FRP castles and fortifications

[kengr]

Ok, I've pretty much always thought that standard castles were a bad idea in a world with large flying monsters and wizards who can at as field artillery. You just can't have things open to the air like that.

Just roofing everything over won't work because then the bad guys can just land on the (mostly flat) roof. Or if its all slanty bits, then the valleys in between become weak points.

I seem to recall some folks suggesting domes, but that runs into a problem On hills, there's what's called the "military crest". That's the farthest up the hill that you can still see the base. That's important because if you can't see the base, then troops can gather there to attack you and you can't shoot at them.

With a dome, the military crest *is* the base because of the way a sphere curves outward. So what's needed is a constant slope.

and that's when it hit me. The ideal fortification for an FRP world is a bloody *pyramid*! Sure, you'll want to "towers" and "balconies to fire from, but the base structure is still a pyramid.

Yeah, the slope is easier to climb than a vertical wall, but not *that* much easier And the various strongpoints running up the edges and spaced along the faces will discourage that a lot.

Damn, I wish I'd thought of this when I was running a campaign. Seeing the players faces when they run into one would have been priceless.

Comments

[siliconshaman]

A pyramid on top of a box would work just as well... but a cone on top of a cylindrical castle structure would work even better. You could even add protruding turrets at the parapet level to increase your field of fire angle in order to protect the base of the castle. Although honestly, you could ahve a mix of designs, with steep slate roofs, cones and pyramids.

In effect, what you would have is something like this

[kengr]

Cones have the same sort of problem as spheres, you can't see past the "bulge". And the roofs on your example are not designed to have people fighting on them. Just to shed flaming projectiles and rain.

A box base is possible. I'm thinking a set of battlements at the top of the box (or an equivalent height up the sides of the pyramid. Complete with turrets (castle type, not gun type) at the corners.

Repeat as needed up the sides. and a lookout at the top.

Ventilation would important, but quite doable even without magic.

Sieges get interesting when you have purify food & water as well as *create* food and water. Cure disease will be a big help.

[fayanora]

I ran into this problem when I was introducing Annwn, but the solution I came up with probably works on other worlds as well. The one major city we see on Annwn in its intro has walls of Adamant (I think maybe silver given the Adamant enchantment, IIRC) but an open top. The solution was just simply "wards." IE various kinds of magic (such as force fields) kept flying things from going over the wall and invading the city. Of course wards can be attacked, there's a scene in book two where a place's wards get a hole punctured into them by a specialized magical artifact called a wardbuster, so it's not a guarantee. The wardbusters make a lot of noise and vibration though, buying time for the defenders to rally to fight the invaders.

I do like your pyramid idea, though. I may use that somewhere.

[fayanora]

What is FRP? Google was no help.

[kengr]

Fantasy Role Playing