Sewer Intersection, Adept

I return this week with another Sewer map, the Sewer Intersection (18x25), one that's designed to feel like more of a boss fight arena while also serving as a connecting map for the other sewer maps I made this month (note: not seamlessly, I don't plan THAT far ahead).

1. Like I said, I wanted this to feel a little boss-fighty. In a sewer environment a boss fight arena can't be too big and also has to feature some trenches to help sell the location. The main circular area is complex enough for an interesting fight, I think, but I thought it would feel a little cramped if I didn't include some space outside of the arena. I figured a single large passage below would help establish the location while also providing a place for wimps to hide from big boss attacks (I'm that wimp, I love peaking around a corner to move moonbeam while yelling encouragement to my wife's sports-themed paladin).

I made some fairly basic but meaningful changes to the lower passage after this step as it felt a little too straightforward here. I didn't like how open it felt, like you could stand on one of the walkways and have too much visibility. That's not the vibe that sewers should have, I think.

2. The changes I made to the bottom were structural but honestly I think they were very important. I shifted around the walls to make the trenches less consistent and harder to maneuver across. I cut a few spans of walkways to, again, provide less space to navigate as an incentive to enter the larger chamber and provide some difficult pathing decisions. I crumbled away some at the entrance of the chamber just to make life difficult for fleeing combatants. All this is to say that I don't think you should have lots of room to move around when fighting in a sewer tunnel, and maybe I want to make players accidentally fall in the trenches.

Also, drawing brick walls is rapidly becoming half my job. Or at least it feels like it, each minute I spend drawing brick walls feels like 10 minutes, it's devilishly boring and requires too much of my attention for me to pass the time side-screening something else. Obnoxious stuff.

3. I really cannot decide on the palette for these sewer maps which makes these last few feel a bit different from one another, and for that I apologize. At least the designs are fairly cohesive!

For this one I decided not to color it quite as saturated as the Sewer Pipes, which might have been a little over the top. I wanted to make sure that the vibe was right for a grimy sewer without being too monotone, which might be realistic but wouldn't be much fun to look at. So this time I'm setting for this sorta greenish yellow with a nice variation in lighting as well as a pleasant contrast against the purplish gray background. I think it's somewhat visually interesting while still being believably realistic, but it's impossible to say whether my opinion on that will be the same in a few days (spoiler, it never is).

Moving on from here, I'm not sure what my next map will be but if happens to be another sewer map then I'll try to take everything I've learned over the last few sewer maps to come up with a final palette that perhaps I can revisit in the future. That would be nice!