Let’s take a last look at the mapping of 2024 with the user maps that our community shared in December. There’s been lots of lovely stuff to show!
Royal Scribe‘s Temple of Déine ap Gáeth combines Winter Village and Ice Caverns styles for a great ice-themed dungeon map.
Continue reading »
The full setup of the Cartographer’s Annual Vol 18 (2024) is now available, meaning you can install it by downloading and running one file from your registration page.
There is no need to re-run this setup, if you followed the Annual as the monthly issues were released, but if you skipped some or are only now purchasing the Annual Vol 5, you only need to use this one download.
Until Friday the Cartographer’s Annual 2025 is still available at an early-subscriber discount of 15%. Check it out here.
We are a bit late with the free December symbols due to Christmas and New Year commitments, but we didn’t want to skip them. So here they are! Mike created a set of map ornaments (borders, corner frames, scale bars and compass roses in two styles each) that complement all the overland mapping we’ve done over the year.
This set finished the current run of overland symbols and we’ll be looking at dungeon and floorplan symbols for the next few months. We are already looking forward to Mike’s work on those.
To download the latest free symbols 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 the current year (January to October 2024 so far) is included in the one download.
You can always check the available monthly content on our dedicated page.
Hello, I am back with another All the Annuals, 2015 Dracula Dossier. This map just begs to be played in some horror RPG setting, doesn’t it? So I went super simple on this one….no furniture or objects to distract, just the basic floorplan, building outline. This map, in my mind, is strictly so the players of a campaign can find their way around this hospital, which is currently abandoned, in disarray and obviously inhabited by some Great Old One, wreaking havoc on the surrounding village.
Meant to be obtained through an encounter is the old city records repository of one of my Cthulhu City maps (courtesy of the 2017 December Annual), this map was inspired by and copied over the original floorplan of an infamous asylum, in an historic city, across the pond in the UK. I’ve used the public domain prints of the original drawn new plans of the infamous Bethlem, otherwise known as Bedlam, Royal Hospital.
I’ve included in the map a copy of the front view of the hospital from the public domain file, as I think it adds something to the map – making it mirror the plans more exactly, which in turn gives the submersion into the game a little flair. I love giving my players handouts (though since I’ve moved we’ve had to move our game to online so my gifts are now in the form of pdfs and pngs), and printing up a map like this is just a favorite of mine in game play.
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.
Welcome to 2025 and another year of mapping goodness with the Cartographer’s Annual – now Vol 19. We are starting the year with an overhaul, revisit and expansion of an older style: Ancient Realms by TJ Vandel.
Already one of the largest annual styles in terms of number of symbols, we’ve expanded the range of symbols available with varicolor versions, overhauled the available bitmap fills and added to the drawing tools of the style. The sheets and their effects were also considerably changed to take advantage of all the work that has been done in that regard since the style was originally published.
The January issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2025 yet, you can still do so here at the early subscriber discount (until January 15th).
Macros in CC3+ can be used for a variety of tasks, so today I thought I would explore macros by having a little bit of fun. I wanted to write a macro that could decorate my maps with randomly placed tiny snowflakes in spirit of the winter season.
In this case, I made a macro that draws small snowflakes in random location all over the map, each snowflake being generated randomly. The snowflakes themselves are just simple white lines, which can then be enhanced by adding sheet effects to them.
In this article, I’ll just present and explain my macro, if you are new to macros you may want to start with my Getting Started with Macros series first: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
News
Resources
Articles
Reminders
The Cartographer’s Annual subscription for 2025 is now available, and you can subscribe at a reduced cost. If you are a current subscriber, be sure to check your email, as you should have received your re-subscription offer that way. Otherwise, visit the Annual 2025 web page for the early subscription discount.
We have the first three issues lined up, starting with a revisited Ancients Realms style by TJ Vandel from 2009 with new symbols, new fills, new effects and new and updated drawing tools.
Next in line is an issue that combines FT3+ exports with new templates in CC3+ for new parchment overland maps. And then in March Sue Daniel provides a great overland style tentatively named “Bird’s Eye Overland”. If you want to provide some input and feedback for that, check out her style development thread on the ProFantasy forum.
As always, subscribing to the Annual will give you access to all twelve monthly issues as they are released, plus a bonus issue at the end of the year. If you want to see an example of all the great content you will receive, check out the Annual 2024.
While the year is quickly churning towards its end, let’s pause for a month, look over the shoulder and enjoy the maps the community shared in November.
Stephen St John created this wonderful city map with Pär Lindström’s Renaissance City style.
Continue reading »
As usual, we close the year with the Annual’s bonus issue and make one issue available for free (which this year is actually the bonus issue). The bonus issue adds the Random Dungeon generator for the DD3 Dungeon style that comes with Dungeon Designer 3. The Random Dungeon command was introduced as a free download, but only included the style components for the Jon Roberts Dungeon style.
This Annual issue expands the options and also contains instruction on how to implement it for any other dungeon style, so you can use your favorite style for it.
The Bonus issue can now be downloaded by all subscribers from their registration page, and it is also freely available from the Annual page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2024 yet, you can do so here.
Resubscription to the 2025 Annual will become available next week.
