August Entry: Oten-jo by MM

[MysticMagellan]

This is a layout I'm working on in Illustrator. I've still got a way to go, but I'll discuss my approach.

I've curved the river a bit to match the larger map, and placed a bridge at the northern side of town that leads across to a scattered farmland and fishing villages. (It seems a few people are placing their bridges to the south, but I think that might make shipping more difficult, not to mention storms could pull away docks and sweep them into the bridge). GP's map only has one residential district, but I have added another smaller residential area on the southern side of Oten-jo assuming that residents often spread outward in all available directions from a city.

I have laid out most of the Downtown District in a grid, but have taken steps to make approaching the Castle difficult by forcing potential visitors to backtrack and cross small bridges over canal and river, then wind their way through the Samurai District and ascend a road alongside fortified walls to get to the Castle Gate.

The Castle and Samurai District are surrounded by a defensive wall, but I'll probably add another smaller wall around the Downtown and Merchant districts.

On a side note, I've tried to incorporate a scaled down version of GP's street layout for the chase through the city. You can even see the little cove on the far side of the river. In fact, I sort of built outwards from the chase area to give me a better feel for the city in general.