Haunted Fort Ruins, Adept (Patreon)

This week's map is the Haunted Fort Ruins (35x35), a small and devastated fort deep in a spooky forest. This place has got to be profoundly haunted, just look at all that fog! No place this foggy has any less than 20 ghosts going bump in the night, probably still trying to protect this place long after the battle has ended. Or maybe two factions of ghosts endlessly duke it out over this fort, deathlessly fighting for control of this long-abandoned battleground. Or maybe there's a griffon who lives in these ruins, that's just as good.

Oh also, I made an extra variant for you this week! I liked the subdued version a lot, but I felt like a stormy one would also be really cool for this map, and since I had already made 2 for the Expert patrons I figured I might as well make both for you and treat you to a bonus one. I hope you enjoy them both, and thanks for being a patron! 

1. I haven't not often designed forts, it's just not something I spend a lot of time doing in my daily life, so how about we start off this conversation by pretending that this fort is realistically laid out and is a reasonable size. I would like that. 

I started with some cool towers (gotta have towers), and connected them with walls. Then I put some old walls inside the fort, pretending that there were once some sorts of structures in there, and that's that. I probably could have done a lot of research into historical forts, cross referenced that against typical forts designs used in mapmakers' battlemaps, and came up with something uniquely historical, but I'm pretty lazy and mostly just wanted some crumbly ruins with parapets, so I'm content. Can you tell that I read all the comments on my maps?

2. The fort. Lots of crumbly details here- walls, ledges, rubble, and I even hurt myself by drawing in multiple levels. I set myself up for a busy week with this one. Thankfully I have recently-made pre-drawn trees both living and dead ready to go, so I knew I wouldn't have to worry much about the outside areas, leaving me time to busy myself with all those details. 

I don't think I found any job here to be particularly more tricky than any other, I didn't agonize over any step or take multiple attempts at anything, every part of the fort simply needed to be drawn and detailed, step by step. This step-by-step process is the mentality I've been trying to keep recently, it's helped me move through each project without being overwhelmed by the to-do list. I don't usually get bogged down by that sort of thing, but I've made a point of making larger maps recently and the increased size/difficulty of these maps definitely can get into my head. 

3. So, for my recent Haunted maps I've been discussing here in Step 3 how I've started the coloring by using an Unhaunted palette as my base, then making an Unhaunted variant, and then once that's finished I begin the process of making it spooky. That process is kinda annoying and isn't particularly effective, so this time I did it the opposite way, and it felt sooo much better. For one, the palette came together without much trouble at all, and I feel like it matches up very nicely with the Haunted Forest from last week. 

The fort's coloring, btw, I kept nice and vibrant, or maybe not vibrant but bright and clear. I didn't want it to get lost among the other details in the map so I left it a pleasant greenish/blue tint with lots of clear highlights to help the ledges and height variations stand out. I'm tentatively happy with how it looks, though I bet I'll feel differently about the level of contrast in a week.