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Swamp Bivouac, Adept
🕑 Added 2025-09-22 19:14:46 +0000 UTCI'm back this week with the Swamp Bivouac (25x30), and in case you're wondering a bivouac is a sort of temporary camp, often without tents. I didn't have a better word for this, so there you go. Anyway, I was imagining this less as a camp and more like a Dark Souls bonfire, the one in Darkroot Garden specifically was what I had in mind. Since I'm not a huge fan of bottomless pits or fog-filled chasms I decided to go with a swamp setting instead of outright imitating Dark Souls, which I felt was an appropriate swap. Anyway, I'll talk more about all that below~
The concept: a small campfire nestled in the ruins of an old watchtower or outpost in a swamp- a ramshackle path winds off further into the swamp. I imagine you might come across trappers or hunters here as they depart or return from their hunts, but you might also discover their remains as well if you're feeling grim. Perhaps your party is here to hunt what's been preying on the locals?
Anywho, it's been a little bit since I've made a swamp map and honestly I think swamps are one of the settings I've rarely done justice, very few of my swamp maps actually feel swampy. My attempt this time includes less water and more meandering routes through the map, as well as a small transition to rockier ground to the top left, maybe implying this is the edge of the swamp if you want.
I live in northwest Indiana and here you'll find lots of little mires and bits of swamp like this, often not huge but similarly with tons of old rotting trees and some hilly terrain nearby, so I feel like this is fairly realistic.
Here you'll see something I'm trying out in this swamp, many tiny patches of ground in the water. I think this helps build the impression that the water is shallow and muddy, but also these little patches fill up the water nicely, add some more detail to other wise blank terrain, and give players a bit more ground to stand on (even if the muddiness makes it rough terrain or maybe even slippery terrain).
I also made a point of trying to fill in the grassy spaces with extra props, like mushrooms and roots, in an attempt to make the map feel more wild than usual. I think in the future I might try out drawing in large patches of reeds or underbrush, just to see how it looks, but I didn't have quite the time this week to be workshopping so many new props.
Alright, the colors. You'll notice that this map is way way less colorful than usual, it's my attempt at making a swampy palette that actually feels swampy. It leans hazy and gray, which isn't my usual go-to but I felt that it was right for this setting even if it isn't the prettiest to look at. Despite that I do think it reads clearly and has some nice transitions between water and ground, and the trees' color feels fitting while still standing out above the rest of the map (a minor struggle I don't often mention in these posts).
Now, while I think it's a nice palette, I doubt I'll be content with it for long. The ground gave me some serious trouble, I wavered on how light/dark, and vibrant/subdued it should be for quite a while before settling for a sorta pale grayish yellow. I suspect I would have been happier with a bit of a more gradual gradient that blends in more naturally with the water, but more than likely this would have lost those little patches of ground. I don't know, something's bugging me about these colors but I can't quite place it, no doubt it'll be obvious to me in a week.
