Church Architecture

I'm trying to design a solo campaign. This is vaguely terrifying, because it's for my poor, suffering, forever-dm of years, who is amazing. It's kind of an odd setting, partially because I've realized that getting overly ambitious is crippling to me. It's going to take place almost entirely in a church and the immediate surrounding areas, with limits on being able to get too far away. I know my dm is going to accept my metaphorical macaroni painting for their refrigerator even if it has a lot of clumsiness and errors, because I actually worked up the courage to try (and give THEM a chance to be the player), but I'm still wildly anxious over it because seriously, they're incredible. I basically have the luck of the gods as far as knowing them goes. That said, I know that I won't get looked down on for this, but I'm trying to figure out my maps. And I don't know a whole lot about church architecture. What kind of features there are, what things are called, different types of churches. Religious differences in themselves aren't probably going to come up, and it shouldn't be that hard for me to look up anyway. But for example, I've spent a lot of time just trying to figure out if a church might have the dwelling of a priest literally, physically attached to it instead of as a separate building, and if so, what the heck would that be called? I know they don't mind if I straight make things up by accident, like if there's a small kitchen, attic (in some part at least?), or basement, say. It's relevant because they're going to need to try to actually survive here. It's driving me insane.

I don't suppose there's any chance you guys know of any good resources for this? I've been searching around on the internet but I've been having a really hard time finding just... ARCHITECTURE, history of it, and the like. Books would be excellent too, if anyone happens to know of any. Pretty much anything related to this?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Church_architecture
youtube.com/watch?v=2PDWXMMgy9c
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Well, for one thing you either haven't looked very hard, or got overwhelmed by the volume, because there's a lot of info out there: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Church_architecture

But, that's a lot of shit, and I happen to know a fair bit about churches and things.

What sort of church were you thinking of, what size?

It's very common to have living quarters on the church property, though the nature will depend on the type, location, and size of church - from small village churches, to cathedrals, to monasteries.

>But for example, I've spent a lot of time just trying to figure out if a church might have the dwelling of a priest literally, physically attached to it instead of as a separate building

More common in Europe than the US (and becoming more rare in the US as you head west), more common in Catholic than Protestant.

>and if so, what the heck would that be called?

Remember how you said religious differences wouldn't come up? Because religious differences. Priory, rectory, parish house, clergy house, parsonage, all are different names for the same kind of structure, depending upon who it belongs to and who it houses.

>a small kitchen

A large number of all churches have a kitchen whether or not they have a residence. The bigger the congregation, the more likely they'll have at least one, if not a large commercial kitchen suitable for feeding [NUMBER OF CONGREGANTS].

If they're Mormons, they have a food stockpile somewhere close.

See also . The more information you give, the more you get.

It's the latter. I'm totally overwhelmed.

I'm not really sure how to describe what kind of size I'm considering, but certainly not anything huge. Probably something small to medium in terms of capacity, but not tiny - searching has surprised me with how small functional churches can actually be. I don't want it to be overwhelming large for a single character to explore - the area of actual worship doesn't need to be particularly imposing. I'm trying to avoid creating a sense of claustrophobia right off the bat, at least just based on size alone. I'd rather that grow over time.

Thank you so much for answering, by the way - I appreciate it a lot. I'll try to give any details I can think of that would be useful, but I'll be the first to admit that my intentions for the structure are still pretty vague - I only started working on this a while ago, and I was focusing more on what kind of game it would be than anything else.

A major element is that the player can leave the church, yes - but they have to return there every night or they're basically screwed. At which point, they really have no real idea what's going on outside. For this purpose, I wanted to have it so that the only windows in the church are stained glass, to make it much harder to make out any details, especially at night.

> Remember how you said religious differences wouldn't come up? Because religious differences. Priory, rectory, parish house, clergy house, parsonage, all are different names for the same kind of structure, depending upon who it belongs to and who it houses.

Mostly I meant in terms of worship and religious rules - but you make an excellent point there. I definitely don't want to accidentally mix up terms and concepts if I can avoid it!

> A large number of all churches have a kitchen whether or not they have a residence. The bigger the congregation, the more likely they'll have at least one, if not a large commercial kitchen suitable for feeding [NUMBER OF CONGREGANTS].

