Le Societe de l'Elephante Blanc Presents GURPS Preindustrial Architecture by Matt Riggsby (fongg@crsa.bu.edu and wombat@sirius.com) INTRODUCTION Desthius, at long last Lord Pasciani, rode past the old man and his young assistant and pulled his horse to a halt at the top to the hill as his companions slowly clattered to a stop behind him. The late- afternoon sun lit the valley and meandering stream below them with a glow like gold and honey. In the weeks since Desthius and his companions had defeated the dark wizard and his demon henchman, and thereafter gone to the capitol to receive their reward, the peasants had cleared away the crushed barns and burned houses. Already the trees felled by the demon's final blow were being put to good use, cut into beams and boards to replace the buildings it had destroyed. Desthius turned to his friends and said in a quiet but carrying voice, "Here." After a brief silence, Lailana, his former companion-in-arms and new wife ventured, "We came up here for the view?" Aged Venexi, lost as always in his shapeless robes, seemed to shrug. "No!" Desthius exclaimed. "The castle! This is where we'll build it." He gestured to the elderly man standing a little downhill, who was alternately consulting a sketch and examining the hilltop, and said, "I met Master Karolus at the capitol and engaged him for the project. He has been here but a week, and already he has the plan of the castle laid out." Drawing his sword, he pointed one way and another, following lines marked out on the ground by pegs and twine. "The curtain wall follows the edge of that drop, curving out a little on that side to follow along the point. The road to the main gate will go across the slope and curve back and forth at those large stones. We can place towers so and so in order to provide coverage for the entire hillside, and if we place the main keep here, we'll have a view of the entire valley as far north as Bleison Town. We can have several rooms to ourselves, dearest, and there will even be a tower for your experiments, Venexi." They sat in silence for a long moment, picturing the massive stoneworks that would soon spring from the hilltop, the vast sweep of whitewashed wall and looming tower that would protects its inhabitants from all but the strongest and most determined attackers. It would be one of the great castles, one that would attract visitors just to view the walls and fill those who saw it with awe for generations to come. Venexi looked around the slope and said, "It's going to cost..." So your characters have been knighted by the king of the realm and given a generous chunk of land to rule over. It's time for them to build a castle. Or maybe, after years of adventuring, it's time to settle down and build a tavern along the big road. How much is it going to cost them? And how long will it take? GURPS Preindustrial Architecture is designed to allow players and GMs to construct buildings in campaigns using TLs 0 through 4. Be warned: building design can be a long and arduous process without much visible payoff, particularly for those with little patience for bookkeeping, but for those bent on empire-building or even a little bit of economic development, it is very important to know how much a castle, an inn, or a house will cost and how long it will take to build it. This will require a lot of number crunching. If you find the vehicle production process of GURPS Vehicles too time consuming, do not attempt to use the full system. Instead, use the "Quick Construction Guide" at the end, which provides labor and monetary costs for common building types and large architectural features. Even the more ambitious designers will be aided considerably by the summary tables and sample building components. The problem is that buildings, especially at lower TLs, are composed of large numbers of a few very simple elements such as walls, windows, and staircases, which may become tedious to map out and will almost certainly become tedious to measure and perform calculations on. Unlike vehicles, which are limited by any number of factors (body size or strength, desired speed, desired accessories, etc.), buildings are limited only by available funds, building space, and the skill of the architect. On the other hand, if your campaign has reached the stage where characters are becoming concerned with building their own home, this system will allow accurate and detailed construction of almost any kind of building. Unless otherwise noted, all materials and techniques are TL 0, but the GM should not allow TLs to be his only guide to the building techniques available in his campaign. Historically, techniques for building with the materials described here changed less than one might expect within the parameters of the GURPS TL system. For example, most of the refinements discussed under the section on freestanding walls were used until many years after the development of gunpowder (up through TL 5 in places), yet all were thoroughly understood by the end of the second century BC (on the early side of TL 2), and most were much older. Their use is a matter of the knowledge and building philosophy of the architect rather than general technological development. While the TLs where architectural innovations appear are indicated, the GM should not regard all architects at the same TL as equal. Rather than imposing limitations based solely on TL, the GM must decide what methods and elements are appropriate to the campaign. The stained glass windows and vaulted ceilings of a twelfth-century French architect, for example, were unknown to his Byzantine contemporaries, but elaborate Byzantine cribwork arrangements were equally unknown in the west, and their equally sophisticated Chinese contemporary had an entirely different set of building ideas. The techniques which might not be known to all builders of a given TL are marked by an *. These techniques may only be known in a particular region, or they may be secrets of construction jealously kept by a particular brotherhood of architects. However, most of them will be generally known and perhaps even obsolete at the next TL. Thanks for this project are due to: the Z-Team (consisting at that point largely of Bill Ayers, Steve Drevik, Allen Hsu, Barbara Schmucker, and Tim Van Beke) for saying to me "We want to build a keep or something. How much will it cost?" (I told them "Give me a week to do some research on it," which makes my official answer about two years late: figure it out your own damn self, guys); Moe's Used Books and the libraries of Boston University, Brandeis University, and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville; and sixty imaginary Amish farmers and their families for help in reality-checking. PROCEDURE The first step in any building process is to produce a plan. The designer (GM or player) should come up with a detailed plan which should include a general outline of the building (including, in most cases, the height and thickness of major walls), placement of doors, windows, stairs, fireplaces, wells, and other interesting architectural features, locations of outbuildings, and notes about particularly elaborated areas such as water reservoirs or drawbridges. Next, the designer must calculate the materials and manpower necessary. Materials are calculated in either cubic yards or square yards, depending on their use as structural or facing materials, although doors and windows and a few other small components are measured in square feet. Manpower is calculated on a basis of man-days or, occasionally, man-hours or even minutes. Some labor must be performed by skilled workers, although most tasks can be carried out by unskilled workers under minimal supervision by a skilled superior. Unless the designer has a significant supply of stone or wood ready at hand, he will need to devote significant labor to obtaining and preparing materials as well as building with them. Once all the relevant amounts have been calculated, the designer (or a wealthy sponsor) must undertake organization and supervision of labor and materials. Small projects, such as a single-family house or a barn, can be accomplished in as little as a day or two by a handful of characters or the population of a friendly village (think about the barn-raising party in Witness), and the materials can be obtained easily. Larger projects, however, will take much longer and can face many setbacks. In an emergency, formidable castles can be built over the course of a few years but might be attacked before the walls are finished. More elaborate structures such as cathedrals can take over a century to build, with frequent delays as funding intermittently dries up. Finally, as the building or parts thereof are completed, the GM will roll secretly against the designer's Architecture skill (or some reasonable substitute; see below). The designer's skill will be modified by the complexity of architectural elements as detailed below. For large structures, the GM may divide the building into several parts rolled for separately. For example, for a castle, he may make separate rolls for inner and outer curtain walls, the main keep, and the major towers. If the roll succeeds, the building has been accomplished successfully. If the roll fails, the building has some flaw. At the GM's option, the flaw may be apparent, costing time and money to correct, or hidden, giving a more observant enemy a point of attack or perhaps leading to the building's collapse some time in the future. A critical success indicates an innovation that saves the designer time or money or strengthens the structure. A critical failure indicates a disastrous flaw in the original design, resulting in its immediate collapse. SKILLS AND CHARACTERS Architecture see p. B59 Presumably, at least one character with Architecture skill will be involved in the design and construction of a building, although for "vernacular" architecture (fieldstone walls, small dwellings) little or no formal training is necessary. To be an effective architect for larger buildings, a character must have Architecture skill as well as a skill appropriate to the materials he works with. At the TLs being addressed here, no architect worthy of the name would not also be a master mason or carpenter. At the GM's option, Architecture skill provides "book knowledge" about buildings but little practical ability to supervise construction. A character with Architecture skill but without Masonry or Carpentry cannot design or supervise a building project. For the purposes of building a wooden building, Architecture may default to Carpentry-4, or Masonry-4 for a stone building. Carpentry see p. B53 This is the basic skill necessary for working with wood. A carpenter can reliably produce doors, shutters, and wooden structural members. Engineering (Combat Engineer) see p. B60 This skill covers setting up improvised fortifications, directing mining, and making rapid repairs on damaged fortifications. It may replace Architecture for the purpose of building earthworks, and is the applicable skill for digging military mines. NEW SKILLS Glazing (M/H) No default The skill of glass-blowing and making items from glass. A glazier can produce bottles, drinking glasses, window panes, and other common glass items. With considerable effort, a glazier can fabricate stained glass windows and even grind a variety of lenses (eyeglasses were a TL3 innovation, but there is no reason that they could not have been fabricated at TL2). The GM may make this skill M/VH for TL 0 and 1 (before glass blowing was invented around 50 BC, glass was produced by the arduous and expensive process of core formation), but otherwise classical glass-blowing tools and techniques have been effected very little by changing technology even in the modern day. Masonry/TL (M/A) Defaults to Sculpture-5 or IQ-6 Just as the artistic skill Woodworking has a "practical" counterpart in Carpentry, Sculpture has a practical counterpart, Masonry. This is the skill of simple stone working and building with stone or brick, with or without mortar. For many TLs, this skill includes quarrying stone (brick making is essentially an application of Pottery skill). Thatching (M/E) Defaults to IQ-5 The skill of producing thatched materials (see section on Materials below) and wickerwork from grasses and reeds. This skill may be used to produce wicker items, such as baskets, floor mats, and furniture, as well as architectural thatching. JOBS Jobs relevant to the building trades are listed below. While the wages are monthly, the GM may prorate weekly, daily, or even hourly wages. For the sake of authenticity, the GM should be aware that the five-day, forty-hour work week is a modern institution, the result of labor reforms in the late 19th century. For most historical periods, a six or seven day work week is more likely, as are ten to twelve hour work days. Therefore, the average month holds twenty-six working days, a total of 260 to 312 working hours. Job (prerequisites) Wages Success Roll Critical Failure POOR Apprentice (IQ 10+) $200 IQ 3d/3d, dismissed Messenger (Speed 6+, $250 Speed x 2 LJ/LJ, 2d IQ 9+) STRUGGLING Construction workman $300 PR LJ/6d (ST 12+) AVERAGE Stonecutter (Masonry $28 x skill PR LJ/2d, LJ at 12+) Journeyman artisan $30 x skill PR LJ/-1i, LJ (any Craft skill at 12+) Drayman (Driver: $350 PR LJ/-2i, LJ Cart at 12+, own cart and draft animals) COMFORTABLE Master artisan $35 x skill PR-4 LJ/-2i, LJ (any Craft skill at 20+) Master Architect $40 x skill PR-4 1d, LJ/3d, LJ (Architecture 20+, Masonry or Carpentry at 15+) Military Engineer $30xskill+rank PR-4 2d/6d (Rank 3+, Engineering (Combat Engineer) at 15+) The cost to hire a drayman is actually from two to three times his wages, since he pays for care of his animals and wear on his cart out of his own pocket. LABOR Building requires a great deal of effort and not a little skill. In general, labor may be divided into two categories: skilled and unskilled. Unskilled labor can be performed by teams whose members have no special skills, although they need supervision. The ratio between skilled and unskilled workers for most tasks is specified in the relevant sections. Unskilled labor is used mostly in general construction and transporting materials, although strong backs are useful and even necessary to assist skilled workers. More specialized labor must be performed by characters with relevant skills. In addition to uses of skilled labor specified elsewhere, any construction using up to 100 workers must be supervised by a character with Architecture skill and the appropriate skill for the primary building material (Carpentry or Masonry). For every additional 100 laborers working on the same project at the same time, the architect will require the