Building a Castle by Ivan Laliashvili

Edit: I’ve done an example run, if you’d like to see it, go HERE

Edit Number Two: The writer of the blog Paper Elemental has created a javascript generator that produces a visual castle map using these rules. It’s rad as hell. Plus they added a Tarot card option! Check it out: https://paperelemental.blogspot.com/2019/10/magical-school-castle-map-generator.html

I’ve had an idea bouncing around in my head for a while, and this is my first attempt to put it to paper. I’m planning to incorporate it into a Blank of the Blank Blank module, and so it’s going to get a lot of playtesting and editing, so check back for gradual improvements and lessons learned.

The Castle Building Robot (Also Known as a Deck of Cards)

Using playing cards to make a map isn’t a new idea. This is tuned specifically to build a castle. In our example, it’s a Generic Wizard School. I’ll walk you through the steps I used to construct our robot, so that you can make your own. If you just want to use the robot as is, skip down below to [Section].

Building the Builder

The first step is to envision four distinct categories or groups that inhabit the castle, each assigned to a suit. Since we’re using a legally distinct school for magical boys and girls, we’ll use these school houses:

Spades: Ambitious Leaders

Hearts: Chivalrous Heroes

Diamonds: Stoic Geniuses

Clubs: Friendly Mediators

Each suit represents the turf of that particular house. It may be something literally belonging to them (Their dorm), or just someplace that is mostly used by them (A study room they’ve monopolized). For my module, each house will also be randomly assigned a school of magic, which should give the module some replayability.

Other examples of a set of four might be: (Court Wizards, Knights, Nobles, Staff) or (Royalty, House of Lords, House of Commons, Judges) or (Elves, Humans, Dwarves, Orcs) or (The Mad Scientist, The Servants, The Creations, The Facade). As seen in that last example, the categories need not be groups, they can be an important individual or a specific purpose.

Then, we name the two most important rooms, which are neutral between the factions. These will be the Jokers. In our witchy high school, those will be the Great Hall and the Headmaster’s Office, two very important rooms that don’t align with any house.

Now, for the special rooms. The numbered cards will be generic rooms, each flavored towards the house, but otherwise the same. The face cards however will each be a unique room, depending on suit. They should of course be a thematic cycle with each other.

We can start by making a list of rooms we need for our theme. We need dorm rooms of course. We’ll have NPC teachers, so we should have rooms for them. We can have the four most important teachers being the advisors for the four houses. We need the Kitchens, a Library, a Dueling Arena. Alchemy should be an important class that lies outside my schools of magic, so we’ll need that. And of course, secret rooms! Then we put each of those to a card, and get this:

Then the rest of the deck makes up the bread and butter of our castle. Not every room can have a very special and important meaning, that’s far too much for players to keep track of looking at a bunch of playing cards. Hallways, staircases, classrooms with b-list NPCs, and of course the ever present extremely hazardous hallways.

And of course, we need to define our hazards. So for each hazard card (8 in this case), we come up with an interesting hazard.

Programming Our Robot

We have our deck of rooms, now we just need to decide the rules for how to arrange them into a castle. First, our goals:

Semi-logical arrangement

Houses mostly form contiguous spaces, but not so rigorously that we can’t have a few fun surprises.

Potential for tall towers and deep basements

Ability for player participation

Ability to have hidden information from players

How do we achieve this? I’ve come up with a few rules, but a different robot will need different rules to achieve the correct building.

Map is side-on rather than top-down. This is slightly less realistic (the castle is kinda 2D), but it makes a single contiguous map. This is easier to follow than a series of separated floor maps, especially if you get really tall.

UNO rules for card placement. A card can only be placed if it is next to another card of the same suit or number. This means one house will be mostly together, but maybe a few extra enclaves sprinkled around.

The map starts with the great hall (Joker), surrounded by the four 2s. The great hall is the Ground Floor. The heroes go to the front of the castle, the mediators towards the back, the leaders on the floor below and the geniuses on the floor above.

If a hallway has another hallway above or below it, they are connected by stairs. The great hall counts as a hallway for this.

Non-hallway cards must be placed on an existing floor, and do not contain stairs.

The GM takes out the four Jacks from the deck to be in their hand. The rest of the cards are dealt out evenly between all players, including the GM.

Each player, starting to the GM’s left, plays a card from their hand onto a legal space. The GM may play their cards face down. Play until all the cards are on the table.

Grand Staircase by Christopher Schiefer

The Finished Robot

Get a deck of standard playing cards, including two jokers. Take out the black joker, all four 2s and all 4 Jacks. Arrange the joker and 2s in the middle of the table like so:

The map of the castle will be from a side-on view. The Joker is on the ground floor of the castle. The diamond is on the second floor, and the spade is in the first basement. The front of the castle is to the left, towards the heart.

The GM keeps the Jacks, and the rest of the cards are dealt evenly between all the players, including the GM. One by one, starting on the GM’s left, each player will play a card onto the castle until one can legally play another card. There are some rules that must be followed:

Any hallway (2 to 7) above another hallway has a staircase between them. This includes the great hall (The black Joker)

Cards can only be played on existing floors to the left or right of an existing card, with the exception of hallways above or below existing hallways.

A card must be played adjacent to a card of the same suit or the same value.

The Headmaster’s Office (The red Joker) is wild. It may be played next to any card, and any card next to it.

The GM may play cards face down. The players can later discover these rooms by adventuring. Only the GM can build off of face down cards, but must still follow all the above rules.

You may additionally use this optional rule:

The Grounds. When building on the ground floor, you can play your card any number of card lengths away from its neighbor. The seperate card can be built off of as normal. Any open spaces in the finished castle become “The Grounds”, outdoor areas.

Each card signifies a specific room. The suits determine which noble house the room is aligned with. Each house has a defining characteristic and holds domain over certain special rooms.

♠ – Ambitious Leaders

♥ – Brave Heroes

♦ – Stoic Geniuses

♣ – Friendly Mediators

For each house, choose at random a school of magic they excel in. Also, choose a random name for that house

House

List of Rooms

Final Thoughts

It certainly needs playtesting to work out the kinks. But I think this is a fairly good primer on how to build a random generator out of a deck of cards. If anyone uses this in a game, or modifies it for a different set of 4, I’d love to hear about it.

Some other ideas bouncing around in my head, if you’re looking for further inspiration on this front:

Adding or subtracting cards to make bigger or smaller maps.

Multi-card rooms, like a huge staircase or a massive hall.

Rules for empty spaces between cards, such as caves underground, rooftops, or courtyards.

Using Tarot cards instead, for massive castles with more neutral rooms, or perhaps more rooms belonging to a mysterious 5th faction. Perhaps the major arcana form the GM’s hand, and therefore all of the secret areas in the castle.