Gloomy Cave, Adept (Patreon)

1Hello there, Adepts! This week's map is the Gloomy Cave (30x40), a nice and basic cave map without much muss or fuss- we've got rocks and water, and your extra version comes with glowing mushrooms. Bing bang boom.

1. So, for this map's layout I wanted to feature a couple bits of terrain in hopes of adding a little variety to a type of map which is typically a little bland- caves. Since I've started sketching cave walls differently recently, depicting them as vertical walls instead of sloped inclines, I'm now able to create caves with tighter spaces and smaller columns. And also I can draw them a whole lot faster now, thank god. 

In practice this means I can make more complex cave layouts, so I wanted to try it out.

The other terrain I wanted to feature was a stream and basin. I felt that these would add a little interest to an otherwise plain cave. And you know what, it just occurred to me that maybe I should have made a version of this map without the water at all, that would have been a good idea. Anyway, I liked the thought of the stream blocking off the path a few times in the cave, forcing players to get their feet wet or offering the DM a chance to add a little puzzle (maybe the water is dangerous to touch, maybe enemies dwell within, maybe the sound of footsteps in water alerts an enemy elsewhere). 

2. Like I said in step 1, the new cave style is granting me the opportunity to depict more complex caves and cut out unnecessarily over-complicated sections of rock wall. As opposed to the first time I had tried this out, for this map I decided to sketch in some details in the outer area of the rock walls so that it doesn't look quite so overly simple. I feel this makes the map look more complete, though in the future I might downplay this detail a little more, just adding a few bits of craggy details here and there- the lines are maybe a little more eye-catching than I had intended.

3. Color! I've always hated coloring and shading cave maps, I just can't quite nail the palette. This time I tried somewhat vibrant water with fairly subdued rock, but who can say what the next will be- it felt like every 2 hours I almost completely redid all the colors, and honestly I think I could tweak it several times further and still not be 100% happy with it. 

Well, I guess I'll call this palette a work in progress. If I know myself well, next week I'll probably end up making another cave map just so I can hammer this out a little more. Any ideas on what kind of cave I should make?