Witch's Hut, Adept (Patreon)

Hi folks! As I promised, I made another spooky map before the month was over- the Witch's Hut (20x20)! This is a map that's been requested many many times over the last year or so, so I thought it would be the perfect time to slip it into the schedule since it felt thematically perfect for the month. With that in mind, your alternate version of this map is recolored with vibrant Fey colors! I'd use this version for enchanted, magical swamp encounters, perhaps as part of a quest to find or aid the resident of this fantastical swamp. 

1. Since the focus of the map is the witch's hut itself, I didn't want to hide it with too much surrounding terrain, instead really emphasizing the little island that it's standing on. Otherwise, I didn't feel like it was necessary to overcomplicate this one- all the little details in swamps are a little overwhelming by themselves, including more props like skulls on sticks, altars, or other witch-y props would, again, get lost in all of that detail. Anyway, that kind of thing is pretty on the nose, I think it's more fun to leave some room for doubt and let your players decide if this is a witch or just a person who lives in a hut in the swamp.

2. I knocked out the outlines for this bad boy in less than a single day, which was a rare treat. I made a few small changes to my usual swamp formula which I think helped make that happen. The most important change was that I let the grass grow all the way up to the water without drawing dirt in-between, which saved me from adding and detailing all of that extra content. 

With my previous swamp map I felt that that little strip of dirt didn't look right and wasn't indicative of how swamps actually look, on top of that it added a lot of extra detail to the edges of each 'island' in a way that felt very unnatural. I knew I was going to be making this change when I started sketching the map, but I was on the edge about whether I should instead add a small rock ledge which dropped down into the water. This would have expressed the transition nicely and given a bit of depth to the islands, but perhaps would still be too heavy-handed, and again would have been way too heavy on unneeded details. 

3. As you can tell, I got pretty crazy with the colors again. My last swamp map ended up extremely gray and not very interesting to look at, a result of me attempting to nail the putrid/rotting/swampy look. I decided to go with a different vibe this time, more of a flourishing and vibrant palette with a hazy green tint on top. I think this is an improvement that still doesn't really feel 'swampy', but I'm starting to get the feeling that my preference for colorful palettes doesn't work well with the ambience that swamps should have. Either way, I'll use this map as another step in my quest for the perfect swamp map!