Guide: Buildings

This guide covers some of the possible ways to write building descriptions. Keep in mind, this is a guide and not the end all and be all. You can follow a completely different path and still make a good description, this is just to help with ideas.

• Quick Tips
• Step 1: Some Things To Consider Before You Begin
• Step 2: What Is Your Theme?
• Step 3: The Introduction
• Step 4: Description Body
• Step 5: Conclusion
• Step 6: Destruction
• Example Building

Quick Tips

• Pressing enter does not work for creating paragraphs in building descriptions. Use <br><br> when building to break up long paragraphs and make it more readable.
• Do not be afraid to use a thesaurus and carefully consider what you think of when you think of the word. If the descriptive word does not evoke the right feeling when you read it you might want to change it.
• Try to build things in the order you’d like them to appear in the list. If you finish building a sequential room (like an inn) before the other they’ll display that way (I.e If you finish Residential room 3 Before 2 then the list will go Room 1, Room 3, and then Room 2).
• If you use a word document to blueprint what you’re writing, make sure the game doesn’t delete any apostrophes from the copy and paste.
• Monuments cannot be altered once made!
• For any structure other than monuments, it might be a good idea to write a description, make the structure and then double check once it is made. The few days will most likely help you find spelling errors or odd grammar.

Step 1: Some Things To Consider Before You Begin

• What are you building?
• What do you want the building to do and how do you want it to do it?
• What type of material is it being built out of?
• What local features/terrain could you use? A river? Mountainsides? Plateaus? Ravines?
• What order are you building things?
• How is the place illuminated? Skylights? Windows? Torches? Braziers?

It is important when you are building to consider what you want the building to do and what you can do to make it do what you want it to. Sometimes this is pretty self evident -- a watch tower for example needs a view. How could you do this? The idea is to get a very general idea of what you want the building to look like before you start getting to the more minute details.

A plain wooden watch tower built on a hill top could work, or maybe it could be a box built onto the side of a cliff? What if rather than a tower, it is a large pyramid with a flat top that people can look out over the landscape? All three of these examples can be a good basis for your watch tower and many more are possible. Remember, not all structures need to use the local landscape to achieve their goal, but it can be a helpful tool.

Step 2: What Is Your Theme?

It is important to note, you can have many themes to a building. The idea behind a theme is just what random touches you want to add to the structure.

So, say you were doing the wooden watch tower in section one. How do you choose how you want to theme this tower? Say your town is supposed to be hardy folk, who are warlike and barbaric with low quality wood. You could think about how that would affect the structure. Maybe have a theme of low quality to your work, things like splinters could be added. Maybe note that the structure is leaning slightly and is uneven? But you don't want it to just be low quality, maybe you want it to inspire fear or inspiration to your clan. Having a banner hanging from it or making it more imposing in the description can help to achieve this.

You don't need to have the exact details at this stage. Just think of the theme you want for the building or room, and you will find it easier to come up with random ways to add this.

Step 3: The Introduction

Now you can start writing your building, but where do you start?

I personally go with you entering the room. Buildings in Marosia follow a linear pattern, so the first time someone ever enters a room they always come from the same direction as everyone else. So describe that as your entrance. Now the description for entrances can either be for entering the building or entering a room if you are going from one room to the next.

For entering buildings, think about the exterior of your structure and where you built it. What does the outside of your building look like? Is it painted? Is it built into the wall of a cliff? Is there a path leading to it, or maybe you have to climb to reach it. Is the door interesting? Is there any sign saying what this building is? Also, do not forget what the building is made out of and local resources. The building has to mostly be made out of the material you used in construction but some use of other local resources in buildings is ok.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Do not reference anything temporary when you are doing this step. Maybe you can say it is next to another building or reference the natural landmarks, but do not give too much detail. Keep in mind these buildings may stand generations after your character dies and nothing is more jarring than talking about how your building overlooks bustling streets in a ghost town or stands next to a town hall that was destroyed years ago.

Continuing our previous example, here is something I might write:

Now you can see how the themes we decided earlier started to come into play. The massive logs suggest a strong people but given the lack of actual processing perhaps not great crafters. Similarly, the ladders creaking further reinforces this. The second theme of strength is further represented by big words like long and massive along with pride by showing the banners.

For going from room to room, you usually have a lot less to go on for entering. Still, consider how you get from the room. Are they next to each other? Is there a door in between? What about stairs? Is there anything in particular you immediately notice when you enter the room?

Don’t forget that you can organize rooms into semi categories! Building a wing to house multiple rooms in an inn is one example. Stairwells can lead to separate floors, or some rooms may house an intermediate means to reach other parts of your building. Maybe the only way into the cellar is through the kitchen!

Step 4: Description Body

This is the meat of your building and can be quite large, depending on the building. It is important to not to be too dense or confusing, as people may skim over this. If there is something particularly important about the building, try to put it early in the body and not right in the center.

Some things to consider:

• How is the room decorated? For decoration, do not go into furniture here unless you know it will be there and can not easily be moved. For example, fireplaces are good in descriptions, or maybe mention where a fireplace would go -- but do not say where the chairs are.
• What type of floor is it? This is where you might want to use other local resources. For example, your stone building might have a hardwood floor or your wood building might have tile flooring.
• Is there anything special about the walls or shape of the room? Carvings, painted walls, windows in the wall and different styles of walls can all be done. The roof is similar, you won’t always go into detail on the roof but there are many times when you might want to describe paintings on the roof.

To continue with the watchtower example from earlier here is something I might write:

Now, in this example you can see further evidence of the builders not being the best, further reinforcing the theme. A similar picture as earlier is etched into the walls. If you wanted to you might want to switch it up, maybe have a picture of someone fighting etched into the wall or have the room be painted in the three banner colors mentioned earlier. Finally, we talk about the thing the room actually does. Notice that we mention the town, but we don’t give any details at all about it. This is important because the town isn’t static; you might reference a building that gets changed massively over the years or destroyed. By avoiding the mention of anything specific you stop the description from potentially conflicting with the mechanics.

Step 5: Conclusion

Not often required, this is maybe a sentence or two to help you know how the room transitions to the entry of the next room. You might mention the stairs to and from the room, or a ladder in the back of the room. It can be placed in the body with no real consequences, though if it is particularly notable splitting it off can make it easier for people skimming to know about it. It is not overly important but can open RP potential that can be missed if someone doesn’t know how they got to the next room without going there.

Step 6: Destruction

If you ever need to bring a building/room down for your work, you’ll need a battering ram! The ram can’t be carried, but it is draggable. Once you have the machine built, you should see a button to destroy any buildings or rooms in the area list. Once the destruction project is started, it will use your Engineering skill and the quality of the ram to determine your hourly effort.

The effort required to break a building down with a ram is equal to the effort it took to build it. However, in the case of rooms, it takes half the required construction effort it took to build. All building materials will fall to the ground once the room or building is destroyed. Be aware of building weight limits for interior room destruction, since the materials will drop within the building.

Anyone inside a building will fall out upon its destruction in the subdued state.

Example building

In this diagram, an inn is used as a model to show the pathways and “tree” of how buildings work. Dotted arrows indicate what rooms you can leave towards and solid ones show ones you can enter.

Large Red X’s are used to show that it is impossible to connect to any pre-built room (this doesn’t mean that you can’t list a room that you are going to build later, i.e the cellar of the kitchen).

Authors: Hamste#5674 and scvideoking#6679