Hidden Cave, Adept

Hi Adepts! This is the Hidden Cave (25x25), a basic and straightforward cave map with a conspicuous little island in the middle with an even more conspicuous dirt patch in the grass, around where I would put the focus of the map if I felt so inclined, like a monk deep in contemplation, a ponderous orb, a statue of an ancient hero, or a treasure chest. You know, adventure things. And, to give you something to start off with, I also whipped up a simple bonus variant with a dead tree in that spot- it probably has some old dude's face on the trunk or has magical sap dripping down its branches or something. You know, adventure things.

 1. Considering how simple this map is, I expect this to be a pretty quick blog post, right? We'll see, I have a knack for endlessly jabbering about things no one else cares about or haven't even considered.

So, since I was out of town last week I whipped up this bad boy about a month ago, something quick so it wouldn't mess up my schedule. The quickest thing I can think of that wouldn't make you patrons riot is a lil cave with interesting lighting and a simple focal point, something to reward players who look for adventure in every gap in the cave wall or jump down every well looking for treasure.

The layout changed a little after I remembered that scene in Dungeon Meshi where Marcille and Falin crawl into the tiny dungeon cave with the slimes in the water. After that, I more or less just tried to replicate that cave with a few extra touches.

 2. So, I shrunk the entrance to be a squeeze and made the central platform into a little peninsula. This layout gives players a little more space to walk around on while keeping plenty of water for DMs to work with if they want. It was around here that I decided to drop in one of my dead trees to the center there so you could have more of a focal point if you didn't want to have your players imagine something else. Again, the goal here was to be simple- basic maps are always much more usable than complicated ones with tons of super specific props.

 3. I had a little fun here with the lighting, just to make it pop a little. I know that being artistic isn't the point of battle maps, but as long as it doesn't take away from it I don't see any reason not to. So, I'm not sure if the colors here really match up with any of my previous cave maps, but I guess sometimes some caves are just unique and that's that.