as well. They give me reference material for ways in which a world CAN work, but my imagination allows me to recombine them in a new way.

How do you do it?

(Posted in response to Harkovast's topic)

Thinking a lot is the main one.
I'm always stewing over ideas.
Often I will see something or think of something and start wondering what the Harkovast equivalent would be, such as today I was wondering how Nymus sleep. They've got wings on their backs, so they can't lay on their backs, and sleeping on your stomach is not always very comfortable, so I was wondering what posture they might adopt.
I'm thinking about them kneeling down to sleep at the moment.
Another good source of ideas is history. World history is fascinating, and the range of cultures and styles is staggering. If I want inspiration I just need to go read some articles on history (or play medieval total war 2, which is awesome) and I will soon be buzzing with ideas and concepts.
Also it is often good to find something a little bit odd or little known that you can throw in, as some historical cultures can seem very alien to the modern reader. You will see more of this come through as the story develops.
Once I have an idea of how each race and culture views the world, it is easy to see how new ideas would fit in and which race should do what etc.
I do have a lot of conversations with my friends and wife about what I am planning, which I think is very important. It is easy to make things that have glaring faults if you don't have anyone to bounce ideas off.
That was a fairly meandering answer, but I suppose that is because there are a lot of places to get inspiration.

Oh, crap! We're supposed to figure all that out beforehand?

Tolkien once commented that he started with a map. I guess I start with a map too, just a very small one, as much as the first character I create can see. I don't so much "craft" a world as I stumble over it. I never liked to put effort into creating all these definite rules and locations, especially if I'm not likely to touch on many of them. Why worry about the history and politics of elves if you only introduce one elf for a handful of pages? If for some reason I need to explain the animosity between elves and dwarves I can simply say it was due to the War of the Shatterspine Mountains that occurred X-hundred years ago. Since I have no map, nobody can point to it and say "But there is no such place as Shatterspine Mountain". Since I have no history no one can say "But I thought the elves were all participating in the 20 decade yoga class X-hundred years ago".

I start with characters, because characters are far more interesting to me. Then I drop them into a broadly defined and purposely vague setting, such as fantasy. I rein in the setting as I see fit while I write the story. Then I give them a relatively simple goal, how difficult it is to achieve that goal remains to be seen. People and places don't come into existence unless they are vital to the characters. I don't really like fluff, so interesting, but unimportant information is rare.

I find that all my best ideas occur at the last minute, but sometimes I'll just be going about my daily life and suddenly *ding* a light-bulb goes on and I'll file that idea away for later use. Gaming helps, and so does reading, but I find talking out of my ass is most useful. If someone asks me a question that I don't have an answer to I'll just make it up on the fly as opposed to saying I don't know. Half the time what I come up with off the cuff is pretty good.

Thats the opposite of me, I've come up with cultures and peoples that don't feature for ages, or in some cases barely feature at all!
I just inherrantly enjoy making stuff up though, so to me it is lots of fun to think about.
The map for Harkovast came very late on, I made up the story then built a map around it.

I usually make worlds based on a concept, rather than actual characters. Then I end up making a map shortly after, followed by some sort of history.
Individual characters come in rather late in the process.

But that is just my way of doing things.

D_Dude thats how I do things as well.
I think up cultures for Harkovast then I add them into the world, then think of characters that might fit into that setting only then do I build a story around it.
I think that way it feels like the setting does not exist just to express this one story, but could potentially involve lots more exciting goings on.