"Why Arabic / Desert style buildings?" Topic

I'm interested why do we use the desert style buildings so much in SciFi games? I am even seeing them creep into fantasy now (possibly due to lack of other buildings) for Orcs and goblins…

I can understand modern day combat but far future worlds should have other options rather than 'mud style' buildings. Maybe not shiny clean cities but more modern style houses / shops?

I cannot imagine that a new colony would go for a dry desert over temperate lands so maybe wood style cabins would make a come back?

I do know other ranges are out there e.g. link but could it be theses are the simplest to scratch build or paint?

Could it be these are the main seller?

Will this change with laser cutting becoming more available?

Please discuss

I think people like desert planets as they can use many of the things they use for modern gaming such as basing styles, tabletops and as you say buildings.

However I am working on a range of 6mm sci-fi buildings that will hopefully be the first of their kind.

The blame most likely rests on a little movie called "Star Wars".

Colony world buildings really should look like pre-fab housing.

They are easy shapes to scratch build. You can put troops on the flat roof (no need to have a lift-off roof). If done right they can look like pre-fab buildings not necessarilly adobe or mud buildings. Have a more low tech look for frontier colonies. Easy to add on to an existing building by butting a smaller structure against it to give a sprawling look. Reminds folks of Mos Isley starport from Star Wars.

Oops. Beat me too the Star Wars idea while I was typing…lol.

Andrew,

I think you hit it on all counts – they're really easy to make (I did a lot for my own "Blackhawk Down" style Near Future scenarios – log style buildings probably would make a comeback in wooded frontier settings – and laser-cut buildings are certainly making alternatives to "adobe" more affordable.

There might be another couple of points, too.

The popularity of desert buildings might tie into the tendency for a certain sci-fant game to set scenarios on "death worlds" – when the tables aren't littered with gothic ruins, they tend to be in wastelands.

Also, some types of desert buildings can be made more versatile by making several alternative removable roofs. The same basic "adobe" box structure can be used for Mid-east games with a flat roof, Africa with a corrugated metal roof, Spain with a tile roof, and fantasy/medieval with a thatch roof. None as good as dedicated buildings for each period, but adequate and relatively quick. Great for lazy terrain makers!

Finally, it's easy to "fluff" adobe into a future setting – mud is really easy to make, just add water and stir! Add in a sci-fi spray-on stabilizing coating and you have a virtually instant and cheap construction material suitable for any backwater planet. Mud brick really was (and still is) a practical building material in a lot of places.

Not sure why the orcs would be living in adobe, though…

Andrew, have you tried Ainsty?

ainstycastings.co.uk

Bob.

Tabletop wargaming in a dense forest is pretty difficult for a number of reasons. Sparser terrain make maneuver between cover more critical. For that reason, desert terrain works pretty well.

Also, from a 'hard sci-fi' perspective, it's a little easier to accept a generic desert as an alien landscape than something that looks like Sherwood Forest.

Star Trek used the Vasquez Rocks for exactly this reason.

Stargate got around it by suggesting that almost all the planets they visited had been terraformed – so every planet looked like Vancouver, B.C.

As a practical matter, colonists will want to build additional living space out of whatever materials they have at hand. So if all you have is sand and water…

As far as pre-fab buildings go, they are a good start. But keep in mind that generally more insulation on a building is better. A shipping container dropped in the middle of a desert, then covered by a layer of mortar would wind up looking a lot like the typical middle eastern style building.

What might make a good miniature product would be semi-circular end caps for prefab buildings. The roofs could be made out of modelling clay or cardboard covered by modeller sand. The end product would look a lot like a cross between a quonset hut and a NASA lunar base.

The "Adobe" style is very easy to make using basic ground materials. Sand, Clay, Water, something fibrous (straw) and heat (sun or fire) and maybe an additional harder and BOOM perfect building material.

Prefabs indicate that you have space to store it on your ship. Space which could have been used to store something more important, like food.

@Bob

I know them well as he is only 15mins from me.

Andy has a range of adobe style link buildings and are the only buildings he currently has.

Well … they do look "suitably different" … I have an assortment of ME type structures in my terrain inventory.

"Dune" deserves a mention, I'd say.

You can call me Hasimir

The Count.

I think you can chalk this one up to the heavy influence magazines like White Dwarf have had on people's perceptions of orcs.Almost all of the 40K Space Ork stuff was adobe and scrap construction.

I think there is more to it, of course. As others have mentioned, this is likely due to the generic look of the construction. Adobe buildings look pretty much the same the world around.

Add to this the popularization of such construction by Star Wars and there ya go.

-Eli

> Prefabs indicate that you have space to store it on your ship. Space which could have been used to store something more important, like food.

The stuff you store the food in becomes the pre-fab materials. Or the entire section of the ship used to house the colonists on the trip, perhaps minus the life support (unless it is needed).

"The blame most likely rests on a little movie called "Star Wars"."

Captain Kirk also seemed to spend a lot of time on rather barren planets looking for someone to teach kissing to.

The future is a desert.

