Desert Temple, Adept (Patreon)

I'm back with another urban desert map, the Desert Temple (33x40)! This one is fairly simple, a large central temple with a span of my stock desert city ringing it. I wanted to make sure it felt like it could fit in with the rest of the desert maps I made, so I decided to stick with buildings and street layouts that look very similar to the rest, though I was very tempted to get a little silly with this one- maybe next time!

1. I went through so many layouts for this temple- all extremely similar to one another. I really agonized over it, shifting walls one grid square at a time until I was disappointed to realize I hated what I ended up with. Then I would delete it and start over, going through this process a handful of times. 

The drawing above was my favorite for a while- I had planned on pools of water winging the entrance and maybe another pool in the entrance chamber, but as I tweaked walls more and more I decided against it for the sake of keeping the building feeling semi-humble. Later I doubled down on this new layout, feeling that big pools of water might be limiting to campaigns where finding water is a key story point- not unlikely in a desert city, I thought. 

2. This layout I ended with felt the most realistic, no small hidden chambers or extra wings, just 2 rooms filled with pillars. The walls also became a little more detailed than I expected- I suspect part of my initial issue with my layouts was that it didn't feel extravagant enough with the flat walls. Well, let's just say that the walls also used to be a lot more extravagant before I took another pass and smoothed some things out, removing half a dozen extra windows and simplifying the overly-complicated pillars.

The symbol in the center of the temple is, of course, mostly taken from the Desert Shrine- I felt that having a through-line there would be nice for tying together the maps into a single campaign. I can also imagine the arguments for not having that through-line though, so there's a chance that was a mistake.

3. I cannot express to you how hard a time I had with this week's map. I think it has to be mental, an artists' block or something, cause despite how similar this map's colors are to the rest of my recent desert maps I truly agonized over it. In fact, between this sentence and the previous I stopped, deleted my files, tweaked the shadows to be a little less dark around the temple, and reuploaded everything. Truly not in the right headspace for this one, I don't know what to say. Here's hoping the next one goes smoother.