Building a Tower (Part I)

I wanted to build a tower. Faced with the failure (or, in some ways, 'critical planning success') of my chapel model (as described in an earlier post), I rather lost heart in the project to make the buildings of the Keep for quite a while. 

Honestly the fact that the first thing I tried to build didn't work, in that I couldn't see a way to make all the details I had 'fit', left me wondering if the whole project was a goner. I thought I knew what I was doing with the Chapel, it seemed like it would be a relatively easy and useful start. But if the build I had identified as 'easy' (in design, not even building the finished thing from foamcore!) proved such a challenge, was I up for any of it?

But, Orc Minimus gave me an actual proper cutting-board for Christmas (not Christmas gone, the Christmas before, end of 2024). This was a couple of months after the chapel debacle, which took place in the second half of that year - I'd originally laid out the scheme in July 2024 (in this post) and around September-October, I did my experiments with the Chapel model.

Presumably, I'd spent so long swearing over bits of cardboard that the 'little one' (he's nearly 24) took pity on me and bought me the cutting-board. Cutting-mat. I dunno, whatever they're called. The green, slightly-floppy measurey ones with the grids and angles in a somewhat sci-fi way.

It's a marvellous thing. Much easier to see if things are square/the right size/the correct angle and all that. Light and easy to move and it doesn't hurt if I drop it on my foot, unlike the old wooden kitchen chopping-board I had been using to cut cardboard and whatnot on. A damned useful piece of kit.

If I have one criticism of it, and I do have one, it's that on one side, it's in metric, and on the other side... it's also in metric.

Now, I'm not crazy. I know, objectively, that measuring things in units of 100 is much easier than measuring them in 16ths of a dead Frenchman. Anyone from an Imperial country that disagrees, please explain why your currency does not use 4 farthings to the penny, 6 pennies to the shilling, 5 shillings to the crown, and 4 crowns to the pound. Metric, decimal, whatever, 100-of-these-make-1-of-those, is vastly simpler to use and much more flexible.

But... all of that time I spent messing about working out whether it's 6' to the inch or 5' to the inch... it doesn't matter. I can't really work in inches on the board anyway.

Of course, my steel rule has inches on it, inches on one edge, mm/cm on the other, but much of the utility of the cutting-mat disappears if you aren't using it for measuring. The old chopping-board I was using as a surface also 'didn't have inches on it' (nor centimetres neither), so if I wasn't using the mat for handy measuring, it would be hardly more useful than the chopping-board.

So; having agonised for far too long about it and eventually taken the decision that everything was going to be based on 1" = 5', I had to then convert that to metric.

Now, everything is going to be 25mm = 5'. Astute observers will know that 25mm does not in fact equal one inch, 25.4mm = one inch. But there's no way I'm working with that. It's going to be 25mm = 5', so 5mm = 1', and that's an end to it.

I don't even know what that makes my scale - not 1:60 (ie, 1"=60"/5'); not 1:72 (1"=72"/6' - at this scale, 5' would be about 22mm, I think) - it's just about 1:61, I reckon. My 'inch' (for this build, the whole Keep project, and I suspect forevermore, at least for terrain work, maybe not if I'm putting up new shelves) will be 25mm.

So, anyway, the mojo to build some buildings finally returned after the disappointment of the failure to successfully tackle the Chapel. 

I didn't attempt anything else as challenging for a while. What I did was print off a few downloadable cardboard kits and make them up. So it wasn't totally dead time. I still added a few bits to my 'village', if not to the project to build the structures in the Keep.

Then, my laptop decided to fry itself and I lost the files I had. I mean all the files. Everything relating to the project that wasn't already on the blog (that is, the 'mission statement' and a couple of draft posts about different aspects, with snippets of info - these were part of the post about the Chapel, and some musings about military organisation in the Keep (since turned into a proper post here) and the Caves, not even directly connected with terrain-building, that will appear as part of the project); also, along with much other stuff, I lost all the downloads of cardboard terrain I'd collected over the years, including a bunch of GW stuff that you can't get access to any more. 

That was a bit of pain I will admit. It did seem like the universe was conspiring against this project.

But, as I don't actually believe that, I eventually returned to it.

So, I decided to try and build a tower.

Now for some reason, I'd become confused (not helped by the fact I'd lost the pdf in the hard-drive disaster and didn't re-download it for a while, while simultaneously not bothering to check my tatty old paper copy of B2 - but the problem must have started earlier, I just took ages to correct it). I thought the tower I decided I would make - the Bailiff Tower - was this structure:

Structure 8 - a 30' square crenelated structure

I read the description of the Bailiff Tower - 30' square, four storeys, battlements; I looked at the map at structure 8 - 30' square, battlements, connected to defensive walls at east side, big doors in south wall. All good.

