Ruin is the architectural horror gumshoe engine rpg I plan to make.
If Ruin happens to be about abandoned places and discovery I stumbled across a couple of news stories in my daily reading that may be interesting/inspiring:
http://www.viralnova.com/explored-office-building-gallery/Dude explores an abandoned building that is attached to his town hall and discovers an abandoned dance hall, and below that abandoned jail cells.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/05/travel/gallery/mobile-architecture-homes/New concept houses, including houses on rails (overpriced boxcars).
Also a story. I'm sure you are familiar with every college/university having its share of forgotten places and hidden rooms.
MIT's underground tunnels are likely the most famous. Supposedly they connect every building.
http://tech.mit.edu/V123/N36/36orange.36n.htmlhttp://www.boston.com/lifestyle/blogs/thenextgreatgeneration/2012/03/school_secrets_5_things_to_kno_4.htmlhttp://weburbanist.com/2010/04/14/hack-this-eerie-abandoned-roof-tunnel-hacking-pics/The last is a great article about Urban Ex around the world.
Now for a couple stories.
UC Irvine was founded in 1965. As the story goes, the UC Regents witnessed the chaos of student rebellion during the 1960s and they were determined to design the university to prevent mass student gatherings from happening. If you look at an overhead map of UCI there is technically no center gathering point. Yes there is a large circle in the middle but that is built on half a hill with rocks and elevation everywhere; no real large place for students across disciplines to gather.
Then there are stories about the tunnels. Those who claim they have explored them say there are empty rooms littered underground with one or two computer terminals quietly humming and a desk. The purpose? In the event of a mass gathering or panic (Ken State sniper, terrorist attack, Russians), these are the go to places for campus security to monitor the situation and deploy from. Trust the UC Regents. The Regents are your friend.
In a university that shall remain nameless there is a six story building. This building was erected five or six decades ago and houses several research labs. On the roof is a lab that is closed. One man on the sixth floor holds the key. As the story goes a lab had need of extra space to carry out experiments with radioactive isotopes. Most labs just have a room for this work, but this lab was important so it got the entire top floor lab. Times change and newer methods were developed for the work that did not require radioactive isotopes. Once the experiments stopped, the rooms were used for storage. Now it lies silent and forgotten, the man on the sixth floor having the only key to the roof. Supposedly there is graffiti of a chemical nature by grad students of ages past on the very top when the lab was open during the 60s.
At UC Berkeley there are secure facilities that take up an entire floor to house small animals for research. One is underground and another is on the top floor of a five story building. I got to tour one once, and they are very maze like, white walls and white doors with few signs. In the frog room (which is deafening) there is this massive kiddy pool, the plastic kind people buy to put on their lawn in the summer, that housed one population of frogs. The other were in these super large open bathtubs, just being frogs. Of course the rumor is one room hold crocodiles some professor was working on, but I'm pretty sure that is a joke.
At Hopkins there are these underground tunnels (they look very uninteresting, just blank white corridors) and balconies that connect research labs with the medical center. I believe I was told they were built for transportation during bad weather and for security since the medical center is in a less than safe area.
Edit:
You probably already know all the details about this, but here is an article about the tunnels under Manhattan.
This may be of interest for Aaron too for his Mordiggian adventure.
Choice quote:
Until that moment, I had only heard tales of New York City’s invisible empire, an elaborate maze of tunnels that goes as deep as the Chrysler Building is high. Under construction in one form or another for more than a century, the system of waterways and pipelines spans thousands of miles and comprises nineteen reservoirs and three lakes. Two main tunnels provide New York City with most of the 1.3 billion gallons of water it consumes each day, ninety per cent of which is pumped in from reservoirs upstate by the sheer force of gravity.
http://www.gonomad.com/1757-six-hundred-feet-below-manhattan-a-visit-to-the-land-of-the-sandhogsNow I recall seeing a tv show about the guys who work in these depths. It was maybe 15 years ago and on 60 minutes or 20/20. The most compelling memory I have of the show was that they had to take an elevator down and even with lights some areas had just massive expanses of total blackness. I may be misremembering.
If I recall correctly there is also a Native American myth about the island of Manhattan being supported by a giant pillar under the earth.