assistance of another character with Architecture. The installation of many complex architectural features must be performed by characters with other specialized skills (see Architectural Features below). Note that the time to install an architectural feature does not include the time required to produce those features (e.g., the time necessary to piece out a stained glass window). It is presumed that specialist characters can carry out this delicate labor while stronger backs are engaged with obtaining materials and building the basic shell of the building. Deviating from the original plan and adding a complex feature to a building in mid- construction can put a significant delay on construction. A high-quality door can take days or weeks to build, depending on wood supplies, and a large stained glass window can take months or years. Players considering grand building schemes should keep in mind that massive pools of labor are not often available. Skilled artisans may be in short supply or have prior engagements, but can be induced to take on new projects if paid highly enough. Unskilled labor, however, can be just as difficult or even more difficult to obtain. In a pre-industrial society, most people make a living by farming. No matter how much money they are offered, most simply cannot leave their farms for more than a few months at a time. If too many leave home for other work, not enough food will be produced and their families will face starvation. Building projects tend to work in cycles. Three or four months out of the year will be taken up by intensive building. In the off months, particularly during planting and harvesting months, building may continue, but more slowly as the better part of the labor supply dries up. In cooler climates, most building must also stop for the winter months, since working conditions become increasingly unpleasant and mortar does not set properly in cold weather. It might be useful to remember that "non-professional" and "peasant" do not necessarily mean "unskilled" in all instances. While few peasant farmers will be master architects, most will have a point or two in Carpentry skill, since they have only themselves and each other to rely on if they need something built. In rockier regions, a point or two in Masonry skill might not be uncommon if farmers are in the habit of piling field stones up into stone walls along the borders of their land. MATERIALS This section outlines the properties of common building materials and the labor necessary to produce them. The cost of materials is highly variable. If a character owns a sizable chunk of land, he may not need to pay for materials. After all, any trees and building stone on his land already belong to him (he will, however, still need to organize the labor necessary to prepare the raw materials). A ruined building can provide a cheap source of materials, as Greek temples did during the Middle Ages. An unexpected diplomatic adventure might come of characters having to negotiate permission to use materials from somebody else's forest or quarry. If characters must buy materials, they will cost the cost of labor plus 50 to 100%, not including transportation costs. THATCH: Thatching is made from reeds, grasses, or long leaves bound or woven together to form larger and more durable bundles or mats. Thatch tends to replace dried earth in buildings in wet regions and is used for roofing in all but the coldest climates. It is cheap and easy to find and produce in appropriate climates but it is a poor structural material because it will support no weight. Rather, it must be attached to a wooden framework. Thatch is flammable but, contrary to popular belief, will not go alight at the first touch of flame. Well-maintained thatching is tied tightly enough that oxygen has difficulty reaching the inner portions of the bundle. As a result, while frayed, poorly maintained thatching will burn quickly (like a bundle of paper), good thatching burns as though it were wood. Thatch is the preferred roofing material for domestic architecture, since it is cheaper and easier to install than other materials. Given access to appropriate materials, a thatcher can make 1.5 square yards of thatching per point of Thatching skill per day. WOOD: Wood is probably the most versatile of building materials, stronger and more durable than thatch and earth, lighter and easier to work than brick and stone. Buildings may be made entirely of wood, and even buildings made mostly of other materials will still often incorporate wooden structural members, particularly as floors and framework for roofing. Nevertheless, wood has its own limitations. First, it is flammable. Second, it is not always available. Some regions will not have trees of appropriate size or in sufficient quantity to support building large structures. Some areas may even have to import all of their wood. The most common woods are softwoods (pines, juniper, etc.). Slightly less common are the slower-growing but more durable hardwoods (oak, mahogany, and the like). The shape of available pieces of wood and the time to turn it into a useful form is variable dependent on the size of trees in the area. A team of foresters with axes and saws can produce an average of one square yard of board per man point of Carpentry skill per day. The exact volume of wood produced depends on the thickness of the boards. The GM may wish to designate a maximum width for boards based on the girth of local trees. Carpentry skill is at an effective -1 for every half-inch of thickness beyond the first (cutting thick boards and beams doesn't take more time itself, but it requires that more trees be cut to obtain a given area of wood) and -3 for working hardwoods. All members of the team should have Carpentry, and at least one should have Naturalist, Survival: Woodlands, or Area Knowledge for the area of forest being harvested at 12+. If not, their rate of production drops to half. Contrary to what one might expect, wood cutting is not a job for amateurs, and a skilled woodsman is an invaluable asset to carpenters looking for good lumber. Simple logs and rough beams may be produced at three times that rate, although the limits for dimensions of structural members are up to the GM. Firewood may be procured at a rate of one cubic yard per day per man, or up to five times as much if the forester is willing to destroy healthy trees. The GM may also place arbitrary limits on the maximum length of cut boards. Major construction projects were occasionally delayed as the result of a search for large enough trees to produce proper beams, and extremely long lumber was often imported from distant forests. Water- and wind-powered sawmills, which become available late in TL 3, can double production rates if the foresters have access to such equipment. Softwoods weigh 800 to 1000 pounds per cubic yard. Hardwoods weigh 1200 to 1500 pounds per cubic yard. EARTH: There are two kinds of earthen materials: piled earth and hard earth. Piled earth is simply dirt dug out of the ground heaped up in a mound or wall. Piled earth is good for improvised fortifications but little else. Hard earth, including rammed earth, sun-dried mud brick, and wattle-and-daub (dried mud over reeds or grass) is the preferred material for many small buildings at low TLs, particularly in dry areas such as the American Southwest and around the Mediterranean. In fact, a great many homes in both regions were made from dried earth until the 20th century and some earthen building are still being built and occupied. The great advantage of earthen buildings is that materials for them are cheap and plentiful. They are also largely fireproof, although they may incorporate flammable roofing or structural members. However, earthen materials have two important structural drawbacks. First, they require frequent maintenance in wet environments. In very wet environments, such as swamps and anywhere with regular heavy rains, earthen materials are almost impossible to use. Earthen materials are sometimes painted to protect them from moisture and may need repair or even partial replacement after sustained rain. Second, earth is not a great weight-bearing material. It is difficult to build a multi-storied structure from earthen materials, although earthen materials can be used as facings over a wooden framework. The raw material for piled earth structures is produced by simple digging, which needs no supervision. Working in teams and with good tools, men can excavate an average of 10 cubic yards of earth per man per day (see p. B90 for more specific information on digging rates). Bricks of dried earth are usually produced by filling wooden forms with mud, then letting them dry in the sun. Working in a team with a few people to mix mud while others fill forms, workmen can produce 4 cubic yards of mud brick per man per day. The actual drying process takes longer; this figure indicates the amount of manpower used. A team of up to twenty men should be supervised by a character with Pottery skill at 12+ or, at TL 0, Survival (Plains, Mountains, or Woodlands) skill at 12+. If the weather is favorably warm and dry, it will take bricks about a week to dry. Rammed earth, sod, and other hard earth materials use somewhat different techniques, but the amount of manpower they consume is comparable. Mud brick weighs five to seven hundred pounds per cubic yard. BRICK: Brick (distinct from mud brick) is made from a mud and straw mixture baked at a high temperature, turning it into a hard ceramic which is far more resistant to the elements. While the basic materials are usually cheap and plentiful, brick is significantly more expensive than earthen materials because its manufacture requires a significant amount of wood and skilled labor. Brick, in the form of flat ceramic roofing tiles or brick arches and vaults, may be used as a roofing material. Bricks may be formed at half the speed of mud brick (2 cu. yd./man/day) by a crew with Pottery skill at 12+. It actually takes two or three days for the bricks to bake and cool, but the bricks can largely be left unsupervised during that time. The process also requires an equal volume of straw (the time needed to gather the straw may be ignored) and twice that volume of wood or other combustible material. The weight of finished brick varies considerably, but its weight is comparable to that of earthen materials. STONE: Strong and durable, stone is the preferred material for public buildings and fortifications. Unfortunately, the very qualities that make it popular for architectural use also make it extremely expensive and difficult to work with. While it is mostly seen as a wall material, stone may be used as a roofing material, usually in the form of sheets of slate, gypsum, or other rock with sharp cleavage planes, but also in the form of complex arches and vaults. Most shaping work for building stones is done at the quarry. The reason is simple: the more work that is done chipping extraneous bits of stone from the final block, the less stone needs to be carried to the building site. This is an important cost-cutting measure, since stone is extremely heavy. A cubic yard of good building stone weighs in the neighborhood of two and a half tons, and moving large quantities of it can get very expensive. Workers with good tools can produce one and a quarter cubic yards of stone rubble per man per day without supervision (see p. B90 for more detail on digging speeds). However, in most of the world, rough stones are available in quantities sufficient for building low walls and small houses without the need to resort to excavation. Indeed, poor fields can claim cobblestones as their finest crop. Finished "ashlar" building stones with smooth, even sides, necessary for fine masonry, may be produced much more slowly. For the TLs in question, ashlar stones can be produced at a maximum of four cubic feet (0.15 cubic yards) per man per day, and all of the workers involved must have Masonry or Sculpture skill at 12+. The exact amount of stone quarried can vary considerably; a mason of the later Middle Ages could produce more than ten times as much finished stone as his colleague three or four hundred earlier. Particularly soft stones, such as gypsum and soapstone, can be excavated three times as fast, although they are usually unsuitable for structural use. The GM may apply additional labor costs for particularly difficult work, such as producing fluted columns or roughing out sculptural decoration. In extremely rocky territory, stone rubble may be collected at a rate of up to 7 cubic yards per man per day. However, this assumes that the terrain is almost entirely rock and gravel. A rate of 2 to 3 cubic yards per man per day is more realistic, and some areas may not have sufficient stone to allow even that much collection. The total amount of stone that can be gathered may also be limited. Such stone will be irregularly shaped and cannot be converted to ashlar. MORTAR: At TL 0, the only "mortar" available was wet clay, which could be used to smooth surfaces and hold mud bricks together more firmly. At TL 1, however, limestone and other calcareous minerals could be heated to yield powdered lime, the basic ingredient of plasters and mortars. Usually, a lime/water mixture is mixed with sand and small amounts of other materials for added strength and partial waterproofing. To produce mortar, one must start by collecting limestone or marble rubble or excavating a sufficient amount of a suitable stone. That stone must then be slaked (baked or heated to remove what little water is already in the stone; to bake a given volume of limestone, use about twice that volume of wood) and reduced to a powder. During the baking process, the volume of the lime essentially doubles. Once the dry mortar reaches the building site, it may quickly be mixed with water and other common materials. A ratio of two or three parts sand and other additives to one part lime is common. Less lime may be used, although the GM may wish to assess DR or HT penalties against the wall the mortar is used on, or even apply a penalty to the architect's skill roll. If starting from scratch, mortar may be produced at a rate of .8 cubic yards per man per day. If starting with suitable rubble at hand, it may be produced at a rate of 1.75 cubic yards per man per day. Mortar must be produced by a crew with Masonry skill at 12+. TRANSPORTATION Materials are rarely found where they are needed, so transport is an important consideration, and can often be costly. It has been suggested that half the expense of building many of the ancient Greek temples was in simply moving huge blocks of marble to the building site from far-away quarries (the Greeks were very particular about their marble). When the Gothic cathedrals of Europe were built, the architects had to ship great quantities of long timbers from Scandinavia, since such large trees were not available in France. The labor necessary to move materials around on the building site is included in the building labor figures, but additional labor may be necessary to get the materials there. The sample boats in GURPS Vehicles are useful here to determine the capabilities of transport vehicles. It costs about 3% of the vehicle's original cost per month plus the salary of the crew to charter a ship. A fully-loaded ox-drawn wagon will carry at most a ton of material and probably significantly less, and will move at a speed of six to eight mph to save wear and tear on the oxen. For particularly steep or narrow approaches, materials may need to be dragged uphill by teams of men (see p. B89 for rules governing encumbrance). Transport by water is far more efficient than transport by land. Prices will, of course, vary wildly, but long-distance shipment of materials over sea can cost as little as $0.03 per ton per mile if the builder intends to fill the entire hold of a ship. Poor weather, piracy, and duties can increase this somewhat. Shipment by boat or raft up rivers and canals is also relatively inexpensive, with the price increasing to perhaps three or four times that. Shipment by land is the most expensive. Moving materials by oxcart will cost in the neighborhood of $0.5 to $0.75 per ton per mile, which can increase tremendously if the cart has to travel over poor roads or through bad weather. Carts must have some kind of road or at least firm ground to travel over, and particularly convoluted roads or steep hills can easily decrease a cart's speed to a third or less, increasing costs accordingly (see the travel and terrain rules on p. B187-8). To get materials to the building site, a builder may find it more efficient to dig a canal from the nearest river rather than hire expensive strings of oxen and carts. ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENTS FREESTANDING WALLS One simple way of building is to stack up materials (stone, brick, or earth) until the wall has reached a suitable height. This can be done in a more or less sophisticated fashion to yield anything from piled fieldstone walls separating one farmer's land from another to massive and complex battlements around a huge keep. The table below lists the amount and types of labor and material necessary to build various types of wall. All wall types are TL 0, except for the ashlar types, which are TL 1. WALL TYPE CY/Day/Person LABOR NEEDED MATERIALS Mortared ashlar 1 At least 20% of 90% ashlar, laborers must 10% mortar have Masonry 12+, an additional 5% must have Masonry 14+ Mortared rubble 2.5 At least 10% of 70-90% stone laborers must (ashlar or rubble), have Masonry 12+ 30-10% mortar Concrete 2 As for mortared Less than 70% ashlar stone, more than 30% mortar Unmortared ashlar 1.25 As for mortared Ashlar, less ashlar than 10% mortar (usually none) Unmortared rubble 2.75 No specialized Any stone, less labor; any stone than 10% mortar wall built by (usually none) unskilled laborers should be treated as unmortared rubble Mortared brick 1.1 As for mortared 90% baked brick, ashlar 10% mortar Mud brick 3 At least 2% of Dried mud laborers must brick have Masonry 12+ Piled earth 5 No specialized Any earth, although labor; piled earth the GM may impose walls may have at DR, HT, and labor most a 45¡ slope, penalties for piled although earth may sand be piled behind another wall up to its own height Ashlar masonry is fine, smooth-faced masonry, as might be found in a Greek temple or well-built castle wall. The Greek temple will be unmortared, while the castle will have mortared stones. Rubble walls consist of stones which may be carefully piled, but little effort goes into their shaping. Unless used as a facing, unmortared rubble must be at least six inches thick for every yard of height. However, the GM may allow sloping walls where at any point the wall is at least six inches thick for every yard of height above that point. Concrete, a Roman invention, is an unattractive but versatile mixture of mortar and stone. It was usually poured into building-shaped wooden molds on the spot and left to set. All walls except piled stone walls under three yards tall and piled earth walls must have a stone or brick foundation extending underground at least 10% of the height of the wall or down to bedrock, whichever is less. Stone walls must have a stone foundation of some kind. Buildings made from most freestanding materials give the architect a -1 to his skill roll for every full six yards of height. Mud brick and unmortared stone give a -1 for every full two yards of height unless they are used as fill between facings of one of the other materials (except piled earth) at least six inches thick. Concrete is an extremely versatile material and gives the architect a +3 to his skill. WALL REFINEMENTS EARTHEN DITCH AND RAMPART: One of the earliest-developed and longest- used fortifications is a ditch with the earth piled up immediately behind it to form a defensive wall. This type of fortification, used by armies from the Bronze Age through the present, can be produced quickly with little or no trained labor. To produce earthen walls immediately next to a ditch, the labor expended in digging the ditch also counts towards building a piled earth wall up to a yard and a half high by a yard and a half wide (this usually takes the shape of a rounded mound; see above for limitations on the shape of earthen walls). These ramparts often included pickets of sharpened wooden stakes. It takes about two minutes to set a wooden stake (usually 4 to 6 feet long, up to 3 x 3 inches). CRENELLATED PARAPET: One of the fixtures of military architecture, and one of the easiest to build, is the crenellation, the square-toothed pattern at the top of a fortification wall. Defenders may fire arrows or throw things from the gaps between the crenels (the proper name for the teeth), then duck behind them for cover as they ready their next shot. Simply treat the wall as a foot taller than intended for purposes of calculating labor and materials. This will yield two-foot high crenellations along the wall perhaps two feet wide alternating with gaps of a similar size. EMBOSSING (TL 2): One construction technique designed to protect stone walls from siege engines is to install projecting stone bosses deeply anchored into the wall. When a boss is struck, it transmits the force deeper into the wall, reducing damage to the surface. On a 1 in 6, an attack by a siege engine strikes a boss and damage is halved. A wall must be faced with at least a half-yard thickness of mortared ashlar, although it need not be stone throughout. Embossing increases labor for the entire wall (not just the facing) by 20%. Embossed walls are also somewhat easier to climb (+2 to Climbing skill). Embossing gives a -2 to the architect's skill. * CRIBWORK (TL 2): A scheme occasionally used to reduce collateral damage to stone or stone-faced fortification walls is to introduce thick wooden ties or brick masonry within the structure of the wall, usually in horizontal courses at intervals of around six feet. Walls thus divided are more resistant to collapse. While cribworked walls may have wood in their construction, fire does no additional damage; most of the wood is surrounded by stone and mortar where it is difficult for oxygen to get at it, and most architects are careful to choose woods already charred or somewhat resistant to burning. To be cribworked, a wall must be faced with at least a half-yard of mortared ashlar. Cribwork increases total labor for the wall by 30%. Cribwork gives a -2 to the architect's skill. * FRAMES AND FACINGS Rather than thinking of a building as a shell of walls with modifications later inserted, one can build a skeleton of structural members upon which wall facings are later hung. Many common dwellings, shops, barns, and other buildings will be of this sort, consisting of a wooden framework to which boards or mats of thatching have been attached. It is also possible to combine both schools of thought. For example, the pueblos of the American Southwest are essentially mud brick buildings combined with a wooden frame supporting floors and ceilings. In building a frame structure, the architect must determine the building's surface area. This will generally exclude the roof, which may be built separately. The volume of structural materials (that is to say, wooden beams making up the frame) is equal to 1 cubic yard for every 100 square yards of surface area, times (building height/6) rounded up, if the building is over 6 yards high. If it becomes important, structural members will be 2" x 2" for most one-story buildings, 2" x 3" for two-story buildings, 3" x 3" for three story buildings, and so on. Workers construct frames of the desired dimensions, which are then raised and assembled into a building frame. A worker can produce and erect a number of square yards worth of framing equal to his Carpentry skill per day. The frame, however, is merely the skeleton of the building. Once the frame is up, it can be covered with a facing material. The architect will need to decide what kind of facing material to use and the surface area of the building to be covered. If he wants to surround his wood frame with a stone, brick, or earthen wall, see the section on freestanding walls above. For a thatched building, a worker can attach (Thatching skill*3) square yards of thatching per day. Additional layers of thatching may be added for extra protection against the elements, insulation, etc. For a wood-faced building, a worker can attach (Carpentry skill*2.5) square yards per hour. Carpentry skill is at -2 for boards over a half-inch thick, -5 for boards over an inch thick. A building may also be faced with thin sheets of gypsum, a very soft stone. A mason may install sheets of up to an inch thick at a rate of (Masonry skill/2) square yards per day, -2 for every additional inch of thickness. Keep in mind that any building can be faced, and multiple or composite facings are available. For example, some Bronze Age palaces made of mud brick had gypsum facings, and a well-insulated building will probably have two layers of planks on their walls. Once the building has been erected, internal walls may be inserted. Walls may be made of freestanding materials (stone, brick, etc.), or they may be based on a frame as described above. Walls made of freestanding materials must start at the foundation level, although they can become thinner higher up. Frame walls, however, may rest on any floor of the building. It is also possible to build a frame from stone or brick, although such frames are more difficult to build and somewhat more limited in their use. Such a "frame" usually appears in the form of an arcade of columns or the piers of a bridge. A stone frame takes one cubic yard for every thirty cubic feet of surface area, times (height in yards/6) rounded up, and must be made of ashlar or mortared brick. If this is evenly distributed in columns six feet apart, the columns will be a foot thick up to a height of six yards, about two feet thick up to twelve yards, two and a half feet up to eighteen yards, and three feet thick up to twenty-four yards. Keep in mind that the columns do not have to be symmetrical squares or circles. For example, to carry the above example to extremes, a building up to forty-eight yards high could have pillars three feet wide by six feet deep with yard-wide bays between them. Wooden frame buildings do not require a stone or brick foundation, although it is wise to provide one on soft ground or in wet climates. The amount of materials given assume short wooden piers for minimal anchoring. Stone frame buildings require a foundation just as a freestanding wall. As with freestanding walls, frame buildings give a -1 to the architect's skill for every full six yards of height. COMPOSITE BUILDINGS It is possible to make a building from several different materials, combining frame and freestanding construction. As mentioned above, it is possible to build a frame building within a freestanding shell. It is also possible to make a building with a stone or brick lower section and a frame upper section, or to layer brick on top of stone. In general, any material may be used to build on top of another as long as it is not "stronger" than the material below it. The hierarchy of "strength," in decreasing order, is as follows: All mortared materials (including concrete) Unmortared rubble Mud brick Wood Building anything on top of unmortared rubble and mud brick incurs a penalty to the architect's skill of -1 for every full two yards built directly on top of the earthen or stone wall. Piled earth may be heaped over any roofed building, but the GM should keep approximate track of the amount of piled dirt. Dirt weighs about 60 lbs. per cubic foot when dry, and when wet can weigh over 100 lbs. FLOORS AND PAVEMENTS Even flat, open spaces can come in a variety of types. A plot of relatively level ground can be cleared of sparse vegetation and evened out at a rate of about 100 square yards per day per man. Somewhat thicker vegetation or other ground clutter (tall grass, low shrubs, many cobbles) will slow clearing work by half. Thick vegetation (forest, light jungle) can reduce speed to 10 square yards per man per day or even less, particularly if thick tree stumps must be burned or pulled out. A sizable boulder or large tree stump can be a full-day affair in itself. Cleared ground may be treated as Firm terrain for the purposes of vehicular movement, assuming that the underlying ground is not particularly swampy or sandy. Ground must be cleared before building can begin. Once cleared, the ground can be paved with wall materials, turning them into Hard surfaces. Floorings can be treated as walls of the appropriate material, but they can be extremely thin since they do not need to bear their own weight. It might be useful to keep in mind that one cubic yard of material will cover thirty two square yards with a layer one inch thick. A one-inch layer of stone (piled stone or, in exceptional circumstances, ashlar) or tile (treat as brick) can withstand most foot traffic and occasional mounted or wagon traffic, but repeated heavy use will eventually crush the paving. Exact effects are up to the GM's discretion, but if he wishes to keep records, he may assess trampling damage against paved surfaces. Calculate HT as a fraction of the HT values given on the table below, but retain the material's full DR for layers an inch thick or more (pro-rate DR for thinner layers). Particularly heavy loads will do extra damage to floorings. If