Minecraft Build Project: Castle Ravenloft - Part 3

For this update, I opted to start with the floor of the Grand Entry, followed by the Hall of Faith leading up to the Chapel. I'll get to the Chapel itself later.

Next up was the Guest Hall. The alcove was a little difficult due to Minecraft blocks not curving. Other than that, this section was fairly easy.

 When I first set up the Dining Hall, I laid out the floor too early, not realizing how it lined up, but this was easily corrected.

After handling the Archer's Post on this side, along with the Turret Post, I realized I'll have to redo it on the other side so they line up.

Minecraft Build Project: Castle Ravenloft - Part 2

After successfully testing the height of the exterior walls, I put myself to work building the footprint of the castle walls. AGAIN.

I have some slight confusion until I realized the Roll20 map of the castle was slightly asymmetrical on the back end. After realizing this, I set up my build to match.

Once I finished the wall footprint, I started on the ground floor of the inner keep. This may be a challenge due to the difference in how walls work between D&D maps and Minecraft. That being said, I have previously built maps based on randomly generated maps from donjon, in which walls work very much like in Minecraft, making it easier. I also realized after the fact that I over-calculated the height of section K19, making it three times as high as it should have been. I'll have to fix that later.

Minecraft Build Project: Castle Ravenloft - Part 1

 I recently decided to try my hand at building the infamous Castle Ravenloft from Dungeons & Dragons, partially because I'm currently running the 5th Edition Ravenloft adventure Curse of Strahd on Roll20, and because it's been a long time since I've built anything particularly fancy in Minecraft.

 Using the top-down maps exclusive to Roll20 and the standard isometric maps for reference, I determined that the best scale would be four Minecraft blocks for every square in the D&D map. For reference, a block in Minecraft is one metre wide while a square in a most D&D maps is five feet. This conversion isn't exact, but it's close enough for my purposes.

 I opted to start with a footprint, going from the main gate outwards, trying to maintain symmetry. This required constant reference to the Roll20 map and careful calculation, but I eventually got the base for the outer walls done.

Unfortunately, I realized that the superflat preset I used went too far underground, severely limiting my upward building space. I couldn't even get the castle walls to their full height, so I had to start over.

The new map is only around 50 blocks deep, giving ample room to build both up, and down.

Source Mixing

Hello, and welcome to the Draconis Fantasy blog, my new blog for discussing various geek stuff, including tabletop roleplaying, as well as sci-fi and fantasy in various media.

What does the name Draconis Cosmic Fantasy refer to? It's in reference to a homebrew fantasy setting used in tabletop roleplaying I've been involved in since late 2009, though it had been around for four or five years before that.

While I might discuss that setting more in a later post, that's not what this first post is about. The majority of games played in this setting use systems for which the third-party licencing is through the Open Game Licence or OGL for short. That is what I'd like to talk about.

Introduced in 2000 by Wizards of the Coast as part of the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons, the OGL is in my opinion, one of the best things that's ever happened to tabletop roleplaying. As the name suggests, it takes an open source approach to game mechanics, allowing the same game systems to be used by a wide variety of publishers, as well as allowing them to build off each others' work.

Of course, as there is a great deal of intellectual property involved in tabletop gaming. This is handled in the OGL by Product Identity, meaning material that other publishers are not allowed to use. In general, this includes things like the name of one's products, artwork, as well as settings, characters and storylines. It's not unheard of to declare other elements, such as specific creatures, spells, or character options as Product Identity as well, like Beholders or Illithids in Dungeons & Dragons.

Now, it's easy to forget that Product Identity restrictions only apply to publishers, not to GM's. Obviously there's nothing wrong with playing with resources from one publisher, or sticking to Open Game Content and your own creations, but at the same time, when you're privately running the games, and not publishing or doing organized play, there's nothing stopping you from fully utilizing works from every publisher as a resource for your games.

So, if you want to throw a Beholder (Dungeons & Dragons) at a party of Hobbits (Adventures in Middle-Earth) or a Balrog (Adventures in Middle-Earth again) at a party of anthropomorphic dogs, nothing's stopping you. That's the beauty of the OGL.