Preview and stuff (Patreon)

I've been stuck in a strange place with my detailing, torn between various design philosophies and questioning my work, but I'm hard at work on the new map anyways. Or should I say maps?

Next week's map will be a series of segmented, individual maps, typically between 7 and 15 tiles in either dimension. They'll all be themed roughly the same - underground mines and associated structures - and each successive tier will have access to more of the maps. This also serves as some graphical experimentation. I'm trying to use colors, patterns, and painting to detail the map rather than relying on inked lines, and I'm considering dropping the bold lines for practicality's sake. I also tried out a new way of drawing rock walls, but I'm not sure I like it - a friend commented that it looks more like rock piles as is. Other artistic adjustments include using a checkerboard painted on the floor for grid patterns. I think it looks nice, but I also worry over the simplicity of the design - it almost feels like cheating. It seems more aesthetic than gridlines, though.

Anyways, the reason why I'm doing a series of segmented maps is because I was thinking about a piece of advice the Angry GM put down in one of his blog posts a couple of months ago, about how large-scale dungeon maps are comparatively worthless. Empty hallways look kinda nice, as does seeing one large connected dungeon, but it occurred to me that as I'm simultaneously planning out a campaign to run for players of my own, I might actually want the rooms to be entirely divorced from each other so that I could re-arrange them as desired. It's not like a fight would take place in all these hallways, after all - everything in between was superfluous.

I also wanted to take a moment to say, thanks for supporting me and my work. It's a comfort to know that there's people out there willing to do that. I'll see to it that this'll be finished by Wednesday, probably - I don't have much else to do, now, with everything shutting down. Take care.