Creepy Crypt, Adept (Patreon)

Hi! I'm back with a rare mid-week map, the Creepy Crypt (25x19), with just a few days to spare in the spooky month. And, your alternate version is an icy Frozen recoloring/reshading, with more vibrant blue coloring and plenty of eerie blue lights! I like the thought of this version being lit from cracks or large holes in the ceiling above, allowing little safety from the blizzard outside, but that's up to you. 

1. I sketched this map up a couple weeks ago as a potential addition to the Modest Chapel, but for whatever reason I ended up putting it aside and working on another project. As you can see, the layout is a little over-simple, with few branching paths and a much heavier emphasis on small side rooms. That's fine and all, but it isn't great for setting up encounters, and personally I hate combats in extremely cramped halls. 

When I returned to this map, I moved some things around, combined areas, and widened several rooms in order to allow for a couple small encounters with a variety of layouts to spice them up. I like the new layout much better, but it's probably just a matter of personal preference- maybe someone out there loves hallway fights.

2. Since I'm trying to make 2 maps this week (to make up for the map I skipped at the beginning of the month), I tried to stick to what I knew. That said, I certainly didn't want to make something boring or uninspired, so I tried to change up the rooms' terrain a little in such a way as to make each unique. 

The chamber in the bottom left has 2 levels within, which is a set up for a spooky visual of the sarcophagi all breaking open below and their inhabitants creeping up the staircase. The chamber in the center at the bottom has a large centerpiece pile of skulls on top of an altar, which easily can become the crux of the whole crypt or just a fun fight where several skulls become wreathed in flame, float up into the air, and strike at the party.  Just a few little things like that, changes to my formula which hopefully will make the map more memorable and interesting to build around without being overbearing. 

3. The tricky thing about coloring underground areas is making them dark without shading it so dark that it's difficult to make out what's going on. I usually play it safe and keep it lighter than it should be, with the thought that there might be some magical light source, the players have night vision (most do), or that no one really cares that it's not as shadowy as you'd think a crypt would be. I think it came out pretty nicely, though I sorta wish I had spent a little more time on the shadows, some of which are a bit more crunchy than I prefer. Definitely not a huge deal, but it catches my eye in a few places.