Great Tree Clearing, Adept (Patreon)

Hi folks! This week's map is the Great Tree Clearing (25x25), a fey-themed forest map centered around a redwood-sized tree trunk. Continuing my month of collaborations, I made this one alongside Will Savino of Music d20! He created a song to accompany this map, called Greenleaf, which really captures the mystical fey vibe that I was going for; it'll be perfect for introducing your players to the environment and it's free for my patrons, so be sure to download it below!

Also, your alternate version this time is a subdued recoloring, one in which I tried to also hint at a kinda blighted or poisonous vibe. This version will fit much better in your more grim environments, perhaps as a side encounter for Curse of Strahd even. 

1. So, the idea for this map is that there's a giant tree in the forest, kinda like the one in Totoro, with a big enough clearing around it for some combat. I was tempted to really fill this map with the one huge tree, maybe making as big as 50 feet across, but the rough versions of that map were kinda unexciting. The alternative to that was making an even bigger tree with a trunk so large that the map contains only a fraction of it, making the combat area almost entirely roots. 

Honestly, I'm still not convinced that that wasn't the right direction to take it, but since I try to make maps that are useful to as many people as possible I decided that the map should instead be somewhat less fantastical than it could be, perhaps with a great tree that's large enough that it could be reasonably found deep in any ancient forest. The scale I went with is approximately the same as a redwood, which would be quite a sight when placed alongside your more typical trees, but could still be found in your typical fantasy environment or your high-magic world. 

I'm tempted to return to this as this month's Revisited post and making the gargantuan off-screen tree version reality, rearranging the roots I've drawn to just be part of what's visible. What do you think?

2. Using the big tree's I've previously drawn for my other Feywild map as reference, most of the work for this map was drawing out detailing the big ol' trunk. Once that was in though, I thought it was missing some extra bits, all the plants and things that would be growing around the roots, so I quickly sketched up some little plants to fill in the gaps. The little leafy ones especially help make the map feel a little more 'wild' and jungle-y, and the mushrooms are great for adding the splashes of color that are vital in Fey maps. At this point, I kinda wanted to also add some rock walls in order to break up the terrain and set up some interesting shading, but I thought the map was already getting a little too complicated to take in at a glance, so I left it as is.

3. Since I had already made a Fey map before (included below), I figured I might as well try to imitate the colors and lighting as much as possible so that they could be used together without much issue. I did change the levels though, as I think the contrast had gotten out of control while I tried to make sure the map was bright enough despite being almost completely shaded by the tree canopy. I decided to leave this effect behind for the new one, instead focusing on dreamlike, ambient lighting that feels a little more Fey. 

The teal grass and purple shadows are still neat though, no need to change any of those. I kinda wish I had decided to leave in the little pond from the original sketch, the blue would have made for really satisfying contrast. Welp, maybe next time!