Building a Ruin from the Ground Up

 Seems pretty silly, huh?  “Building” a ruin.  But that is what you’re looking to do as a GM who is about to send your party into the ruins on a mission.  So, how?

Eons ago, OK, maybe only a couple of decades ago, one of the really popular FRPG magazines came out with their edition on ruins.  Contained within was a pretty massive chart about what buildings might be and what might be expected in them.  The problem was that it assumed that every ruin was the same.  Worse, it assumed that every city had been the same, so it therefore made sense to them that the ruins would be the same.

But that’s dumb!  Not only is every city different, but how the city fell into ruin matters.  Not only that, but who lives nearby (and therefore who has been looting the site) matters, because they will approach the ruined city differently.  Just as a quick example:  Assume there was a city of some semi-advanced race.  Their city falls to ruin because of a demonic invasion.  The fact that it was a demonic invasion is important because demons don’t care about material items.  They were there to collect souls, not gold coins.  So immediately after the city fell, all the valuables would still be there.

But wait for it!  If the city was conquered by rampaging demons and not mortal looters, what is left behind in the city?  The city is now probably infested with some manner of undead or dark spirits - something that might be left over after the demons moved on.  We assume the demons moved on because the city is described as a ruin, and even demons keep their homes up.  Well, demon owners do; demon renters, we’re not so sure of.

So, have people braved the dark spirits and even minor demons still skittering around the ruin to loot it?  There has to be an incredible amount of wealth left there.  Is it worth the risk?  Maybe the looters are willing to go in during daylight but won’t stay after dark.  That would mean that the edges are probably well looted, but the center still has a vast amount of treasure.  Or maybe the next-door neighbors have developed large orders of paladins and other holy folks because of the demons and undead creeping out of the city all the time.  Do they have the protections to enter the city and defeat the spirits?  If they do, this is probably a frequent trial they must pass in order to keep the evil from encroaching on their homes.

So, let’s focus on our title - how do you build one of these things?  If you wanted to design the entire city and then destroy it in order to build the ruins, that would probably be the best way, but even in building from the ground up, few of us have the time for that.  Then again, maybe you built a city for a different game world and you know you aren’t going to use it anymore.  Use that as your template.

It will be important to know the generalizations about the city when it was thriving.  How did they get water?  What race or mixes of races were they?  What was the chief industry?  These things are vital to laying out a believable ruin.

Next, how did it fall?  Was it invaded, and if so by whom?  Did the city die over a long period of time, so that some neighborhoods have been ruins for a long time, but others were far more recently abandoned?  Was there a natural disaster, and if so what?  Knowing how it came to be a ruin will give you ideas of how to design what’s left standing.

Lastly, who has been here since it fell?  Has the city been inhabited by brigands?  monsters?  beggars?  Did the ruin stand as a base for the conquering army for several decades before they too abandoned it?  If there have been beggars and vagrants in here for some time - what do they eat, and what eats them?

This last part is really the key to it all!  If you want to design a ruin, you need to know what is left.  If the people living in the ruin for the last century have burned all the wooden homes for firewood, then that’s important to know!  If they have been mining the city walls for the stone to build their homes, that’s important to know!

We are going to get into a lot more details and scenarios on these specific topics in our Game Master’s edition of All About Ruins.  If you want to see those scenarios and how they can play out for your ruins, please join us on Patreon.  We’re building a community of GMs and world builders, and we would love to have you join us.

 

This post was written as part of The Lost City of Ballogfar Part I aka All About Ruins, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one is showcasing fantasy ruins.

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 99 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.