Here are the latest live mapping videos we’ve done on our YouTube channel, including the whole “New City Style” series.

CA201The September issue of the Annual 2023 extends April’s “E Prybylski Watercolor” style with another 50 symbols for non-human settlements, more mountains and other artwork.

Add giant elven tree cities, dwarven mountain strongholds, orc camps and cozy halfling cottages to your map, populate your oceans with monsters and hazards, and have a cat (yes, a cat) shove ships off the edge of the world. The accompanying mapping guide takes a look at the new symbols, and details additional methods to decorate your maps.

The September issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page.

If you haven’t subscribed to the Cartographer’s Annual 2023 yet, you can do so here.

If you are a novice CC3+ user, you may think that macros sounds way to complicated to even touch. But, the fact is that from the moment you start making a map, you have already been exposed to several macros. You might not have noticed, but CC3+ uses macros for quite a lot of things. Every time you start a new map or load an existing one, a macro is run to set up the environment appropriately for that type of map. A lot of the buttons on the toolbars and elements in the menus call macros, and many of the drawing tools have embedded macros that are being run when you draw something with them.

So, why don’t we take a brief look at the basics of macros?

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Grisfend Harbour
News

  • The August issue of the Cartographer’s Annual is available, providing an black and white floorplan style for ruined settlements and outdoor locations.

Resources

Articles

  • Remy takes a loot at randomizing symbols and how that functionality can be leveraged for settlement placement.
  • Christina Trani creates a map with the “1800s Floorplans” style in her quest to go through All the Annuals.

Reminders

  • CC3+’s current version is 3.98. Check in Help > About and if your version is older, run Update 28 for CC3+ available from your registration page.
  • Fractal Terrains 3+ has been released and is available from among your FT3 downloads on your registration page.
  • Join our community of map-makers on the Profantasy forum and/or the Facebook group.

Sears Robuck Catalog HouseLast up this bunch, 1800s Floorplan. Oh, boy I loved this one. What fun it was looking for inspiration for this map. I ended up using a floorplan for a model home from a Sears and Roebuck Co. Catalog from the early 1900s. These homes could be ordered via mail catalog and Sears would ship the homeowner all the materials needed to build this home, seriously everything, was sent by train to be constructed by the homeowner. These catalogs are a huge favorite resource of mine for floorplans of all kinds.

I used an image of the floorplans and traced them with the Annual’s tools making a few minor adjustments of my own to the floorplan. Everything I needed to reconstruct the catalog image was at my fingertips. What an easy annual. I then inserted a file of an image of the actual house for this floorplan. I processed the image in PS, gave it a little more a sepia hue to it to give it a more authentic look. I think this is the PERFECT map for a Cthulhu game, don’t you? . I also did felt the need to change the name of the catalog company, as well as the model home name and number for copyright purposes.

[Download the FCW file]

About the author: Lorelei was my very first D&D character I created more years back than i’d like to remember. When I decided to venture into creating maps for my and others rpgs, I thought I owed it to her to name myself Lorelei Cartography, since it was her that led me to the wonderful world of tabletop gaming in the first place. Since then I have been honored to have worked with companies such as WizKids, Pelgrane Press, and ProFantasy.

Here are the latest live mapping videos we’ve done on our YouTube channel. There are a few less than usual, due to us being at GenCon Indianapolis.

Welcome to another wonderful selection of maps created by the Profantasy user community. Let’s take a look at what our mappers came up with on the ProFantasy forum or the CC3+ Facebook group in July.

Mythal82 undertook a project to convert a Watabou-generated map into the Ferraris style by Sue Daniel, and look at what was achieved!
Grisfend Harbour
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Theatres
Are you yearning for some spectacular entertainment? Perhaps some classic play on a grandiose stage? Or something more visceral like a gladiator fight in the arena? The latest monthly symbols have you covered. Get the new symbols by Mike Schley to add grand theaters and arenas to your cityscapes, pleasing the crowds.

The example maps included with this free content make use of Symbol Set 6 to showcase the symbols in proper surroundings. If you don’t have SS6 installed, you won’t see these, but you can still use the symbols on other maps. Symbol Set 6 – Isometric Cities is available for purchase here.

To download the free content go to your registration page and on the Downloads tab, click the download button for Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus. Mike’s new symbols are the last link in the list. All the content of year two up to and including July 2023 is included in the one download.

You can always check the available monthly content on our dedicated page.

CA200 Ruins on a CliffIn the August issue of the Annual 2023 we return back to some (visually) simpler maps in black and white. Draw ruins, floorplans and dungeons with faux-inked lines and easy to use black and white symbols.

Related to and compatible with 2020’s Inked Dungeons, the Inked Ruins style allows you to build surface ruins and outdoor areas that can be easily printed and comfortably read even at relatively small output sizes.

The August issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page.

If you haven’t subscribed to the Cartographer’s Annual 2023 yet, you can do so here.

One of the things that are easily overlooked when mapping local scale overland maps for gaming is the sheer numbers of settlements that traditionally dot the countryside. In medieval times, the distances between them could be surprisingly short compared to our modern standards, simply because we are used to larger settlements (and faster transportation) these days.

Now, dotting a landscape with settlements is pretty easy with CC3+, as we have great tools for doing this. To ensure randomness, we can have symbols randomly picked for each placement, we can use Symbols Along to place them along a road, and we can use Symbols in Area to fill a large plain with settlements. Great, job done.

Well, if you try to do this with a standard overland map, you’ll quickly notice that this doesn’t seem to work as desired for this purpose. You’ll notice that the groups in the settlement symbol catalog are set up with groups containing just a single symbol, including varicolor versions of that symbol. Now, that is not going to help us spread settlement symbols of various sizes easily as we wanted.

What we are seeing here is really the fact that you can’t organize everything for every imaginable purpose. It is similar to sorting your contact list on your phone. Should it be sorted by last names or first names? Last names are probably more formally correct, and it ensures that all the people from the same family appear next to each other, but you’re probably more used to refer to people by their first name, making them easier find for you when sorted that way. Neither way is wrong, but you can only have one of them at a time. Symbol catalogs are similar. When making them, the creator need to figure one sensible way to offer them, and then leave it to the users to rearrange things when needed. And that is what I will be showing today. I am using Mike Schley Overland for the example here, but this can of course be done with any map type and any style.

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