It’s a weird dance, honestly. I start with the skeleton of the siege—real siege engines, the weight of a trebuchet, the physics of a battering ram—because those feel authentic. Then I test a handful of iterations, seeing where the pacing stalls or feels too linear, and that’s when I tweak things: maybe add a hidden catapult that only works at night or give the castle a secret tunnel that lets a player sneak in. I keep the core mechanics true but let the fun bits slide in where the story needs a bit of magic.

When a detail hits a snag, I usually pull a quick “what if” out of my head. If a castle wall in 1300 was too thick for a catapult to breach, I’ll either redesign the wall to be slightly thinner in that spot or give the player a hidden siege drill that was actually used in some lesser‑known campaigns. I lean on the “plausible loophole” route more often than just mutating the fact—players love a good Easter egg, not a blatant time‑warp. If the tweak makes the story stronger and feels believable in the world, it stays. If it breaks immersion, I go back to the books.