Reply With QuoteJezelf...love that show, it's frequently on the History International channel. I think it's called something like "England's Lost Wooden Castles". Nice to know I'm not the only one who has seen it
Sorry Denis, I have long forgotton what the pm was about and have done some spring cleaning on my outbox, so can't resend it
Jezelf...love that show, it's frequently on the History International channel. I think it's called something like "England's Lost Wooden Castles". Nice to know I'm not the only one who has seen it
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
I actually found it as a trio of DVDs in T.K.MAXX - that's right, history channel, Lost Castles of England, Atlantis, and Machu Picchu a right bargain at £5 I think it was.
found the Lost Castles one on the History channel site, though
Folks have already linked to my trusty old demographics article, so I don't need to rehash that. Instead, I'll offer up the most common oversight I see in medieval-styled fantasy-city maps, which is maps that are filled wall-to-wall with small buildings but which forget to leave appropriate spaces for larger structures analagous to cathedrals, theaters, arenas and so forth. These aren't details most folks forget when thinking about adventures in cities, but for whatever reason a lot of detailed street-maps (the kind that are groovy enough to show every structure) omit them entirely, giving the impression of a city made up entirely of craftsmen's houses, inns, warehouses, and the occasional walled manor-house
I personally keep a large spreadsheet filled with the comparitive sizes of real-world things that I use when city-mapping, so if I want something analagous to (for example) Seville Cathedral or the Colosseum or Vatican City, I can know at a glance what dimensions I should shoot for (or what dimensions I may choose to playfully deviate from). The same spreadsheet includes things like ordinary tree sizes, a selection of river-widths/bridge-spans from actual medieval cities, notes on typical distances between wall-towers, the sizes of select types of seagoing vessels (for including appropriate symbols next to the docks), and so on. At the larger end it compares whole cities, both real and fantastical, that I've measured for the purpose (did you know that the City State of the Invincible Overlord is just over double the size of TSR's Lankhmar? Or that Thyatis is 220% the size of Specularum? Now you do! Is the information useful? Probably not but I'm a dork that way)!
(Another related large-area issue which some folks overlook, but which any cursory glance at a good collection of historical maps will show, is just how much of the interior of a medieval city can be orchard or garden-oriented, containing no structures at all)
... and for what amounts to a micro-article on medieval urban cemeteries, see one of my recent posts on one of the city-WIP threads on this board
Ok, you've got me salivating now. I don't suppose there's any way you'd be willing to share that spreadsheet?
Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
http://www.bryanray.name
I second that request! That would be fantastic info to have at the fingertips!
Craig's Cartography
Campaign Cartographer 3 User
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