PDA

View Full Version : Need help building a castle ruin



Xiander
2011-01-15, 09:05 AM
I am planning an adventure which is to centre around an old castle ruin sunken into the ground with magic. I have a fair idea about what kind of encounters i want to make and i think i am able to balance them. However, i have limited experience with dming D&D (I have a lot of dm experience in other systems and I have a strong working knowledge of D&Ds system).

The clincher is that this is the first time I construct a large dungeon from scratch, ad apart from some loose ideas i really donīt know which considerations to make.

About the castle:
I am using the Diamond Throne setting, as described in the book arcana evolved.
The castle in question lies in the capital of Verdune. Verdune was a great military kingdom which boasted strong warriors and waged a continous war against Thartolan a kingdom of many strong mages. 1600 years ago the country was invaded by the Dramojh, a race of demonic dragon beeings who slaughtered almost everything living in the land and flooded it with necrotic energies raising many as undead. (this far i have been sticking to the setting as written, hereon out I start comming up with my own stuff.)
Filling out the Details of the details of the Dramohj invation i decided that as the wa was going badly, it would make sense for the Verdunians to make their last stand within their strongest fortress, which logically was located within the capitol city. However the Dramohj had no reason to play fair, so instead they used a lot of powerful magic to sink the fortress into the ground stranding the strongest warriors of Verdune in a large hole in the ground, leaving them to starve to death or be slaughtered in their attempt to escape.

Now, 1600 years later, the Dramohj are gone and all that is left is the ruined castle at the bottom of a cliff filled with undead soldiers and giant vermin.



About the players:
I have a party of three or four level nine characters. They will be using classes from arcana evolved (identical to the unearthed arcana classes i think). They have been told to make whatever they would like, and that i would think up a way to implicate them in the plot.

The way is already thought out: Basicly, someone unimportant npc stumbles over a custom version of a Talisman of Reluctant Wishes, not knowing what he found. While having it in his possesion he wishes he had a kings treasure, and he is promtly teleported to the treasury in the forgotten underground castle. Realising that he technically got what he wished for but also realising the great danger he is in, he tries to think up a way of escaping.
As asking to be transported seens to have a lot of possiple bad side effects he settles to call in help. "I wish someone who could and would help me was here". Cue player entry.

So, given this groundwork, how do i go about making a ruined castle?


Thanks in advance for your help. :smallsmile:

Coidzor
2011-01-15, 09:23 AM
Well, you start with a basic castle design. Great hall, lord's bedchambers, storerooms, treasury, walls and gatehouses, kitchens; workshops, stables, and other outbuildings; cellars and larders, hidden passage ways (classic examples include between bedchambers and a network to get from general area to area in the castle), and all the rest of that sort of thing.

Some filling the place with standard things such as tools where they should be, furniture that'll either rot or be preserved or be destroyed by the residents, treasures in the treasury.

Don't have it set too much in stone, should have a fairly clear idea of where things are in relation to one another, but have it be fluid enough to adapt it to how the process of ruining it and process of populating it and filling it with items and traps influence you.

Then you figure out what kind of damage the place took during the process of it sinking. Maybe, the west wing and the central castle ended up being at slightly different levels of foundation, so that the stones were being stressed in such a way that there's now a gap where most of the hallway connecting the western wing to the central castle has collapsed, rendering it difficult and dangerous to get to that way without some way of levitating over to the safer terrain on the other side or entering that wing through another path. Ground level rooms might have broken/difficult/impassable terrain for floors not from rubble but due to the foundation taking damage during the sinking process.

Then you figure out what's been altered or removed by the passage of time, say, this wine cellar was emptied by the men while they still lived, this one was partially emptied and then trashed by vermin looking to eat and gnaw on anything, and this one is intact and preserved for the most part. Whether certain items of the treasury have been taken by vermin or undead and squirreled away in various nests or even if an intelligent undead has added some to the treasure over the years.

Xiander
2011-01-15, 11:33 AM
Well, you start with a basic castle design. Great hall, lord's bedchambers, storerooms, treasury, walls and gatehouses, kitchens; workshops, stables, and other outbuildings; cellars and larders, hidden passage ways (classic examples include between bedchambers and a network to get from general area to area in the castle), and all the rest of that sort of thing.

Some filling the place with standard things such as tools where they should be, furniture that'll either rot or be preserved or be destroyed by the residents, treasures in the treasury.

Don't have it set too much in stone, should have a fairly clear idea of where things are in relation to one another, but have it be fluid enough to adapt it to how the process of ruining it and process of populating it and filling it with items and traps influence you.

This is good advice, and i had pretty much planned to do something like this. My problem is that i do not know to much about castle architecture. All the things you mention needs to be there (thanks for expanding my list :smallwink:). Trouble is i have no idea where to put them in relation to each other. Should the Lords bedchamper be next to the great hall or sould it rather be more secluded and private? Should the treasury be underground? If it should should it be in the same underground space as the dungeons? Should the whole place be in on floor or does it make better sense to have multiple floors?


