About Source Maps: Castles

This demo shows one set of castle info. There are twenty five castles in all!

Ah, castles! The height of medieval cultural and military development, even those which are now millennium-stained ruins still evoke our wonder and impress us with their testimony to the dedication and power of the people that built them. Little wonder that they figure so prominently in our stories and games. The greatest of the noble and the basest of the ignoble reside in castles, from which they dominate all the surrounding territory. The information for a particular castle is divided into three categories, Historical, Maps, OGL Adventure and Images .

Historical Information

The first part of this section, is History, which gives the background of the castle. The next section is the Purpose section, which describes in what role the castle served historically.

Maps

The menu provides links to the CC2 Pro floorplans. A click will open up a new instance of CC2 Pro, or CC2 View and show the appropriate map.

Images

These include photos and drawings from a variety of sources.

Adventure Game Material

Now we enter the realm of fantasy. The material that follows is for players of roleplaying games (RPGs), and in particular the most famous RPG of them all. If you don’t know what a roleplaying game is, see this article .

For the gamer we’ve taken the CC2 Pro plans for each castle and used them as inspiration for twenty-five fantasy castles, adding inhabitants and adventure seeds for each described in OGL format. The adventures cater for a variety of levels and alignments, and they can be slotted in to almost any campaign, but with the added veracity of floorplans and design based on real-world castles.

Under the OGL Adventure heading, we have Residents, Defenses and Garrison.

The Residents section, details the characters and creatures who call the castle home. Regardless of whether rulers are haughty knights, scheming wizards, or vile fiends, the castle is the embodiment of their might and importance. This section begins with a brief introduction of its own, including scenario suggestions and a recommendation as to which player character levels will find the castle and its residents to be an appropriate challenge or patron. It also contains the game statistics for the creatures and objects found in and around the castle.

Garrison details the soldiers who guard the castle and the surroundings. It can include foot soldiers and artillerists.

Next, there is a section describing the castle Defenses. This indicates what fantastic as well as mundane steps the residents have taken to defend the castle, in addition to the strength of the castle walls and the garrison. It can include large-scale weapons and magical protections. Obviously not all residents have the capability to erect magical defenses so some of the castles have a gap in their armor for the cunning to exploit.

Using the Adventures

Source Map: Castles! is somewhat atypical as a fantasy RPG supplement. As usual, you get maps, monsters, characters, treasure and a setting in which they reside. But as part of the CC2 Pro program suite, you also get the tools to modify the plans to suit you and your game. As a result, the authors of the adventure supplement materials have focused on detailing the characters and creatures for the settings. But they have not specified in great detail the placement of monsters, traps or treasures in the castles presented. Suggestions on placement have been made, or general descriptions of how a trap is positioned have been supplied. The expectation is that shortly after the supplement is opened, the referee is going to be using these tools to modify the maps and descriptions to suit the game in which it will be used. So, rather than provide a detailed, step-by-step recipe for how an adventure should unfold, placement and events have been left open. After all, the referee is the final link in the creative chain that brings the adventure to life for the players, and only the referee can choose how the NPCs and their resources are arranged and deployed.

Overview of Adventures

The following table gives an overview of the castle adventures available. See the explanation of terms below the table.

Castle Name	Orientation	Nature of Leader	Suitable PC Level
Ballymalis	Good to Neutral	Rogue	1-3
Beaumaris	Good to Neutral	Fighter	7-9
Castello dei Conti Guidi	Good to Neutral	Monk	7 - 9
Castel del Monte	Evil	Sorcerer	13-16
Chillon	Evil	Cleric	15-20
Conwy	Good to Neutral	Aristocrat (elf)	18 - 20
Deal	Good to Neutral	Fighter (dwarf)	11 - 15
Fort Bellegarde	Good to Neutral	Paladin	8-10
Fort Sumter	Evil	Fighter	15 - 17
Goodrich	Evil	Aristocrat	8-10
Harlech	Evil	Wizard	10-12
Japanese	Good to Neutral	Fighter	10-12
Kidwelly	Good to Neutral	Fighter & Expert	6 - 8
Krak de Chevaliers	Evil	Wizard (monster)	13 - 15
La Belle Colline	Evil	Wizard (monster)	5-7
Motte & Bailey	Good to Neutral	Barbarian	13 - 15
Peñafiel	Evil	Fighter (goblinoid)	7 - 9
Pfalzgrafenstein	Neutral	Aristocrat	4 - 6
Raglan	Evil	Wizard (drow)	epic (25)
Restormel	Neutral	Expert	1 - 3
Roman Base	Evil	Aristocrat/Fighter	1 - 3
Somoskö	Evil	Fighter	4 - 6
Tarasp	Evil	Aristocrat	6 - 8
Vampire	Evil	Aristocrat (undead)	11 - 13
Wizard’s Castle	Good to Neutral	Dragon	epic (25)

Orientation: Good to Neural indicates that the castle residents are prone to cooperate with a classic good-to-neutral PC group. Evil means that the residents are unlikely to cooperate with a typical PC Group . Neutral indicates that the residents motivation is primarily pecuniary in nature. Class: Class of the dominant individual(s). If non-human, or significant non-human presence, race or "monster" as a catch-all is in parentheses. Level: Roughly indicative of an appropriate level for PCs. "Roughly" because it is possible to interact with the castle and its residents in a manner that does not involve a direct confrontation. Smart, experienced players can get more out of 10th-level characters than less experienced players, and the actual mix of PCs and their possessions also has a big impact.

