CA203 Bairnemouth Under Siege
The November 2023 Annual issue brings you a large city map in Mike Schley’s Isometric Cities style. Inspired by the recent free “Breached Walls” symbols for the style and many beautiful maps created by the user community, we’ve taken size and detail to the next level with this map. To make it even more useful as a gaming resource, the map comes with a 13-page guide describing many locations and presenting adventure hooks keyed to them.

The November 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.

Iso BridgesFor this month we have a few very useful symbols for the Symbol Set 6: Isometric Cities (but which could also be used on overland maps). These Isometric Bridges can be extended to variable length to span any width of river, gorge or similar terrain feature.

Note that 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 correctly, 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 February 2023 is included in the one download.

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

The February issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2023 is now available for download. We have a new, beautiful town style by Pär Lindström for you, venturing out into the heat of the desert this time. The “Desert Oasis” style contains hand-drawn buildings, ruins, palm trees and gigantic monuments, alongside bitmap textures to build an oasis settlement, an ancient ruin, or similar locations in a desert setting.

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

We are excited to release the final version of the latest Symbol Set into the public, with hundreds of amazing symbols by Mike Schley. Symbols Set 6 – Isometric Cities let’s you soar across the rooftops of your cities, giving you a unique new perspective.

Symbol Set 6 – Isometric Cities comes with these features:

    • 128 different city buildings in full color, varicolor and inked versions, each individually drawn in four different views.
    • A total of more than 800 color and 450 black & white symbols.
    • More than 30 bitmap fills, 88 drawing, and 4 templates across two styles.
    • An Essentials guide introducing you to creating maps with the Isometric Cities style.

  • Symbol Set 6 can be used with or without City Designer 3 and Perspectives 3.
  • If you don’t own Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus, you can still use the PNG artwork included in this add-on, installed as a stand-alone resource folder.

Get more information on the Symbol Set 6 product page. If you want to take a look at SS6 in action, check out our live mapping video here.

Get Symbol Set 6 – Isometric Cities now!

Newsletter Subscribers have had access to SS6 for a while, and the CC3+ community has already created lots of beautiful maps. Here is a collection of some of them:

Murder At The East Gate by Grimur Fjeldsted
Murder At The East Gate

The Village of Orin by Gerri Broman
The Village of Orin by Gerri Broman

Shurav and Evorah by Ricko Hasche
Shurav
Evorah

Rattenzwinge by Micha Hofmann
Rattenzwinge

The Village of Humbolt by Luke Zitlofsky
Humbolt

The City of Aeniar by Jeffrey Beiderbeck

And finally, an example map included in Symbol Set 6.
SS6 Altebruck

Have you marveled at the beautiful city maps that Mike Schley has created for the D&D role-playing game and other brands? If not, head over to his web page to see a great selection. Myself, I am a particular fan of his isometric city views like the Candlekeep map you see as the first listed on that page. They give a great overall impression of the location, while also haviong enough precise information to make them really useful as a gaming tool.

Of course I’ve been advocating for a symbol set using this art style for a while here at Profantasy, and I’m now more than happy that I have the first symbols on my desk for by an upcoming set by Mike himself. He’s been busy creating the inked outlines ofr the buildings and kindly provided a few colored ones as well, that I can show off here. Take a look!

Isometric Cities Preview

So far my job concerning this product has mostly been looking over the incoming symbols, nodding and saying “Yes, they are great, thank you” by way approval. I’m looking forward to diving into creating all the symbols for CC3+ when more of the colored versions come in, and trying my hand at creating isometric city maps with them myself.

CA177 Aramalina - Rivers Meet DistrictThe September issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2021 is now available. Dive into city building with a great new style by Sue Daniel. The style is designed to match her Darklands overland style in tone and colors, and is named Darklands City accordingly.

The grim and gritty style contains many ruins and dilapitated buildings, and with its more than 200 new symbols and many bitmaps fills in Sue’s detailed signature style offers a gorgeous set for city mapping.

The live mapping session on ProFantasy’s YouTube channel on September 2nd 2021 (6pm UTC+2) will demo this city drawing style.

The Septmeber issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2021 yet, you can do so here.

This is a lovely style, which compliments the Japanese Temple Annual. The tools and symbols you get between the two give you all you need to create a really nice Asian inspired city, town or village.
ProFantasy 2018 Asian Town Annual
(Download the FCW file)

I honestly haven’t much to say about this map. I did get the coastline from a satellite pic in Google that I slightly modified, but other than that, I just mapped along as I felt inspired, starting with my cliffs along the beach. After that, everything just fell into place.

I really love a nice easy style like this. Thanks to Sue Daniel for another fantastic Annual.

CA169 LittlebrideA Happy New Year to all you cartographer’s out there, we hope you had a good start into 2021. If you want to celebrate it with a bit of mapping, we have a new city drawing style for you, created by our dear Pär Lindström. “Fantasy Towns”, the first issue of the Cartographer’s Annual Vol 15 (2021) is now available for all subscribers from their registration page.

For anyone who hasn’t subscribed to the Annual 2021 yet, you can still do so at the early subscriber’s discount (15% off).

If you are unsure about the Annuals and their content, check out our free sampler. With 14 individual issues, it’s now bigger than any one yearly volume of the Annuals!

This was a fun little map. With this month’s annual I decided I would do a section of the ruined city Shan Drag’Oth in my homebrew campaign. It is a cursed city of ruins in a valley of evil and desecration, so a dark, gloomy theme was a must. This annual fits in with the CD3 Bitmap B symbol set, so I stuck with those fills for this map.
ProFantasy 2018 City Ruins
(Download the FCW file)

I am not personally particularly fond of the fills for this set, and they are not as gloomy as I needed for the look I wanted, so I found myself using the RGB Matrix on multiple sheets, including the sheet with my trees on it…..surprisingly the RGB Matrix worked beautifully on the tree symbols (not the bushes for some reason, so I just shrunk down the trees and used them for bushes on a separate sheet). I used a setting Sue had provided for her Isometric Town annual and tweaked it a little for the exact look I wanted. Once I had the coloring down, I then added the Texturize effect, which I am a fan of, to multiple sheets to give the map a gritty look.

Along with changing the color of the trees for this map, as usual, I used the varicolored symbols so I can change their color at any time, which can dramatically change the look of a map very simply. The ruins symbols that our friend, the talented Pär Lindström created for this annual are a wonderful addition to the city set.

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.

CA165 Derandil - Jon Roberts ExampleRecently we’ve done quite a few video tutorials and Annual issues on city mapping, and I wanted to to collect these into one conventient reference. Let’s take a look what we got:

Annual issues

Blog articles

Live Mapping Sessions

Serpentine City

City Cliffs

Renaissance City

Ryecroft Town

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