I’ve been continuing my Watabou Hex Map practice every other day or so, and I’m really pleased with the Wonderdraft tricks I’m learning from doing this. Perilous Shores gave me a basic outline of the Anthir Lakes, a region that is oppressed, dark, and dangerous. I took the prompts to really focus on creating a grungy, dirty-looking map.
The entire map is shaded with a brown tone, and I focused on getting greens in the map, including in the water tone, so that the two colors combined would create a gross-feeling tone to the map as awhole. Among all the places on this map with their dark themes, I love that the central village is called “Rabbitway”, a bizarrely friendly-sounding name.
Another aspect I enjoy about this map is the brown color I’ve given to the pines that were marked as dead trees on the Watabou map. Without having a dedicated dead tree asset, I think this was a nice compromise that ended up adding to the dark nature of the map as a whole.
These experiments sound like a good idea. You’ve inspired me to do the same.
Regarding Rabbitway, if you’ve read Watership Down or watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail, then it might not seem so friendly. 🙂
I’m glad you’re giving it a try as well! I’ve found it great practice so far.
As for Rabbitway, I certainly wasn’t thinking of the terrible Rabbit of Caerbannog! It would be quite interesting to see if something like a rabbit could be turned into a sinister image for human-sized characters in RPGs. I’m certain everybody who’s watched the Watership Down animation would have terrible flashbacks from it!