Devastated Dungeon, Adept (Patreon)

Hello there, Adepts! This week's map is the Devastated Dungeon (37x34), a map I suddenly felt inspired to make earlier this week, despite all the other maps I should be making. But you know what? Sometimes I like to take the initiative and do what feels right, and that's just great. 

Your alternate version of this map is a subdued version, since I felt that the original was so gosh-danged colorful that it might in fact be way too vibrant for a decent portion of my patrons to use. So, you'll probably find that this one is a little more easy to fit into your less happy campaigns/quests. Enjoy!

1. This time around I happened to take a moment to save some of the iterations of this map as I sketched them, thinking that some of you might find it interesting to see a little more of the process behind my layouts. The first version of this map was a little more.. constrained? The cave had less space to maneuver and the dungeon was more split into rooms without a lot of space to work with. Also, I had the entrance of the map located in the cave, which I felt wasn't quite right. 

2. In this version I took the time to flesh out the cave a little more, and you'll notice that the dungeon portion of the map utilizes the available space in the frame a bit better (it's free real estate, after all, why not use it?). At this point I felt pretty happy with the map, but I had the feeling that the cave could also use a little more complexity and the dungeon could really use some more tweaking, nothing about it felt particularly unique or fun yet.

And here's the final sketch, now utilizing the frame much more efficiently, at the cost of feeling somewhat squarish. Also, the final change involved combining and widening some of the dungeon's rooms into a central hallway, which I feel was a welcome addition that should make for interesting paths through the structure. 

2. I promised myself I would take time off from making rock walls after the Mountain Shrine map, and look what I did to myself. It really hurt me too, all that extra detailing on top of all the dungeon's details put me profoundly behind schedule. This time I really am going to promise myself that I won't be making any new rock wall for a while, I'm serious this time.

3. Colors! I was inspired to get kinda weird with it this time, with 2 very different themes and palettes split between the parts of the map. I'm not sure exactly why I felt the need to do it, but it seemed like a really cool idea that I wanted to get down on digital paper. I was originally planning on going with a strong yellowish vibe for the dungeon in order to really contrast with the cave's purples, but I pivoted at the last moment for a palette that was much more similar to my most recent Sewers map, thinking it might be nice to connect the two together into a single adventure.