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Post by delverinthedark on Nov 17, 2015 16:31:13 GMT -6
Castles and towers are certainly a part of the conventional D&D landscape. Keeps and strongholds are woven into the fabric of the original wilderness encounter tables. The designs of these structures demand a certain architectural panache from the DM, whether that comes from real-world knowledge of medieval structures, a rich imagination that can find expression in convincing forms, or other such fonts of creativity and inspiration. So what kinds of structures appear in people's campaigns? What resources do people draw on for inspiration in design and for historical knowledge? Have people ever had to design castles or towers on the fly for a tactical situation? How was that handled? Have there been any castle or tower crawls as opposed to dungeon crawls! On a somewhat unrelated note, I'm looking forward to running a game in a Beowulf-inspired world because Mead Halls are MUCH easier to design than castles, especially on the fly. One big room versus motte and bailey, portcullis, and murder hole? Sign me up!
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Post by howandwhy99 on Nov 18, 2015 6:34:05 GMT -6
Of course U&WA Bk3 has some basic castle and tower structures. Towers are easy: enclosed walls with layers in height. That can be mixed up a bit with add-ons. Castles are a bigger enclosure with towers and gatehouses and usually a great hall or cathedral included. Massive structures like Castle Ravenloft are far more complex with many kinds of pieces mashed together.
The most important elements are the basics of course. What are the building rules for fortifications? What resources besides stone, wood, people, tools, and an engineer are needed? And how available are they? Cost? What about the time to build any one component in work days per worker? How thick are the walls and how many apertures can there be in any stone structure? What about the base? Dungeons and excavations beneath? Then what about defensive structures like wall splays, merlons, embrasures, and machicolations? How hard is a hanging princess tower to build? And how high can we reasonably build a standing structure anyways?
I think with a good set of rules lots of fascinating stuff could be built, priced, and statted up. Long before adding in magic and all the exceptions that can include.
(as a general rule, I think magically standing edifices are are bad idea given a single Dispel Magic might make them topple over)
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mindcontrolsquid
Level 4 Theurgist
"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man..."
Posts: 118
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Post by mindcontrolsquid on Nov 18, 2015 6:58:10 GMT -6
The Judge's Guild's Ready Reference Sheets have a pretty good section on stronghold construction, including prices for structures other than castles and formulae for determining construction time and resources.
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Post by starcraft on Nov 20, 2015 10:46:37 GMT -6
I base mine on real castles I toured in Spain years ago but with appropriately 'fantasy' flair. I don't get too hyper-obsessive about perfect detail and accuracy, but I keep in mind that unless the builder was a magic-user of obscene power or lorded over a clan of stone giants, this was hard work. Adding useless towers and under ground passages that served no real purpose just would not have been done unless the person was mad or just had buckets of time and money to throw away.
One thing that struck me about almost all of the castles I saw was how small everything was as far as interior rooms. It makes sense of course, not only was it expensive to build but you needed to heat it and defend it.
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mindcontrolsquid
Level 4 Theurgist
"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man..."
Posts: 118
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Post by mindcontrolsquid on Nov 20, 2015 10:52:01 GMT -6
I for one am quite partial to the motte-and-bailey design. Both in real-world terms and in game-mastering terms, it's relatively simple to construct and design, unlike the more complex keeps and bastions of more grandiose castle structures.
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Post by Vile Traveller on Nov 20, 2015 20:52:18 GMT -6
My Known World, as inspired by the implied world of OD&D, is sparsely populated so most settlements are fortified. But it also has a long history of civilisations arising and collapsing, so there are some unusal artefacts that may or may not originally have been fortifications but are used as such now. One example is the White Tower of Camlann Castle in the Necropolis of Nuromen module:
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