Ponte di Palladio means “Bridge of Palladio.” I hope. Apologies to the Italians out there if I screwed it up, but can I promise you that, as we speak, there are dozens of people at Google Translate working hard to improve my fluency.
This bridge was Andrea Palladio’s design for what later became the Rialto Bridge in Venice, Italy. They ended up going with a different, single-arch design, in part because they wanted more space for boats to pass under it. It’s genuinely tragic when practical concerns get in the way of doing something awesome, but I suppose that’s life.
Anyway, having drawn two Venetian-inspired maps in the last month, I think it’s time to take a break from Italy for a moment (although the Castel Sant’Angelo has been calling out to me, so we may be heading back before long).
Next, I’ll be drawing a keep that’s largely designed as an adventurers’ base. It’ll be the kind of place a party might buy once they get to the point where they’re dragging around an ox-cart with 100,000gp piled onto it and one of them starts wondering if this is a financially responsible course of action.
So this place will have all the things a party would want, like a laboratory for the wizard, a kennel for the ranger, and a dungeon for whoever the party has kidnapped recently (for good reasons, I’m sure). I’ll also put in a secret chamber because literally 100% of players will want one. There will also be space for various services the party might need, such as a blacksmith to do repairs and a trading post so they can turn all the jade statuettes and ruby earrings they find into cash. I’ll also include 3-4 empty rooms for the players to use how they want, since every party has their own particular needs.
Anyway, that’s it for now. Let me know what you think of the map (and my Italian).
If I ever use this, the stairs will access a dungeon under the canal, just because:
A: The implausible and dangerous hydrology will make my players twitch.
B. There will be a trap at the end where removing the golden idol from the pedestal (or whatever) breaks the anti-water ward and the whole thing floods and the PCs have to get out before they drown.
You could have the dungeon be a tomb that the canal was redirected over in order to keep it from being robbed. Some stories say that was done when Genghis Khan was buried.