Ridgebury Inn

[Caenwyr]

Hey all! So with my crazy Dragon's Backbone map finished, I decided it was high time to go do an experiment with yet another style I've never done before. This time I'm setting my sights for building mapping!

Ridgebury Inn is a fun little resting area along the high road between Cailltir and Ostwyc. It has a few rooms to spend the night if you stay too long, a tavern on the ground floor (the main reason for staying too long), a well equipped pantry and a kitchen that's famous for dozens of miles in every direction. Oh, and it serves beer too. Exquisitely exotic beers. Rumour has it the innkeep spent his younger years as a sword for rent fighting wars in faraway places. Which sounds weird if you know he's one of the fattest people in the known world, but his stories are so terribly detailed that you're almost tempted to believe the rumours anyway. And then there's the band of mercenaries who tend to drop by each spring on their way to the summer wars, bringing grim silence to the otherwise pleasant inn, but also, unfailingly, a casket of exotic beer from places so strange that even their names can hardly be pronounced by civilised folk. Although the fat innkeep always manages. And then, on top of all that, there's the scrawny little girl he keeps calling his daughter, even though she was dropped off by the mercenaries only two years ago, incapable of uttering even a single civilised word, her skin several shades darker than his own.

Maybe it's the marvelous food, maybe the exotic beer that draws travelers to Ridgebury Inn from all over the world. But possibly more than all that it's the curious, mysterious atmosphere brought to it by its keeper, the fat but oh so frivolous Sim Castyrio.

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Okay. So that's a bit of backstory. More importantly, below you'll find the first version of my first ever building map. Linework for the ground and first floors is done, next step is adding a roof, colour, and an outside area!

[DondarfSnowbonk]

This is very cool! I particularly love the pillars — a detail I (and many professionals) tend to forget about.

[Larb]

It's nice to see you gave some proper thought to the supports for the upper flood. The middle room will have no light though. I don't know if that is intentional or not.

[Caenwyr]

Hey thanks guys! Yeah, I figured if I was going to map a place, I might as well do it structurally sound. Not sure if what I have is actually decent, but all those pillars are a nice way to limit the possibilities, and thus maximise the necessity to get creative!

About that middle room: there were actually two in my original version, but I narrowed it down to just one (the other one has become a staircase to the second floor). The room in the middle is gonna be some sort of storage unit, or... hey, I just got an awesome idea! Since it's entirely above the common room, I might just throw out the bottom and turn the corridor into something of a mezzanine! With handrails instead of walls.

Okay, gotta get that fixed right now!

[bkh1914]

Since you asked about your inn's structure...

At one time I wanted to build a timber frame (post and beam) home and I studied it.

For your inn, you could easily remove the row of posts I've circled and
move the two posts forward to line up with the walls in the upstairs bedrooms.

Inn suggestions.jpg


All of the spans for floor beams and joists are well within normal practices.
(Beams run between the posts and joists run between the beams to support the floor.)

In real life, it's nice to have the post spacing consistent - less carpenter measurement errors.

[Caenwyr]

darn, will have to get that checked. Thanks BKH!

In the meantime, here's an update!!

Ridgebury Inn (2).jpg

[Larb]

You may as well have a railing overlooking the stairs leading up on the right side too. But yes, I think it looks much more interesting with the mezzanine.

[Caenwyr]

Hey Larb, that was a useful tip! I changed it, thanks!

I also added the chairs, benches and stools to the common room on the ground floor, did a bunch of tiny changes to the first floor, and added a second floor under the roof.

Oh, and I did an ISO drawing of the entire thing.

Ridgebury Inn (3).jpg

Still a lot to do though. But I've discovered I really like this sort of mapping!

[Caenwyr]

Update!

Ridgebury Inn (4).jpg

Added a tonof stuff around the main building.This was my first ever attempt at drawing trees, in fact!

Still got some shading todo, and then I'll go ahead and label it all... But that's for a future update.

[ThomasR]

It reminds me of Ilanthar's plans in this style which is high praise