The Campaign Builder: Castles & Crowns Map Folio (out in August!) is a mess of cool maps to inspire your next one shot. Awesome! Here’s a throne room for your next sudden betrayal. Or a ballroom for evening of adventurous flirtation!
Campaign Builder: Castles & Crowns releases next month! Monarchs and their realms get a zillion options make your worldbuilding deeper and more immersive!
Let’s examine this versatile location for key features, draft up a random table or two, and offer up some new GMing options. Even if you don’t use this exact map (but really, who wouldn’t?) you can still apply this article’s structure towards designing your own battle map and one-shot adventure.
What is in the Royal Ballroom?
Ideal for hobnobbing with nobles, courtly audiences with regents, and other high-brow social functions, the Royal Ballroom offers a wide swath of central space and plenty of diversionary nooks and crannies. Here are just a few noteworthy terrain features you might notice at a glance.
- Dance Floor. The main space of the map, offering no cover save for the twenty-two pillars ideal for discrete whisperings and handoffs. In most social encounters, this area would be chock full of NPCs to interact with or pickpocket from.
- Throne Platform. Two velveted thrones await on a dais at the end of the ballroom opposite the entry staircase. Could they be magical, contain secrets known only by those who sit on them, or even cursed to afflict those forbidden to try their plushness?
- Side Rooms. Above or adjacent to the ballroom and connected by staircases or doors await a variety of rooms for quieter meetings and moments of private confrontation. Most notably, a kitchen on the map could offer provisions, improvised weapons, or the origins of an unpleasant dinner surprise.
Good Reasons to Visit the Royal Ballroom
An interesting location serves your game no purpose if your PCs lack a reason to go there. Here are a few hooks to get your players to the royal ballroom.
- Audience with the King. Your deeds have earned you status and reputation. Now it is time to meet the kingdom’s regent. Will they ask of you some great deed, bestow a princely gift for works wrought, or condemn you for transgressions committed or falsified?
- Masquerade Ball. The biggest ball of the season is at hand and the theme is masks. Have fun in disguise as you cavort with incognito peers, but beware! Such an occasion is the perfect opportunity for an unexpected attack.
- Thwart a Plot. You’ve been approached by a castle representative to help ferret out usurpers. With a dinner party planned in honor of the newly crowned regent comes a possible poisoning plot. Will you find the poison in food or drink or some other manner of delivery before it is too late?
Random Social Encounters in the Royal Ballroom
Parties in spaces like the Royal Ballroom get to enjoy the rare treat where social interactions trump combat encounters. These moments are great for complex and group skill checks, information bartering, and flexing roleplay muscles. Use this d8 table to enrich the Royal Ballroom with intrigue and opportunity.
| d8 | Encounter |
|---|---|
| 1 | The court herald wishes to know all your titles and greatest deeds so he may announce your arrival to the room. |
| 2 | A pack of noble sportsmen are discussing their greatest hunts. A prime opportunity for some humble braggery. |
| 3 | The music in the room picks up again, signaling a courtly dance where abstaining tanks one’s own reputation. |
| 4 | A pair of spies talking to each other in code over drinks. Is that thieves’ cant they speak or another cypher? |
| 5 | A clique of richly-gowned debutantes are making snide fun of someone else’s lesser attire. Do you join in for the laughs and status boost or gallantly stand against the veiled insults and gain an ally? |
| 6 | Someone cries for a healer, herbalist, cleric, or anyone to help! Is this emergency a choking, an allergy, a poisoning, or something else entirely? |
| 7 | A trio of out-of-town gnomes are having trouble reaching the banquet table. They beg for help, socially unconscious of how unseemly the act might appear to the rest of the room. |
| 8 | Just your luck—you crossed the wrong noble and they now call for a duel, your choice of weapon. Will it be a duel of wits, rapiers, or something sharper? |
Pickpocket the Rich in the Royal Ballroom
They say, “for every person in a ballroom there are two pockets to pick.” Use this d8 table to keep your PCs with sticky fingers occupied when there is a lull in the festivities.
| d8 | What’s in the Noble’s Pockets? |
|---|---|
| 1 | A finger sandwich in a folded napkin and 1d4 cookies, all unbitten and saved for later. |
| 2 | An array of keys on a gilded ring designed to look like an encircling crane. One key is made of malachite. |
| 3 | A pouch heavy with 1d10 x 100 gold, a single copper coin with two heads and no tails, and a rabbit’s foot. |
| 4 | A handkerchief with a hasty scribbled recipe in red wine that has begun to bleed into the fabric. |
| 5 | A handful of rings, pins, and lockets. Likely stolen, based on the appearance of the pocket owner. |
| 6 | A clockwork sphere of bronze and copper that ticks when shaken and chirps when held still. |
| 7 | A pair of pince-nez attached to a silvered chain. The lenses make one’s eyes appear enormous. |
| 8 | A fist-sized, pearly sphere that shines on its many facets with an internal luminescence. You hear a woman’s voice speak in your mind when you touch it. |
Royal Lair Actions of the Royal Ballroom
Dragons have their cave lairs and fey nobles and animal lords keep their lairs too. But what well-appointed monarch wouldn’t call the Royal Ballroom their lair? Use this suite of lair actions to create a more personalized encounter in your Royal Ballroom. This suite of lair actions increases the chosen NPC’s CR by 1.
On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties), the NPC that calls the Royal Ballroom their lair can take a lair action to cause one of the following effects (using the NPC’s spell save DC):
- Guards! Seize Them! Magical apparitions emerge from the ballroom’s pillars to grab and restrain targets. Each creature of the NPC’s choice on the ballroom floor must make a STR save or be restrained by the apparitions. A creature can take its action to free itself or another restrained creature by succeeding a STR check. The apparitions disappear after 1 minute or when this lair action is used again.
- Call for Order. A single target of the NPC’s choice that is concentrating on a spell or effect must make a concentration check. The target does so at disadvantage if the spell they are concentrating on requires a verbal component.
- Regent’s Axiom. A wave of commanding force pulses out from the throne dais. Each creature of the NPC’s choice within 90 feet of the throne dais must make a CHA save, taking 2d8 x (NPC’s PB) force damage on a failure or half as much on a success.
Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide and Monster Vault BOOKS are now on sale at the Kobold Store!
Hold the rules in your thick, meaty hands like Gutenberg intended!
