Practical concerns like living spaces, easy navigation, and easy access to the rest of the world are sacrificed for fifty-foot ceilings and walls that grimace and moan. It may be that little thought is given to the backstory of the structures you're looting. Often, however, the game designers are simply trying to create an interesting immersive environment for the player. These enigmatic designs can be justified, especially if the ruins are only partially preserved, making their original purpose more difficult to ascertain. There is little to no evidence that people ever lived in these structures or used them for any practical purpose. Ruins weren't always ruins, but many dungeons look like some contractor was tasked simply to build a vast labyrinth of dead-end corridors under a mountain and then cover the walls with creepy carvings. Poking around ancient ruins looking for treasure or an important item while dodging the many monsters that make these places their home is the bread and butter of RPGs.Ĭlose examination of those ruins, however, raises some interesting questions as to what these structures were originally built for. Renée Loth's column appears regularly in the Globe.Every intrepid RPG player has done the Dungeon Crawl. “They reflect a landscape or world spinning beyond our control.” Somehow, that is reassuring.īut wouldn’t it be better if the value of these old buildings, with their ornate interiors and warm, human-scale materials, could be recognized while the structures can still be salvaged? The photographers Marchand and Meffre have another series, this one showing abandoned theaters that have been adapted into discount retail stores, gyms, supermarkets, and churches. “These ruins present us with images and reflections on our own vulnerability and mortality,” said Bluestone.
Gazing at the ivy growing through the window, we are reminded that nature eventually will reclaim the built environment that all things turn into dust. In an age dominated by the sleek interfaces of electronic devices and texture-less skyscrapers of glass and steel, a crumbling old building speaks to some need, or at least nostalgia, for the tactile and organic. One book published this year showcases verdant ferns and moss overrunning the decomposing tennis courts at Grossinger’s, the Catskill Mountains resort that was once the height of vacation luxury but couldn’t compete once air travel became affordable. The ruins are a chronicle of society’s shifting priorities, as railroad stations and grain terminals fall into disuse. Others speak to the folly, or hubris, of man’s best-laid plans, such as the disused, graffiti-splattered facilities at former Olympic sites, from Athens to Sarajevo.
Some of the crumbling edifices are strangely beautiful, with ghostly layers of past lives visible through the collapsing walls. I admit to a certain frisson of delight myself in these haunting images. Unscripted and vaguely transgressive, it was a good example of “ruin porn,” the chic fascination with buildings in decay.įrom crumbling public theaters and bankrupt amusement parks to vacant “feral houses” overtaken by weeds, ruins are the current eye candy for photographers and designers – and the public who buy their coffee table books or post on Pinterest.
The evening was perfectly safe - if you don’t count the wretched herbal liquor we gagged on - but the crowded bar, with its bombed-out courtyard and exposed wiring, had a definite cool factor. On a visit to Budapest earlier this year, a group of us went to a “ruin pub,” a pop-up bar in an abandoned building in a possibly sketchy neighborhood.