You saw it first in The Forbidden Planet.

Andrew, I was really thinking of the other ranges he does, if you want to move away from Adobe.

bob.

1) Who am I kidding. I love Mars! And, even if we give it our all in terraforming it, it will always dry in most places. So, the buildings will probably have to use materials and techniques that work best in that environment.

2) Also, a desert planet board and desert buildings facilitates the use of post-apocalyptic scavenger-like figures, but in an alien world setting. Same figures for two entirely different settings. Can't get better than that! Just change the board from an urban rubble one to one of a dry semi-terraformed planet (or a future wastleand on Earth) and done.

3) I particularly like the idea of ebb and flow of an empire, and how that empire may "forget" to finish terraforming a world and bringing that colony up to the level of the other ones, or forgetting the colony completely, when forced to "downsize". The colonists risk everything they have for a shot at a new life, but then they are told "sorry, things came up, you're on your own now". Similar to Rome's Dacia, trans-Rhine Germania and the abandoned eastern provinces. Even then, half of the remaining border of the Empire was still desert-like, with appropriate desert building styles:

Then the semi-colonized, partially-terraformed world is left to fend for itself:

TMP link

4) Being that Mars will be our first major colonization experiment, I can see the possibility of an abandoned colony if things on Earth get bad and government needs to consolidate.

5) Plus, I find desert living to be very romantic in films!

6) And I don't have to come up with a board full of alien trees, plants and animals.

7) So far, other than our perfect little Earth, worlds come in just a few basic styles: large gas giants, dry rocky planets/moons and ice planets/moons. Gas giants will be uninhabitable by humans, and most of the ice worlds aren't even water ice. So, for mos that just leaves the "dry" ones, with hidden sources of water.

Dan

I use desert a lot simply because there are not a lot of modern or futuristic buildings in 15mm available.

The answer is! Because a majority of gamers the desert is a alien environment.

What really surprises me is the lack of a selection of Mobile homes, which seem to be a very common housing type in outlaying regions. As well as the ubiquitous single level Ranch.

Infojunky,

You are so right!!!

TMP link
TMP link
TMP link

Dan

I once read a sci fi bit where the character was called "Red" because his family lived in the red shipping container-cum-house.

Always thought that was a good idea for colonial homesteading. Ship everything in a container, then use the container to make a house. Might use dirt around it as an insulator, sort of like old sod houses. Would depend on climate, I suppose.

J Womack 94,

Excellent point. And the containers could have been built as a passenger's cabin so it could be used long before arriving at the planet:

Say what I might about that film, but they definitely got that part right.

Dan

Officers and corporate chiefs might get larger accomodations, like this house in Martian Chronicles:

Or for industrial use:

The good thing is that, buildings of that sort could be used in almost any environment, not just desert:

The smaller units could be dropped off in batches:

Dan
TMP link

Igloos melt in the desert.

Because that is what's mostly available at 15mm other than WWII European terrain. :P <hint> <hint>

Aside from scrap-metal shanties, I think adobe huts give the frontier look far more than most other building styles.

Shipping containers refurbed into housing would be a close second, but, imo, look more like a temporary solution. YMMV.

What are you going to use:
a) a pre-fab which cannot be expanded, or
b) a mud building which can be easily modified to whatever size and shape you want?

How long do you reckon you could live in that module shown just above? It's tiny.

There is a reason most of the world still builds in stone or wood, if available, or mud when it isn't. Yet almost no-one builds houses out of metal or plastic composite.

I actually think it would be a combination of the two.

The container can be temporary, until permanent shelter is built, or as just another room (or closet) in the permanent shelter.

Dan

I mean generally you want your buildings to be made with materials you can find…. 'mud' huts are actually pretty realistic for this reason.

Of course various prefabs and such would lay the groundwork for such future buildings, and as manufacturing ability rises you might end up with 'prefab' looking biuldings being more common than their dirt predecessors, but you know.

I use them because they fit with my backstory. I've also got buildings in other styles though.

Future colonization will be like this:

link

Dan

Well, CC, I see mining camp and I raise you 'hostile planet' buildings: link

Tsunami-proof 'arcologies'

Domes are both strong & easy to construct.

I would seriously think such a building be the default structure in future colonisation in space.

After the settlers have had some time to get the materials and build them, low domes make a lot of sense to me for a sandy, windy* desert planet (like Mars)!!!

In the meantime, I still feel the colony would initially be a bunch of containers, detached from the transport ship.

Dan
* But, then again, I'm no wind science expert.

…Because model trees/plants are a pain in the arse?

I'd imagine that on some worlds over time the exterior of a prefab house would just end up caked in mud and look like mud/abobe anyways. Of course, that's my lazy excuse for it. ;)

@Andrew Beasley, excellent topic. There is certainly a dearth of non-desert themed sci-fi buildings.

Critical Mass Games is making some inroads in this area:
link

Lion in the Stars,

Come to think of it, even if a planet with a single Pangea-like continent was mostly desert, the super waves would make those tsunami-resistant buildings an absolute must!!!

Dan