Well that's good news for me! I asked around a bit and was mostly told that wasn't a thing in older churches, and it was basically a modern addition... This church doesn't have to be ancient or anything, though - I'm just thinking it has some of the old style, which reminds me of an IMPORTANT POINT I SHOULD INCLUDE. But first:

> If they're Mormons, they have a food stockpile somewhere close.

Wait, really? That would be super convenient.

I'm going to write another post describing some of the things I had in mind, to make this easier.

So basically, this campaign is kind of a mix of minecraft (minus some of the crafting?), /x/ themes, and detective work. The player can exit the church and is in a wooded area, with a dirt road that goes... somewhere, but staying out at night would be - while technically perhaps survivable - a horrible idea. At some point they'll probably get trapped outside, but I aim to discourage that for some time by giving warning signs.

Time passes with the usual requirements of life; despite the oddities of their situation (they don't know where they are or how they got there), they have to sleep, eat, and if they get injured, heal. For this reason I need to leave them resources they can survive on, and, depending on how long this goes, use as a jumping off point to make their situation at least a little more sustainable. It's ok if there are some strange things in the area, but I'd like it to make a little sense (hence why including a kitchen/pantry would be great).

At night all the ways in or out of the church lock. You can't see outside with any detail at all. All windows are, like I said, stained glass. There is a church bell with functional importance.

One thing I haven't settled on is if they have access to electricity/plumbing here. If they do, I'm thinking it's probably a bit... off. Spotty, at least. This suggests to me that either it isn't a very old church, or it's merely been retrofitted, which seems perfectly likely.

Ah, right, so we're not talking anything that'd have a lot of extraneous buildings, and I'm guessing it's for a horror game?

Yeah, that'd be for the best - do mention when and where (or equivalents, if fantasy) the church is - the size of community served and the time of the game (and when the church was built) all matter to some degree

In terms of layout, my goals are pretty much:

> Enough space so hints, clues and evidence aren't jam-packed together
> Avoiding -too- much claustrophobia, at least at first
> Providing context and a reasonable explanation for various items, such as presence of blankets, food, possibly gardening tools, etc.
> Making it seem varied and interesting despite the small scale of the 'total' map itself, because of the constraints on exploration.

I've considered making a few structures detached from the church itself, but related to it, such as a dwelling for priests (disadvantage of not being a safe place to sleep at night, but offers a chance for some interesting risks, perhaps, another place to put clues?), parts of a graveyard such as a small mausoleum, or a shed.

As you can see, I've got a lot of vague ideas, but not a whole lot of certainty yet - I'm still very much in the early design phases, and I got stuck on a lot of decisions, because I really just don't know what's plausible.

Horror would sum it up pretty well - I'm challenging myself with the idea of making the tension rise and fall with the time of day. At first a lot of it would, ideally, be not knowing what's actually going on, but that there's definite threat of some kind, and that the entire situation is clearly supernatural in some way (due to not having the slightest goddamn idea about where they are or how they got there) At some point, chance are good that things will get a bit more - direct.

My original thought was, and I still favor, avoiding extra structures - having -just- the church adds to some of the weirdness of it all, in my mind. So anything of importance had to be physically a part of it. I'm not 100% sure on that now, and am debating alternatives - but I think I still favor just the one thing.

As for the community and time frame of the church - that I really don't know, a bit frustratingly. I can pinpoint the latter only very vaguely. Because of where the church is (... or appears to be) saying what the community is like is tricky. I know it has to be large enough to justify the various features. But I'm not really sure how many people it takes for that. I'm pretty annoyed with myself I don't have better details on this, but I did just come up with this idea very recently, so I probably shouldn't be too harsh on myself - for my dm's sake if nothing else.

One challenge is that churches are social buildings. They exist in population centers and to serve a congregation. So you either have to have a very good explanation why there are no people around in what should be a village or town, or why this thing is in the middle of fucking nowhere.

A convent / monastery with a large chapel has seclusion baked right in from the word go.

Alright, for pretty much any size, your basic floor plan, in a western church anyway (ah, fuck, a traditional one), is a crucifix shape, with doors at the end of the long end (the nave) - though they can be on the long or short sides (or both, small, everyday doors on the long sides, big ones on the end). Alter is at the opposite end.

