Swamp Shrine, Adept (Patreon)

This week's swamp map is the Swamp Shrine (25x30), a nice place for a swampy adventure to wrap up with a battle focused around some magic stones. With that in mind, your extra version is this 'Glowing' one, where I've added some eye-catching magical effects to the night version as well as additional dramatic lighting. 

1. Part of the difficulty of making swamp maps is making sure there is enough solid ground to work with, though I suppose it isn't my job to come up with reasons why your players don't want to trudge though the water. Personally, I think that maps like this need several irregular patches of ground in order to feel 'swampy', but that's just me. Even so, I decided to go a little light on solid ground this time in an attempt to help confine the battle to the area around the central island, which I felt would be appropriate for the 'boss fight' vibes I was aiming for. 

Also, I thought it would be a fun scene if zombies started emerging from the water while the players attempted to buy some time near the stones or tried to stop a ritual. Call me old fashioned, but I think swamp zombies make for exciting encounters.

2. I'm still pretty happy with the new setup for these swamp maps I've been making. The grass growing directly up to the water feels right to me, very swampy, and the minimal dirt patches really do help get across the vibe I was hoping for. I'm still a little iffy on the little plants though, I'm starting to think I should integrate more things like reeds near the shorelines, though last time I tried that it got way too detailed and felt overwhelming to look at. Maybe a small amount of reed-like plants would help there, it's something I'll toy around with for my next swamp map. 

3. Yup, that's right, I changed my swamp palette once again. I realize that, in the Behind the Scenes posts for my last two, I also said that I felt pretty happy about the colors I ended up with, despite iterating on them each time, so maybe I need to stop making claims like this. Despite that, I do think I'm slowly working towards a palette that I'm going to be truly happy with, something that feels yellow and brown enough to be appropriate for a bog but vibrant enough so you could splash it into a jungle adventure without much hassle. 

The changes I made this time were, once again, in a more swampy direction. I dulled the greens somewhat, and I think I also darkened the water a little, though I did end up brightening the underwater shoreline a decent amount, which I decided would be helpful for indicating to players where traversable but difficult terrain might be. In hindsight I might have gone a bit too hard on that, but I don't think it's that much of an issue. I'll see how I feel about it in a day or two and decided on whether I'll do it again for future swamps.