City Boulevard, Adept (Patreon)

Hi Adepts! This week I made the City Boulevard (35x34), formerly the Lush City Boulevard from the poll. When I imagined this map, I had in mind the sort of planter boxes you see in some cities along major streets, which I felt would be interesting cover on an open street. Also, you alternate version is one with Stormy effects, one of my long time favorite weather effects for spicing up encounters. Anyone jumping around roofs with swords raised over their heads better be a little cautious about lightning strikes, while also being careful about slippery roof tiles. I hope you like it!

1. Oops! For the first time ever, I accidentally saved over the initial rough sketch of a map, sorry! I don't believe I strayed much from my original plans, fortunately, so nothing of great value was lost. 

My original concept of this map didn't include a canal cutting through the center, but rather a wide open stretch of road with maybe a wagon or two parked near the planter boxes. I tried a few sketches of this, but predictably I decided that some changes in elevation would be much more exciting. And, since the City Canal map went down so well with many patrons, I thought that it would be fun to spice up this street with a nice canal, which is great for adventurers who don't mind getting soggy in exchange for cover and extra movement options. 

As for the wings of the map, as always I try to make several alleys for players to cut through. Urban maps just aren't quite right unless they have extra paths for quick/crafty/stealthy players to take advantage of, I think. For this one, I tried to get as many of these paths in as possible, which is partially why this map got over 30 inches wide and tall. 

2. I'm so glad I saved a few patches of roof tiles and windows in their own PNG, it has saved me so much time- without them I can't imagine I'd be able to make a map like this in a week. In fact, it's because I have so many premade props/trees/roofs/cobblestone patches saved up at this point that I can confidently make a map this size in a reasonable amount of time. I think that's probably one of the biggest and best improvements in my workflow since I started making urban maps- it's allowed me to essentially double the scale of them and spend more time designing a satisfying layout than carefully drawing roof tiles and cobblestone. 

3. While I'm still pretty happy with the colors and lighting of the City Canal (my most recent urban map), I feel like it turned out a little more muted than I'd prefer- what's the fun of having water in your city map if you don't get vibrant with it? For this map, I wanted to try to imitate the effects of that map, but with changes in lighting which I think are all positive. The issue I'm still having though is balancing the bright colors I desire against the palette that feels correct for a city street. I want the map to feel fun and energetic, but not so vibrant that it would be unusable for a grim setting, like a slaver city or otherwise evil location. On that front, I've probably failed, but not by that much actually. It might not actually be possible to perfectly strike a balance like that, but I'm keeping myself entertained by trying, so that's cool.