A Rough Guide to Castle Design Part 1 Who? and Why?

by Jon Roberts In this article Ill lead you through the design process I use to bring sense to my castle designs. Its a process that puts reason into design, so that players questions have sensible answers. When a world makes sense to players they can imagine it, engage with it and use their heads to navigate its challenges. 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 any value that time is better spent on the evil villains master plan or creating truly fiendish traps 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. In benign lands a castle might be a place of showoff luxury, of paranoid protection, a seat of power, 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. There are unlimited reasons for a castle but, if its going to make sense, we first have to think of one. Who?: Who owns it? Who built it? Whos necessary to fulfill the castles Why? Who else lives there? Together, the answers to Who? tell us the castles size, grandeur, construction methods, 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 small village. The village is tucked away in a mountain valley and the castle is a solid defensive structure at the valley mouth, protecting the community from bandits. The defended valley is relatively safe and few of the community and none of the livestock are housed within the castle. The castle is small; most of the servants come from the town and only important people 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 for comfort, rather than defence, its role more to impress than to hold off attackers.

Part 2 The Room List

The basic Why? and Who? can now be developed first into a list of who lives in the castle and 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 noncombatants, including a castellan, chief herald, captain of the guard, and 3 or 4 senior servants. 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 floor Ill have the second tier of nobles and important servants the castellan I mentioned. I also want the cavalry to have a room on this level. The men at arms will sleep in the great hall similar to vikings sleeping in the mead hall. It adds an obvious historic divide to the building from our own experiences. The non-combatant staff will be in a series of rooms one floor up. The mage and the priest will have their own rooms as theyre important but the mage should probably be in a separate area as his activities are dangerous and likely to give off foul odours. I also want a couple of spare chambers for visiting nobility and a small cell for a couple of prisoners. I dont need a large prison because local justice is brutal and brief. I dont need to list every last member of staff and figure out what they do; but I must know where 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 if you dont have any water. So whether its a deep well in the cellars or a fountain that flows straight 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 you dont 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 want to know where the wine cellar is. In some strongholds youll also want to have some idea of where the food comes from. It may be a drow house with its own rothe herd. That would be a precious resource and would be well guarded and likely within the boundaries of the fortress. In our case the farmland in the valley is the source of the food so we only need short term store rooms in the castle itself. Finally lets consider defence. Defences tend to exist around the outside of the building and so have relatively little impact on the internal layout. First of all, you want to control access 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

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 arrows and pour oil) * Portcullis * Drawbridge At this stage we dont need to worry too much about the specifics, but Im going to just have one front gate and Ill make sure its solidly defended. I think probably a gate and a portcullis, 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 a castle, 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 arm blocked by the central pillar. A defender fighting from above will have a clear swing around the arc of the staircase. In addition, spiral stairs are often used as archery positions. If the spiral stair is on an outer wall then it will butt out of the wall and have arrow slits, allowing an 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 more than one way to get to an area. Finally consider the battlements. A defender on the battlements can rain down fire and hails of arrows on attackers. I want my defenders to have 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 a relatively modest castle. Lets start connecting them together. When doing this, consider the flow of traffic in the castle. The kitchen needs to be connected to the stores, and should also access the well. The great hall should be close to the kitchen. Lower levels of castles 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 good access to the armoury, as well as to the murder holes above the gate. The main area where the soldiers sleep should have easy access to the battlements. If you ask what rooms people will need to use regularly, you can quickly figure out how the rooms must be connected.

Part 3 The Floorplan

To collect and transform the room list into a sensible layout I make a flowchart, finding this to be a simple way to list the areas and work out how they are connected or, indeed, isolated. Youre unlikely to get it right first time (the chart below is my third attempt) but that just goes to show that its time well spent. Its much easier to fix a flowchart than a floorplan and lines added to a floorplan become an increasing deterrent to fixing mistakes. Notice that there are already clear hubs. The great hall, the kitchen and a group connecting the Lords quarters, cavalry quarters and the chapel are all clear groups. At this point we have the rough layout of our castle. Before we go any further, sit back and have a look at it. Think about anything else youd like to add. In my case I want this to have a bit a twist. What if the castle is in a region that is beset by wyverns? To combat this, the castle needs covered walkways on the roof and battlements, and some means of combating the flying menace. Ill add ballistas with alchemists fire from our wizard. Im going to give our lord a gryphon too. This adds in an eyrie and solves the issue of how our lord might escape. With these final twists laid in, Ill do one final flowchart of the layout (below), now adding floors. This allows us to locate the stairs. If youre feeling really keen you can always decide to place the fireplaces and chimneys here too. However, unless your players like turning into gaseous form and coming down the chimneys (mine do) you probably dont need 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 kitchen and stores and place them in a grand citadel, a hill giants lair or a mind flayer hive. I can re-use this castle structure for many situations with little chance of anyone noticing. Save yourself the hard work and re-use this work when you need to. If it makes sense in this castle, itll make sense in others too.

Now that the layout is set, its time to turn it into a map. You can dive straight into CC3 but I find it worth using pencil and paper to quickly sketch the floorplan first. This allows me to make sure that each floors area lines up and that the rooms fit. This does not need to be clean and beautiful. As this is for an audience, I have taken more care with my sketch than I normally would. I use this step to ask myself: * do my staircases line up? * have I kept my connections in the right place? * have I made sure that its hard to get to the most important places like the treasure room and the prison? With this sketch to work from I know that when I create the pretty map I wont have to go back in and fix things when something doesnt line up right. I could use this to run an adventure, but I certainly wont be using it as a battlemat.