Snowy Clearing, Adept (Patreon)

Hello Adepts! This week's map is the Snowy Clearing (25x20), and like last time you're getting another snowstorm-y version to accompany it! I just think it would be a shame to offer a map with interesting weather and terrain without also offering a version with that weather bumped up to 10. Now you can surprise your players with a snowstorm while they trek through the forest, and as they search for cover they come across a small cave in a furrow, unfortunately occupied by someone (or something) who had the same idea.

1. I started this about 2 weeks ago, and at the time I was hoping that I could get a headstart on it so I wouldn't have to stretch myself thin during the week of Christmas. Going into it, I wanted to make sure that I made something that I could reasonably put together in the time I had, nothing too complicated. That said, I never want to check out on a map and make something boring or too similar to an old map, so I put together a handful of sketches of terrains that I thought didn't retread the same ground, and of them I chose the winter cave clearing as the best of the bunch. 

The environment was simple enough and it worked well alongside the previous map I released, so the two could both easily be part of the same adventure. On top of that, cave entrance maps are always interesting, with an innate hook that's super easy to integrate into a story or bait your players with while they're on the road. 

2. For the sake of time I reused all the trees from the Jungle Camp, just rotated so they couldn't be too easily identified by careful observers. I had a little bit of a hard time placing them though, my first draft looked unnatural somehow. I think the problem was I accidentally placed all the trees too evenly spaced across the map and it just felt wrong. I stepped away for a while and when I returned with fresh eyes I shifted several clusters closer together, cut some unnecessary stragglers, and added a few more to the edge of the frame to give the impression of more trees just off-screen.

3. I've had the chance to really work on my winter maps recently, giving me the time to refine their style. This time I decided to work on the colors. I pushed the blues much harder while trying not to lose the nice greens of the trees. Most of the nice blue color is coming from the vignette, the darkening around the edge of the frame, which looks nice, but also multitasks by wrangling your players towards the well-lit center (rather than wandering off-screen, making more work for you). The vignette extends much closer to the center for this map, though fading into a more vibrant blue than I have tried up until now.