These are really cute, TheElf! Is it me or are they missing stairs?
These are really cute, TheElf! Is it me or are they missing stairs?
As you see they are rural houses. For the first house designed there is a single floor.
For the 2nd house, there is the ground floor, and the attic. There is no stairs inside, as you see the attic is accessible from the outside, and there is a ladder for that. I seen quite a few such rural houses.
Why they are built this way? If you know how the ceilings are built in those houses, you will see: They have a set of beams to support the ceiling. Both ends of the beams should reach a supporting wall, and the distance between beams were often limited and wouldn't allow for stairs. Or so I heard.
Since I wanted to use this simple design, without too many supporting walls inside, and decided to reserve "dwarven craftmanship" and other explanations for a fantasy building for the inn itself (need it for the tower, and the size), I used ladders.
When I added basement for the 3rd building, I asked myself: How would it work? But luckily for a trapdoor you don't need too much place, and it would be much simpler that way, this is why it has a ladder.
And of course if you see how the basement is used, you could add: A trapdoor can be hidden easily.
This is why I have choosen the ladder way. And this way is easy to present when you describe the village, easy to draw it, and the realistic explanation doesn't hurt the mood. And such buildings can be nice, and if people seen such buildings before, showing them can help to build the mood of the adventures.
If you see my latest blog post about the project itself, you can see with the inn, I decided to go in a different direction. Why?
If you have seen the old posts, you know that building should be a relatively tall building, with a tower... For sights.
At first: it is a complex building. But the problem with tower: The supporting walls could look odd, or would make it pretty hard to design the building. The later isn't good when the goal for the series is to explain some concepts: People would see it is too difficult to follow the guide. And one such incident was enough (about mapping the surrounding area). And the first is nasty, since when your players wonder why the walls are there and you give them a realistic explanation for a such huge inn (where I don't care much about beam lenghts, etc. anyway).
And most people wouldn't notice the missing supporting walls, and even if they do you can use a plausible fantasy explanation. Which can add to the mood.
Also: if you would want, you can describe this difference in the begining if you want to compare the simplicity of nearby houses to glory of the inn itself, to speak about its prosperity.
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