Blacksmith Forge, Adept (Patreon)

Hi Adepts! This week's map is the Blacksmith Forge (24x22, 10x9), a small shop/forge/home that you should have absolutely no problem fitting into just about any campaign, at least that's what I was aiming for. 

Your alternate version of this map is subdued, which honestly feels a little creepy this time around. I was intending for this to be a little more appropriate for shadier towns, a shop where you might feel mildly threatened or like the smith might be charging you through the nose, but maybe this place is just plain ol' haunted, who can say?

1. Like I said, I wanted this to be a useful map. I didn't plan on including anything that might limit how you could use it, so I designed it to be just about as generic as possible.  So, the shop is small and well-stocked, the forge is modestly sized, and that's all there is to it, really.

2. While this should have been a quick map to draw up, I ended up spending a fair bit of time sketching out suits of armor, weapons, and forging supplies- types of props I've never had to spend much time on in the past. I whipped up the armor by finding reference on Sketchfab, a website where you can rotate people's 3D models to the angle you want, which is particularly helpful when you only look at props from above like in my maps. After making one set of armor, the center one, I duplicated it twice and altered the pauldrons and helmets to look just different enough while keeping approximately the same proportions. 

I had a little fun with the weapons, after drawing up one or two generic swords and daggers I threw in a buster sword, and afterwards felt spicy so I quickly sketched up Smough's hammer, a Castlevania-inspired axe, and the Mace of Molag Bal, which I felt would help add some variety to the types of weapons in the shop. Sure, I know it's a little too cute to add easily-identifiable weapons to a map, but I thought it might be kinda fun. 

3. Colors! I had to think about this, I don't often make isolated building maps so I forgot how I tend to handle maps like this, especially considering how I wanted to isolate the extra floors as PNGs. I had to take a refresher course by looking through my last few building maps (again, not many), and eventually got an idea of what I was going to need to do. I decided to imitate the Grimy Inn map, which is one of the few I've made that includes a bit of cobblestone street. I think I'll try to include this detail in the future, it adds a nice sense to location to the map and I feel like it helps prompt players to explore outside the building.