Cultist Hideout, Adept

I'm back with a micro dungeon, the Cultist Hideout (16x11)- a tiny map which is designed to fit on 2 sheets of computer paper (which is 8.5x11), 2 sheets of A4 paper (8.27x11.69), or a single sheet of A3 paper (11.69x16.54). Why? I thought it might be nice to have a few little dungeon maps which you could easily print without needing to put much effort into piecing together a bunch of sheets or investing a bunch of ink. It might be nice for introducing new players to the game or quickly whipping out a nice map! With that in mind, please remember to use the PDFs I include in your files, they're sized for printing and the PDFs for this one don't include the colored background so as to save on ink.

1. So, there was lots of strategizing and sketching for this map on account of the limited space. I tried out a few layouts which had more hallways but I didn't like how that wasted so much space. I figured I'd be better off with just rooms connecting to other rooms, giving you a bit more room to maneuver despite the cramped spaces.

One thing I wanted to avoid was full loops, that is to say pieces of the map that looped back on themselves. Obviously there's the rocky passage on the top of the map that connects down to the sanctuary on either side, but I wanted that to be the only loop. I find that dead ends can actually make a map feel larger, especially when the dead end is a room. It makes each dead end feel more important, like a destination, which is hard when the map represents an area 80 feet across- the length of a tennis court.

2. Something fun about smaller maps is that I find I have an easier time giving each part more attention. I tend to draw maps zoomed way too far out so I sometimes lose track of the scale, so when I get to make tiny maps like the building maps I made recently I can get in deep and give rooms as much attention as a rock wall or a piece of forest.

But that does mean that I have to detail tiny underground stone rooms, which means lots of rock walls and lots of annoying tile floors to draw. You should be proud of me, I tried really hard not to duplicate and copy chunks of floor tile so as to save on time.. but then I did anyway because no one cares about that sort of thing other than me. I don't know why I'm like this.

Oh also! I moved the entrance stair case to the bottom from the side. It really didn't make much sense there, I don't know why I drew it there in the first place. I need to resist the impulse to start a dungeon map with the entrance, I think, it's really not as important as the final chamber(s) and the location for the entrance always becomes obvious eventually on its own.

3. So, I tried to use the sewer colors here as the starting point but it wasn't really working for me so I pivoted to one of my more typical dungeon palettes. Though, even after I did all that I didn't much like how the cave area and the dungeon area had more or less the same palettes so I layered on a little tint over the dungeon part so as to give it a more stone-y vibe. I was working pretty quickly at this point since I was falling fairly far behind schedule so I can't honestly say this is the best version of this map, but it's really not a bad result.

I think I could have juiced up the prop colors a little and made them stood out a bit more but, if I know myself, I would have hated that and ended with just an additional 5% saturation after toggling back and forth for an hour. Anyway, this is a good map with nice lighting and I'm happy with that.