Ritual Chamber, Adept

This week's map is the Ritual Chamber (13x20), a small and fairly generic dungeon which I kept pretty vague so as to give you room to write your own encounter around it, same as with just about every map around these parts. Anyway, for your alternate version of this map I made a funky Subterranean recoloring that gives the map a sorta magical and grimy vibe which I think works really well with this map, making it feel a bit less friendly than the original. Fun!

1. This week I felt like making a dungeon map, a smallish one since I'm trying to fit in an extra map into the schedule before the end of the month due to the time I took off for vacation. I like making small dungeons that are just one or two rooms, an entrance chamber and a second smaller one for players to work their way towards. It's very simple, but I think it's ideal for short combats and one-shot adventures to have as few branching paths as possible to distract from the mission and keep the journey snappy.

Anyway, I wanted the layout provide some amount of cover and broken sighlines so I drew in giant pillars and a raised platform (for ducking behind perhaps). Later I drew in a raised platform leading to the second chamber which adds more potential hiding spots and a location for a ranged enemy to be stationed though, admittedly, not very high up considering the short steps.

2. Outlines! Again, only new props and outlines here, none are reused. I struggled with the floor a bit but that's nothing new- I never really know how to spice up tile floors. I think that's part of why I have such a hard time designing internal spaces, I struggle to think past the utility and form of the space and end up blanking on how to pretty it up. That would be a good aspect for me to put more effort into from here on, I suppose.

3. Since I was so happy with the colors in last week's Sewer Cave map, I decided to stick with that palette as a starting point and spin off from there. The colors to feel pretty good for this map too, and as an added bonus it feels like you might find this location branching off of those sewers somewhere! Anyway, I like to draw basic maps with an accessible palette, nothing too wild, just simple grays with touches that might hint at jungles or swamps outside.