The Campaign Builder: Castles & Crowns Map Folio (out in August!) contains a dozen 24″ x 36″ battle maps to inspire your next one shot. Each one is wet/dry-erase and ready for action out of the pack. Here’s a site for a battle scene inside city walls after an attack, such as a siege!

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 game mastering 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’s Happening Behind Broken Walls?

While the battle rages outside of a city during a siege, the city’s interior suffers their own hardships, paces away from the breached ramparts. Here are a few noteworthy terrain features you might notice:

• Razed Buildings. Whether ravaged by artillery fire and siege weaponry, looters and arsonists taking advantage of the chaos, or something else entirely, these buildings pose both an environmental hazard and a unique tactical opportunity.

• Vacant Roadways. Note that the roads are empty of life. No townsfolk, no animals, no plants even. If the locals haven’t already been evacuated, they are likely holing up in the buildings.

• Hasty Fortifications. The main features of tactical relevance are the scattered fortifications on the streets and between buildings. Spiked palisades like the ones outside on the battlefield; stacks of crates, barrels, and carts; and wooden plank bridges connecting the rooftops allow for PC shenangans aplenty.

Why Are You on this Side of the Siege?

While you could pull out this map as a scene in the aftermath of a great battle, let’s suppose you’re here now continuing an adventure from the external siege. Here are a few hooks that continue with the themes from the outside siege.

• The Desire Grew. The bastion has fallen and the call to find “heart’s desire” is louder now that the city is breached. Do you make a last stand here to keep what is sought from falling into hungry hands or are you here to claim what’s yours?

• The Power Magnifies. You’ve watched as walls, weapons of war, and the men who wield them have fallen in the name of this bloody conflict. Is the battle over with only the spoils to be taken or must another statement of prowess be made?

• Justice Must Prevail. Enemy forces press inward and pushing them back beyond the city walls will take a miracle. Do you hold the line or are you here now to save whoever you can?

Siege Skirmish Table

Fighting back a torrent of goblins, orcs, and trolls has worked great for plenty of adventures. However, managing an encounter of that scope has huge challenges, both mechanically and logistically. What’s more likely, and wieldy, is a series of back to back smaller, skirmish-style encounters that emphasize the chaos of a siege. Roll a d12 on the Skirmish Encounters table a number of times equal to twice the hours you expect your game session to take, and place the encounters where you wish.

Keep in mind and share with your players that part of the appeal is not necessarily fighting every encounter but losing the enemy in the many twisting alleyways, especially since some of these foes are exceptionally deadly for a first or second tier party.

Skirmish Encounters

d12	Skirmish Encounter
1–6	1d6 creatures of the defending army are locked in a stalemate with 1d6 creatures of the attacking army, blocking the way forward.
7	1d6+1 ash drakes (see Tome of Beasts 1) perform aerials in the smoke caused by nearby house fires.
8	A pack of 3d6 kobolds works frantically to usher their kobold king (see Creature Codex) to safety.
9	A merchant captain (see Tome of Beasts 3) and his 4 guards, fiercely defends their goods from looters and takes no chances in determining friend or foe.
10	1d6+1 ghouls and a bloated ghoul (see Tome of Beasts 2) gorge themselves on the recent massacre.
11	1d3 thugs and a thief lord (see Creature Codex) crime boss ransack a rival’s storefront.
12	A herald of slaughter (see Tome of Beasts 2) gleefully picks through the wreckage for the injured and dead.

Siege Complications

Need a quick complication table for a chase scene during the siege or to spice up an otherwise staid encounter? Roll a d20 and consult the Siege Complications table.

Siege Complications

d20	Siege Complication
1–10	No complication
11–12	A smoking projectile descends from the sky, launched by a faraway siege engine. Where it lands, it kicks up a plume of choking toxic smoke cloud that harms and hampers creatures caught within the area. This functions like the stinking cloud or cloudkill spell, at the GM’s discretion.
13–14	A bull (see Tome of Beasts 2) breaks loose from some hidden confines, terrified and aggressive. It attacks the nearest PC with advantage.
15–16	An adjacent building explodes from some sort of internal combustion, scattering debris and cinders everywhere. All creatures within 20 feet of the blast must make a DC 15 DEX save, taking 4d6 bludgeoning damage and 4d6 fire damage on a failure or half as much damage on a success.
17–18	A sudden flood of stored water washes over everything, making a 20-foot area difficult terrain and causing all creatures caught within the initial flood to be knocked prone unless they succeed on a DC 14 STR save.
19–20	A nearby building is about to collapse, with 1d4 screaming people still stuck inside! You have 1d4 rounds to rescue everyone before time runs out.

Battlefield Loot

With all this opportunity for looting, why shouldn’t PCs get in on the action? One way to introduce this sort of loot into the game is picking it off the bodies when creatures are slain. Another idea is to have a PC make a DC 14 INT (Investigation) check while searching a building, crate, barrel, or cart. If successful, have that player roll a d6 and consult the Battlefield Loot table.

Battlefield Loot

d6	Battlefield Loot
1	Something Martial. A weapon, shield, or bit of armor damaged during the siege. If repaired, it might sell well?
2	Something Ruined. A masterpiece artwork, once gorgeous and decadent but now ruined by the ravages of war.
3	Something Saved. A favored toy, family heirloom, or treasured tool kit stashed away beneath a cairn of bricks for later retrieval.
4	Something Coveted. A gilded trinket of great worth and greater cost, judging by all the creatures who died in a clear struggle by the thing.
5	Something Guarded. Under heavy trap, locked safe, and missing key this item once waited for the taking. Now a derelict building only adds to the hazards of this mystery’s security. What could be so hidden?
6	Something Reviled. A hateful thing, resplendent with filth and malaise. Do you feel the malevolence coming off it or is that merely your gut roiling in somersaults?

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