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VoxRationis
2017-02-01, 03:56 PM
How much effort do people go to in distinguishing different styles of architecture in their games, from both different cultures and different time periods?

On another note, do people put into their games the sort of fantastic architecture (such as the ridiculously tall castles with the needle-like spires) that is commonly depicted in fantasy art?

Altair_the_Vexed
2017-02-01, 04:16 PM
I commonly get reference pictures to show the players, or to help my own descriptions, and I always have a style of architecture in mind - and yes, it's different for different parts of the world, different cultures and technology levels, and so on.

As for fantastic architecture - totally! But only when the building is meant to be fantastic in the game. I don't want to overload the players with so much fantasy that it becomes routine. I save my towers-upon-towers-upon-towers and flying castles and the like for when I really want to create a sense of wonder.

BWR
2017-02-01, 04:20 PM
I'm notoriously bad at descriptions but when I remember them I usually go with the sort of feelings they evoke rather than actual appearances. Sure, if a specific culture is 'fantasy Roman' I'll note that the architecture is very Roman in appearance, and I'll (try to) mention if one architectural style is different than the surrounding one(s) but that's it.

Knaight
2017-02-01, 08:25 PM
I'll give a description, and while they won't explicitly contain mention of where the architecture is based on there is generally a distinct basis that comes through.

Stealth Marmot
2017-02-01, 09:35 PM
I dont have the best ideas for custom places, and now that I think about it I should probably be more descriptive towards the environments and buildings.

redwizard007
2017-02-03, 06:48 AM
I use regional differences in architecture all the time, often tied to specific cultures. In fact, one of my favorite gimmicks is to use climate/terrain appropriate architecture, but not base the fantasy culture on the same real world source.

Most of my cities and towns look pretty homogeneous, but major centers of trade can have multiple styles of architecture. It lends credence to a foreign quarter or a cosmopolitan feeling.

Professor Chimp
2017-02-08, 07:43 AM
Since many of the countries and regions in my campaign are based on historical cultures, so is their architecture. For example, there is a country based on Renaissance France with likewise Renaissance architecture, although the buildings dedicated to the state religion of St Cuthbert are differentiated by being Gothic style. Another is a blend of Byzantium and late Renaissance Italy and has Classical/Byzantine architecture. Yet another is largely Aztec inspired. And another merges Islamic and Edo-period Japanese architecture.

These architectural styles all have distinctive elements to them that I frequently mention when describing buildings, helping my players distinguish which of the factions in the campaign a structure belongs to.

Joe the Rat
2017-02-08, 08:41 AM
I haven't been explicit in my styles, beyond a culture/period sense. Describing things as Dwarven (Blocky and super-sturdy), Imperial ("Westeros"), Pre-Imperial ("Atlantean-Hyborean"), Second Age (Iron Age Celtic/Germanic), etc. This is more to relay the age and quality of construction as anything else.

In theory there are other styles at work (fake mythic china, Hadrian's Hobgoblin, Angkor Wat Giant, Biopunk Elf, etc.), but they haven't encountered them yet.

This thread has inspired me to try and be a bit more daring and descriptive when they encounter new (old) things.

Mmagsgreen
2017-02-13, 10:28 AM
I'm running an Exalted campaign in a little-described portion of the Scavenger Lands at the moment, and so I've had to make up a lot of culture and architecture from scratch. The area my players are in is heavily Vietnamese influenced, so I grabbed a bunch of pictures of traditional architecture and generated people and place names that would work.

It seems to have gone pretty well so far. Since the Scavenger Lands are a mix, I tried to include some additional touches-the Lookshy embassy and the Guild headquarters have markedly different architecture that I went out of my way to describe.

GungHo
2017-02-13, 01:35 PM
I sometimes show pictures or just outright give them a cop out description and say "it's got those tiles on top like an old Roman building" or "there are dougong brackets like a Chinese temple" or "this is as stereotypical as a bodega can get, those Ritz crackers are probably from 1986". It doesn't really matter that the walls in the bodega are yellow to someone or pink to someone else. They all see the dirt and smell the mold in their mind.

sktarq
2017-02-13, 02:24 PM
Yes I do change the architecture depending on where the players are. And I try to work it into the plot in little ways.

Tracking a spy or defending a goblin incursion in an Andurian Open-plan house is different than tracking a spy in the Warren of cozy rooms that make up a Karrn mansion.

Make the local differences matter and the PC's wil remember them years after they forget the plot.

Max_Killjoy
2017-02-13, 02:29 PM
I definitely include references to this sort of thing, whether it's planet-hopping sci-fi, or traveling between locations in a fantasy setting.

Architecture, building materials, etc, are part of the flavor that goes into signalling differences between cultures, economies, etc.