Nov 2016 Challenge: Abu's Abandoned Mesa Outpost

[Abu Lafia]

Haven't been mapping a lot lately, so my fingers were really itchy, when i saw the next random map challenge announced by our beloved MapMaster Diamond Drooling over the lovely little scifi maps by Miska Fredman once again, i decided to make a futuristic outpost/base "dungeon" for this challenge, inspired by his wonderful work.
I had some problems with the instructions too, as i went on rolling the dice for my life and sketching the rooms down . Half way through the process, i realized i added the number of exits of the respective room on top of the entry to it, so every room has in fact one more "door" than the dice roll showed. So, only the rooms with a trap have a single access.
Since i notoriously fail to finish my challenge entries in time lately, i wanted to finish it before uploading this time. After i finished the drawing with pen on paper, i scanned and then colored and labeled it in gimp.

The retrospective WIP:

After an even messier first version of the dungeon, i came up with this rough layout, starting at a landing platform/hangar and having two exit points of the whole dungeon on the other side of a mesa (platforms/hangars too), where the outpost is build in.

With 3 "Chasm Traps" rolled on roughly the same "level" (on a vertical axis), i decided to represent them with an actual chasm leading directly through the banse. The rooms are traps in so far, as the ground is unstable here and with a 33% chance you can crush into the chasm.
With this idea in mind the "Acid/Poison Traps", who are in rooms roughly next to the chasm traps, are also depicted as half destroyed rooms this time with a more stable ground, but with nice toxic gas leaks instead.

The "Water Traps" gave me some headache, since i felt in a scifi setting a trap might look a bit different. So i wondered in wich places in the outpost could be water and on top of that in form of a trap? The only place i could think of were washing facilities... So the trap is a sort of a trapdoor in the ground, where the explorer could be flushed into the base's sewer system, that is ultimately leading to an exit some dozen meters above the groud...

For illusions, i thought some distracting holograms projected in the room might be a good fit. The statue, etc. coming to life would be a sort of combat drone waiting for some explorers to eliminate


This is the scan of the final "pen&paper" BW version:


I'll post the colored version in the next post, since the thumbnail scraper always has problems with the "latest WIP tag" and multiple images in one post.

Even though i think it's pretty much finished, i'm (as always) open to any sort of comments/crititque and suggestions. I think i won't change the drawing anymore, but would love to hear if you think the coloring / labelling could be improved.

Cheers,
AL

[Abu Lafia]

### Winner ###

[Greg]

Looks cool, Abu! You've done a nice job incorporating that number of rooms whilst keeping everything clear and easy to see. The font choice is spot on.

Good job all round.

[Bogie]

Great job Abu! Very nice Sci-Fi map, Wonderful coloring.

[Bryan G. McWhirter]

That is outstanding!

[Diamond]

Oh man, that is too cool!

...as is MapMaster Diamond. Can that be my rap name?

[snodsy]

This is really well done, nice color balance and really clean. Looking forward to seeing this at challenge's end.

[Abu Lafia]

Many thanks everyone for the nice feedback, I appreciate it a lot! For those interested in this kind of setting, i posted some further maps in the same style over here.

[Ilanthar]

Great Job Abu! I like the fact your adding some sci-fi flair here and there .

[ThomasR]

The dun ... base is awesome and you really achieved the "Miska" feeling you were after while keeping that ocre (signature) palette that you already did wonders with on your Guildworld map. That is really a great piece and the conversion from med-fan to sci-fi is really well thought. Congrats Martin and rendez-vous for the vote

EDIT : and I'll come back once I've spread some rep