Recently, I had the pleasure of finishing 5e’s Curse of Strahd and after such a thrilling adventure I couldn’t help myself from mocking the castle up in 3D. As I’m sure plenty of other modelers have discovered as they began working on Castle Ravenloft, the grid map supplied isn’t completely accurate. While it does do a good job, the castle artwork doesn’t always represent the grid map, nor does the grid map always follow the logic of the construction (I’m looking at you Chapel).
Despite that, I was able to smoothly create the general shape of the castle, the keep, the carriage house, and numerous towers without too much issue. The exterior turret towers beyond the drawbridge were the first things I modeled, as I experimented with the best way to present the stone walls that provided the flexibility necessary to tweak the design, while also limiting the amount of detail necessary to bring the structures to life.
Now that the structure has been roughly put together, I can begin to work on fleshing out the smaller details, especially the more artistic elements. This has led to a bit of exploration into architectural styles, from medieval Romanian styles to a more modern Gothic style. Likely, I’ll end up fusing the two a bit as they already share so many design qualities.
