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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haltherrion" data-source="post: 5125690" data-attributes="member: 18253">It’s a fair enough approach to start with given #1, how to allow #2 as long as it is clearly acknowledged. I would expect it to be very common; I tend to do it myself but it isn’t quite the same thing as imagining a world where there is magic, presumably in nearly all settings from the beginning and in such a place, wondering if castles would come to be. The first is, more “I like castles, how do I make them reasonable given magic.” Fair enough and useful for most of us who find the castle one of the must-haves in a campaign. This is distinct from the mental exercise of what you really get, given magic. Since the original post only defined the discussion so well and even “castle” itself could stand to be defined (are we talking stone fortifications, or at also wood and earthen? Military fortifications separately from a fortified lordly dwelling?), there is ample room for confused and heated discussion. Similarly, what is meant by magic and how accessible is it? Re: my reference to a “Rome” Actually I didn’t mean “Rome” in a strong sense of the particular Mediterranean Empire only in the sense of an aggressive, expansionist entity that was effective at exploiting available methods. Rome is interesting, though, in that they only originated so much technology; their innovations were more organizational. Turning it back around, and admitting that “castle” hasn’t actually been defined, I would venture that most people are thinking stonework, fortified lordly residences in Europe of the period 1150-1350. That’s a very narrow period in time and place and one could as easily claim that they are no more likely to develop than Rome itself or any other Earth analog used on this thread. That is, the castle itself as is commonly stereotyped, is a fairly specific evolution from a specific culture on earth, change any of those a little and you might get military forts (like the stone and wooden Roman forts) or Asian castle and forts or the old earthen and wood, massive fortifications of Iron Age Europe. Even broadening "castle" to include realm-fortifications (like Edward I's Welsh castles) and military order fortifications doesn't really broaden the definition much in terms of time and place.  True enough and fodder for another lengthy thread but in the end, all those parameters are very much setting specific. All I note is that judging from the amount of magic items generally present in treasure hordes and other magic prevalence indicators typical in a game world, there must be some reasonable pool of mages, and that magic has obvious military value, therefore, just as happened with, on Earth, Rome, the Mongols and other conquerors, someone would figure out how to exploit and make effective use of it. Perhaps not everyone could have many mages but enough powers probably could manage it and that would be enough to change the face of castles. I do agree it is hard to take this any farther without more definition of what magic is and what do we mean by castle. That in itself would be an epic argument no doubt but perhaps entertaining. I find these mental exercises stimulating if they don’t get too heated. And to be absolutely clear, I wouldn’t run a D&D game without castles; my players are happy with my castles and any niggling doubts I have about whether the castle would really be there is irrelevant to the campaign.</blockquote>

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