Narrow Alleys, Adept

Hi Adepts! This is the Narrow Alleys (11x16), a very compact urban map with just a few short paths to traverse.. unless you're the kind of person who sees roofs as traversable terrain. If not, the street level gives you enough space to fight a handful of drunks, no problem.

Your alternate version here is called 'Foggy' but it's kinda purple because someone once asked for maps of some plane where everything is purple and foggy. I don't remember what it's called but I remember the aesthetic, so here you go!

1. Tiny map, tricky tricky. When it comes to urban maps I always aim to provide plenty of space to run around while also making sure there are enough buildings to make the city feel city-like. While it seemed obvious when I started sketching that I should make an alley for this tiny map (small map needs small streets, right?), it started feeling pretty counterintuitive when I filled over half the map with rooftops. I tried to fix that by adding balconies to a few roofs but they mostly felt awkward so I ended up shrinking them down to make room for more alleys or better-looking roofs. Oh also, do you like all the little patios and decks? I feel like they look nice but add almost nothing to the map, so they're a small net positive.

2. I've said it before, but how is it that my small maps somehow aren't any less work than my big ones? Something about the frame tricks me into adding just as much detail to each of these 11x16 maps as I would to a regular 30x30 map despite being a fifth of the size. I suppose that means the maps are better because of it, but it would have been nice if I could make small maps faster than big maps. I'll probably have to figure out how to make these faster somehow for the rest of this month, I'll have family in town sleeping in my office soon so I have to whip up 3 maps sometime this month in a fraction of the time. So.. I guess I'm saying maybe you'll see another forest clearing map within the next 2 1/2 weeks, haha.

3. It's been a minute since I've made a city street map, enough time for me to, once again, dislike all my old ones and decide that I needed to start over from scratch. So, this time, I drew up all the roofs from scratch and determined that what my previous city maps were missing were props and more detailed streets. Simple enough, I threw down extra junk all over the place and added moss to the roofs in an attempt to make them slightly more visually interesting. I also took a lesson from Dungeon Mapster and drew in sidewalks.. or at least something that kinda looks like sidewalks. Whatever they are, they break up the ground level a little which is more important than I realized before I looked at other mapmakers' work.

In short, an overall improvement. I plan on making more urban maps soon so hopefully I can improve on this environment even further.