Depending on the design your tower will either be at the door end, or above the cross. This will likely also define where the stairs up to the balcony are, and often any other rooms as well - they might be in the tower, in the base of the tower, or on the "outside" of the transepts (the arms of the cross). The balcony, depending on size, may go all around the church, or it might just have the organ and the stairs up to the belfry. Either way though, it'll likely look down on the nave.
The other important room, that's usually got a door accessing it in one of the transepts, is the vestry - where all the robes and bibles and shit are kept.
If the priest's house is connected then you'll probably access it through there - if not then it'll at least be likely to have the closest external door to it. There may be another room or two, for community stuff, attached to it. If the church is on raised ground, it may be downstairs from the church, but almost never underneath it.

Has a point about community and monasteries, though they might be a bit bigger than you were thinking.

A quick way to add a lot of space is to dig. Catacombs are great places for creepy stuff and storage.
You can also connect various outbuildings by underground tunnels, which was common in areas with lots of snow. Just make the first layer of tunnells and underground storage safe during the night (just creepy), and possible tie it into the back story and mystery.
If you stick some immovable artifact down in the depths, there's also your reason to have such a largish complex away from a village. Or also have the village abandoned/thinly populated.

I was thinking of playing up the oddity of it seemingly being in the middle of no-where. Almost like it had been picked up and put there. There's this short story - I think it's called The Cornfield? Psychic kid basically carved off town from the rest of reality; no one's sure if they're somewhere else or if he destroyed the rest. That was a little bit of the inspiration behind that, the lack of explanation. It's also possible that the player is experiencing the reality of the church differently than it might otherwise be; think of Silent Hill, where you've got features of one reality in another.

The convent/monastery idea catches my attention as well... That WOULD be a great way to explain it. That's not what I'm going for, but I almost kind of regret it in a way - that might be pretty cool.

> Tunnels, Basement, Catacombs

I was planning on having the next phase of it all being centered around discovering that there's actually a decent amount of weirdness going on underground (in theory). I didn't know that tunnels were actually a thing, though! I was considering that if I had a separate building that one or more priests would live in, that it might be connected to the church by one - but I had no idea there was any actual basis for that! That's awesome!

You make a great point about an immovable artifact or the like, too. I've considered that it's probably going to be VERY TECHNICALLY possible for the player to get pretty far away... Think of the artificial boarders in Fallout 4, where the radiation level is so high you have to go to ridiculous lengths to explore it. And in that event, this would make for a great answer, if I wanted a reasonable explanation - and not just 'reality doesn't give a fuck'.

Thank you for the layout description! I'm not sure I've entirely got the picture for the cluster of rooms, but the rest are really clear. You said that they're almost never underneath it. Is it extremely rare for churches to have basements? What about attics? I would think you wouldn't probably have them over the place of worship, right? In a lot of cases you literally couldn't, because of the architecture - but I would expect that it wouldn't be done for religious reasons as well (a barrier between the faithful and god?) But perhaps over other parts of the church?

I don't recall seeing many basements, but I don't live somewhere that gets all that much snow.

Depending on the church, I've seen steps down beneath it into cellars both inside and outside, now that I think about it, but I don't think the undercrofts are usually very big. Generally the closer the bit is to the alter the more likely it is to be a crypt - that's the most common underground part

Attics could certainly exist, though a lot of churches you can see the slope of the roof from inside. But an extra storage space you can reach from the way up the tower wouldn't be unusual.

What other user is describing is a classical chapel done in the old way. A lot of more "modern" churches have the sanctuary where actual services take place, and then a whole other chunk of the building dedicated to classrooms, storage, offices, event space, kitchens, meeting rooms, libraries, etc etc. If it's a room and the people using the building had a need for it, it exists in a church.

Many older churches (or churches built as stand-alone chapels) cram all that stuff into outbuildings. They're also commonly seen as additions, hanging off the back of the church, usually built so as not to ruin the classical appearance of the structure as viewed from [MAIN ROAD].

So I've just realized I should probably put on a temp trip to make this less confusing.

I also just remembered something. I went to Bard College, and there was a church on the campus, very old and small - and it had this _terrifying_ basement, even though it's hard for me to explain why it was. (It was super claustrophobic, though) I only just remembered it - but at the time it freaked me out so badly I ended up bolting back out of it and ended up dislocating my kneecap in the process because I tripped and fell. Man. If I can mimic _that_ kind of ambiance, I'm probably good to go. I'm not sure if any part of it was located directly under where the pews/etc. were. I didn't end up exploring it, for obvious reasons.

This one?

Yeah, that's a point - I was definitely thinking older, where rooms tend to be in buildings a little way off, or in low extensions that don't disrupt the look - though the two nearest to me both have it the same despite being very different otherwise: one church, one all-purpose community building, one priest house. Though I think the modern one has a few rooms near the front, proving my point.

