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JustineZxy In reply to FranciscoKH [2017-05-07 23:06:34 +0000 UTC]

Aww thank you very much! Yeah, the clouds look flat for me too, could use more studies with it, thank you for the feedback!  

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FranciscoKH In reply to JustineZxy [2017-05-08 18:01:44 +0000 UTC]

your welcome ! i really like your art ! keep the good work 

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JustineZxy In reply to NonieR [2017-03-15 08:18:10 +0000 UTC]

Hey thank you dude!  Well, the water does end near the curved rock, and will have to walk through the rest of the way to get to the gate.   Thanks for pointing that out though, will need to make those kind of things clearer in my future works  

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NonieR In reply to JustineZxy [2017-03-17 23:49:49 +0000 UTC]

It all depends on the purpose of the gate--or how much the landscape's changed since the gate was built, like Gandalf pointing out that the sullen lake before the gate of Moria was higher than it used to be. (I forget if that's in the movie 'cause I grew up on the books and re-read 'em every year or two.)

The biggest problem I have with gaming dungeons, castles, etc., as well as the ones in a lot of fantasy books, is that they're usually designed only to fit the story rather than following even the slightest common-sense architecture you'd expect from a place where people actually LIVE. In the real world, most outside doors/gates are designed for people or vehicles to get in and out of, several times a day in most cases, which means almost nobody would build a gate-into-water for anything but a boathouse (public or for secret smuggling), any more than you'd usuall put a public door at the top of a thousand stone steps without a rail, etc.

My first year or two of D&D (back in the late '70s), I did the same sort of whimsical mapping everybody else did, like a series of rooms where the first one has a hallway door but the others only connect to the first one, in a series going on for hundreds of yards/metres--which would be inconvenient for the tenant AND for anyone cleaning the floors, changing the bedding, just trying to get fresh AIR all the way back there.... Ditto personal suites that can only be reached by a concealed door on the main hallway ceiling, which would be a real pain to get yourself and your stuff in and out of, AND with no way to exit that isn't in plain sight of anyone using the hallway.

After that, I decided an old dwarven city would mostly be built according to common sense, like large main entrances leading to large road corridors, smaller roads leading off the big ones, most doors from the main roads leading into suites of rooms like a house or business, rather than random rooms everywhere, and so on. Dwarves being the wary and private people they are, a reasonable number of secret doors & chambers would exist, but again, common sense would put most secret doors where random passersby wouldn't see you enter & exit 'em from the main roads, etc.

I've come to particularly treasure books from historians like Barbara Hambly, who knows that stinky things like dyeworks and any open sewers would be put DOWNwind of your castle or wizard's tower if at all possible; that you need room for your servants (if any), your food and fuel stores, your domestic animals, and all the rest. I've really enjoyed seeing how many kids' & teens' books come out explaining how castles & cathedrals & oil rigs are built, bioth in theory and how the work was actually done ("These men are mixing the mortar that will be used to...").

I don't mean that I try to be historically realistic in every detail my games & stories; just that I try not to be a total idiot, and adding just one or two details really helps the gamers/readers feel their way into the world.

--Nonie

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