A Wizard's Tower

A Wizard's Tower

 

 

 

I recently stumbled upon an image of a wizard's tower from one of my old home games. It was a fun environment for the players to navigate so I thought I'd pop it up here.

I often style my wizards as obsessively nerdy about a particular field. The wizard who built this tower is really into creating animal-human hybrids a la The Island of Dr Moreau. Continuing the Moreau theme I placed the tower on a floating island entirely populated by the wiz's bio engineered monstrosities. Even the plants were designed - as the players walked through the tangled mangroves I described the canopy of leaves turning in unison to catch the wind and steer the island on its mysterious course.

In classic mad scientist fashion the wizard has been eaten by rebellious frog people and their tower is... dormant. This set up left the players relatively free to poke around and put together the situation. 

From bottom to top here's a breakdown of the rooms. 

A Golden Barge

The Golden Barge

    The Golden Barge spools its way along a luminous thread through the humpbacked sky. 

On the prow, under the sheen of a translucent dome, tiny figures are moving…

 

I've been meaning to get into Troika by Daniel Sell for a while. The PDF has been sitting in 

my dropbox  but till now I've only rolled a few characters and enjoyed the art 

by Dirk Detweiler Leichty and Andrew Walter.

 
That changed this weekend when I set sail on a Golden Barge and dipped a toe into the system 

with a few friends. 

 

I'm pathologically unable to run a module in any system and couldn't help home brewing up a

quick one shot. Above is my attempt to map one of the Golden Barges eluded to by the rules 

(more than lightly influenced by Leichty's fantastic illustrations). I had hoped to actually make

 this post a rough outline of that adventure but I'd need to work further on my understanding of the 

system and the bones of the adventure itself for that to be worth your time. Instead, in the spirit of

Troika, I offer you this map as an invitation to your own imaginations. 

 

I'll include these two room descriptions I drafted for the session. 

The Kitchens  

 

A fury of shouts and flames, a spicy assault on the senses - a cadre of inevitable chefs are busy cooking orders. 

They have been recruited from a fanatical culinary sect that will stop at nothing to spike any ticket that comes into the kitchen. An army might march on its stomach but these chefs will  lay waste to entire spheres to serve canapes. Only once a meal is served will they return to their  regenerative cocoons until service hours resume. 

 

The Hangar

It takes a lot to traverse the spheres. The assorted craft here aren’t up to the task - being more suited to 

a quick jaunt or occasional maintenance of the barge itself. The options in each bay are as varied 

as the passengers themselves. 

 

1. A Gossamer pleasure skiff - great for being seen whilst seeing the sights.

2. A large insectoid with mouth parts like a garbage disposal. Its compound eyes seem to shift from you 

to the saddle hanging nearby. 

3. A vapor ski - perfect for enjoying the humpbacked sky at the expense of everyone else.

4. A Scorpedo Rum Runner in jailbreak blue. There is a pistolet in the glove box and a person in the trunk. 

5. A two person, pedal powered, velocipede.

6. A Gronk class sky tug - solid as a bathtub full of concrete and just as maneuverable. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Under The Dunes

 

    

 Another month another map and random table - like a serve of fish and chips or cheese and wine or... etc, etc.

There are mushrooms on this map, so here's a dual table to help you establish some fun mycology for players to mess around with. Also I'm aware a mushroom is the reproductive structure not the whole organism - it's just fun to say. 

What happens when you have a mushroom that grows dramatically when wet and an axe wielding murderbot in an adjacent cavern? I dunno - just asking the question.

 

What's That Mushroom Do?

Roll a d6 for an effect and what triggers it. 

This Mushroom...

1. Soothes body and mind.
2. Grants fantastic visions.
3. Explodes violently.
   
4. Induces sleep.
5. Grows exponentially.
   
6. Spreads Virulently.

When...

1. Exposed to fire.
2. Wet.
3. Ingested.
4. Touched.
5. Combined with another fungus. 
6. Subjected to any magic.
   

 100 Strange Forest Encounters

 

 

 

I like random tables. I also enjoy simple, one page, dungeon illustrations that give you some game-able ideas at a glance.

So I'm going to start regularly posting some tiny dungeon images with a thematically linked random table. Once a month might be a good aim but let's see how we go.

The picture above is this month's tiny dungeon. I'm not going to go into detail about what the fruit thing is or the squirrel statue or the well of pure darkness. Does this dungeon involve Fruit Goblins? I don't know. Does it involve a swarm of undead squirrels that try and stuff you full of cursed acorns? Again, I don't know. Does drinking the well water give you a free spell that has a chance of progressively mutating you every time you cast it? Stop asking! But if you have a hollow tree or a hole in the ground in your game you now have this little doodle to go with it. 

 

Now to further explore the world of woodsy weirdness here are 100 things for players to run into when in a forest.