an animal or vehicle weighs over 1.5 tons will do +1 damage to any floor surface, +2 if over 2.5 tons. Wooden planks can also be used as a paving material. Wood's flexibility makes it somewhat more durable than one might expect (add 25% to DR, rounding up, if it is placed directly on the ground), but it will decay quickly in wet environments if it is in direct contact with the ground. Dried or packed earth is an inappropriate material for road building by itself, since a cleared pathway already is packed earth, but can serve as an under-layer for a roadway. For regular heavy loads, a roadbed must be more extensively prepared. A heavy roadbed usually consists of a layer of gravel and sand bedding at least a foot thick covered by a layer of closely set paving cobbles (same labor requirements as a mud brick wall). If a road is constructed of stone or brick, it may gain 1% of the HT of the built layers below it to the DR of the top layer (maximum additional DR 10). Road crews must be supervised by a character with Architecture, Masonry, or Engineer (Combat Engineering) skill, but road building takes no time or expense beyond the normal costs for building with the appropriate materials. Since muddy ground doesn't hold road materials well, unmortared roads without this kind of preparation will lose one third of their DR after a heavy rain until the ground dries up. ROOFS AND CEILINGS The easiest way to make a roof is to build a wooden frame on top of the building and face it with the material of the builder's choice. One significant restriction on a roof is that the simplest techniques require long timbers. When laying roof beams for a small dwelling, this presents little problem, since fifteen to twenty-foot beams are rarely hard to find. Trying to find hundred-foot beams to span the king's throne room, though, is a different problem. Unfortunately, roof beams cannot simply be nailed together, so a number of creative solutions were devised to overcome the limitations of limited supplies of good roofing timber. In general, a building will have a roof covering an area equal to that of the building itself. However, the architect may wish to build a roof bigger than the building it covers in order to shed rainwater farther away from the building or provide shade outside. A building can support a frame roof covering an area up to 50% greater than the area of the supporting building. A particularly long or wide frame roof can extend up a distance up to the length of the building beyond the building itself as long as the roof is supported by a wooden or stone frame of the appropriate height at the far end. A freestanding-material roof, however, cannot be larger than the supporting building or frame. A wooden frame-based roof can support a thatched facing (builders in colder climates would be well advised to use two layers of thatching for better insulation) or a wooden facing as with wooden floors. Frame-based roofs can also be reinforced to support additional facings of tile, stone, or even metal for extra waterproofing. A reinforced roof requires double the materials and must be faced with planks at least an inch thick. However, it may then also be faced with a stone, tile, or metal up to an inch thick. Stone frames may not be used to produce roofs. Each of the roof types below, except for the flat roof, may be a building all by itself, resting directly on the ground. Common types of roof include: FLAT ROOFS: The maximum width of a freestanding roof (that is to say, one supported only at the edges) is limited to the maximum length of beams available. Special types of ceiling, however, may span broader distances. PEAKED ROOFS: A peaked roof is shaped like an upside-down V. It is an extremely common type and can be found on most houses even today. The frame for such a roof actually consists of two or more frames leaning together. Such a roof must have a sufficient slope for the beams to lean against each other for some kind of support. The height of the peaked section must be at least a quarter of the distance from the peak to the edge of the roof (this is an angle of about 15 degrees). Many roofs are much steeper. Particularly snowy or rainy climates will have sharply peaked roofs to shed precipitation more efficiently. The area of each frame is SQRT(h^2+w^2)l, where h is the height of the peaked section, w is the horizontal distance from the edge of the roof to the peak, and l is the length of the roofed section. A peaked roof gives a -1 to the architect's skill. ARCHED ROOFS (TL 2): An arched roof is shaped like half of a hollow cylinder, an arch projected through a third dimension. An arched roof may be made from either a frame or freestanding wall materials. For freestanding materials, the volume of necessary materials is PIrlt, where r is equal to the radius of the arch, l is the length of the vaulted space, and t is the thickness of the roof. Such a roof may be made from any stone material, brick, or even mud brick. The frame area is equal to ¹rl. Arched roofs give a -2 to the architect's skill. A Gothic-style vaulted ceiling takes the same volume of materials as a freestanding-material arched roof. DOMES (TL 3): Like an arched roof, this roof may be made from either a frame or freestanding material. For freestanding materials, volume = 2PIrt, where r is equal to the radius of the dome and t is the thickness of the roof. Frame area is 2¹r. Domes give a -3 to the architect's skill. CONES: A conical roof may be made of any material except piled earth, although if it is made from piled rubble, it must be at least twice as high as it is wide. For freestanding materials, volume = (htPIr2)/3, where r is the radius of the cone, t is the thickness of the roof, and h is the height of the cone. For frames, the area is (h¹r2)/3. Conical roofs give a -1 to the architect's skill for wood and thatch, -3 for piled stone, and -2 for other materials. CEILING/FLOORS As Paul Simon once said, "one man's ceiling is another man's floor." Upper-story floors can best be treated as roofs, but require a somewhat more detailed consideration. Building a floor for the second story of a building or higher (that is to say, any floor that doesn't rest directly on the ground) is only slightly more difficult. A floor can be inserted at any level within a frame or freestanding-wall building. The builder needs only to construct a frame of the appropriate size as detailed above for building walls and "face" it with an appropriate material. The only major limitation is that the size of such a floor is limited by the maximum length of available beams as determined by the GM (see flat roofs above). For floor surfaces, half-inch planks are the absolute minimum and may not be safe for floors that will see heavy use. The maximum safe weight for a person or man-sized object on such a floor is 500 lb. Heavier traffic will do double trampling damage to the floor, and its DR is halved. Inch-thick planks are safer for most uses, raising the maximum safe weight to 1500 lbs. If the builder doubles the effort and material to build the frame and employs planks an inch-thick or more, the floor is considered reinforced. A reinforced floor can support an extra surface of brick (ceramic tile) or stone, as well as light mounted and vehicle traffic. Maximum safe weight increases to 3000 lbs. An additional doubling of the frame increases the maximum safe weight to 6000 lbs. A solid floor may also be constructed by "filling in" the space above a freestanding-material ceiling, pouring in more material and leveling it off. Such floors are particularly durable, although they cannot be built over mud brick or unmortared stone roofs. WINDOWS AND DOORS Windows and doors are similar in that the first step in building either is to leave a hole in the wall. For the purposes of figuring the materials necessary to build a freestanding wall or to face a frame building, the allowance for windows and doors can be considered negligible (if you want a stone building with a lot of windows, build a stone frame instead). Windows and doors may be any shape or size that structural limitations allow, although the designer may wish to use "standard" sizes of three by seven feet for doors and three feet square for windows. Once a hole is made or left in a wall, doorways and windows may be left open, or other architectural elements such as doors or glass panes may be installed. Unless otherwise noted, these items must be installed by a character with either Masonry or Carpentry skill at 10+. WINDOWS Arrow Slit: A specialized window for buildings with walls thicker than one foot. An arrow slit is a window which is narrow on one side (usually the outer), but widens considerably towards the other. This allows someone inside the building a wide arc of vision, and a similarly wide arc of fire with a bow, while exposing only a small area. An arrow slit may be any height (one to two yards was common), and may be as narrow as two inches. A character at the window has a ninety degree arc of fire, but may only be targeted from the outside by someone in the archer's line of fire that turn, and then only at an appropriate penalty for target size. If the slit is less than six inches wide and the interior room is dimmer than the outside, the GM may declare an additional -2 penalty for difficulty seeing the target. Each arrow slit requires an extra day of building labor, although no skilled labor is necessary. Bars and Gratings: For added security, an architect may wish to install metal or wooden bars in his windows. Bars may be installed horizontally, vertically, diagonally, or in any combination. Spacing between the bars is up to the architect, but a spacing of six to eight inches should prevent almost anyone from getting in or out. Thicker bars provide more security. In fact, potential intruders or escapees may attempt to remove the structural material around a particularly thick bar rather than to destroy the bar itself. Each bar requires ten minutes to install when the building is constructed (twice as long if retrofitted to the building!) and must be installed by a character with Masonry skill. Metal bars cost $12 per yard times the barÕs diameter in inches. Wooden bars cost $.75 per yard times the bar's diameter. A barred window or partition with half-inch bars every six inches costs $36 per square yard, $2.25 per square yard for wooden bars. Double cost for inch-thick bars, and double cost again for a grided window (with a second set of bars crossing the first at a right angle). Shutters: Shutters are opaque or slightly translucent window covers. Usually, shutters are mounted on hinges so that they may be opened or closed at will. The architect should note whether the shutters are on the outside of the building (common on modern dwellings) or on the inside. Shutters may be made of wood, paper, or even stone. Wood shutters are to be either sheets of wood, usually with thin groves cut into them to let in light, or frames with slats of wood inset in such a way that they may be partially opened or closed to let in light while keeping out wind and rain. Paper shutters are made of thick sheets of oiled paper or parchment. While not particularly durable, they do a fine job of letting in light while keeping out light winds and rain. Stone shutters are made from very thin sheets of stone (softer stones such as gypsum are popular for this application), often with holes drilled in them to let in light. Shutters take one-quarter day for a carpenter to install or one-half day for a mason for stone shutters. Installation time is reduced by 10% for unhinged shutters, which must stay permanently closed. Shutters cost $4 per square foot ($3 for unhinged shutters). Glass Panes (TL3): Costly, but sure to be admired. At these TLs, glass windows are made from tiny panes fitted together in a rigid framework, usually made of lead. Since blown glass tends to be cloudy, uneven, and full of bubbles, Vision rolls through glass windows at TLs 3 and 4 are at -3. A glass window takes ten minutes per square foot to install (must be installed by a character with Glazing skill) and costs $20 per square foot. DOORS Regular: A door made of planks held together by cross-slats and a few nails. The door is held closed by a simple latch that may be opened from either side. $3 per square foot, two minutes per square foot to install. Heavy: Like the regular door, but with heavier wood and additional cross-bracing. Internal doors are rarely Heavy, but they are used occasionally for dividing public from private areas or for added security. $6 per square foot, two minutes per square foot to install. Reinforced: Thick hardwood doors with heavy iron bindings. Reinforced doors are used where enormous strength is necessary, as at castle gates or in dungeons and treasuries. $8 per square foot, three minutes per square foot to install. Gate: A metal or wooden gate may be installed for the cost of the bars in it (see above). A grid of one-inch bars set six inches apart costs $1.5 per square foot. Two minutes per square foot to install. Drawbridge: A particular type of door hinged at the bottom rather than at the side, the drawbridge is designed to open out over a ditch, forming a bridge when open. The door portion itself should be either a heavy or a reinforced door. A drawbridge also includes a counterweight mechanism allowing easy raising and lowering. The additional mechanisms cost $10 per square foot, and takes up space immediately adjacent the drawbridge with a volume in cubic feet equal to the bridge's area in square feet. The entire system takes one hour per square foot of bridge area to install. Portcullis: A heavy gate which may be dropped into a doorway from above as a last-ditch effort to prevent either escape or invasion. A portcullis requires a gate (see above), usually made with the thickest possible bars sharpened on the bottom (a grid of six-inch thick bars set a foot across is common; $9 per square foot). The gate is then mounted above the doorway (the wall surrounding the doorway must be at least twice as high as the doorway itself) along with winching mechanisms to drag the portcullis back up after it has been dropped. Once dropped, the sharpened points in the bottom will dig into the ground, making the gate extremely hard to lift even for someone working the integral winch mechanism. Anyone standing under the portcullis will surely be severely injured if he cannot dodge out of the way (double trampling damage for an animal of equivalent weight; damage is impaling). The additional mechanisms cost $6 per square foot of gate area and take up space immediately adjacent to the portcullis with a volume in cubic feet equal to half the gate's area in square feet. The entire system takes an hour