It’s also my first attempt to depict lateral distance using the same color-coding system I normally use for vertical depth. I think that aspect turned out pretty well.
I must be some kind of idiot, because it didn’t occur to me that the color thing would work until I started sketching things out. I thought it was going to be a standard metroidvania style side-view like the one I did for Peridot,* how dumb is that?
Also, it looks like I forgot to draw stairs between rooms 6 & 7, but I left them out intentionally. You just can’t get to 7 unless you can fly, at least not in this configuration. Or climb I guess but I’d make the walls too smooth and slippery for that to be likely.
Oh and most people reading this have probably seen my posts on G+ and/or Facebook about it, but for those of you who haven’t: I released a pay-what-you-want pdf on DriveThruRPG a week ago called Escape from the Astral Spellhold.
It’s a short, ruleset-neutral trick/trap/puzzle dungeon with a house rule on almost every page and a tiny bit of worldbuilding thrown in for good measure. It’s got clockwork robots, a cranky old wizard, and a completely gratuitous dick monster attached to a Michael Moorcock reference. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever put a dragon in any Dungeons & Dragons adventure I’ve run and it totally ate a dude during the playtest.
Full disclosure: I really just wanted something I could use to showcase my layout skills, but a few people seem to really dig the actual content so there you go.
Download it. Talk about it. Gimme money if you want to and can. If you have a project in the works, and you want it to use functional graphic design that actually improves the game, hit me up.
*this is the one I mean. with the spiral staircase that was apparently designed for people under 3 feet tall. whoops.
