Ruined Tower of Zenopus Goes Mithral!

Find it here

I haven't had much free time lately, hence the dearth of posts, but here's a quick update on the Ruined Tower of Zenopus 5E conversion/expansion: last week it achieved Mithral Best Seller status (2,501+ copies sold) on DMs Guild! A big thank you to every one who has purchased it over the years.

It was originally released on January 22nd, 2020, which means that it's been out for more than 5 years now! Naturally, it sold most quickly right after release, achieving Platinum status (1,001+) in less than one year. The remaining sales accumulated slowly over the intervening four plus years. The next (and final) badge is Adamantine at 5,001+ sales, which is double the Mithral level; for those curious, you can see all of the badge levels here. To reach this it will need to sell additional copies in an amount equal to what has already been sold. So, it will probably take more than 5 more years, if ever, before it earns the final level.

The adventure remains at its original price of $1.99, and I have no plans to increase the price.

I've made a few updates to it over the years following the original release, which are all noted on the product page linked below. These mainly concern maps that I added, plus a piece of original art by Chris Holmes. If you purchased an earlier version, you should be able to go back and get the updated version. The most recent update, in October 2024, was merely to the product page to add the "Greyhawk" setting tag when DMs Guild opened up that setting for creative content. While the original module is not set in any specific setting other than Portown, the conversion includes a section on using the adventure with Ghosts of Saltmarsh, which is set along the Keoland coast of Greyhawk.

What's next for the Zenopus Archives? When I have more time, I hope to return to work on preparing the Forgotten Smugglers' Cave adventure for publication.

Product Link:
The Ruined Tower of Zenopus on DMs Guild

Click here to read reviews of the RTOZ by various bloggers

A Return to Greyhawk!

"Behold Greyhawk" by Bruce Brenneise for the new DMG

A few days ago DMs Guild announced that Greyhawk is now available a campaign setting for community content:

This is because the newly revised 5E DMG, out November 11th, includes a 30-page chapter on detailing Greyhawk as a sample setting to show DMs how they can create their own settings. This will include a map of the City of Greyhawk and an updated version of Darlene's famous map of the setting:

Harking back to the Sample Dungeons of yore, the DMG will also contain a chapter of Sample Adventures that are set in Greyhawk.

Watch here for an 18 minute interview with Chris Perkins and James Wyatt about thoughts behind using Greyhawk as a sample campaign setting in the new DMG.

While WOTC may not support this setting any further, allowing it to be added to DMs Guild opens it up to fans who wish to add more content to the setting (albeit only in 5E form).

I don't have any specific plans at the moment for creating Greyhawk content for DMsGuild, but I have updated the Ruined Tower of Zenopus conversion/expansion to tag it as Greyhawk (as opposed to just "nonspecific/any setting"), given that I have an appendix in it on using it with the Ghosts of Saltmarsh, which draws its mini-setting details from Greyhawk.

The new DMG is available for order on Amazon.

The Sea-Changed (New Monster)

Ariel's Song from the Tempest as illustrated by Virgil Finlay

A new monster for your Portown, Saltmarsh or other coastal D&D campaign, inspired by this thread on ODD74, which shows a photo of a skull undergoing a "sea change". As a bit of further explanation, the modern expression "sea change" originates in Shakespeare's The Tempest (click on the image above to enlarge it so you can read the full quote), which was memorably referenced by Gary Gygax in the Example of Play in the original AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide. I've taken it one step further by using it as the basis for a monster.

The Sea-changed

Move: 60 feet/turn
Hit Dice: 1 + 1
Armor Class: 5
Treasure Type: special

Alignment: lawful evil
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d6

Sailors whisper that a corpse that comes to rest in the brine may undergo a mysterious and sinister transformation, rising again in a calcified skeletal form known as "the sea-changed". 

The sea-changed seek to spread their animating force to the living by touch of calciferous claws or an equally mineralized weapon or tool used during life such as a cutlass, harpoon or even anchor.

A hit with such will, in addition to inflicting damage, encrust the area of the wound with the sea-change unless a successful saving throw versus poison is made. Failure results results in the loss of one point of dexterity per day as the calcification spreads. Once dexterity reaches zero, the victim will be transformed into one of the sea-changed.

The spread can be kept at bay, but not cured, through daily application of vinegar. It is rumored among sailors that the merfolk know the secret of how to reverse the sea-change.

Each sea-changed has a 1 in 10 chance of having pearlescent eyes (roll on the gem table for value).

The sea-changed are subject to turning as zombies.

9/24 Update: Added an alignment, which I had inadvertently left out: Lawful Evil like mummies, wights, wraiths & spectres in Holmes. Thanks to Lore Suto on Twitter for pointing this out to me.

The Tower of Zenopus in Ghosts of Saltmarsh

Ghosts of Saltmarsh alternate cover by N.C. Winters. I like this one more.