per square foot of gate area to install. Peephole: A small hole may be cut into any door so that those inside may look out without opening the door. A simple hole of any size may be had for no additional cost, a hinged door for an additional $10, and bars and gratings for the appropriate cost. None of these modifications take additional time to install. Door Bars: For additional security, a door may be blocked with a thick wooden bar set in brackets to either side. It is impossible to open a barred door from the outside, although the door may still be destroyed. A bar costs $4 for every yard or part thereof of the door's width and takes an additional ten minutes to install. Locks (TL 1): Doors regularly come with a simple latch which may be opened from either side. However, a locking mechanism may be installed in any door which may be locked from either side, preventing someone without a key from either entering or leaving the room. A lock costs $40, but does not effect the time to install. Finer locks are more expensive but more difficult to pick (double cost for every -1 to Lockpick skill to a maximum penalty of -5). Secret Doors: Doorways and their latching mechanisms may be hidden by skillful painting or decoration. A doorway may be hidden for an additional $20 per square foot. Installation takes fifteen minutes per square foot by a character with Artist, Holdout, and either Masonry or Carpentry skill, all at 12+. * OTHER FEATURES Stairs: The average step is eight inches high by eight inches deep. The width of the step is up to the designer, but a yard to a yard and a half is common. Staircases come in two configurations: straight and spiral. A straight staircase might curve somewhat but generally needs a length equal to its height. A spiral staircase has a diameter of about two and a half times the width of the individual stairs regardless of the height, but the tight turn makes it somewhat more difficult to navigate (reduce Move on a spiral staircase by 1). Spiral staircases usually spiral upwards in a clockwise direction, giving an advantage in combat to a right-handed fighter facing downstairs. A character with his weapon arm to the inside of the spiral is at -1 to his weapon skill due to the cramped quarters. A spiral stone staircase must be constructed of ashlar and takes up 10% of the volume of the passage. For example, a set of one yard wide steps twenty yards high requires 0.1*20*PI(1.25)^2 = about 9.8 cubic yards of stone. A straight stone or brick staircase requires a volume of material equal to the staircase's height*width*length/2. A wooden staircase requires a frame with an area equal to width*(height + length). Cellars and wells: To produce a cellar, one may simply dig a hole of appropriate size (see the digging rules on p. B89) and line it with the material of choice, essentially building a building inside the empty space. A cellar of may be lined with any building material except thatch and earthen materials and should have a ceiling, if only to shore up any earth above it. A well is simply a shaft dug down to the water table. How deep one will have to dig to strike water is up to the GM, although in fantasy campaigns the Seek Water spell will locate a good place. Wells may be lined with unmortared rubble or, if the builder is wealthy enough, mortared stone covered with hydraulic cement (see below) to prevent the water from becoming dirty. Bridges: Building a bridge merely requires that the builder make two frames of appropriate shape, set them apart by the distance of the bridge's width, and construct frame "roof" over them to form the surface of the bridge. Heavily reinforced frames are highly recommended. If the bridge is to span a river, double the necessary material and multiply labor by five. Rain gutters: Buildings with slanted and curved roofs can mount small channels and tubes to direct rainfall from the roof, usually into cisterns or rain barrels. They cost $2 per yard of roof perimeter and take one minute per yard to install. Fireplaces/chimneys: The hearth of many early buildings consists of a simple depression in the earth or a ring of stones, and the chimney of a hole in the roof for smoke to escape, taking no extra time or particular skill to install. More sophisticated buildings need more elaborate mechanisms to contain necessary fires and channel the smoke out of the house. A fireplace must have a stone or brick floor and walls. If the fireplace is set on a wooden floor, the stone/brick flooring must be at least eight inches thick. A fireplace in a wooden building should also have a chimney made of stone (any stone-containing wall type except piled stone) or brick at least as tall as the building itself or, if feasible, a few feet taller. A chimney should have walls at least 6 inches thick, and the opening should be at least one tenth of the floor area covered by the fireplace. In a stone or brick building, a chimney simply needs a slight modification in wall design to leave space for smoke to escape. Each fireplace/chimney adds another day's worth of labor from a mason. A typical fireplace covers from 6 to 9 square feet for a private chamber or sitting room. Fireplaces in kitchens and large halls may be somewhat larger. For reasons probably connected with their cost, chimneys did not become common in private dwellings in Europe until at least the Renaissance, and most homes had only a hole in the roof over a cooking fire to let smoke out. Light fixtures: Iron brackets for torches cost $3 each and may be installed in negligible time. A small chandelier (18" across), sufficient for lighting a small table, costs $20 and takes ten minutes to install. A large chandelier (five to seven feet across) costs $90 and takes a half-hour to install. These fixtures are generally wooden wheels hung from the ceiling by a rope or light chain, with metal brackets to hold candles. The large chandelier is also equipped with a pulley arrangement so that it can be raised and lowered for easy maintenance. Crystal-bedecked versions will cost at least twenty times as much. See GURPS Swashbucklers for rules on what to do with chandeliers. Privies: For a small dwelling, a privy will be little more than a deep hole with a shack around it. If a privy is built into a stone or brick building, treat it as a chimney leading down rather than up. Hypocaust (TL 2): The hypocaust is probably the most sophisticated heating device of the ancient world. It consists of a sizable furnace connected by ducts to an adjacent room. The room to be heated has a "false floor" made of ceramic tiles set on small pedestals, raising it a foot or two above ground level. Air heated by the furnace circulates through the empty space under the false floor and sometimes even passing through column- chimneys, thereby heating the room. A typical hypocaust floor uses as much material as an 8-inch thick tile floor, but construction time is doubled. It must also be adjacent to a furnace or furnaces (treat as a fireplace) taking up at least 5% as much floor area as the room to be heated. * Cooling devices (TL 2): Residents of hot climates devised a number of ingenious schemes to cool their buildings before the advent of modern air conditioning. Wind catchers atop buildings can funnel breezes through interior rooms, and screens of damp cloth or charcoal can be used to cool the air. No particular game effect, but the spaces cooled will be significantly more comfortable in extremely hot weather. $20 and 1 hour of labor for cubic yard of building space to be cooled. * Plumbing (TL 1): Running water and sewage systems date back at least as far as the late Bronze Age, although they hardly became extensive in European cities until massive aqueduct systems were introduced by civil engineers of the Roman Republic. However, any building may have internal plumbing if it is attached to an appropriate water supply. Installation of plumbing requires that trenches be dug to lay pipe (6 inches to 1 foot in diameter is sufficient for a dwelling) leading in from a water source and out to a sewer. The pipe itself costs about $2-3 per yard and takes 1/2 hour per yard to install, including attachment to above-ground features. Paint: Any building surface may be painted for minimal waterproofing and protection from the elements as well as for an improved appearance. A coat of simple whitewash costs $0.25 and takes 1 minute per square yard. For more elaborate paint jobs, see Luxury Appointments below. Pitch: This thick, smelly mineral substance can be used to seal cracks and provide more serious waterproofing than paint can provide, but is usually limited to use on roofs. $1 and 2 minutes per square yard to seal cracks and stop small draughts, $3 and 5 minutes per square yard for complete surfacing. Hydraulic Cement (TL 1): While common mortars are waterproof enough to withstand most weather conditions and pitch is reasonably waterproof, neither can stand up to sustained immersion. However, special ingredients such as pulverized brick can be added to mortar to make it almost completely waterproof. This kind of mortar, called hydraulic cement, is used to coat surfaces of wells, cisterns, river bridge supports, aqueducts, and other structures meant to hold or resist water. Hydraulic cement costs $10 per square yard and takes 10 minutes per square yard to apply. * Metal Facing: Any building face may be covered with sheet metal for decoration or protection, although coating a building in metal can be excessively expensive. Metal facings are measured in thicknesses of an eighth of an inch. Lead sheeting provides non-corroding waterproofing but little more (DR 1, HT 2 per eighth inch), $20 per square yard. Copper and bronze ($100 per square yard) are impressive if maintained, but difficult to polish. Iron ($80 per square yard) provides better protection than either lead or copper, but looks quite ugly. Metal facings take five minutes per square yard to install, or six minutes per square yard for iron. The GM may choose not to allow facings thicker than a half-inch. Luxury Appointments: This accessory includes mural paintings, mosaics, tile inlays, and other architectural decorations (not non-architectural accessories such as furniture, tapestries, and rugs). Decoration of walls, ceilings, and floors costs at least $20 per square foot of area to be decorated. Installation and finishing at least a day per square yard by a character with Artist skill. An architect should also note which if any windows are stained glass windows (effectively opaque, $70 per square foot). Please note that these costs are simply ball-park estimates for good but by no means outstanding decoration. Elaborate decoration is something on which the builder can spend as much or as little as he wishes, with the amount spent being reflected in the fineness of the finished product. DAMAGE TO BUILDINGS The amount of damage done to a piece of architecture depends heavily on construction materials and method of attack. HT and DR values for architectural components are listed on the table below. The HT of a wall material indicates the damage necessary to open a hole approximately a yard square (minor change from rules on p. B124). Wall facings and cores must be destroyed separately, and to penetrate a thick wall, attackers may have to essentially tunnel through it. Damage to a wall will dig a progressively deeper hole into it. For example, 40 points of damage will break a hole through a six inch thickness of brick wall. An additional 40 points of damage will increase the depth of the hole to one foot, and so on. Unlike personal armor, DRs of wall materials are not additive, although walls made of compactable earth can add DR to their facing material under certain circumstances. Attacks from personal weapons do full damage, although some types of weapons are unsuitable for destroying buildings. Attacks with inappropriate weapons will do little or no damage or, at the GM's option, damage the weapon (attacking a stone wall with a sword is a good way to lose the sword). In general, impaling weapons are useless against buildings. Particularly powerful impaling weapons, such as lasers, may poke holes into walls, but will leave the building structurally sound. To poke a hole in a wall large enough to peer through, an impaling weapon needs to do damage equal to only half of the wall's HT. Fire can also damage buildings, whether or not the wall material is flammable. Use the fire damage procedure on p. B130: fire does 1d-1 damage per turn, DR protects entirely for (3xDR) turns but full damage is taken thereafter. Even stone walls can be weakened and destroyed by fire, although it is a long and onerous process. Wooden and thatched walls and structural members can be set on fire using the fire damage procedure on p. V162-3. When a freestanding wall is breached, there is the danger of collapse. Once a wall is penetrated half-way through or more, the GM should roll against the architect's skill at +2 for mortared walls (mortared brick, mortared ashlar, mortared rubble, or concrete) or -10 for unmortared walls. The roll is at -3 for every yard of breech horizontally adjacent. If the roll fails, the wall above the breech collapses into rubble, including any horizontally adjacent sections of wall. For example, a mortared ashlar wall is breached by a trebuchet. The architect's skill was 18, so the GM rolls against a 20. If a second breech is made immediately adjacent to the first, the roll is at -3, for a modified roll of 17. A third breech would reduce the roll to a 14, and so on. A floor within a freestanding-wall building may collapse if the attached wall collapses. If more than half of a wall supporting a floor collapses, roll against the architect's skill. If the roll fails, the floor itself falls, probably injuring or killing its occupants and those of the floor below (6 dice of damage to everyone, treat as falling damage). Roll again if the entire wall collapses, this time at -3 to the architect's skill. As other half-walls collapse, roll again each time at an additional -3. A floor will collapse automatically if all but one of its supporting walls are destroyed. Roofs have the same chance of collapsing as internal floors, and domed, vaulted, and conical roofs are at an additional -2. The GM may modify this as he sees fit for buildings with a large number of walls. Punching a hole in a frame building may also make it collapse. The chance of a collapse is lower, since breaking a hole in a wall won't necessarily destroy a load-bearing member, but once structural members are destroyed, the building is likely to collapse rather spectacularly. Each roll is at the architect's skill, unmodified by adjacent breaches. However, if the roll fails, the entire face of the building at