Sinister Temple, Adept (Patreon)

Hi folks! This week I made the Sinister Temple (33x38), which is more or less just your average temple with grungier lighting, more candles, and a room for cages! You alternate version this time is a Caustic recoloring, which is quickly becoming a personal favorite for maps with pools that I can turn greenish-yellow and glowing. Thinking about it, I usually have Borderlands 2's Caustic Caverns area in mind when coloring this type of thing, though I suppose the idea of giant pools of nasty glowing green stuff isn't too unique, I can think of a couple of other games with similar zones. 

Anyway, let's talk about it!

1. When laying out buildings, I like to think about their purpose- what will it be used for? What rooms are absolutely necessary, and which aren't? I personally avoid using maps in my campaigns that have too many rooms for me to explain or prepare for, so I make maps that I would use. Anyway, I decided that living quarters, scriptoriums, eating chambers, storage rooms, and bathrooms are sometimes nice if you're looking for that sort of thing, but I think they complicate maps that don't necessarily need them. And if your players pepper you with questions about where the cultists all sleep, just tell them they cuddle in a giant pile in the chapel. 

2. As you can tell, rough sketches for buildings are often just suggestions, I think they're mostly useful for feeling out the rough shapes of rooms as well as their purposes. 

This time around I decided to finally pull the trigger and make a tileable png for these 1"x1" floor tiles. I've been kicking around this current version since the first dungeon token pack, stitching together bits of them to save myself the effort of detailing even more patches of ground, something that gets to be a little boring after a couple dozen maps. 

I think the other notable part of this map is all the statues, which are props I typically avoid. Why? Because they suck to draw, I hate drawing people and characters, why do you think I make maps? Oh, also, want to hear a secret? I've noticed that I'm not the only one who does this, but I google actual character tokens when drawing statues and I'll use their exact pose and clothing as reference. Some people go so far as to trace the tokens, I suspect, but that's none of my business and I see nothing wrong with it. 

3. Call it quarantine fatigue if you want, but I had a hell of a time finishing this map as the days dragged on. I used the Evil version of the Stately Throneroom as reference for this map's coloring, but even so I struggled to make much headway, losing interest in detailing more stone altars almost immediately after starting as my mind wandered to playing some more Mount & Blade 2. 

In the end I suppose I finished, but I can pick out several areas that aren't quite right, the pools for one a little flatter than I'd like, and there's significantly less shading around the altars and pools than I'd typically add. Sometimes a map just doesn't spark my interest late in the game, that's just the biz I suppose.