Cc 3 Castle Design

7/28/2019 Cc 3 Castle Design

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A Rough Guide to Castle Design

Part 1 Who? and Why?

by Jon Roberts

In this article Ill lead you through the designprocess I use to bring sense to my castledesigns. Its a process that puts reason intodesign, so that players questions havesensible answers. When a world makessense to players they can imagine it, engagewith it and use their heads to navigate itschallenges.

There is of course a balance to be struck. If I spend too much time on the little details (how

many pounds of meat a garrison of 20 need to store for the winter) then Im not adding anyvalue that time is better spent on the evil villains master plan or creating truly fiendishtraps to deter invaders.

To create a castle that makes sense, first we need to answer Why? and Who?

Why?: A castles purpose is usually defined by its location, its owner and local politics. Inbenign lands a castle might be a place of showoff luxury, of paranoid protection, a seat ofpower, a status symbol or a community focal point. In hostile lands it might be an essential

safe haven or a point of hard power from which to dominate the surrounding lands. Thereare unlimited reasons for a castle but, if its going to make sense, we first have to think ofone.

Who?: Who owns it? Who built it? Whos necessary to fulfill the castles Why? Who elselives there? Together, the answers to Who? tell us the castles size, grandeur, constructionmethods, practical limitations and building materials.

The Why? and Who? of my example castle:

It is the seat of a minor lord who rules a medium sized farming community and smallvillage. The village is tucked away in a mountain valley and the castle is a solid defensivestructure at the valley mouth, protecting the community from bandits. The defended valleyis relatively safe and few of the community and none of the livestock are housed within thecastle. The castle is small; most of the servants come from the town and only importantpeople and soldiers live in the castle itself.

A military outpost it would be very different; everyone needed to run the castle would have

to live within its walls. A kings castle in the center of a stable country would be built forcomfort, rather than defence, its role more to impress than to hold off attackers.


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Part 2 The Room List

The basic Why? and Who? can now be developed first into a list of who lives in the castleand then the living and work space they will require.

My castle is home to the lord, 10 elite cavalry and 25 soldiers. It will also house 10 non-combatants, including a castellan, chief herald, captain of the guard, and 3 or 4 seniorservants. I also want a mage and a priest.

Now that I have the population I can quickly get an idea of the rooms were going to need.I think in terms of shelter, food and defence.

For shelter, its a question of thinking about how the population lives and allocating

suitable space. My lord lives at the top of the castle, in a suite of rooms. On a lower floorIll have the second tier of nobles and important servants the castellan I mentioned. Ialso want the cavalry to have a room on this level. The men at arms will sleep in the greathall similar to vikings sleeping in the mead hall. It adds an obvious historic divide to thebuilding from our own experiences. The non-combatant staff will be in a series of roomsone floor up. The mage and the priest will have their own rooms as theyre important butthe mage should probably be in a separate area as his activities are dangerous and likelyto give off foul odours. I also want a couple of spare chambers for visiting nobility and asmall cell for a couple of prisoners. I dont need a large prison because local justice isbrutal and brief.

I dont need to list every last member of staff and figure out what they do; but I must knowwhere the important people are and that theres roughly enough space for everyone else.

Food is a more pressing issue. All castles need to have an internal source of fresh water.Castles are built to withstand siege and you wont hold out more than a couple of days ifyou dont have any water. So whether its a deep well in the cellars or a fountain that flowsstraight from the elemental planes, make sure that theres a source of water for the castle.We also need a kitchen, food stores, a cold store and a wine cellar. Now obviously youdont need to identify all the different types of store and their contents unless your players

will be tasked with raiding the castle pantry but youd be amazed how many players wantto know where the wine cellar is. In some strongholds youll also want to have some ideaof where the food comes from. It may be a drow house with its own rothe herd. That wouldbe a precious resource and would be well guarded and likely within the boundaries of thefortress. In our case the farmland in the valley is the source of the food so we only needshort term store rooms in the castle itself.