that level or above collapses, and the GM should roll against the architect's skill at -2 for each internal floor in the building to see if the collapsing side takes that floor down with it. If the floors fall, roll again at -2 to see if the entire building collapses. Each roll is at an additional -4 if another face has already collapsed, -10 if two other faces have already collapsed. Again, these rules assume four-sided buildings, and the GM may vary them for buildings with more sides. The table below partially reproduces and expands on the table on p. B125. The GM should feel free to vary the HT values of walls somewhat depending on maintenance, the builder's skill, and the material itself. For example, a particularly well-built wall or one made from a particularly hard stone may have a slightly higher HT, while a mortared wall with an unusually high mortar content will have a slightly lower HT. DR AND HT FOR ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENTS FREESTANDING WALLS Material DR HT Weapon Piled earth 0 7 per foot axe, pick Mud brick 0 10 per foot axe, pick Brick 6 40 per 6 in. crushing Unmortared rubble 4 40 per 6 in. crushing Unmortared ashlar 8 60 per 6 in. crushing Concrete 4 45 per 6 in. hammer or pick Mortared rubble 6 50 per 6 in. hammer or pick Mortared ashlar 8 90 per 6 in. hammer or pick Earthen walls gain a DR equal to 1% of their HT against siege engines (catapults, battering rams, and the like, but not picks and axes). This DR is additive with the DR of any facing material 6 inches thick or more up to twice the facing's original DR. Any masonry wall using clay rather than lime-based mortar has its DR reduced by 2 and HT reduced by 10%. Gypsum and soapstone facings have DR reduced to one third and HT reduced to one quarter. FACINGS Material DR HT Weapon Thatching 0 5/layer not impaling Soft wood (1/2 in.) 1 5 not impaling Soft wood (1 in.) 2 10 not impaling Soft wood (2 in.) 4 20 not impaling Soft wood (3 in.) 6 30 axe, crushing Hard wood (1/2 in.) 2 6 not impaling Hard wood (1 in.) 3 12 not impaling Hard wood (2 in.) 5 24 not impaling Hard wood (3 in.) 7 36 axe, crushing Metal (1/8 in.) 3 6 axe, crushing Metal (1/4 in.) 4 12 axe, crushing One may cut a slit between the bundles of a thatched wall or ceiling large enough to peek or, for smaller characters, even squeeze through (HT 3 per foot of slit, cutting weapons only). Softwoods get +5 to HT for every inch of thickness beyond 3. Hardwoods get +6 to HT per additional inch of thickness. Lead sheets have half the DR and one quarter of the HT of other metals (round down). DOORS Material DR HT Weapon Regular door 2 10 not impaling Heavy door 4 20 not impaling Reinforced door 5 40 axe, crushing This table lists the damage necessary to break open a regular locked door. For barred doors, increase DR by 2 and HT by 50%. In either case, overcoming the door's HT will destroy the latch but leave the door more or less in one piece. A door can take damage equal to three times its basic HT before it is reduced to splinters. BARS AND GRATINGS Material DR HT Weapon Wooden pole (1 in.) 1 3 any Wooden pole (2 in.) 3 8 not impaling Wooden pole (3 in.) 4 12 axe Wooden pole (4 in.) 6 20 axe Iron bar (1/2 in.) 1 4 not impaling Iron bar (1 in.) 3 20 axe, hammer Iron bar (2 in.) 3 60 axe, hammer For wooden poles, add 10 to HT for every additional inch of thickness. SHUTTERS AND WINDOWS Material DR HT Weapon Paper shutter 0 1 not impaling Wooden shutter 1 5 not impaling Glass window 1 3 any Impaling weapons and bullets will pass through paper shutters without losing any damage or doing significant damage to the window. WEATHERING AND NATURAL DISASTERS If not properly looked after, buildings can decay and collapse under their own weight. While this decay will rarely effect buildings built by characters in an ongoing campaign (unless the campaign lasts for many years), a GM may quantify the toll that the ages take on a building. Every year, the GM may roll against an 8 for buildings with wooden components and a 3 for buildings with thatched or earthen components. Roll twice for buildings with both, once for the wooden parts and once for the earth and thatching. On a failed roll, all wooden components take 1 point of damage. Thatched and earthen components take 2. Roofs take double damage. This damage is done to the first foot-thickness of wall on the inside and the outside, which means that very thick earthen walls may erode gradually over time. DR does not protect, and all damage is doubled on a critical failure. The roll is subject to the following modifiers: +5 in a fairly dry climate +10 for a desert climate -5 for particularly damp climates +1 for pitch sealing +2 for a complete pitch or paint job +2 for a stone or tile facing -3 if not regularly maintained (includes sweeping, pulling vines off the building, etc.) These modifiers are cumulative, and the GM may add others as he sees fit. For example, extreme cold may cause additional damage to earthen buildings as the result of frost heave, or special kinds of wood such as cypress may be particularly resistant to water damage. Paint must be renewed annually, while pitch must be renewed every five years. At the GM's option, earthworks that survive through a growing season may be covered with grass weeds, whose root network will prevent their HT from dropping below that of piled earth as the result of weathering. For stone buildings, roll against a 12 every decade (stone buildings, once put up, are very hard to knock down again). If the roll fails, the wall will take one point of damage. For sustained weathering, the GM may wish to pro-rate DR. If wooden components are cased within intact brick or stone walls at least a foot thick, they gain a +5 to their weathering rolls. Earthen walls completely encased in brick or stone walls also gain a +5 to their weathering rolls, and their HT cannot drop below that of piled earth. Severe weather can cause more immediate damage, although the weather must be severe indeed in most cases. Earthen buildings take 1 point of damage per hour of light rain, 3 points of damage per hour of moderate rain, and 5 points of damage per hour of heavy rain. This damage is done to the first foot-thickness of the exterior. Water resistant facings provide a DR of 2 against rain damage for two hours. Sustained gales and hurricane winds can break windows and tear off wooden roofs off of any kind of building (roll against Architect's skill). Earthquakes can be a threat as well, although their effects will be unpredictable. In general, roll against the architect's skill with a modifier appropriate to the severity of the quake. Wooden buildings are most easily damaged, and buildings on soft ground are more vulnerable than those with a foundation solidly on bedrock. If the roll fails, the GM should assess damage to the building appropriate to the magnitude of the failure (say, 1 die per point missed by) or, in the case of freestanding walls, arbitrarily declare that some sections of wall have collapsed as if breached by mining (see below). REPAIR AND RESTORATION Damage from direct attack is in many ways the easiest to repair, since it is usually fairly limited in scope. Damaged walls need to be replaced at an appropriate cost in materials and labor. Since stone walls are often dismantled rather than actually destroyed, it is usually possible to repair them with the materials on hand, using only new mortar. Wooden or thatched walls, however, will usually need at least a square yard worth of new board or thatching. Partially collapsed buildings are somewhat more difficult to repair. A wooden building with one collapsed side will require 4*(3d6)% of the original building cost in new materials and labor to effect repairs. Add 20% if two sides have collapsed, 40% if three or more sides have collapsed (maximum 100%). Here again, stone buildings are easier to repair, since most of the materials necessary for repair will be on hand, largely undamaged. The GM may require (3d6)% of the original wall cost in new material in addition to appropriate labor to rebuild the wall. It can be the most difficult restore buildings damaged by weathering, since damage is often slight but building-wide. Restoration of buildings to their fully undamaged condition requires labor and materials equal to (1d6)% for every 3 points of damage taken as the result of weathering. A heavily weathered building may be more efficiently repaired by having it demolished and rebuilt. SIEGE WARFARE Siege Engines: Very large if somewhat clumsy weapons were developed to attack thick walls. Several engines may be found on p. V96. Those listed below are generally too large to fit on any vehicle, although volumes are given below for anyone wealthy and ambitious enough to build a sufficiently large vehicle. Both of the weapons below must be placed in open mounts. The trebuchet is particularly large, and even when not mounted on a vehicle requires an open space of several yards in front and behind it. Anyone within that distance is in danger of being struck by the swinging arm. Even under the best of circumstances, siege weapons are not terribly accurate weapons. The GM may wish to use these optional rules to reflect that exceptional inaccuracy: No siege engine may specifically target an object smaller than man-size. Onagers and trebuchets may only perform indirect fire and cannot effectively fire on moving targets. The GM may make exceptions for extremely large targets, such as sailing ships, but even then the target's effective speed should be doubled for the purpose of calculating hit penalties. The heavy onager takes a long time to reload: half an hour minus the average skill of the crew, minimum ten minutes. The trebuchet takes even longer: one hour minus the average skill of the crew, minimum forty minutes. The trebuchet also requires a team of horses or oxen to pull back the counterweight with a combined ST of 200. Increase reloading time by one minute for every point of ST the team falls short. The ammunition weights given for the onagers and the trebuchet are for optimum range. However, they are all capable of firing heavier loads shorter distances. The weight of the load can be quite large. Modern reproductions of Medieval trebuchets have been used to hurl pianos and small cars. Siege weapons of this size have no half damage range; their accuracy is already so low that it does not degrade significantly with range, and a rock of sufficient size falling from a sufficient height will do enormous damage to anything it hits. In hopes of spreading plague, besieging armies would often load their catapults with dead, rotting animals or other noxious substances. The range for these unconventional "warheads" is unpredictable, but a trebuchet is capable of flinging a dead horse as far as 100 yards. Dead animals will cause little actual damage (calculate falling damage from a height equal to half the range to the target), but the GM should decide on the additional effects that this will have on the health and morale of those being attacked. Costs for stones are theoretical and need only be used if no steady supply of large stones is immediately at hand. In just about all territory, a catapult crew could find ample ammunition in the ground nearby. Greek fire containers spread flaming liquid over a radius equal to that noted in the damage column. See p. B121 for more detail. Type Cost Mass Vol. HT Crew Heavy Onager $50,000 5000 600 200 4 stone $2 100 1 Greek fire $350 100 1.5 Trebuchet $100,000 10,000 2000 350 6+team stone $2 100 1 Greek fire $350 100 1.5 Malf. Type Dmg. SS Acc 1/2D Max RoF Shots Heavy Onager see above stone 15 cr. 6dx5 no 1 n/a 500 1 Greek fire 15 fire 8 yd. no 1 n/a 500 1 Trebuchet see above stone 15 cr. 6dx8 no 1 n/a 600 1 Greek fire 15 fire 8 yd. no 1 n/a 600 1 Battering Rams: The battering ram is the siege engineer's answer to the melee weapon. It is hardly more than a glorified club, a sturdy log with handles and perhaps an iron head for greater durability. The power of a ram depends on the number of men using it, which is in turn dependent on its length. Two men may use a battering ram per yard of length. A standard ram does thrust crushing damage to walls (not to people or animals; targets capable of movement will take no more than three dice of damage and then fall over if struck by a ram rather than take full damage) appropriate to 75% of the combined ST of its users. However, every time it is used, there is a chance it will damage itself as well. After each use, roll three dice and add 5% of effective ST used. On an 18 or more, the front end of the ram is so damaged that it cannot be used. The first yard of the ram may be hacked off so that the ram may be returned to service, slightly shorter than before. A metal-shod ram is more durable; it will only be damaged on a natural 18, but if it is, it will lose its metal facing until it can be repaired by a blacksmith. A battering ram weighs 80 lbs. and costs $20 per yard. Add 60 lbs. and $100 for metal-shod rams. If mounted in a vehicle (for example, slung from ropes in a covered, wheeled frame for easier transport and protection from projectiles), a ram and its users take up 100 cu. ft. per yard. Local wood supplies often limit the length of rams, and the GM may prohibit rams longer than 6 to 8 yards. Sapping: Rather than working directly against walls, one can attempt to undermine them. One siege operation consists of digging tunnels under a wall's foundations in order to make it collapse. Tunnels may be any dimension that excavators can fit in, and often had a cross section as small as a square yard or less. Tunnels may be dug at half the rate for digging given on p. B90. The tunneling rate is significantly slower than the regular digging rate because the excavation must be shored up with sturdy timbers at intervals to keep it from collapsing prematurely. Digging must be performed by a character with Engineering (Combat Engineer) skill. Roll against skill every five yards of excavation under regular ground and once every yard under a wall. On a failed roll, the tunnel collapses; it collapses with the digger in it on a critical failure. Once the excavation reaches its desired length, usually undermining most of the enemy wall, the tunnel is filled with brush, dead animals, and other flammables, and the lot is set afire. After the timbers are consumed, the tunnel may collapse and take a section of wall with it. Burning takes at least ten minutes per yard, and can take much longer if it works at all. Roll against the excavator's Engineering (Combat Engineer) skill to determine whether or not the fire will burn properly. After the timbers are consumed, roll to determine whether or not the undermined section of wall will collapse