Arabian Market (2012)

From publisher blurb:

This product is a set of two 48 x 30 inch maps of Markets

Game Masters need quality maps for their miniatures. DramaScape™ is committed to bringing Game Masters the maps they need.

This product includes an Arabian market in a Merchant’s Quarter, and a more Poor Quarter where seedier business is conducted. In the Merchant’s Quarter, the streets were laid out far in advance of construction and are kept clean and well maintained.

The four main guard outposts protect the two main roads leading to the market and are on constant lookout for thieves in the crowd and climbing the walls. The Arabian market is a cluster of shops, tables, and stalls where merchants hock their wares.

The market is always packed with customers during business hours. The merchants sell just about anything and everything legal that you can think of.

In sharp contrast, the Poor Quarter is a chaotic urban sprawl that is dirty and cluttered. The only area that is clean is a guard outpost to the northeast next to a small park where the guards try to keep the poor out of the Merchant’s Quarter. Buildings are seemingly placed wherever the builders felt like it, connected by a maze of back alleys and wooden planks used to walk from rooftop to rooftop. Business is conducted here too, in grungy stalls, in dark alleyways, inside buildings away from prying eyes, and on rooftop tables and storefronts. In this seedier part of town anything could be sold, fenced goods, or even slaves.

There are a lot of adventures possible with this module. The Player Characters could be shopping at the Arabian market when thieves or cutpurses go after them or one of the merchants.

The merchant hires the Player Characters to go retrieve what is stolen, or the Player Characters go to retrieve their own goods, having to go into the Poor Quarter and find the thieves in their home turf. Or reverse the adventure, with the Player Characters going to the Poor Quarter and getting a job to steal from the merchants, assassinate a merchant, etc. and have to get through the guards and walls to do it. Perhaps the Player Characters are hired as guards to watch the outpost and they have to capture thieves or assassins before they can get to their merchant target.

Even if there are no planned adventures here in this city, this module can make an excellent base for a campaign. Using the Poor Quarter, you can plan out a small city’s buildings. Twenty-one different building’s insides can be anything the Game Master wants from forges to taverns to temples to guild houses.