Quote Originally Posted by ravells View Post
I know this might sound counter-intuitive, but for small scale maps (regional / continental) you really don't need spacio-mechanical skills to any great degree. It's more a question of following procedures and tinkering with them to find a result which pleases you.

In terms of city design, yes, I think you do need to have some idea of 'dimensional fit', but you don't have to be Da Vinci.

I'm very suspicious of tests which seek to asses how able a person is to do a thing apart from his ability to take the test in question.

Anyway, if you'd like someone to take on your map requests, then I suggest you post it in the map request forum. I'd give it a go myself, but I'm strapped for time at the moment. Bear in mind that city maps are very time consuming to draw, and more detail in your description would be helpful to anyone looking at taking on your commission.

Good luck with your map request!

ravells.
Trust me, there's plenty of other evidence to support the notion that I have below-average spacio-mechanical skills, above average math skills, and substantially above-average language skills. :-)

Anyway I can probably design something myself given the time, but basically I have been postponing that part of the campaign for a couple of years now because I just haven't gotten around to it.

For the port itself, I see the city rising above the harbor on a hill, sort of forming a semi-circle around a roughly elliptical harbor. A narrow opening bounded by two spires of rock allows entry the only entry into the harbor from the sea. I care more about the spires and the entry than the rest of the port really. I assume there are other garrisoned positions around the seaward lip of the harbor (I hadn't thought of that before but it makes sense to me) to allow attacking ships as they sail up to the entry. That's about the sum of what I have in mind for that site.

For the fort I have in mind something vaguely square or at least rectangular, but I'd prefer if it had features designed by someone who actually knows what a wooden fort might look like in detail. I'm just not very good with physical details of structures. I've DMed over the years for many people who had much better spacio-mechanical skills and they routinely ask me questions to which I just have to invent an answer on the spot because I'm tend to think in the abstract rather than concrete.