Giovanni Battista Piranesi was born in 1720, in Venice, though he spent much of his working life in Rome and its environs, and died there in 1778. His etchings, which tend to be of architectural or archaeological subjects, were some of the finest of his day and are still astounding today.

For our purposes, his series “Carceri d’invenzione,” or “Imaginary Prisons,” is probably the most important in terms of its influence on RPGs — these 16 prints depict impossible subterranean spaces, part jail, part labyrinth, full of strange machines, hanging chains and baffling architecture. You know, like a dungeon. I believe, in some way, these illustrations have been absorbed into a kind of collective unconscious when it comes to the idea of an RPG dungeon. And, in the D&D cosmology; I think it is no coincidence that the prison plane is called Carceri, even if it doesn’t look like something Piranesi dreamed up.

Piranesi’s other work isn’t without influence, though. He was obsessed with ruins and underground spaces, the cavernous remains of aqueducts and other more obscure places. Many of his aboveground views have exaggerated scales, or fanciful elements. It all looms. This Taschen published book is a collection of all Piranesi’s etchings and flipping through, I dare you to not have dozens of ideas for adventures. I didn’t choose Piranesi as incidental illustrations for the appendix of my book by accident, after all!