1d100 Things in the Wizard's Tower

1 Extensive board game collection

2 Ostentatious chessboard
3 7 decks of cards and poker chips
4 Polyhedral dice
5 Alembics
6 Bunsen burners
7 Centrifuge
8 Fume hood
9 Boiling test tubes
10 Copper pot still
11 Acid hole-riddled apron
12 Hot plate (for work)
13 Hot plate (for food)
14 Microwave (dirty)
15 Stacks of dirty dishes
16 Poptarts
17 Pizza rolls
18 60lbs frozen chicken nuggets
19 40lbs dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets
20 872lbs dinosaur nuggets
21 Chest freezers
22 Orb
23 Fruit bat
24 Pointy hat (scorched)
25 Hand-carved staff
26 Animated cloak
27 Wardrobe of impressive clothes for public appearances
28 Dresser full of sweatpants and hoodies
29 Dirty socks
30 Basket of clean socks
31 Basket of socks in an uncollapsed clean-dirty superposition
32 Iguana named Lloyd, likes ham
33 Glowing orb
34 Blacklight posters
35 Glow-in-the-dark stars and planets
36 Lava lamps
37 Bean bag chairs
38 Bead curtains
39 Waterbed
40 Turntable and vinyl collection
41 Big screen TV
42 Popcorn maker
43 Gourmet popcorn assortment
44 Giant talking mealworm named Eli, very judgemental
45 Fruit bowl
46 Fruit flies
47 Dormant golem
48 3 inert clones
49 Magic sword
50 Cursed sword
51 Sword lodged to the hilt in a boulder
52 Umbrella stand full of failed and prototype wands, rods, and staves
53 Closet full of random electronic parts and components
54 Ancient computer running Win 3.1 (amber CRT and mechanical keyboard, actively processing data)
55 TI-83 graphing calculator
56 High-powered telescope
57 High-powered sniper rifle (experimental)
58 saxophone (alto)
59 Silly string
60 Serious string
61 Vacuum cleaner (full of ghosts)
62 Shopping cart (borrowed indefinitely)
63 Skulls (gossipy and loud)
64 Homunculus
65 Imp infestation
66 Miniature mammoth
67 Snakes!
68 1d12+20 chinchillas
69 Frog-shaped teapot (home to an actual tiny frog)
70 3000 gallon tank of liquid nitrogen
71 60 helium tanks (each 5' tall and hold 300 cubic ft of gas)
72 435 gallons of mercury
73 Elixir of immortality (just pure mercury)
74 Elixir of immortality (actually works, tastes like death)
75 Fireball (liquor)
76 Fireball (8' diameter, caught in stasis but slowly expanding)
77 Fire extinguisher
78 Wine cellar (extradimensional, 5000 sqft)
79 Meerschaum pipe
80 Long-stemmed pipe
81 Opium pipe
82 Rolling papers
83 280kg of weed
84 Mushrooms (recreational)
85 Claw-footed bathtub
86 Weight rack and bench
87 Well-worn persian rug
88 Complex painted summoning circle (hidden under the rug)
89 Wall of diplomas and degrees
90 Candles (dripping wax on the floor)
91 Towering pile of books (unstable)
92 Complete collection of National Geographic
93 Decades-overdue library books
94 Swirling portal to Outside (mostly stable)
95 Door that opens onto 4 separate destinations
96 Machines that make the tower walk (offline)
97 1/1000th scale model of the tower (perfect in every detail)
98 Massive model train table
99 Vintage motorcycle (robin's egg blue)
100 Panel van painted with a mural of accountants doing taxes

Experiment: The Tower That Follows You

The Tower That Follows You is something I've always wanted to use in a game. It's exactly what it sounds like, some feature of the world that follows the party and inserts itself into the local landscape as they move. The players can go wherever they like, do whatever adventuring they want, but that Tower is always there. It just shows up, no matter how far they travel. They never have to go in or interact with it if they don't want to, but the option is always there.

It feels like a fun mix of mysterious, ominous, and unsettling.

It's also important to remember that the thing following the party doesn't have to be a tower. I just think of towers as the default because they're dramatic and near impossible to miss looming in the distance. It could be any type of building or location like a dungeon mouth, temple, spooky old manor, or something as simple as a distinctive ornate door that keeps showing up on random walls. It doesn't even need to be man-made. The party could keep running into the same forest clearing with a fairy circle, the same tree, a particular prehistoric standing stone, or just a rip in space-time that keeps appearing.

The key things are that whatever's following is:

1) Conspicuous. Extremely obvious, easily visible, and distinctive so the players can't miss it. The rest of the world might not notice it (or think it's always been there) but the party has to know it's there and be able to recognize it as the exact same feature from past sightings.

2) Ready to go. It needs to be something the party can interact with whenever they decide they've had enough of its malarkey. That means it's got to be fully prepared and ready to run at a moment's notice.

3) A constant and unavoidable presence in the world that confronts the party just by existing. They can choose not to interact with it, but they can't ignore it's there.

The real fun is it might not even be something menacing. They might just have a fan who's a wizard with a mobile tower. No way to know for sure unless they go in and check it out.