as thought it had been breached. Sappers should make a careful survey of the defending fortifications before they begin work. If a wall has foundations extending down to the bedrock, it will be extremely hard to undermine. Sappers tend to start their mines at a significant distance from the walls they wish to undermine. The distance makes for a greater length of tunnel, which in turn makes for more time and work, but placing the head of a mine near the wall makes it an easier target for enemy missile fire and also makes the target section of wall easier to guess. If defenders can determine the course of an attacker's mine, they can dig a counter-mine intercepting the first tunnel. This moves combat to another level as sappers and counter-sappers meet in the dark, confined quarters of narrow tunnels. If the defenders can drive the attackers from their tunnels, they can collapse the original tunnel while filling in the sections under their walls. ADVICE ON BUILDING HOMES People's homes are the most common item of architecture in any region. While their most exciting adventures will take place in castles, caves, or at the gates of Hell, PCs and the people they deal with will at some point return to a building meant simply to be lived in. The design of a home will reflect available resources, environmental demands, and the ideas of the culture that produced them. One important thing to remember about most homes built before the twentieth century is that they were not designed by an architect. The vast majority of homes simply were not elaborate enough to require the participation of a professional. Rather, a home would be built by the owner himself, usually with the help of family, friends, and neighbors, constructing the new home according to traditional ideas of how a home should be. Invariably, the most common building materials are the cheapest and most readily available. For example, in the dry, wood-poor regions of the American Southwest and the Mediterranean basin, most homes and many larger structures were made from blocks of dried earth. Northern Europeans often used some earthen materials, but their climate forced them to used less earth and more grasses and wood, which were far less vulnerable to the elements. One of the results of this combination was the common composite wattle-and-daub, a thatched mat covered with earth and straw. Wood and eventually stone also become rather more common than in the south. The heavier construction allowed them to hold heat better in the cooler climate. Through large sections of Africa, buildings were (and still are in some places) made from more complex components: wood and thatched structures, sometimes covered with smooth layers of clay or surrounded with "fences" of natural or transplanted thorn bushes. Longhouses in the Pacific Northwest could be constructed from huge logs and beams extracted from the lush surrounding forests, while homes in the Amazon and the South Pacific could be made from a light skeleton of wood covered with large, waterproof leaves or planks of wood from the rain forests. White settlers on the Great Plains would build homes from sheets of sod, relying on the thick root networks set down by the tall grasses to hold thick walls of insulating earth together. Brick, stone, or materials exotic to a region, such as wood in the Southwest, will be found in important structural members (even in regions where they are rarely used as the major structural material, wood is commonly used for roof beams and stone for foundations) or incorporated into the homes of the relatively wealthy or powerful, although their use will increase as a culture's technology increases and more people obtain the means to build with materials once reserved for the few. Responses to climate are often obvious, but can be quite subtle and clever. In warm regions, there is rarely need for the expense and effort needed to construct large covered buildings, since most work can be done outside if a bit of shade is provided during the hot early afternoon. Homes in hot, dry environments such as the Mediterranean and Mideast often consist of a collection of rooms around a courtyard, and with good reason. A completely closed courtyard shaded by the building walls around it acts as a "reservoir" for cool air, and sets up a microclimate that produces a cooling breeze during the hottest part of the day. In harsher environments, homes will be larger to permit more work to be done inside during the colder or wetter months. In many parts of Europe, there was often even a room at one end of the house for farm animals to live in, keeping them sheltered from extreme weather while harnessing their own body heat to help keep the house warm. Homes in the hot and humid regions around the Pacific are often built raised off the ground on stilts. Reduced contact with the ground improves drainage and lets more air circulate around the building. Traditional building ideas can result in other clearly utilitarian gestures or subtle differences in structure which reflect the builder's way of life. The "homes" of nomads are usually small, temporary, and often portable structures. Eskimo igloos, Bedouin tents, and Mongolian yurts are often only large enough for a few people to sleep in them, perhaps with enough room in the center for a small fire in the center for light, heat, and cooking. Even in more settled societies, the house may consist of only one or two small huts for sleeping and storage if the climate permits. In many places across Africa, the Southwest, and even in southern Europe, a home may not consist of a single building, but instead may be a few independent structures usually surrounded by a fence or low wall. There is often some division of "public" spaces where strangers are met and guests entertained and "private" spaces where the residents of the house sleep and keep possessions, or homes may have preferred spots for elders or honored guests. City homes in both the Medieval Muslim world and Medieval France often had fairly open internal arrangements, but presented blank walls to the outside, with only a few doors and high windows. This design had the practical effect of making access more difficult for thieves and the more esoteric effect of enforcing ideals of privacy. There may also be "male" and "female" or "old" and "young" sides of the house. Buildings, villages, or even sets of villages may be completely segregated by age, sex, or some other factor. Many homes have a small niche or altar for family religious services. Hallways may seem a natural thing to put into a building, but until the Renaissance, rooms in most European buildings were usually connected directly to one another without recourse to corridors. Finally, although it can often make little difference in the overall structure of the house, decoration is a very important aspect of a home. Some houses are very publicly decorated. Large houses in the Pacific Northwest had elaborately carved posts, decorated with sacred images associated with the owner's family (these were the forerunners of modern totem poles). Houses of some Pacific cultures have intricately painted gabled roofs sweeping out over the front of the house like the prow of a ship. Some African houses and house compounds have a coating of smooth or incised clay, giving the compound the appearance of having grown out of the ground. Other homes are more privately decorated. Arab homes often have very plain exteriors, but on the inside have intricate painting and tile inlay floors and walls. CHURCHES AND SACRED BUILDINGS When people began to build settlements larger than villages, one of the first types of new building to appear was the temple. Temples, churches, and other sacred buildings have remained one of the most important pieces of architecture in any settlement of any size up to the present day. Sacred buildings serve not only as a place for worship, but also as a meeting place for elite councils and public assemblies and as a showcase for the community's wealth, artistic accomplishments, and aspirations. The size and shape of the church will vary wildly with the local forms of religious practice, but in all but a few communities (relatively secularized American society is one of the exceptions) it will be the largest and richest building around. When designing a sacred building, the architect must take into account the ceremonies to be conducted there. Almost every sacred building will have a large room or courtyard for public ceremonies, often with some physical focus for worship. The Greeks and Romans held their religious ceremonies outside the temple building (which was set aside for storing sacred images and other temple goods), but within the confines of a sacred courtyard, sometimes noted by a few stones. The courtyard held an altar for sacrifice, usually immediately in front of the temple. Aztec temples, built on pyramids, had sacrificial altars set on top of the temple, high up above the ground so that sacrifices would be in good view for the crowd below. Christian churches almost invariably hold services indoors (which made the Roman pagans suspect that they were holding unspeakably obscene private orgies) facing an altar which often points in the approximate direction of Jerusalem, while mosques, which hold services either indoors or in a courtyard, contain a prayer niche which faces Mecca. Both Christian and Muslim sacred buildings also have a pulpit a bit to the side of the focus of worship from which holy men may address the faithful, and many have a tower from which the faithful may be called to worship with bells or criers, or, in times of emergency, from which the community may be issued general warnings and alarms. They also often contain a fountain or other water source, albeit for different reasons. Many Christian churches have a water source near the altar for use in baptism (early churches could have a separate baptistery), while mosques usually have a running water source near the entrance for ritual ablutions. Japanese Zen temples contain some sort of symbol for visitors to contemplate, which may be as ordinary as a statue or as enigmatic as a mirror. Even the geographical placement of a church can be significant. Several religions prefer to place their temples facing a particular direction or on a particular type of terrain such as seashores or mountainsides. Some archaeologists have suggested that the Greeks intentionally placed their temples for a good view of the landscape. In addition to the basic space for worship, a sacred building may have special areas for more private worship or other functions. Many temples have small side chapels or other rooms set aside for more private (or secret!) ceremonies. Particularly secret, elaborate, or restricted ceremonies might require all kinds of special architecture (consider the sets of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom). Some religions will require holy men to live in or near the church proper, so the main building may have small apartments attached (or, in the case of a monastery or convent, an entire community). Large churches which serve as seats of important church officials will also require a certain amount of office space from which to administrate larger church affairs. Tombs and tomb complexes might be placed near or under a sacred building, although many religions prohibit the dead from being buried in an inhabited area, much less near such a building. Greek and Roman temples often served as treasuries, and so had a special secure room set apart from the rest of the temple building, usually around the back of the temple itself or in a small separate building. The early temples of Mesopotamia were at the center of a system of taxation by the temples themselves, and so had sizable storage rooms to hold grain and other bulk food products. Churches and temples are often centers of literacy and may contain libraries. Pilgrimage sites, oracular shrines, and special sanctuaries will expect visitors and make provisions for them. Such sites will have living quarters and support facilities, usually quite Spartan, for a transient population, and might have special, often restricted, areas for special ceremonies, such as healing springs or the seat of an oracle. Churches also tend to be the primary source of charity and relief for the poor in most societies, and so may keep supplies to be handed out in time of emergency or may even be attached to hospitals and orphanages. Finally, it is worth keeping in mind two principles about the growth and use of sacred buildings. First, a church or temple complex is something built and maintained by the community and will reflect the growth of its community. If a town becomes larger or wealthy, the local church will grow in response. If the original building is not abandoned or torn down and rebuilt entirely, this may result in additional buildings or additional rooms and courtyards being added to the original with little regard to the original plan (late Byzantine churches are particularly convoluted for this reason). Second, sacred buildings and their sites are often reused by conquerors, converts, or immigrants of different religions, no matter what the original religion was. Many sites of pagan temples in Europe and the Near East became the sites of Christian churches, and in Muslim-ruled areas those churches were converted to mosques. The results are both strange and wonderful. FORTIFICATIONS There are many different ways to build a fortified position, and many architects and generals have written a great deal on how best to built and attack fortifications. The shape and composition of a fortification depends on many factors, including local terrain, materials, time, personnel, and funding available to the architect, the purpose of the structure, the level of technology (of both defenders and attackers), and the producing culture's ideas about warfare. However, the planning of most fortifications goes beyond just the placement of walls and gates. Rather, building a fortification involves constructing not just a building but a defensible environment. The intelligent architect will consider likely forms of attack, approaches to the castle, visibility, and other less obvious features in addition to towers and thickness of the curtain wall. The three most important things to consider about real estate are said to be "location, location, location," and that principle holds true here. The first consideration when building a fortification is placement. The best place to build a fortification is usually on the highest point of land available (for an independent fortification) or the highest point nearest the area it is supposed to defend. For example, a tower meant to control access through