What I didn't realise was that I had applied description 6 (Bailiff's Tower) to structure 8 (the Smithy), and I was actually embarking on building this structure:

Structure 6 - the Bailiff's Tower

Same floorplan, same crenelations, just different connections to the walls and different doors (also the Smithy is only 2 storeys, but as I was building the structure from description 6 that lists 4 storeys, that wasn't a worry). Not a problem, once I realised my mistake, which came later in the planning process than it should have done. But it was at least before I got round to cutting anything, so no harm, no foul I suppose.

The parameters of the problem gradually revealed themselves to me when I started looking in detail at what the Tower was. There are two walls which connect to it; these, unlike in most of the towers on the circuit of walls, are not marked with doors. Conversely, the Bailiff Tower is not joined directly to the battlements the way some others are, so it isn't the same height as the walkway. This, quite frankly, must be a mistake; I can't see how it is not. The idea that the only entrance/exit to this tower is on the ground floor in the Outer Bailey, and that the tower itself is a massive block on moving troops around the walls, doesn't make any sense to me. There must be access from the walkways to the tower somehow. In defence of this thesis, the illustration from the back of the module bears this out, somewhat:

Original illustration by Erol Otus, (c) TSR/Wizards of the Coast

This illustration clearly shows the Bailiff's Tower protruding above the level of the walls to a considerable degree. But it makes no sense that it blocks access around the circuit of the curtain-walls (so, by my reckoning, there must be doors in the north and west faces of the tower leading to the walkways along the walls).

The question that arises first is 'where do the walls connect?'

The answer is - not surprisingly, perhaps - slightly complex. The information in the module is written for gaming purposes, it's not an architectural brief. The drawing is illustrative of the 'feel' of the Keep and is not necessarily strictly accurate (though honestly it's pretty good where I have checked details against the text). The height of the walls is not given anywhere in the description of the Keep that I've found, but I've extrapolated a height of 20' to the walkway, mostly from the description of the gate-towers at the Keep's entrance. These are listed as both "30' high with battlements" - by which I take it is meant "35' high including battlements" - and all also as having "three floors" - which I take to mean, apart from the ground floor, two more internal rooms, and then the fighting-platform on top (an easily-extrapolatable 10'=one storey rule seems to pertain here). These 'flanking towers' are described as being either side of a 'gatehouse' which is 20' tall. 

From the towers on the opposite sides to the gatehouse, curtain walls come out to further towers, and the Bailiff's Tower is one of these. My rationale for 20' walls is that they are likely shorter than the towers, and on the castle plan, doors from the 'flanking towers' to the walkways can be seen, suggesting that the towers occupy at least another storey above the level of the walkway. So if the 'flanking towers' are 30' (plus battlements) and 3 floors (plus fighting platform) then the walls are likely 20' (plus battlements). 

This means that the doors to connect the walkways with the Bailiff's Tower on the 2nd (for North America, read '3rd') floor of the tower: in British counting, 'ground' is 'floor 0' not floor 1 - the first floor is the 'first above ground', then 'second above ground' etc. So for a 20' high walkway (with another 5' of battlements) the door must also be 20' up (unless there are steps... no, I'm not putting random level-changes in, this will be done in as simple a way as I can). If the ground floor is 0-10', the next floor above that is 10-20', then it will be the floor above that, at 20-30', that has the door to the walkways on the walls.

There are four internal storeys to the Bailiff Tower - the ground floor (0-10') of offices for the Bailiff and Scribe; a floor above (10-20') is the personal quarters of those two; above that (20-30') is a storeroom; the uppermost (internal) floor (30-40') is a barracks-room for 12 soldiers; and on the roof is a fighting platform with 5' battlements. It's also described as a 40' high tower with a 5' battlement above it. I can't help but think that if I had started here, or with the Gatehouse, and not with the Chapel, I would have agonised far less about how high a 'storey' is.

The doors then likely lead to the floor that is the storeroom. I think that makes some sense from the point of view of organisation in the Keep, as that means that it could be used to easily resupply other parts of the defences if there was an attack (assuming there are doors, of course). Don't know if Gary thought of that when he was writing it, but it fits nicely anyway.

