Roadside Tavern, Adept (Patreon)

I revisited this map and gave it a 2nd floor, find it here!

This week's map is the Roadside Tavern (24x24)! I had some fun with this one, it feels like it's been some time since I've been able to make a simple forest map so I relished the opportunity to throw one together. I actually surprised myself by finishing the forest part of this in about 2 days flat, definitely a record pace. Imagine how many maps I could make if I only drew forests, you'd all have left me long ago and I'd be the least stressed man on earth. Can you picture the minute details and intricacies of my 100th forest? I'd be a woodland connoisseur for sure..

Well, that's enough dreaming. Let's talk about the map.

1. My desire for this map was to make a very cozy little place, I was imagining the Waystone Inn from the Kingkiller Chronicles, a well-off place where travelers and locals could eat and drink. My other inspirations were the various inns from the Wheel of Time series, where a traveling musician or gleeman could get a meal and a bed in exchange for entertaining the crowd for a while. Inns and taverns are such a big part of fantasy, there's tons of inspiration to draw on. 

I kept the layout simple, nothing too flashy. I especially wanted to insert a small stage, as nearly all the inns in my personal campaign come stock with some place for bards to perform, as well as a decent-sized stable. The outhouse and well are apparently necessities that humans generally need, according to people on the internet at least.

2. Life has been pretty good since I started using excessive grids for my outlines. Extra 1/2", 1/4", and 1/8" gridlines have drastically improved the flow of my interior drawings, something I only started doing for the Throneroom map a couple weeks ago. I've had an issue with hyper-focusing on uniformity, stemming from college where I majored in 3D modeling I think, it's easy to get caught up on that sort of thing when working digitally. The extra grids aid with that, making it very easy to ensure symmetry and keep things like walls and floorboards identically wide despite right angles or excessive length. Maybe someday I'll get better at eyeballing this sort of thing or maybe I'll get caught up on it a little less, but this is a huge improvement in the meantime. 

3. Looking back through my recent maps, I think I've been washing out my colors for some time. Somewhere along the way I got used to blasting the 'glare' on my maps and losing a lot of the vibrant colors I used to emphasize, especially for forests. This time I took a step in the right direction, and though it feels like it's maybe a little too colorful it's probably a solid change. Moving forward, I think I need to take a fresh look at the colors I've been taking for granted. The trees and grass have always clashed a little bit, and the ground color doesn't exactly go well with the blue shadows. There are some simple tweaks I could make that would pretty easily fix this, but I'll need to take time on it. The next map on the list is the Sewer Tunnels, so it won't be obvious for a while, but we'll see.