Finally lets consider defence. Defences tend to exist around the outside of the buildingand so have relatively little impact on the internal layout. First of all, you want to controlaccess to the building. The more doors you have, the more weak points you have to

protect. Small castles are likely to only have one gate, larger ones may have two or three,but rarely more. These gates will be heavily protected and will rarely just be a single


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wooden door. In order of increasing sophistication, typical gate defence structures are(these are cumulative):

* Overlooking arrow slits

* Two gates as a holding area, with a killing zone in between

* Murder holes (open spaces in the roof above through which defenders can fire arrowsand pour oil)

* Portcullis

* Drawbridge

At this stage we dont need to worry too much about the specifics, but Im going to justhave one front gate and Ill make sure its solidly defended. I think probably a gate and aportcullis, but no drawbridge here. That said, well be needing a couple of guard rooms

beside the gate and an armoury.

The other standard defensive features of castles are the staircases and the battlements.Many castles sport spiral staircases. This is not only a compact way to fit a staircase into acastle, but also a key defensive feature. Spiral staircases spiral clockwise as they go up.This means that a right handed attacker climbing the stairs will have their sword armblocked by the central pillar. A defender fighting from above will have a clear swing aroundthe arc of the staircase. In addition, spiral stairs are often used as archery positions. If thespiral stair is on an outer wall then it will butt out of the wall and have arrow slits, allowingan archer in the staircase to fire along the wall at attackers, catching them in a crossfire.

Stairs are also a strategic means of getting between levels. Defenders should have morethan one way to get to an area. Finally consider the battlements. A defender on thebattlements can rain down fire and hails of arrows on attackers. I want my defenders tohave quick access to the battlements on the roof.

Now we have a full list of the rooms we need and its quite extensive, even for arelatively modest castle. Lets start connecting them together. When doing this, considerthe flow of traffic in the castle. The kitchen needs to be connected to the stores, andshould also access the well. The great hall should be close to the kitchen. Lower levels ofcastles are generally damper so the poorer inhabitants are likely to be on the lower levels

whereas the more important people are higher up. The guard rooms should have goodaccess to the armoury, as well as to the murder holes above the gate. The main areawhere the soldiers sleep should have easy access to the battlements. If you ask whatrooms people will need to use regularly, you can quickly figure out how the rooms must beconnected.


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Part 3 The Floorplan

To collect and transform the room list into a sensible layout I make a flowchart, finding thisto be a simple way to list the areasand work out how they are

connected or, indeed, isolated.Youre unlikely to get it right firsttime (the chart below is my thirdattempt) but that just goes to showthat its time well spent. Its mucheasier to fix a flowchart than afloorplan and lines added to afloorplan become an increasingdeterrent to fixing mistakes.

Notice that there are already clearhubs. The great hall, the kitchenand a group connecting the Lordsquarters, cavalry quarters and thechapel are all clear groups.

At this point we have the roughlayout of our castle. Before we goany further, sit back and have alook at it. Think about anything else

youd like to add. In my case I wantthis to have a bit a twist. What if thecastle is in a region that is beset bywyverns? To combat this, thecastle needs covered walkways onthe roof and battlements, and some

means of combating the flying menace. Ill add ballistas with alchemists fire from ourwizard. Im going to give our lord a gryphon too. This adds in an eyrie and solves the issueof how our lord might escape.

With these final twists laid in, Ill do one final flowchart of the layout (below), now addingfloors. This allows us to locate the stairs. If youre feeling really keen you can alwaysdecide to place the fireplaces and chimneys here too. However, unless your players liketurning into gaseous form and coming down the chimneys (mine do) you probably dontneed to worry too much about that level of detail.

Note that many of these groupings can be re-used in any castle. You can take the kitchenand stores and place them in a grand citadel, a hill giants lair or a mind flayer hive. I canre-use this castle structure for many situations with little chance of anyone noticing. Saveyourself the hard work and re-use this work when you need to. If it makes sense in thiscastle, itll make sense in others too.


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Now that the layout is set, its time to turnit into a map. You can dive straight intoCC3 but I find it worth using pencil andpaper to quickly sketch the floorplan first.This allows me to make sure that eachfloors area lines up and that the rooms fit.

This does not need to be clean andbeautiful. As this is for an audience, I havetaken more care with my sketch than Inormally would.

I use this step to ask myself:

* do my staircases line up?

* have I kept my connections in the rightplace?

* have I made sure that its hard to getto the most important places like thetreasure room and the prison?

With this sketch to work from I know thatwhen I create the pretty map I wont haveto go back in and fix things whensomething doesnt line up right. I could

use this to run an adventure, but I certainly wont be using it as a battlemat.

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Cc 3 Castle Design