Bailiff's Tower, west elevation

The somewhat schematic diagram shows the lower door for entrance from the Outer Bailey, the hypothetical position of the southern wall of the Keep (the wall leading to the Bailiff's Tower in Erol Otus's illustration), with the proposed door as the entrance to the storeroom level, and the internal floors. On the north wall (which is on the left of this diagram), another door at the same height, and a similar wall-and-battlement structure, makes up the southern part of the east wall of the castle complex, leading to the 'flanking towers' of the Gatehouse. On my reckoning, the height of the Bailiff's Tower relative to the wall is slightly less than the illustration makes it, but I'm not taking the illustration as definitive.

This then became my basic plan for the Tower build.

At that point, I started to wonder if I could build the tower as a series of 'trays', one for each floor, and have fully-playable rooms. I did investigate this possibility: I built a card model of the ground floor (at least partly) and even drew some stonework on the side (I have some grey card I though would make a good stone surface), but have reluctantly put it aside, at least for the time being. I don't want to complicate things that much at the moment. Maybe, if I get a bit further with actual exteriors, I can start to worry about how I might model the interiors.

That all left me with a conceptual problem though. The point about these builds is supposed to be to try and get some playable terrain. What I am planning is a tower, which can be free-standing of course, something like a pele tower (also spelled peel tower... if you don't know about them, go and check them out, they're cool) from the Anglo-Scottish Border region.

However, a free-standing tower with a door in the corner at the bottom doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense if it also has two doors half-way up its walls on adjacent sides. 

It seemed to me there were three options. Maybe there are more, but these are the ones I came up with.

1 - model the tower as-is, with the upper doors, and add something to it to justify them. Perhaps there could be a gallery or some sort of porch-type structure to either cover them or utilise them;

2 - model the tower without them, but create some doors that could be attached somehow when used with the walls;

3 - model the tower without them, and attach the upper doors to the walls, rather than the tower, as the upper doors would only be necessary if the tower was used with the walls.

Of these, the second seemed like the system that would give me the greatest utility, without requiring a bunch of extra building. If I went for attaching the doors to the walls, I wouldn't be able to use the walls in a different configuration. If I attached some kind of ancillary structure, I would have to do a whole load of modelling on something that wouldn't work with the Keep. If I was going to do that, I might as well just build a pele tower, perhaps based on Smailholm Tower (link), one of my favourites, and not attempt to utilise the tower from the Keep at all. As the whole point of this build was to try to get some multi-use terrain with minimal building, the idea of building stuff that can't be used for the Keep makes no sense.

So I'll build a tower and worry about attaching doors to it later.

However, this post is now getting very long, perhaps I should leave it there and post Part II later.

Military Organisation of the Keep on the Borderlands

Or, 'Can I do KotB for Oathmark?'

Part of the motivation for starting the Keep build was obviously to play more games with suitable terrain. The Keep is a framework for building some things - a Chapel, a Tower, an Inn, a Fountain as a kind of village centrepiece in the market square...

But also, wargames need armies. I started to wonder if the Keep could also provide a framework for troop organisation.

As with many things about the Keep, the 'force organisation chart' is very complicated. There are, listed for the actual compliment of the Keep proper (not including the guards of the Jewel Merchant or the fanatical Guild guardsmen or anything), 238 'soldiers' of varying kinds and 10 what might be thought of as 'officers' or heroes.

But my idea of organising these as Oathmark units was sadly dashed. Or at least, much more complex than it seemed at first thought.

40-42 of the troops (it's not quite clear what two 'men-at-arms' are actually armed with) are equipped with pole-arms. These, perhaps, could be organised into 'Linebreaker' units for Oathmark - Human heavy infantry with 2-handed weapons.

However, Linebreakers are equipped with 'heavy' armour; only 4 of the Pole-arm troops are wearing plate, and 12 definitely are not wearing heavy armour at all, as they are listed as wearing leather armour. The 24-26 remaining men-at-arms with pole-arms are listed as wearing chain. This potentially could be classed as heavy armour; in that case they could make up units of Linebreakers with the plate-armoured troops (30 all together could potentially be split into 2-3 units).

That would leave 12 lightly-armoured, pole-armed men-at-arms. That's not a unit-type that exists in Oathmark, unfortunately. The situation would be worse if chain is deemed 'light' rather than 'heavy'; in that case, only 4 of the (potentially) 42 pole-armed troops would be able to make up a unit - at least, if they kept their pole-arms. Most of these also have access to hand-axes or swords and shields, so could potentially provide 38 bodies for 'Soldier' units, with light armour (ie chain or leather) and shield, and sword or hand-axe. That would already be nearly two full units, which sounds like it would be a good start to an Oathmark Human army.

