Cozy keep
Ok so I'm playing with the idea of a "cozy keep" and the challenge was to fit everything in to a square that was no bigger than 100x100. Leaving out the problem with wall thicknesses and stuff, the challenge was to find a way to fit in all of the components that I wanted to put into one place.
So I started to explore the idea of what rooms needed to be connected to or near others. I figured out that the common hall needs to be next to the keep, the kitchen next to the common hall and the servant's hall near it. In this fashion, the servants would leave their hall, cross over to the kitchen, then into the common hall for big meals or possibly up into the keep to do their daily routine.
The barracks seems to be this absent building but I knew that I wanted it near the main gate. I'm not sure what I would attach to it since I'm not (necessarily) placing any 'crafter' buildings inside the walls (no blacksmith, etc.) as that would be handled within the adjoining village.
The basic idea is that this is a small keep that would be attached to a large village. Therefore I could remove things like the stables, gardens and the like as they would be handled 'outside' of the walls. I figured that I would lay it out on some graph paper just to see how much room I was using for the various buildings and how they could all fit within the square. It was not an easy task.
Once I started to establish what buildings I would need it was a matter of arranging them within the 100x100 foot square. Then I could also decide how tall the buildings were (in terms of how many stories they would have)
1 ) Keep (4x)
2 ) Common Hall (x2 but 2nd is just open space)
3 ) Kitchen (x2: staff quarters on 2nd)
4 ) Servant's Hall (quarters) (x2)
5 ) Barracks (x2: senior staff on 2nd)
6 ) Watch Towers (for gate area) (x2)
7 ) Extra Building which I haven't figured out what to put there yet. (x2)
So then I slapped the whole thing into Sketchp to get an idea of what the place would look like and could start identifying things.
I placed the well (unlabeled) between the kitchen and the servant's hall in the small alcove beside the set of stairs that lead up to the second floors of the servant's hall and the kitchen.
I wanted stairs leading up to the second floors of the barracks, the unknown building (though I'm not sure I need another set by the keep) and by the watch tower. The barracks would definitely need double stairs (watch towers would have their own, internal stairs) to empty guards quickly in an emergency.
Any suggestions on the placement of the stairs?
Thanks!
-GP
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