My "small" project about designing inns
Maybe some of you have read my introduction post, and heard I am trying to write some "guide" to designing an inn for fantasy games, and in earlier stages I was stuck in the design the surroundings phase of the project. Why this phase was important? Mostly to see how big the inn is, what kind of people visits it, and various other questions. If we speak about world building and not only mapping the surrounding area can get more important. Also it delivers plot hooks for the adventures you can run with the inn as base of operation for your party.
So I reached to a point where some of the data is available and the surroundings are mapped at acceptable quality. Right now, I started to map the surrouding buildings, and the first version for first building seems to be ready.
smallhouse1.jpg
You can get the source file (CC3 .fcw format) for this floorplan from the blog entry at Cartographer's Corner.
Who uses the building? Some of the people who work at the inn.
Project updated
As you perhaps remember I started with the surrounding area, then with the places where the staff of the inn lives. Now we are at 2nd of the 3 such buildings.
Sorry for low quality JPG export, but CC3 crashed when i tried to export. If you would have any advice about the project feel free to post it either here or on the blog.
On the second floor map I would suggest mixing up the rotation of the piles of bags a bit so they don't look so uniform, but these are pretty darn nice overall.
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Thank you for the feedback. Will work on rotation, etc.
Have you checked the related project and our goals? Since some feedback about the project itself would be good. I know it is more difficult than commenting on individual maps, but it could make me very very happy.
Last edited by TheElf; 01-11-2009 at 12:59 AM. Reason: Fixed typos
Sorry for being a bit slow, but trying to work on the inn itself, and it seems to be a bit difficult.
Well, I made it difficult for myself
These are really cute, TheElf! Is it me or are they missing stairs?
As you see they are rural houses. For the first house designed there is a single floor.
For the 2nd house, there is the ground floor, and the attic. There is no stairs inside, as you see the attic is accessible from the outside, and there is a ladder for that. I seen quite a few such rural houses.
Why they are built this way? If you know how the ceilings are built in those houses, you will see: They have a set of beams to support the ceiling. Both ends of the beams should reach a supporting wall, and the distance between beams were often limited and wouldn't allow for stairs. Or so I heard.
Since I wanted to use this simple design, without too many supporting walls inside, and decided to reserve "dwarven craftmanship" and other explanations for a fantasy building for the inn itself (need it for the tower, and the size), I used ladders.
When I added basement for the 3rd building, I asked myself: How would it work? But luckily for a trapdoor you don't need too much place, and it would be much simpler that way, this is why it has a ladder.
And of course if you see how the basement is used, you could add: A trapdoor can be hidden easily.
This is why I have choosen the ladder way. And this way is easy to present when you describe the village, easy to draw it, and the realistic explanation doesn't hurt the mood. And such buildings can be nice, and if people seen such buildings before, showing them can help to build the mood of the adventures.
If you see my latest blog post about the project itself, you can see with the inn, I decided to go in a different direction. Why?
If you have seen the old posts, you know that building should be a relatively tall building, with a tower... For sights.
At first: it is a complex building. But the problem with tower: The supporting walls could look odd, or would make it pretty hard to design the building. The later isn't good when the goal for the series is to explain some concepts: People would see it is too difficult to follow the guide. And one such incident was enough (about mapping the surrounding area). And the first is nasty, since when your players wonder why the walls are there and you give them a realistic explanation for a such huge inn (where I don't care much about beam lenghts, etc. anyway).
And most people wouldn't notice the missing supporting walls, and even if they do you can use a plausible fantasy explanation. Which can add to the mood.
Also: if you would want, you can describe this difference in the begining if you want to compare the simplicity of nearby houses to glory of the inn itself, to speak about its prosperity.
Oh I beg your pardon! I thought that they were different floors of the same building! Makes sense now, thanks!
Some of the info about the buildings and the project is on the linked blog, it might worth reading them, and downloading the other related maps.
There are 2 new images ready, this time about the top 2 floors, I hope you will like them
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