Swamp Bridges, Adept (Patreon)

Welcome back, Adepts! This week's map is the Swamp Bridges (30x30), and your extra version is one where I've removed all of the half-submerged bones littering the swamp! Without them, this map feels a little less grim, and a fair bit more verdant. If you're into Magic the Gathering, I'd say the vibe shifts from Golgari to Selesnya, or maybe even Simic.

You'll find these 'Boneless' versions of this map in the day/night files, rather than in their own new file, with the 'boneless' tag included in the name. I felt that this was a little cleaner than the alternative, but maybe that's just me.

1. As I've been talking about in the last few weeks' $1 posts, I've just started my paternity leave this week, and thus will be posting a series of maps over the next several weeks which I've been setting aside since July. This means that my memory of the creation process for some is probably pretty hazy, but even so I'll do my best to discuss here what I remember, or perhaps just what occurs to me now.  However, the nice thing about these posts is that I'm free to use them however I wish, so let's see how I do!

The first thing that occurs to me when I look at this map is that it's a little reminiscent of one of my early Patreon trial maps, the Lava Path, which was one of a few maps I made to draw in new Patrons when I first created Neutral Party. I think that this design, with a couple bridges spanning difficult/dangerous terrain, is something I keep returning to because of the inherent tactical complexity of bridges. Which is a fancy way of saying that bridges are fun and make for cool fights. And, of course, two bridges are better than one, right?

2. Bones! I realized this year that bones are some of my favorite things to draw, specifically the bones of fantastical creatures. What's nice about drawing monster bones is that there aren't really many rules for them, I can mess with the structure however I want and no one can say that they're inaccurate or wrong. For example, I see a goat skull near the center of the swamp here, but with the addition of some extra horns and the hint of fangs. Who knows what kind of creature that thing is from, but I'd bet it was pretty freaky! The only thing that I have to try to keep in mind though is the rules for bones/skeletal structures in general and how they fundamentally work- but as long as I don't go too buck-wild, I'm pretty much in the clear!

3. Yikes, I'm not sure I have much to talk about here. I made this map at the tail-end of my streak of swamp maps back in October, so I had the benefit of lots of iterations of this palette before I made it, but even so I'm noticing that I made several changes in the palette which makes this map cut the difference between a swamp map and a jungle map, primarily the greenish emerald tint to everything, rather than my usual swampy olive green. I don't remember if that move was intentional or not, but I kinda like that this might be a nice include in either jungle or swamp encounters, so I'm not going to imply that that's a bad thing!