On top of that there are 54 chain-clad men-at-arms with crossbows and probably 46 men-at-arms with longbows (6 are just listed with 'bows' but all the other men-at-arms with bows have specifically longbows). This means there are 100 troops in chain with different types of bows.

If chain is heavy armour (see the Linebreakers above) then these 100 troops are not a legal troop-type in Oathmark. There are no heavy-armour Human troops with bows (there are no specific crossbow, longbow, shortbow units for Humans in Oathmark, just units of Archers with light armour and bows, and unarmoured, bow-wielding Rangers; all the various various crossbow and longbow contingents from the Keep would just have 'bows'). If the chain-clad troops can be classed as 'Linebreakers' (heavy) then the chain-clad 'Archers' (light) can't be legal for Oathmark, and vice versa.

Even if the chain-clad Archers are considered 'light', there are still 100 of them. This would give 5 units of Archers, as maximum unit size is 20. However, Oathmark has a limit of 4 units of any one troop type, so even accepting them as 'light' would disqualify 20 of them from being in a legal Oathmark army.

Whatever the classification of chain, the further 32 plate-wearing crossbowmen are automatically illegal under Oathmark rules, as there are no 'heavy' archers.

So, the best we can do so far is 30 Linebreakers and 132 disqualified bowmen in heavy armour along with 12 disqualified light-armoured pole-armed troops, or probably 38 lightly-armoured Soldiers and 80 (4 units of) Archers, also in light armour, and at this point only 52 disqualified archers, and a few 'heavy' troops that can't make a viable unit (the 4 actual plate-armoured, pole-armed troops).

After that, there are 32 men-at-arms with plate, shield and sword. These are a perfectly legal heavy infantry type, 'Warriors', the heavily-armoured version of 'Soldiers', and could make up two 16-man units of this type (or a 20 and a 12, etc).

That is (30+[12]+[132]+32=206) or (38+80+[52]+{4}+32=206) where brackets denote [illegal] or {probably unviable} units. Categorising chain as 'light' armour saves many more troops at the expense of dispensing with the pole-arms.

The remaining 32 troops are cavalry. 12 are heavily-armoured in plate armour, and carry swords and shields. In Oathmark, Human Heavy Cavalry is usually thought of as using spears or lances but their equipment categorisation is 'Hand Weapon'. It is perfectly possible to field these troops, though the maximum size for a cavalry unit is 10. Perhaps attaching three of the 'officers' and fielding three units of 5 Heavy Cavalry would be an option. Of the 20 remaining, 18 of the cavalry have chain and crossbows, but again there is the problem of armour and crossbows, but even more acutely than with the infantry - whatever chain is classed as, there are no mounted archers with any armour in the Human list. The remaining 2 cavalry troops are described as lightly-armoured couriers. It could however be reasonable to put these 20 cavalrymen together and make two units of Cavalry with light armour.

As it stands the troop-types in KotB are not a great fit for Oathmark but a relatively-simple solution would be swapping some crossbows or longbows for pole-arms, particularly, or sword and shield when not possible. Given that the maximum number of lightly-armoured archers is 80, the 'current' number of 132 archers is too high for a viable Oathmark force, whatever their armour type. The 52 unviable troops are divided between 32 plate-clad and 20 chain-clad troops. The 32 in plate could take up some of the abandoned pole-arms to become Linebreakers (with the four actual plate-and-pole-arm troops), and the remaining 20 could join their sword-and shield, chain-clad brethren to be another unit of Soldiers.

This would give something like the following list:

3 units of Soldiers - light (chain or leather) armour, sword or axe, shield - 58 (+1 officer)

4 units of Archers - light armour, crossbow or longbow ie 'bow' - 80

2 units of Warriors - heavy armour, sword, shield - 32 (+2 officers)

2 units of Linebreakers - heavy armour, pole-arm - 36 (+2 officers)

2 units of Cavalry - light armour, shield, hand weapon - 20

3 units of Heavy Cavalry - heavy armour, shield, hand weapon - 12 (+3 officers)

The majority of the officers or other 'heroes' in the Keep are unproblematic - seven of them, from the three corporals to the Castellan himself - are armed with swords and shields and wear heavy armour. There are also seven units with heavy armour in the proposed list. Perhaps the Castellan leads one unit of Heavy cavalry, a Captain the second and a Corporal the third; the Bailiff leads a unit of Warriors and a Corporal the second; and the remaining Captain the first unit of Linebreakers and the last Corporal the second. There are at least 40 pole-arms in the Keep, as 40 (or possibly 42) are armed with them in the original list, and I only have 36 'Linebreakers'. There are enough pole-arms for anyone joining the unit, such as the Corporal, to be armed with one. The Sergeant, who wears chain (and therefore, probably light) armour, could join a unit of Soldiers. 