Speaking of old churches, I'm reminded of when I went to a cathedral, St David's in Wales. They like to tell Americans that go there about their 'new' roof, only 6 or 700 years old.

Reality doesn't give a fuck.
>Walk down the road
>Pass under arch of tree branches
>keep going down the road
>that's a nice looking church
>wait.jpg
>didn't I just leave that church?
>better not stop.
>I swear this arch of tree branches looks familiar...
>shit it's the church again.

One creepy stone by the door says "in the darkness all ways are open"
So they can't leave during the safe day, but can leave during the deadly and terrifying night.
[Spoiler]The artifact only works during the day

It's been a while, and I stayed away from it after that, so I'm not sure if that's it, to tell you the truth. It was stone, though. Next to a small graveyard. (This might not be true, but in the X-Men comics, Jean Grey's father was said to have been buried there, I think. We had a surprising about of X-Men lore as far as our campus went)

> only 6 or 700 years old.

Hahaha, oh man. Wow. Well, that's a different time scale for you, alright... I remember hearing about massive drama over the course of a few years about re-creating the bells for Notre Dame, I think it was? They didn't sound right anymore, apparently.

My most recent, frequent experience with churches has been due to my living in NYC and walking past them fairly often. I think this has added to my confusion, because they often appear to be very firmly squares or rectangular, at least from the sidewalk. But I'm not really clear on how they place things internally - it's led to me wondering a lot about how they vary and how things are placed.

Come to think of it, some churches, particularly cathedral style (I think?) have a sort of... second layer 'balcony' around the nave, I think? What is that for? Is it additional viewing space for services? Or what?

I like the idea of dropping a hint in such a way - and the idea of an artifact being time-dependent on how/when it works. I was considering doing something similar with power, maybe water, if it's available. Only works during the day or night -- probably the night, which I think would be interesting. It almost feels weirdly counter-intuitive. Speaking of which, I guess the rationalization (for the player, initially) as to how or why these things could exist/function would be underground power lines, which are common in a number of places in the world. The plumbing is self-explanatory.

Additional viewing space. The balcony also could extend into the arms of the cross, creating additional internal space. That style was rarely used though, since it requires additional structural support inside, and most churches ended up being built for having lots of open space on the ground floor. A church with both arms being used for rooms might be interesting though.

If you need a power source that's nearby, consider a geothermal generator. This could also placvplacve hotsprings nearby, adding additional history to the place (healing hot springs were a common idea). Such a generator could be a Stirling engine, using nheat from the hot springs and a diverted cold stream to create the temperature differential needed.

Yeah, in a city you work with the space you've got. Especially in the US where everything is grids, but you get it with older places too - pic related, though it also had a small courtyard down one side I think (was on holiday in belgium)

The balcony round the nave is usually for access, to windows and things - mostly they're not big enough for extra people, and usually not open to the public.

Cathedrals usually stick to a cross on the inside, even if they're a bit wider - they might have aisles that make the nave basically square, but they still usually have the central bit

The 'only' bit is mainly just to make fun, but it's the nature of the place - it's tiny and the ""city"" relies on tourism, so they get told it's quaint and shit a lot.

The Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá (Spanish: Catedral de Sal de Zipaquirá) is an underground Roman Catholic church built within the tunnels of a salt mine 200 metres (220 yd) underground in a halite mountain near the town of Zipaquirá, in Cundinamarca, Colombia. It is a very popular tourist destination and place of pilgrimage in the country.[2] The name "Salt Cathedral" is mostly to attract tourists - while a functioning church that receives as many as 3,000 visitors on Sundays, it has no bishop and therefore no official status as a cathedral in Catholicism.[3]

The temple at the bottom has three sections, representing the birth, life, and death of Jesus. The icons, ornaments and architectural details are hand carved in the halite rock. Some marble sculptures are included.

The Salt Cathedral is considered one of the most notable achievements of Colombian architecture,[4] being described as a "Jewel of Modern Architecture".[5] The cathedral represents for the Colombian people a valuable cultural, environmental and religious patrimony.[6]

The cathedral is part of a larger complex including Parque de la Sal (Salt Park),[7] and a museum of mining, mineralogy, geology and natural resources.

25 year pastor here...

