Stormy Town Market, Adept & Expert (Patreon)

This week my alternate version is another one with stormy weather, which is the same as last time, but you can't deny that noire city feel is awesome. Actually recently in my campaign, which is set almost entirely in a single city, I had a huge storm pass through while my players were trying to track down a pirate friend of theirs who had dumped a black dragon egg onto them and ran away. Fortunately the rain had helped hide their rapidly hatching egg (and later, the dragon's squawks), but in all I was surprised at how much I liked how the rain altered the city's terrain. 

1. So I know that many many of my Patrons love urban maps, but I've gotta say they're the least interesting ones to draw. I just don't find squares and rectangles to be much fun, but many of you have been very vocal that this is what you wanted, so here we are. Anyway, I wanted to make a very disorganized market because I figured it would make for more interesting combat if the stalls weren't in neat rows, there's a little more cover this way and you can't just look down any lane to see across the entire map. With that in mind, with the stalls as they are there's room for combat at short, mid, and long range, so this layout should allow most players to use their preferred weapons if they're crafty. 

2. The last few times I drew cobblestone I made them in a detailed but unattractive style if I'm being honest. This time I cut back on the detail (which is always a nice time saver) and drew it like many of my peers do, with implied cobblestones in-between. I'm not convinced yet that this is how I will continue to draw them, but it absolutely is a step in the right direction. 

The roofs are another part I drew differently. Drawing my last urban map, the Town Courtyard, I found that I wasn't very happy with the low-detail, faded roof tiles I had drawn, but at that point I was too far into the map to undo them. Knowing that I drew up a somewhat easily tiled texture for the roofs. The most important change, I think, is the outside outline of the roofs isn't a straight line anymore, instead it's bumpy and follows the shapes of the various tiles. This is a little trick I like to use, breaking up the silhouette (wow I spelled that right on the first try). I think doing so gives a sense of realism, because almost nothing has a perfectly unbroken silhouette. It's just a little something to catch your eye on.

3. Wow, I had some serious trouble coloring this map. When I made the tents and stalls colorful I hated how it looked, but when I made them subdued I hated them even more. Pretty rough. Sometimes you have to just find a middle ground though, which I guess I did in the end, but I'm still not sure why I don't like the colors for this. Anyway, after being frustrated with the stalls I cooled myself off with some satisfying shading for the rooftops, some nice textured gradients with neat shadows that really catch the eye (hopefully drawing it away from those dang stalls). This is definitely my favorite part of drawing maps, shading makes everything work in the end.