But this is not the only possible way to slice the organisational pie - just a first, reasonable-looking pass. I'm sure I could tinker greatly with this list, if I ever get any games in anyway. One problem with it is that I have magicked up a few extra warhorses. There are only 30 in the Keep, according to the original list, along with some riding horses; I have somehow managed to conjure 15 Heavy Cavalry and 20 (Light) Cavalry without a problem, which is perhaps slightly cheating, given the constraints I have set myself. On the other hand, Human Cavalry in Oathmark are not noted as riding 'Warhorses' specifically, so perhaps it doesn't matter. The heavier horses are prioritised for the Heavy Cavalry and the last line of (Light) Cavalry has lighter horses, perhaps.

Though several of the officers and 'heroes' of the KotB garrison have magical weapons, this would not really be permitted in Oathmark. Oathmark has a system for unit officers that allows special characters to be the commander of a unit, but there are limits to how many of these special characters can be taken, and only these special characters can have magical weapons or equipment. It is likely that a standard Oathmark force-organisation chart would only allow 3 or 4 of these 'officers' to be special characters. The others would just be normal representatives of their unit-type. Perhaps the Castellan and Bailiff could be considered as 'Captains' in Oathmark terms and the two Captains in the Keep would be considered 'Champions'; or perhaps the Castellan would be considered a General, and the Bailiff and one of the Captains (probably the one leading the Linebreakers in the example above) would be Oathmark 'Champions'. The other two officer/hero-types that might be considered are the Castellan's Elven advisor and Clerical scribe; these may be considered as spell-casters in Oathmark terms (neither, I think, would be allowed to wear armour in this role). They somewhat stand outside the normal 'force organisation'.

This, of course, pre-supposes emptying the Keep and engaging an enemy on open ground. And what enemy? Well, in Oathmark terms, maybe the enemy should be the inhabitants of the Caves of Chaos. That would be an entirely different beast in terms of force-organisation, and will require much thinking about...

Not Building a Chapel

A while back (link here), I had an idea for trying to build some of the buildings in the Keep on the Borderlands. I started - at least, as far as trying to do a mock-up of one of the buildings. My idea was to start with the Chapel (building 17 on the Keep floorplan). This, I was certain, was a good start. I thought I could use it as a free-standing chapel or temple building if I needed such a thing for gaming. A chapel is always useful, right? My plan was to do it in a style that would more-or-less fit medieval Europe, a Warhammer-y fantasy early-modern Europe analogue, could be in Middle-earth with a bit of squinty side-eye, would serve as an old chapel in more modern Victorian sci-fi-ish gaming, or could even be a non-ruined building in the 41st Millennium, if they have non-ruined buildings. A generic stone hall-type building of vaguely religious bent - that could cover a lot of genres of gaming. Re-using anything to do with wargaming always seems like a good idea to me (I don't have infinite space or money, so anything has to be potentially able to serve a variety of functions), so, enthused with the idea that it would fit with almost anything I was likely to do, I embarked on the planning process.

It was not a good start. 

I'm going to quote from the description of the Chapel in the module:

"This building has a peaked roof two stories tall; the interior is one large room. The altar is located at the eastern end, with a colored glass window (worth 350 g.p. intact) above it; the window is 20’ tall and 8’ wide."

This was all fairly understandable, I thought. Looking at the map, the Chapel is 60' long and 20' wide, with doors at the west end. So far so good.

Excerpt from the plan of the Keep in The Keep on the Borderlands (c) TSR/Wizards of the Coast

I got into a bit of a flap about what a 'peaked roof two stories tall' meant however. Did it mean the roof was two storeys tall, atop a building of unknown height? Did it mean the building was two storeys tall including the roof? These speculations came back to haunt me later, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm pretty certain it was intended to mean, 'a peaked roof that makes the building two storeys tall at its peak' (the quotes obviously are in American English but I'm British, a 'story' to me is a told narrative, the floor of a building is a 'storey'). On this interpretation, I just need to know what 'two storeys' means. I decided that to keep things simple I would treat each storey as 10' (though I did flirt for a while with 12' - see below for 1:72 v 1:60).

This gave me the basic (in-game) dimensions of the building - 60' by 20' by 'two storeys' = 20'.

But what does this look like in practice?

