Crumbling Facility, Adept & Expert (Patreon)

Hey everyone! The alternate version of this week's map is a fairly simple palette swap from gray to orange, which I usually do when I make maps that are almost entirely stone or rock. I do this because the gray version, while pretty, has a more aged and cold feeling to it. For me, that would be great as that's the way I imagine my dungeons anyway, but the orange version has different uses. I could see this in the sewers beneath a built-up desert city, or perhaps as an abandoned (or operational but run-down) dwarven facility where they used to control the flow of water into their mountain kingdom. Either way, it's a neat little swap that really broadens this map's usefulness in interesting ways. 

1. As I mentioned in the regular post, this map was suggested as an Expert-level reward. The idea behind it was it would be a ruined facility that's been eroded with time, with clockwork and hextech technology, though in a medieval setting with Greek styling. My first inclination was to make a Bioshock-inspired map, which is a setting that fits just about all the requirements (an excellent game btw, it's on PS4 if you haven't played it before). My first few sketches, however, didn't excite me though, so I scrapped it for a more traditional dungeon-y design with more ancient Grecian architecture than Bioshock's clockwork. 

At this stage, you can see that I had many more props in just about every room, nearly all of which I cut. I decided that, for the sake of not presuming too much about the map's use and leaving it versatile, I would leave most rooms empty. I think this leaves the possibility of small-scale combat open as well as puzzles, as well as not limiting the use of the map, though I'm not too confident about this choice as it leaves most areas looking rather unexciting. I've been considering putting together another token pack though, so maybe I'll start by filling out a couple of these rooms with versatile props. 

2. You know what was the most difficult part of this map to draw? Surprisingly, the walls. Lots and lots of little details, and though I duplicated many portions it still was a pain. Everything else was just business as usual, but I so rarely draw walls (and brick walls especially) that I forgot how much work it was. Don't even get me started on the circular walls. Even the rubble was less difficult, though I practically only drew 2 large chunks and then cut copies apart to fill in the rest. 

3. So, the thing about this map's colors was I had to make a decision: would I make it realistically dark or just color it and make it look nice? I guess I chose both in the end and the 'dark' version just replaced the normal 'night' version. If it were my decision though, I would only ever use the well-lit map and tell my players this is what it looks like with their darkvision (who plays humans, anyway?), or maybe there are inexplicably fully functional lit chandeliers in almost every room. I tried to toe the line by making the lighting more dramatic than usual so I think it works.