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Gameable Architecture

Time for another one of those posts which, back in the day, might have been a Pyramid article.

I've long had an anthropological and historical interest in architecture: how buildings are constructed, why, what it takes to put them up, how they're used, and so on. That's what led me to write multiple versions of architecture rules and a number of locations for Pyramid and as freestanding publications. And in that, I keep coming back to two books: Buildings Without Architects, by John May and Anthony Reid, and Dwellings: The Vernacular House Worldwide, by Paul Oliver.


Both of these books address vernacular architecture, which is to say architecture built by non-specialists rather than trained professionals. They're about the homes people build for themselves around the world. There are examples of vernacular buildings from all over: English cob houses, Yemini towers, semi-subterranean Chinese yaodong, Cameroonian ribbed mud-brick tolek, Haida plank houses, Yanomami shabano compounds, and many, many more. Most are structures the likes of which could have been found far back in antiquity, though they also include things like Brazilian favelas and other improvised urban architecture. I should give special mention of the coverage of earthen architecture here; there's a tendency to be dismissive of "mud huts" since we've moved so far away from them in the modern world, but the photos and illustrations in these books, like the cover of Buildings Without Architects below, show the potential elegance and beauty of earthen buildings.


Dwellings is more analytical, heavier on text than pictures and outlining categories, functions, processes, and the like with buildings serving largely as illustrations of theoretical points (and speaking of illustrations, it's particularly well provisioned with photographs, many taken by the author himself). It's a good book for world-building where you want to start from first principles and build up from there. Buildings Without Architects is more of a handbook and spotters guide. It's physically a much smaller book both in page count and page size, with most buildings dealt with in two pages: one of description, and another of illustrations, usually in the form of line drawings. This one is great for immediate inspiration. Need to pick a style of homes for people in your game? Flip through until you find something that strikes your fancy.

From the point of view of the GURPS GM, these are outstanding books to have on one's shelf. They're generally accessible to non-specialists, and they cover a great deal of ground. There's likely to be something of value in them for any historically-flavored campaign, and the more different societies you have, the more useful they'll be. They're not without limitations, of course. Their scope is global but anthropological rather than deeply historical, and it mostly doesn't cover military, monumental, palatial, or industrial architecture. There aren't any Roman villas or Chinese border fortresses in these books, though there are a few sacred buildings. And I'm not going to bother linking to anything, since both books are out of print, but with any luck they're available via ILL or at a very good local library for free or used for...well, they won't come cheap, but they're worth it. They've been on my shelf for many years, and if you care about the buildings in your campaigns, strongly consider adding them to yours.


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