I have generally applied a 1:72 or sometimes1:75 scale to my gaming involving miniatures. Both D&D and Warhammer use Imperial measurement, so I assumed that 1"=6' (one inch = 6 feet/72 inches). This after all was the scale of minis back in the day - if 25mm = 1" (it doesn't but close enough) then a 1" or 25mm mini represents a 6' (72") person. All well and good, that's 1:72. Later I decided that 4mm might equal 1', but as I never got round to building anything related to that scale it didn't matter. My D&D playing never really got to the 3rd Ed+ 'battlemat'-style of play (maybe that was 4th Ed, I don't really know) so I didn't do the 5' square thing that became very popular. I'm an old-school-10'-blue-squares-kinda guy.

So, how to convert 10' squares into terrain? It never bothered me before, I just made what I had and hoped it would kind-of fit. But now I was making a model to a pre-existing plan, based mostly on 10' squares, and occasional descriptions to fill in details.

I spent a lot of time going backwards and forwards between 1"=6' and 1"=5'. I should not have bothered. The sheer faff of trying to 5/6 or 6/5 everything was a baffling ordeal. I decided in the course of the planning for this build that from now on, 1:72 be damned, 1:60 is the way to go. 1"=5' and that's an end to it. I think this is the scale of the D&D battlemats so that's good... though the Keep in plan is 365' north-south - if I ever get the whole thing built, that will be 73", which is an inch over 6 feet; at 1:72 it would 'only' be a shade under 62", or 5-foot-2. But even though it increases the size by 6/5, it's so much easier to work with 1'=5" so that's what I decided would be the scale. And will be for all future builds I do that concern minis (and why would they not concern minis?).

So I decided on a scale, and started with a model-of-my-model. I have some foamcore - I bought it quite recently for building models, but have not used it yet, so thought I would use it for this build. But before I started hacking up my foamcore I thought I would plan out the build in cardboard just to see if it looked right. I can get cereal-box card out of the recycling, so I decided rather than jump straight in with the somewhat expensive foamcore (more expensive than 'free', anyway) I might as well build a test model to make sure I was happy.

So, I went back to the description. OK, questions about the exact meaning of 'two storeys' aside... peaked roof... well, that's pretty clear isn't it? It's not a flat roof; the roof is not a single slope from a higher wall to a lower; it's not a barrel-vault. Fine. I can work with a peaked roof (probably easier than working out how to do a vaulted roof). It doesn't say if it's a moderately-steeply-peaked roof, as in a more 'Gothic' style of architecture, or if it's a shallower angle of roof, a more 'Romanesque' style that you might find in Ravenna, let's say (which, though not so well represented on game-boards, is something of the model for Gondor, for example, both in Tolkien's imagination, and in terms of the visual language of Jackson's films). So I thought I would explore both. These are two of the potential designs I came up with for the west (entrance) end, based on 'two storeys' being 20' (bear in mind I've now gone from 1 square = 10', as in the plan, to 1 square = 5' = 1", for modelling purposes).

'Gothic' and 'Romanesque' (Classical?) west elevations

But the description also mentions a stained glass window, 20' tall in the east end. But the whole building is only 20' tall (ie, two stories) isn't it? Maybe I'm getting my storeys wrong. 2&1/2 inches? 3 inches? This moves my 10' storeys to 12'6" or even 15'.

I can't change the storeys that much. That would make everything far too tall, I think. Maybe I could make the walls of the building two storeys, with the roof on top of that? So I started playing about with elevations for the east end. There's no indication that there's any kind of internal differentiation; in fact, in the description it says 'the interior is one large room' - no mention of subdivisions or towers or anything. So my assumption is, the east and west elevations must match. Therefore, I need to find an elevation that works at the east end, with the window, then take out the window and add the doors for the west end. Simple. These are two of the elevations I came up with (there was a third intermediate form with a 45° pitch) - now abandoning any idea that 'two storeys' meant the total - it had to be the hight of the building without the roof... maybe... because I couldn't see how the stained-glass window could start at ground-level, it had to be raised somewhat, surely?

Potential east elevations

So, this is where I got to with the elevations. I took the (perhaps arbitrary) decision that the window would start 10' up the wall. Suddenly the building was not 20' tall, but 35' tall, in order to accommodate a 20' tall, 8' wide window. And, the Romanesque version at least looked like it would be 30' to the top of the wall - that was starting to look like three storeys, and that without the roof.

But it got worse. Consulting the plan again I realised that the Chapel butts up against another building at its east end - the end with the window. Checking against the description of location 4 - the Stables, which are the building immediately to the east - one finds this information:

"4. COMMON STABLE: This long building is about 15’ high, with a 3’ parapet* atop its flat roof, so that it can be used in defense of the gate. The gateside wall is pierced for archery..."

