Champion Tier - The Candy House - 20x30 (Patreon)

Hey everyone, and happy New Release Monday! Today, I have my holiday special map, which I hope will inspire some fun encounters during your holiday break. I present to you The Candy House. 

In case you missed it, check out my trailer vid here! (I'm really proud of it, hehe) 

This map was inspired by my love of dark fairytales, especially the Brothers Grimm tales, which have inspired a mountain of popular media today. Even the basis of The Old Bonegrinder from Curse of Strahd! I wanted to create a map for the holidays but stay within the dark fantasy themes I enjoy so much. The other inspiration for this map was I know a lot of us talk about our hobby to pretty much anyone who will listen, and this often results in running games for first time friends and family. With (hopefully) holiday breaks coming up, the tale of Hansel & Gretel is a perfect backdrop to run your newbies through a game of 5e. A tale of missing children, a search in the woods, a magically enchanted house, and a Green Hag's lair is a great way to introduce the pillars of roleplay in a simple and well-known manner. 

This map contains both interior and exterior, both of which you'll find a stark contrast! The allure of the Candy House is, of course, the magic that makes the exterior appear to be made of gingerbread and frosting, with a trail of candy leading up to its tempting doors, which open, beckoning would-be hungry forest travelers inside with a promise of sweet smelling holiday treats.  

Of course, once you are inside the home and the doors slam shut, the interior reeks of cooked flesh and other nefarious scents and reveals the hag's true nature.

In addition to taking on the fun challenge of scratch-building a gingerbread house, I am also experimenting with drawing my own trees to give a feeling of tall, looming trees and provide the sense of being in the forest rather than above it. Something as common as trees can often provide a challenge for map makers to give the sense of a full, lush, and tall forest yet give the user plenty of map space to move tokens around on. I hope you enjoy this new approach! 

For my Champion Tier patrons, you will get the following with this map release:

• 4k & 8k Resolution 
• Grid & NoGrid
• 8 Color Moods: Dark Fairytale, Ghostly, Gloom, Night, Warm, Verdant, Sunny Day, and overcast
• Various weather effects, such as sun rays, fog, and rain
• Interior/exterior 
• Jpg & Webp file formats
• VTT Sizing Guide

I wanted to be sure to get my holiday map out as early as I could to give you enough time to run any holiday-themed encounters you might have planned. Since I just gave Argynvostholt some updates last month, I wanted to revisit the incredible encounter Pyram King created for the Spider Queen's lair and create a new map to support this encounter. My vision is a pathway of stone ruins and, of course, tons of webs in a swampy marshland. As we bring the month to an end, I originally intended to work on the interior of my Gothic Village streets map, but I don't want to overcommit as I know there are a lot of extra activities that happen this time of the month that take me away from mapping. What I may do instead is provide some updates for Castle Ravenloft, which include creating cleaned-up variants (cleaned-up throne room, chapel, etc.) and creating my color moods so you can use this location in other settings (imagine a verdant variant with sun rays coming through windows!) and creating a parchment style map to include the floors. 

Hope you enjoyed this map, and I'll catch up with you all on Sneak Peek Thursday! Thanks as always for your support. 

Cheers,

DM Andy