Then you figure out what kind of damage the place took during the process of it sinking. Maybe, the west wing and the central castle ended up being at slightly different levels of foundation, so that the stones were being stressed in such a way that there's now a gap where most of the hallway connecting the western wing to the central castle has collapsed, rendering it difficult and dangerous to get to that way without some way of levitating over to the safer terrain on the other side or entering that wing through another path. Ground level rooms might have broken/difficult/impassable terrain for floors not from rubble but due to the foundation taking damage during the sinking process.

Then you figure out what's been altered or removed by the passage of time, say, this wine cellar was emptied by the men while they still lived, this one was partially emptied and then trashed by vermin looking to eat and gnaw on anything, and this one is intact and preserved for the most part. Whether certain items of the treasury have been taken by vermin or undead and squirreled away in various nests or even if an intelligent undead has added some to the treasure over the years.


This makes good sense, itīs important to me to get the feel of an ooooold abandoned castle right, and this helps.
I particualarly like the idea about different groundlevels due to the castle sinking. Thanks a lot. :smallsmile:

Kuma Kode
2011-01-15, 12:30 PM
A google image search for "Medieval castle blueprint" seems to be something you need. A few that turned up include

This (http://image35.blog84.fc2.com/blog-entry-129.html?googlesorgu=%20medieval%20castle%20floor% 20plan)
This (http://www.estalia.net/estalia/atoyot.htm)
and
This (https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/carlin/www/castle2009-wk3.htm)

Edit: Also, I think the idea of the dungeon is really neat. The intro is heavy-handed and suspiciously convenient but... remarkably believable in-universe.

Xiander
2011-01-15, 12:46 PM
A google image search for "Medieval castle blueprint" seems to be something you need. A few that turned up include

This (http://image35.blog84.fc2.com/blog-entry-129.html?googlesorgu=%20medieval%20castle%20floor% 20plan)
This (http://www.estalia.net/estalia/atoyot.htm)
and
This (https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/carlin/www/castle2009-wk3.htm)

wow... i need to learn to go straight to google. Thanks for the links.


Edit: Also, I think the idea of the dungeon is really neat. The intro is heavy-handed and suspiciously convenient but... remarkably believable in-universe.


The dungeon idea is what carries this one. I am aware of the heavyhandedness, but I basicly wanted a believeable and ranther easy way to craft a group of adventurers. Knowing my players, I am sure I can sell this to them by doing it right.

Trekkin
2011-01-15, 01:15 PM
The two things I most remember my players associating automatically with extreme age are fading and dust. Faded tapestries crumbling to dust usually resulted in them trying to remember the history of the world.

Incidentally, that the castle sunk magically opens up some interesting options architecturally; it is entirely possible that the castle could have intersected an underground area that was unknown to the castle denizens, or that its sinking was like a seismic dinner bell to various subterranean nasties. Walls can be mined through and traps or bars retrofitted to doorways, particularly in areas unoccupied by the zombies at one time or other; depending on how long ago this was, they could have been built with organic material of the type that will have disintegrated after the trapmakers were eaten by zombies. It's also nicely obfuscatory to have ominous tunnels leading away.

There is also the possibility that they fell through the water table as the castle descended. Flooding, or flooded areas contrasting with air bubbles, can open up new possibilities for dungeon hazards, as well as exposing the players to a hazard too seldom seen in a dungeon crawl.

If local zombie density is low enough, looters become a possibility in the form of looter skeletons still clutching rusted daggers jammed into door latches or arrayed around the local trapped magical item like a calcium-rich halo. Zombies work for the second one, too. If, on the other hand, local zombie density is high enough, having an obviously accessible area totally devoid of them can be quietly terrifying--what's keeping them out?

Just my two cents.

Savannah
2011-01-15, 05:31 PM
This is good advice, and i had pretty much planned to do something like this. My problem is that i do not know to much about castle architecture. All the things you mention needs to be there (thanks for expanding my list :smallwink:). Trouble is i have no idea where to put them in relation to each other. Should the Lords bedchamper be next to the great hall or sould it rather be more secluded and private? Should the treasury be underground? If it should should it be in the same underground space as the dungeons? Should the whole place be in on floor or does it make better sense to have multiple floors?

You know what? I used to worry about those sorts of details and I always took forever researching real floorplans trying to be as accurate as possible and wasting a lot of time. Then I realized that the vast majority of players know exactly as much as I do - not much. Put the things where it makes sense to you. The players won't care as long as it's not totally random.

Gnoman
2011-01-15, 09:02 PM
The Dwarf Fortress Map Archive can be a useful place for that sort of thing.