So the parapet (leaving aside the notion that it's only 3' high for now, that can't mean what it appears to mean) is used for defence, and is on the opposite side from the Chapel. But the whole building is still 15' high and has a flat roof. The side that is adjacent to the Chapel is 15' high.

Now there is no possibility that the window starts below the level of the building immediately to the east of it, that is absurd - unless the window predates the stables, and the latter was constructed against the wishes of the Chapel authorities... I could go with that but it seems pretty far-fetched, and I don't want to waste time explaining that the building 'mistake' isn't my mistake, it's part of the history of the castle. So the window must be at least 15' above ground level, and add a further 20' on top of that, and it can't go right the way to the roof, there must be some clearance at the top... and that would put the bottom of the window on the same level as soldiers fighting on the roof of the stable, risking them toppling into the window if they were injured up there...

The simplest solution to the whole problem is to assume that the building itself was 'two storeys' - that is 20' - and the roof was on top of that, and also, that the height of the widow was included in the roof and not the height of the building (ie, the bottom of the window was also at 20').

So I came up with the following elevation...

West elevation with 'tall' roof

Gone was any notion I could do a 'Romanesque' version of this. I could just about sneak a 'Gothic' arched window under a steeply-pointed roof; the possibility to do the same with a rounded window on a roof with a shallow pitch would have meant walls 40' (four storeys, not two) high.

So this is what I went with - a 45' high, 20' wide, 60' long Chapel, with the window taking up almost the entire height of the roof, starting 20' above ground-level. It was the only way I could see to get all the pieces to fit.

And it looked rubbish.

The whole thing was a daft, spindly thing that was far too tall (and long) for its width. I hated it.

I can only assume that Gary Gygax never build cardboard models of all of this (or maybe he did and he thought it looked OK - which is fine, we all have different appreciations of aesthetics). Either way... this was a success, in that I didn't waste the foamcore (it's still in the loft in its pristine state, and I'm still playing with cardboard), but also, a failure in that I didn't get a model chapel either for my 'Keep' gameboard or for anything else.

So I shelved the plans until I came up with a solution.

My favoured solution at the moment is, there is no stained-glass window. Maybe I will revisit this sometime and see what other solutions I can come up with but if - and it's a big 'if', now - if I build the Chapel, I will probably do it without the window. It's the only way I can see to make it work. And in that case, I might do it in a Romanesque style for two reasons. The first is that I like the look of it (I went to Ravenna on a college trip in 2010, it was absolutely amazing, architecturally and historically) and don't see it on many gaming boards; and the second is that I still have plans to drop the Keep into northern Gondor (as I first hinted at nearly a decade ago here) and see what happens. In that case, the Ravenna-ish feel of the Romanesque frontage might be more appropriate.

And that is where I left the Chapel, and for a while, the task of building the various locations in the Keep.

So, then, I tried to build a tower...

Building on the Borderlands

This is both a reminiscence and a mission statement.

The Keep from the southwest; from the back cover, Erol Otus's evocative illustration, (c) TSR 1980 and now (c) WotC

The Keep on the Borderlands - D&D Module B2 - is an iconic module. Since its first publication in 1980, it's been estimated that more gamers have had a copy of Keep on the Borderlands than any other module, in part because it was packaged with later printings of Holmes Basic, and then Moldvay Basic (visit the wiki page if you like).

That may no longer be true; Lost Mines of Phandelver may have overtaken it, for all I know, but whether it's still number one is not really important. It is an icon because so many have taken that journey that leads to the castle on the hill, at the edge of the forest, and gone on from there to explore the forest itself, and the Caves of Chaos it contains.

It was my introduction to D&D, and to RPGs. I got the D&D Basic Set for Christmas in 1981. Years later, I thought it was Christmas 1980 - but the Moldvay Basic Set wasn't released then, so it can't have been. My brother and I were players, and my Dad was DM in those first sessions. We had a rip-roaring time. I'd forced my brother and my parents to roll up characters, and my Dad had read enough of the rules to grasp that we needed a party to go adventuring, so my brother and I each ran two characters. I ran Eilea, an Elf, and Weredath, a Dwarf, while my brother ran Gilidor and Calorian, two Fighters. We also had along Althan, a Cleric, and Retep, a Thief, who were my Dad's characters. They were somewhere between PCs and NPCs, as my brother and I controlled them. My Dad - through the Captain of the Guard at the Keep - made it known that there were a couple of demobbed men-at-arms that might be keen to sign up for a cut of the treasure, so we were joined by Aluf and Elric, also Fighters. And thus our party of eight went adventuring.