Way back in the mists of 2006, on Dragonsfoot I wrote that: 

Another dungeon that could be fit into such a combined setting would be the Zenopus dungeon in the Holmes basic book. It's set in Portown on the coast and also has pirates/sea caves, so I've often thought of having Portown and Saltmarsh be the same. Neither town is described, though, so Restenford could be used for details. (Though I guess it could be a bit much to have one small town with both a haunted house and a ruined wizard's tower.)

I'm certainly not the only one who has had the idea of merging Portown and Saltmarsh. The similar coastal setting and lack of a full description for either town make them a natural fit. While Saltmarsh being described as a "small south-coast English fishing town of the 14th Century and with a population about 2,000" does feel smaller than Portown, a "small but busy city linking the caravan routes from the south to the merchant ships" plying the Northern Sea, it's still an easy merge for the DM building a coastal sandbox setting. In fact, I have run each of these adventures in the last few years in my kids game, and while I kept Saltmarsh separate, I still had it nearby on the same coast as Portown.

Now the Wizards of the Coast have themselves taken advantage of this. Yesterday an eagle-eyed member of the Holmes Basic community over on MeWe, Chris H., reported that he'd spotted the Tower of Zenopus in a flip-thru review of the forthcoming Ghosts of Saltmarsh...! This is the latest hardcover 5E adventure from WOTC, a compilation of conversions of the original AD&D modules U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh*, U2 The Danger at Dunwater, and U3 The Final Enemy** (the pdfs are also available as a discounted bundle), plus four later adventures from Dungeon magazine.

Buy Ghosts of Saltmarsh at Amazon (click on image; links includes my affiliate #):

Ghosts of Saltmarsh on Amazon

In addition to the obvious similarities between Portown and Saltmarsh, I'm also not surprised to see Zenopus turn up in this product because Mike Mearls is credited as one of the co-Lead Designers (along with Kate Welch, interviewed here), and he ran a Return to the Tower of Zenopus this past March at Gary Con, and also tweeted this map, so it was certainly on his radar at the right time.

After looking into the previews myself, the area map for Saltmarsh --- drawn by Dyson Logos --- shows the town on the mouth of a river emptying into the Azure Sea. Yes, that's right, they've preserved the Greyhawk location names from the originals! Across this river on a peninsula is a location marked "Tower of Zenopus". Per the map compass, this places the tower generally to the west of Saltmarsh, which fits with Holmes' original description (albeit without an intervening river). The U1 Haunted House is in the other direction along the coast, east of Saltmarsh. 

On the page facing this map is a four-paragraph section titled "Tower of Zenopus", which gives the background for the location --- condensed from the original --- and some brief ideas for encounters found therein. It's much more of an adventure hook than a fleshed out location, and it acknowledges as much by concluding that the details are left for the DM to determine. It would be fairly simple to use a direct 5E conversion of the original dungeon (perhaps adapting my list of Portown rumors to get the PCs over there?). 

As far as I can recall, this is the first time TSR or Wizards has recycled any of the Zenopus content in a later product, and also the first time it has been officially placed in Greyhawk. Also significant is that they've titled it the "Tower of Zenopus", as over the years this has been the most frequently used colloquial name for the originally unnamed adventure. In the new version, just the like original, the tower is a complete ruin and the actual adventure is in the dungeons beneath. As I've written before, this follows the naming convention of Castle Greyhawk, where the dungeons are referred to by the name of the ruined edifice. 

In addition to the Azure Sea, the area map also includes the Hool Marshes to the east of Saltmarsh and the Dreadwood to north, clearly placing it on the original Darlene map from the World of Greyhawk folio or boxed set. Also, the "Geographic Features" section following the Tower of Zenopus mentions the "Kingdom of Keoland", a location going all the way back to the proto-Greyhawk Great Kingdom map.

After some further delving, I realized that this area map in Ghosts of Saltmarsh is simply a direct update of the area map from U2 Danger at Dunwater. All of the major geographical features and even the hexes lines on the map match the placement on the original. 
The original even gave hex numbers for the World of Greyhawk map, with Saltmarsh being located in hex U4-123. So while the new adventure may not be specifically identified as being in Greyhawk, it is easily placeable and usable with that campaign world.

In the image below I've annotated the original U2 map with the new location for the Tower:

*All Drivethrurpg links include my affiliate number.

**I've long suspected that this title is a sneaky pun (spoiler: The Enemy with Fins; i.e. the Sahuagin). I even asked Gygax about it once on DF, and while he claimed no knowledge, we did exchange some fintastic puns.

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Jan 2020 Update: I've now released a Fifth Edition (5E) Conversion of the original Tower of Zenopus on DMs Guild, including advice on using it with Ghosts of Saltmarsh. See here.