a pass would most likely be placed on a hilltop immediately next to the pass where the occupants can fire arrows and stones down on attackers, not a higher mountain top farther away. The mountain top might be a more defensible position, but would not be able to control the pass as effectively. Fortification walls are also most efficiently placed complementing natural features. For example, walls may be placed along river banks, leaving attackers little or no room to land, or atop cliffs, which essentially add their own height to the height of the built wall (the Roman city of Dura- Europos in Syria was placed in such a position, with two walls following ravines and a third along a steep riverbank, leaving only one side vulnerable to attack). When the architects were given sufficient funds, European castles were usually designed to resist attacks along broad fronts. Large castles tend to have multiple layers of built defenses, with as many as four rings of "curtain" walls and moats (usually just ditches, but occasionally filled with water) around a strong central keep, which may or may not be attached to the innermost curtain wall. The enclosed space gives ample room for barracks, stables, storehouses, and siege engines to return fire at the attackers. Curtain walls are usually about twenty five to thirty feet tall with crenellated parapets to shelter the defenders on the walls. Several authors on the subject advise strongly that towers along curtain walls be placed within bowshot of each other so that they can catch attackers in a crossfire, should the intervening section of wall be taken. They also suggest that passages through towers from one section of wall to another be made of wooden planks that can be quickly removed, isolating sections of wall. The space around a castle should also be cleared, so that attackers cannot find cover. Number and shape of entrances and exits also vary with the purpose of the fortification. The gates of Roman fortifications along Hadrian's Wall and in and around population centers consisted of paired gates separated by pillars or a wall. These fortifications were designed with a regular traffic flow in mind, and the gates could be easily and naturally divided between lanes for "in" and "out" traffic. Fortifications built exclusively for defense, however, will have a single main gate, which is easier to defend. The passage through the walls may be flanked by arrow slits or have "murder holes" in the ceiling, though which defenders can drop things on such attackers as make it that far, and the entrance will often have multiple gates and portculli. The Byzantines built passages through their walls with a slight bend that would break the force of any charge. Despite the advantage, the bent-entrance plan makes attacks out the gate equally difficult. Secondary gates ("posterns" is the technical term) are usually much smaller but built according to similar design philosophies. Control of access is a governing principle in Japanese castles. The fortifications of Medieval Japan are not built to stand up to as much direct punishment as European fortifications, partially a consequence of a low incidence of siege engines and artillery in Japanese warfare. Rather than placing massive walls between attackers and defenders, they are built on a principle of constricted approaches, taking advantage of Japan's extremely hilly terrain. Approaches to such castles are broad ramps or winding steps up very sharp slopes. Essentially, rather than attacking directly from several approaches, an attacker must attack uphill through a long, narrow passage which is open to intense fire from the defenders above. The structures of the castle itself can also be placed very close together, which forces attackers through a maze of narrow passages exposed to vicious crossfires. Japanese castles are usually much smaller than their European counterparts since they do not enclose such large courtyards. If constructed properly, it is exceedingly difficult to enter a castle in the face of active resistance. Many castles had regular garrisons of as few as twenty or thirty men, including boys and old men who could be pressed into service. If they had food, water, a little luck, and the good sense to keep their heads down as much as possible, these small garrisons were capable of holding off attacking forces that outnumbered them by huge margins. Garrisons of forty or fifty men have been known to hold off armies of thousands. As long as enough men remain inside the walls to push over ladders, cut grapnel ropes, and occasionally dump rocks on miners and battering rams, there is little an attacker can do but wait until the defenders' supplies are exhausted, particularly if the attacker is without siege engines of his own. Such a small force will be incapable of breaking a siege on its own accord, but it can hold out for a very long time until relief arrives. Barbarian hordes can sweep through an area burning everything in sight, but fast-moving raiders have a poor history against fortified positions. For example, Viking raids in northern France declined sharply when the French began to build more castles. Given the defensibility of a good fortification, it has been observed that a castle is only as well-protected as its water supply. Indeed, food and water supply have often been the determining factors for how long a city or castle can hold out against attack. Different parts of a castle were often provisioned with their own food supplies so that they would be able to fight independently even if some part of the whole castle's food supply was damaged or any one tower or building should be occupied. A good castle had its own well, and every castle had some kind of water reservoir, often supplied by the rain. Castles are not the only kind of fortification. Another fortification worth speaking of is the "long wall." Many empires have built relatively low defensive walls (10 to 20 feet high) along miles of border, reinforced at intervals with watchtowers. The classic examples are Hadrian's Wall across northern Britain and, of course, the Great Wall of China. Contrary to popular belief, long walls were never meant to hold off hordes of ravening barbarians. Rather, they were built to control access. Walls make it difficult for individuals or small raiding parties to enter a territory without going through points of access designated by the builders. If a small group attempts to cross over the wall, the nearest garrison can usually spot them in time to stop them from coming over or, failing that, alert troops stationed in the interior in order to intercept them. Long walls were usually built by large empires in order to protect border regions from barbarian raids, and in that capacity they were probably reasonably successful. APPENDIX I: LABOR CHARTS The chart below summarizes the labor necessary to produce materials and build structures. For convenience, both the time per unit of production (for example, days necessary to build a cubic yard worth of brick wall) and amount of production per unit of time (volume of brick wall build per day) are listed. For the fired materials, mortar and brick, this includes time necessary to gather wood for firing. Also listed is the total time to build structures, which adds together material production time and building time. This chart makes certain assumptions about both freestanding walls and frame buildings in order to provide a single number rather than a range of values. In the charts below, ashlar is produced at a rate of .12 cubic yards per day, mortared rubble consists of 10% mortar, concrete consists of 50% mortar, carpentry and thatching work are done by workers with skill 12, and frame buildings use 1/2 in. planks for the walls. The chart also assumes that fresh wood is being cut to fire brick and mortar. PRODUCTION Material Days/Unit Units/Day Thatching .055 days/square yard 18 square yards Wood (skill halved if .083 days/square yard 12 square yards woodcutters are not accompanied by character with applicable Outdoor skills) Earth .1 day/cubic yard 10 cubic yards Packed earth .25 day/cubic yard 4 cubic yards Brick (makers must .7 days/cubic yard 1.43 cubic yards have Pottery at 12+) (includes .2 days to gather wood, .5 at Pottery 12+) Stone rubble 0.8 days/cubic yard 1.25 cubic yards Ashlar (makers must 8 1/3 days/cubic yard 0.12 cubic yards have Masonry at 12+) Mortar (makers must 1 day/cubic yard 1 cubic yard have Masonry at 12+) (includes .2 days to gather wood, .8 at Masonry 12+) CONSTRUCTION Structure Days/Unit Units/Day Mortared ashlar 1 day/cubic yard 1 cubic yard (.2 at Masonry 12+, .05 at Masonry 14+) Mortared rubble .4 days/cubic yard 2.5 cubic yards (.04 at Masonry 12+) Concrete .5 days/cubic yard (.1 2 cubic yards at Masonry 12+, .025 at Masonry 14+) Unmortared ashlar .8 days/cubic yard 1.25 cubic yards (.16 at Masonry 12+, .04 at Masonry 14+) Unmortared rubble .3636 days/cubic yard 2.75 cubic yards Mortared brick .9 days/cubic yard 1.1 cubic yards (.18 at Masonry 12+, .045 at Masonry 14+) Mud brick .333 days/cubic yard 3 cubic yards (.0067 at Masonry 12+) Piled earth .2 days/cubic yard 5 cubic yards Wood frame .083 days/square yard 12 square yards Thatched face .024 days/square yard 42 square yards Wooden face .033 days/square yard 30 square yards TOTAL BUILDING TIME Structure Days/Unit Units/Day Mortared ashlar 8.6 days/cubic 0.116 cubic yards yard (7.78 at Masonry 12+, .05 at Masonry 14+) Mortared rubble 1.21 days/cubic 0.826 cubic yards yard (.12 at Masonry 12+) Concrete 1.2 days/cubic 0.833 cubic yards yard (.5 at Masonry 12+, .04 at Masonry 14+) Unmortared ashlar 9.133 days/cubic 0.11 cubic yards yard (8.513 at Masonry 12+, .04 at Masonry 14+) Unmortared rubble 1.16 days/cubic yard 0.862 cubic yards Mortared brick 1.81 days/cubic yard 0.552 cubic yards (.45 at Pottery 12+, .26 at Masonry 12+, .045 at Masonry 14+) Mud brick .583 days/cubic yard 1.714 cubic yards (.0067 at Masonry 12+) Piled earth .3 days/cubic yard 3 1/3 cubic yards Wood-faced frame .2 days/square yard 5 square yards Thatched frame .162 days/square yard 6.16 square yards APPENDIX II: QUICK CONSTRUCTION GUIDE For those who are simply want a castle or a home, this section provides labor and monetary costs for "prefabricated" structures. Road: A road bed with a variety of pavings. Can be cleared at a rate of one square yard of road per 0.01 days. A one-mile road five yards wide can be cleared in 88 man-days. A 3-inch rubble paving takes an additional 0.03 man-days per square yard plus time to gather or cut the stone (about .04 days per square yard worth of road surface). Such a road takes .08 days per square yard, or 704 man-days for a one mile stretch five yards wide. Curtain Wall: The standard outer wall for a good-sized castle or even a city. This curtain wall has a twenty-four foot high crenellated stone facing (crenellations stretch to twenty six feet, so the wall is treated as twenty five feet tall) eighteen inches thick, a six foot thick mortared rubble core twenty feet high, and a twenty foot high, one foot thick stone facing on the inner side. The wall behind the parapet is seven feet wide, more than wide enough to act as its own walkway. A one-yard length of wall would contain 7.03 cubic yards of mortared ashlar and 14.67 cubic yards of mortared rubble (including foundation). The labor necessary is 18.74 man-days of unskilled labor, 56.46 days at Masonry 12+, and 3.02 days at Masonry 14+ (total labor cost is about $1055). Peasant Hut: This is small, simple dwelling that the GM can use as a "module" to build a variety of common buildings. The basic hut is a six by six yard square, two yards tall. The labor costs for such a building built from a variety of materials are as follows: Wood-faced Frame Thatch-faced Frame Mud Brick Unmortared Rubble 9.6 days 7.79 days 9.33 days 18.56 days Mud brick and unmortared rubble walls will require a foundation. An unmortared rubble foundation will take 1.54 days. In addition, the building will probably need a roof. A flat roof will take 7.2 days if wood-surfaced or 5.8 days if thatched. A 45-degree peaked roof will take 10.2 days if wood, 8.2 if thatched. To create a somewhat larger building, the builder may build two adjacent "huts," reducing labor somewhat. For a two-room building (each 6x6 yards), the total amount of labor is decreased by one-eighth. For a single large room (12x6 yards), reduce total labor by one quarter. Other configurations may suggest themselves. The amount of labor to build the roof remains the same. APPENDIX III: FURNITURE Furnishings are, like elaborate decoration or clothing, something that one can spend as much or as little on as desired. A crude split-log bench may cost several orders of magnitude less than the king's throne, but ultimately both perform the same function (that is, keeping one off the floor) equally well. The price modifiers for high-quality furnishings listed below are merely guidelines. Chairs: A low bench, such as one might find in a cheap tavern, costs about $8 and weighs about 10 lb. per person (about two feet of length). A footstool costs about as much, although it weighs less. A rickety arm chair costs $40 and weighs perhaps 7-12 lb. A better-quality chair (perhaps varnished or lightly padded, and certainly more durable) costs at least $90. A luxurious chair with silk and velvet padding and attractively carved armrests might weight a bit more and cost at least $200. Tables: A cheap table costs $22 and weighs 6 lb. per square yard, enough to seat two comfortably or four in a pinch. A better table (smoother surface, doesn't wobble, etc.) costs at least $35 per square yard. A well- decorated table, with hand-turned legs and inlaid designs on the surface, costs at least $100 per square yard. Chests: A small chest or cabinet (two cubic feet, about the size of a small dorm refrigerator) costs $10 and up, depending on the skill of the maker and the decoration of the cabinet. Such a chest weighs about 15 lb. empty. A strongbox starts at $20, protecting its contents with a DR of 5 or more. Weight is 30 lb. or more, depending on how strongly the box is built. Strongboxes may be equipped with locks (see above). Wardrobes (about 6 feet tall and a yard or so wide and deep) start at $300 and 400 lb. empty. Couch/Bed: A couch for leisurely dinners or a small bed costs at least $200 and weighs about 450 lb. (mattresses were not light-weight). Double cost and weight for a full size bed. High-quality carving and fine joinery can add $200 or more to the cost, and a canopy is at least $100 extra. Tapestry/Curtain: Heavy cloth, designed to keep out drafts in cold, dreary stone buildings as well as to decorate. $10 and 5 lb. per square yard. Triple cost for a nicely embroidered design.