Village Jailhouse, Adept

Hi again, folks! This week's map is the Village Jailhouse (12x14), another entry in my ongoing series of simple building maps. This one is similarly ubiquitous in small towns as the last two, a tiny guardhouse/sheriff's office with a few small cells, a drunk tank, a bunk room for two guards, and a backroom.

Your bonus variant of this map is one where I swapped out the cell props with chains and shackles and added a bloody chair to the backroom, which is a pretty simple change but the effect is this place isn't quite as quaint as it was before. This might give your players a bad feeling if they stop by, making them wonder why a small town jail has shackles like a castle dungeon, or it might be a little more effective at keeping your players restrained if they get too spicy in town. Either way, I think this is a great option to have on hand if you need to up the ante a little.

1. As with the rest of this series, this was made to be a straightforward and basic building for slotting into your campaign, nothing you'll find here will feel out of place. The idea with the design is that this should look nearly exactly as you'd imagine a little sheriff's office to look. The only issue was that I didn't want it to feel TOO western, which was tricky considering I mostly used photos of sheriff's offices as reference. Worth the risk, I think, since that's the vibe I wanted and I didn't care too much if it came off a bit western.

2. Outlines! I'm still freehanding everything in an attempt to get more natural lines and now I'm making an effort to make the lines even rougher since the last map's outlines were a little too clean. Primarily I want the wall lines to be a bit wiggly and uneven, when they're too clean I think it makes a building map look unrealistic, like it's a fake building that hasn't been lived in. I'll keep honing in on how to enhance the feeling of realism, but for now I think I've got a good thing going.

3. I'm trying to thread the needle here between fantasy and western, and the colors are a big part of that. The cobblestone parts of the map are a big part of why this map feels fantasy at all, making this structure feel older than it would otherwise. The colors also are a little more vibrant than you'd expect in a western sheriff's office, which adds on to the feeling of a fantasy adventure. I think I probably could have toned it down a bit though, but maybe that's in my head. The energy here is pleasant and not too grim, which is what I usually aim for for the base version of each map- anything more than that can be saved for variants.