Today's lingo: the house where the pastor lives is a parsonage. It is typically near or on property. One church i was in had the parsonage next door, with a foot bridge connecting the church proper and the parsonage. I remember this was way out in the country and one night we had a big elk in the backyard

Church proper: the sanctuary is the worship hall, stage pews, piano, organ etc. in older buildings behind the stage is typically storage, and maybe a small study or office. In a protestant church you would have access to the baptistery, a 4' x 10' water tank where people could be immersed in water. Catholic, lutheran and others have a bapitry basin. One shut i was in today had a baptistery pool fed from a fountain in front of the sanctuary.

Storage rooms, mainly robes and old books - cuz nobody throws those. Things away. 20 on d20 to find what you want, maybe worse odds.

Class rooms, typically tables chairs, books etc... not a whole lot of interest.

Kitchen. The church i work at has a small kitchen with seating four about 40 people at chairs and tables and a larger kitchen that sill seat and feed about 200.

We have several hard to find and hard to access parts of the building. When our youth play hide and seek, we have a room at the top of the stairs, through two doors, that has some old wooden student desks and some old pipes, and odds and ends. It is very dusty and creepy.

The church i was in growing up had some crawl spaces that connected through a dumb waiter type system from different levels.when i was small i could climb into the chute and come out under the stairs in the basement. Pretty creepy.

If you want to have fun with your characters, have an old empty casket up in a storage room...

Oh cool - I had no idea about hot springs! I thought of a geothermal generator myself, but I wasn't sure if that would be too outlandish for a church - I really have no idea how commonly they're used, when they started to be a normal feature. I mean, or how often they're even used just today, in general. But so it's plausible, then? I don't know how much effort they might put into searching for an explanation where the electricity is coming from, so maybe it would be a good idea to have one ready, instead of just a 'maybe it works like this??' unless I've decided that no explanation simply IS the explanation.

Most geothermal is restricted to areas that have lots of water and heat - typically using steam engines powered by pumping water real close to a lava flow. Of course, most geothermal is looked at from the perspective of powering a city, but running a small complex of buildings with low power needs can be easily done using the method I described sized up a bit.

Putting it in a valley with some particularly gnarly mountain peaks ringing it also gives a very good reason why your PCs aren't going anywhere, even if they wanted to.

Sewage can also be done via septic tank and leech field. The stream that provides cold water for the Stirling engines also provides a water source for plumbing.
If you and your player both live in (and grew up in) NYC, having a place this self contained for everything but food can be somewhat creepy. Having bounced between both rural and urban, I actually find it normnal.
Basis for it being creepy comes from a friend who puked at the fact that she was standing on the household leech field.

> quaint and shit a lot

I wonder if that's irritating to the people who live there, lol.

That ... is... awesome. Oh wow, that's super, super cool. And are un-official cathedrals a common thing? Or is this really unusual - you know, aside from all the obvious other ways in which it is.

Oh, this is really useful stuff to know! Thank you so much for telling me about the place - this is a huge part of the kind of information I'm looking for. Do you have any stories about it or other churches, in relation to how they were built? (Was seeing the elk a bit of a shock? Now you have me all curious.)

> empty casket

Oh lawd, I could go places with this...

Nice; then I have a definite explanation if it turns out I need one! (Especially since I don't plan on identifying the place geographically, almost at all)

There's something similar in Poland as well

I invite you to watch this ten-part series of short YouTube videos on the deeper meanings of many elements of Catholic church architecture, OP: youtube.com/watch?v=2PDWXMMgy9c
It's very good and insightful.

So if you wanna include creepy religious shit to your games then at least in some parts of the Europe it used to be common to burry important people beneath the church floor. Sometimes these corpses would mummify naturally and thus you end with all kinds of fun church mummies (there is one from early 17th century less than 100 kms from where I live).

Awesome!! Thanks!

I think I heard about that once - I don't really know anything about it, though. Was it like... in rooms, sort of like underground mausoleums? Or was it more like... literally burry, sometimes?

>Was it like... in rooms, sort of like underground mausoleums? Or was it more like... literally burry
Yep.

By which I mean, it could be either. Sometimes there's crypts beneath the church, accessed by stairs, sometimes there's just a big flagstone that's a grave.

There's also above-ground burials in churches, where there's a big carved stone casket with a roughly life-sized carving of the interned, but those tend to be for very rich - the only time I've seen them in small churches is when said church is on some country estate, and it's one of the estate-owners