Dungeon Entryway, Adept (Patreon)

I'm back again, this time with the Dungeon Entryway (35x35)- a curious staircase in the middle of a plain. If something like this doesn't intrigue your players and inspire a side-adventure, then I don't know what to tell you- it's a setup that, once upon a time, got my players to take a break from the main quest despite being short on time. 

Also, your alternate version of this maps is Autumn, but I made it to be somewhat similar to the Savannah Cave, so perhaps you could use them together. I know the trees aren't exactly the same color, but in what world are all trees the same color?

1. Whenever I lay out ruins I have to start out by asking myself just how symmetrical this one ought to be. This time around I wanted the ruins to feel particularly old, as if there once were many many more walls standing here, which I decided meant that there shouldn't be any mirroring. Even so, I tried to imply a kind of layout to whatever stood here, with the stairway being central to the rest of the buildings nearby, with even a important-looking pathway between obelisks leading up to the staircase itself. Mysterious!

2. Walls and grass, a few trees, a handful of rocks. The trees and rocks came from the Forest Cave Entrance, the ruins were made from about 40" of beat-up brick walls I had previously drawn and put aside. Not hard, kinda fun even. As always with this kind of map, the only thing  that slowed me down was the endless grass details, which always turn me into a monster who can't stand if they're too grouped together, too spread apart, too symmetrical, too shapeless, too patterned. It gets to be a little exhausting, honestly, and it comes together 5x slower than any other prop and 10x slower than it should. 

3. Color-wise, I again tried to keep this one similar to other recent forest/plains maps, specifically the Forest's Edge. As always, I might have gone a little too hard with the vignette, especially considering that there aren't many props near the edge of the map to obfuscate it, but even so I do think it's a rather pretty one that captures the melancholy vibe I was going for.