Haunted Graveyard, Adept (Patreon)

This week I made the Haunted Graveyard (35x35), an understandably spooky place for your players to journey into! There is a 100% likelihood of adventurers encountering ghosts, ghouls, skeletons, vampires, bats, zombies, and necromancers here, so make sure to keep the pace of the encounter fast because it'll take a while for your party to deal with each one, one by one. 

Your alternate version of this map is, once again, Unhaunted! I hope you're not getting tired of this type of extra variant for these Haunted maps, but I thought it might be the most useful one I could make for you. If you don't think so, please let me know and I'll be happy to make something different next time. 

1. Graveyards are kinda tricky- the walls don't have much reason to be particularly secure, especially if it's not a fancy or well-maintained graveyard, so I have to expect that it'll be approached from any direction. With that in mind, I tried work with that by placing interesting locations in several spots around the map so that DMs could have a little more to work with in case they decide the stretch an encounter or move their macguffin so that the players don't find it too quick. 

I also designed the layout to feel a little wonky- it wouldn't feel spooky enough for me if all the headstones were in neat rows. Placing graves at odd angles that follow the randomly curvy dirt paths adds a little tension and gives the impression that this place isn't quite right somehow. 

2. Whoops, I lost my rock walls. That was 50% intentional- I wasn't sure if they felt completely necessary so I decided to draw them in last. Then, of course, I forgot about them entirely, so I suppose they weren't all that important. 

I did end up drawing all the tombs, headstones, walls, and mausoleums fresh for this map, even though I have quite a few saved from past tombs, crypts, and graveyards. However, I wanted to try a few things al little different: the headstones have a little bit of perspective (as opposed to my usual completely top-down view) so as to help the viewer visualize the shape, the tombs are a little more simple in design, and the mausoleums are a little fancier with tile roofs and little bits of decoration added at the edges. The wall was utterly unnecessary for me to draw new, but I wasn't sure what it was going to end up looking like when I started, so when it eventually looked exactly like all my other brick walls I was resigned to my fate. 

3. Colors! I'm starting to get pretty fast as whipping up this palette, and though I did make a few little changes I'm very happy that this map still, overall, feels like it's in the same forest as the Haunted Forest map from a few weeks back (I'm going to pretend that the Haunted Village Ruins wasn't intended to be in this same line of Haunted maps). 

The tweaks made to the palette this time include a deeper vignette around the edge of the map (which I think heightens the spooky vibe when paired with the creeping mist), slightly more vibrant grass which hopefully isn't offsetting the Haunted theme, slightly more vibrant dirt, and yellower trees. All these changes should ideally make the map pop a little better without making it feel too much more happy, though that may be a pipe dream. 

Also, happily, I was able to whip up the Unhaunted version without altering any base colors- only the lighting effects! I think that, while it isn't a 100% match for my other Unhaunted forest maps, it does a really really solid impression, and importantly it's waaay easier for me to put together. Hopefully I can get an even better match now too, with what I've learned from this attempt- I'm excited to try again!