Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from June, 2020

The Ruined Tower of Zenopus Campaign: The Portmaster's Garden Palace

In my ongoing campaign centered on The Ruined Tower of Zenopus, Portown is called Bandar Arzoo in the local language. Ruling over the town is the Portmaster, Lord Atesh. His palace is more garden than not. The PCs have been called into Lord Atesh's office several times, but this time it occurred to me that I might need a map, in case they, oh, say, needed to fight their way out. Most of this map is taken directly from Dyson Logos' The Palace Market , which had the open look I wanted, adjusted and edited to suit my purposes.  The white areas are typical interior spaces, and probably contain offices, kitchens, storage, and other things I feel confident I can make up on the spot. There are a few rooms at the top of the map that are the Palace Guards' station, which can be accessed directly from the street. The big room with 9 columns is the ballroom, and the smaller space invader-shaped room with 4 columns is the Portmaster's office and suite. Everything else is perfumed b

The Ruined Tower of Zenopus: One-Shots, Campaigns, and the Sea Caves

I've been getting a lot of good use out of The Ruined Tower of Zenopus. I've run it a half dozen times for one-shots, and have also been using it as the central dungeon in a campaign. It's worked admirably in both capacities. One-Shot Observations When I run this at the local library, I usually start with the hook that smugglers have kidnapped Lemunda, daughter of Portown nobility, and drop the rumor that maybe they could sneak up on the smugglers through the tunnels under the old ruins.  Interestingly enough, the one-shot parties always turn to the left at the first intersection. I recall reading that customers usually turn left as soon as they enter a store, but I had no idea this might apply to mentally entering a two-dimensional map. If this really is as consistent a behavior as it appears, that is something to take into consideration when designing dungeons. After turning left, they usually stick to a pretty westward path, aiming in the direction of the sea caves. They