It was amazing and inspiring, and complete carnage. From memory, Aluf was the first of our party to die, but after only a few sessions, many more had joined him. I particularly remember Weredath's death, charging after the 'Bree-Yark!' Goblins, straight into the main mass of Goblinry and their pet Ogre. The rest of the party brought down the Ogre and in the stunned silence that followed, I had Eilea climb on its corpse and make a speech (I'd picked Goblin as her extra language, fortunately enough). "See, dwellers in the Underworld, how your mightiest has fallen! Begone, lest we slay you all!" I don't know if my Dad rolled for that or just ruled that she intimidated them with chutzpah (what's the Elvish for chutzpah? I wonder...), but whatever - it worked, and the Goblins temporarily fled. We took the opportunity to go further into the complex. However, the Goblins were not the only enemies we found down there and between the Goblins, now recovered from their fright, and the Hobgoblins we had also succeeded in riling, the now somewhat-depleted party was outmatched, and not long after that, we made a retreat.

Then we were attacked by Bugbears in the woods. I'm sure they took Althan, and maybe Calorian then. Of that party of eight, I think only Eilea and Gilidor made it back to the Keep, with a couple of bags of loot. But my brother and I thought it was great. We'd really enjoyed it and played a lot more in coming years, with various friends, and always from then me DMing - using B2 as the setting often, especially in the first few years.

Anyway - B2 has always held a special place in my heart, as my first gaming setting. That's why I've actually started a new campaign and the first sessions - if they even happen - will be run using Keep as the basis. But I'll talk about those in another post.

These days it seems harder to organise games than it used to. Adults don't find it quite so easy to organise their free time to fit in with other people's free time. This blog isn't just about D&D, though that has been a major part of it, it's also about tabletop wargaming - which usually only takes two. Less dependent on getting a bunch of people together. So when I'm not pondering a new D&D campaign, I often think about battle-games instead.

I'm not a very 'good' wargamer. I'm not very dedicated, usually. I like Warhammer and 40K and Kings of War and whatnot, but I don't play them often. I have loads of rulesets for tabletop battle-games I've never even played. At the moment, that includes Oathmark. But, I'm sort-of determined to try to get some Oathmark games in soon. Definitely this year if I can manage it.

So if I'm serious about getting some games in, I should get my mojo working. I need to build armies - I need to paint minis, and in fact I need to physically turn boxes of multipart kits into troops. I need to create terrain, because I need various things for my troops to fight over.

I'm sure I'll be posting about minis and army-building as well, but this post is really about terrain.

I started looking at cardboard models, downloaded some, printed them out and made some up. I don't know why, but some of the tiles and suchlike started suggesting to me that I could build a tower or a walkway of a certain size. Idly I began comparing them to the map of the Keep, the rest of the castle and its buildings, and the idea of building the Keep came into my head.

I'm not a maniac. I know that is a mammoth undertaking - the Keep, at a scale of 10'=2" is larger than a standard 6'x4' table for Warhammer. Even a table that size is too big for my dining room. But what, I thought, if I can build freestanding buildings with the same footprint as those from the Keep map? Might I be able to use them in my games of Oathmark? If I build the Chapel (17) as a freestanding building, I can use it as a chapel or temple in Oathmark. If I build the Tavern (15) and Inn (14), the Fountain (13), the Bank (11), the Stables (4) and Warehouse (5)... could I not use these to make a 'village' with my other cardboard buildings? And eventually, could I build some walls and towers, to create the Outer Bailey of the Keep?

And if I can do that, can I not create the rest of the walls and towers, and the Keep of the Castellan itself? If I could, then perhaps I'd be able to run games centred on the Keep, using my somewhat limited space to set up either the Outer or the Inner Bailey as necessary?

That's the plan anyway. Of course, as anyone who reads this blog knows (and I know there aren't many of you), I sometimes plan on doing things that never happen. But, this is really no more than 'I'm planning to make some buildings as terrain'. The fact that the buildings will be made to an existing plan will, I am confident, make things easier not harder. I may be wrong of course, I often am about gaming things. But, I expect I will get a certain enjoyment out of it anyway, even if I am wrong. But what's the worst that can happen? I think it's unlikely I'll fail completely. Even if I only build a few buildings, that's a few more than I had before. That's still a win. As long as I get one more building in a state fit for a table, that's still a win.

I shall of course keep readers informed as to progress (if any). There had better be some, I've made a new 'Building on the Borderlands' tag for this. That's how you know I'm serious. Wish me luck!