Castles vs Dungeons

Certainly the interior of a castle is quite like a subterranean labyrinth. Where a castle can differ from a dungeon are often very well organized and have quite a high population. The distribution of monster or NPC levels is also different from the classic dungeon setting. The highest-level opponents may be ten or more levels above the much more numerous low-level opponents. Adventurers may make their way by stealth or subterfuge into the interior of a castle, only to be discovered and faced with fighting their way back out. With a seemingly inexhaustible supply of low-level opponents on every side, this can be quite a daunting prospect.

From the exterior, a castle is unlike a typical dungeon setting. A party of four 5th-level adventurers might sneer at a room full of 20 1st-level fighters in studded leather armor encountered in a dungeon. The same 20 1st-level fighters behind the crenelations at the top of a 20-foot stone wall is a much tougher prospect. Sure, the wizard may get some of them with a fireball, but then the survivors know whom the wizard is!

Scale this up to a large castle that can simultaneously bring scores of archers to bear, send forth a sally of heavily armed cavalry on warhorses, and whose spell casters go into action at the same time. This is a significant challenge. If things go well for a party of adventurers, a castle can be easy. But the opportunity for them to be overwhelmed is considerably greater than inside the narrow confines of a dungeon.

For this reason, the suggested player character levels need to be understood for what they are: a suggestion. They are based on the appropriate level of player characters to face the principle NPCs or monsters that inhabit the castle. If those principle opponents can be dealt with in isolation, the PCs should emerge victorious. If these more powerful adversaries are shielded or supported by their massed underlings when they confront the PCs, the challenge is much tougher. Remember it is perfectly possible for a referee to use castles whose principle NPCs are massively more powerful than his players. They may be taken there as prisoners and have to escape, they may be sent as ambassadors, spies or even offer themselves as recruits or minor allies. Similarly many of these castles contain inhabitants who live in an atmosphere of mutual distrust and constantly plot against each other. A cunning party of player characters could bring the garrison down from within by allowing this feuding to break out into violent faction fighting.

Treasure

Another thing that it is important to balance is the amount and types of treasure. This is another area where a referee using a supplement must exercise caution. The NPCs in these scenarios have equipment that is appropriate for characters of their level. In many cases, NPCs have functional treasures such as potions and scrolls. Even the dullest man-at-arms can comprehend orders from his commanding officer that indicate he does not use these blessed magics for shooting at the orcs from the parapets, but that he does use his oil of magic weapon and drink his potion of aid when he sees a small group of mixed sexes and races floating over the walls and slinging magic like throwing confetti at a parade. In other words, intelligent opponents use their magic to best advantage in a fight. They are not just holding it for the adventurers until the latter come to claim it.

By the same token, classic "lair treasures," such as locked and trapped chests full of coins and gems, have only been specified where they are germane to the suggested plot. Most of the wealth of a castle is tied up in the structure itself, and in the outfitting of its residents. Certainly rich and powerful castle residents are wealthy, but their wealth often takes the form elegant attire, artwork, and the ultimate expression of conspicuous consumption: lots of retainers. The referee is encouraged to add or subtract treasure as appropriate.

Required References

The RPG material conforms to the Revised Standard Reference Document, version 3.5, henceforth referred to as the SRD. The SRD is referenced frequently throughout these scenarios, and it is assumed that the reader has access to it and is familiar with its contents. For more information see Licenses. We include an extra section of adventure material including rules for siege machinery and new magic.

Statistics Blocks

Descriptions of creatures, communities and objects in an RPG use a compact notation to describe the game statistics for that feature of the scenario. The OGL-based games have a standard format for a creature's statistics block that tends to vary a bit from place to place. There are three different stat blocks used in this supplement: the creature stat block, the trap stat block, and the community stat block. Full details on the format of the statistics blocks, or "stat blocks" as they are commonly called, are found in the "Statistics Blocks" Appendix. A couple of important points should be noted at the outset.

First, some of the stat blocks are what should be called "partial stat blocks." If the monster described is absolutely the same as the standard monster as described in the SRD, then just its name, and possibly its Challenge Rating (CR) and hit points (hp), are given. In the case where only a few properties of the creature have changed (such as changing the armor and weapons of a standard monster), only the differences between the base creature and the one in the scenario are shown. Second, the skill check bonuses shown in a stat block indicate the creature's bonuses under the "most likely" configuration of the creature when it is encountered. For example, a fighter in armor will have the Armor Check Penalty for that armor already calculated into the skill check bonuses to which it applies, since it is most likely that the NPC will be wearing its armor when encountered. Also, skill check bonuses are only shown for those skills for which the creature has at least one rank in the listed skills.