Sorry for a little delay in getting the February symbols to you, but Mike was exceptionally busy. Hopefully we are now back on track and will get the March set to you this month. The February set brings you a colorful collection of mushrooms, fungi and lichen tp decorate the fungal caves of your mega dungeon. The monsters and other inhabitants do need something to eat after all!
Note that the example maps included with this free content make use of Symbol Set 4 to showcase the symbols in proper surroundings. If you don’t have SS4 installed, you won’t see these correctly, but you can still use the symbols on other maps. Symbol Set 4 – Dungeons of Schley 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 listed there. All the content of year (so far only January 2025) is included in the one download.
You can always check the available monthly content on our dedicated page.
Here is the March issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2025. This month we have a treat for you with a wonderful new style by Sue Daniel. She created a top-down landscape style for sprawling, colorful continental maps, along with a mapping guide taking you through her process of map creation.
If you have ever looked into the art directory folders (symbols/fills) inside the CC3+ data directory, you may have noticed one thing, there appears to be four copies of every file. Why is that? And why is four files better than one file?
Well, the answer here comes down to quality and performance.
The main issue that occurs when computers need to display an image on the screen is that the image must be scaled to fit the place it is being displayed. And this is not a free operation for a computer, it is actually a bit of a resource-intensive one. If you look at any random overland map, like the example map from the manual shown here, you’ll see that it is full of symbols. But all those symbols are pretty tiny. When zoomed out so you can see the whole map on screen, even in full screen, each of those trees are only something like 25 by 25 pixels on screen. Obviously, the symbol itself is much bigger, because it is not supposed to just look good when zoomed out like this, but also when you zoom in closer. And that means that for every one of those trees, CC3+ will have to take a much larger image, load it in to memory, and then resize it there before putting it on screen. A modern computer can do that pretty fast, but a map doesn’t just have one symbol, it can have thousands of them. And this process needs to be done anew each time you change the map view, like scrolling or zooming.
The mapping community starts strong into 2025 with a great set of maps across the forum and Facebook. Take a look at some of this fancy work!
Dan Harlan‘s map of the Dungeon Level of Undermountain is a wonderful huge dungeon map, showcasing the beauty of the Dungeons of Schley style. Continue reading »
If you’ve missed any of the live mapping sessions we do on YouTube most weeks, showcasing a certain style or set of tools in CC3+, you’ll find them archived on YouTube. Here are the most ones:
Oh Mappers, my least favorite map…..Overland. As usual, I get my typical anxiety when mapping an overland map. There’s something about where the mountains, rivers, desserts and grasslands go that get my head in a tizzy. And, as usual, I just dug in and came up with something. Is it great? No. Is it good? Debatable. Is it passable? Yes. Will my players care or notice if a river is somewhere that is typically geographically impossible? Absolutely not. So, with this in mind I give you…..this map 😀
I’ve not anything to say about what I did, or how I did it, because frankly even a beginner can put together an overland map just as well as I can. What I will say that I really like about this annual (although the 2015 year has two, Ancient Realms and Ancient Realms II both by TJ Vandel) is, the first gives you the basics (fills, symbols, tools, location icons, tools, etc. ). It’s lovely style, artistically speaking. Now the second, Ancient Realms II gives you a template to make your own location icons, so for this installment, I made one location icon from a public domain png, following the Mapping Guide, and included it in the map. I found one thing I really liked using this style….i really like the location icons instead of specific symbols. This can be useful when you are providing a larger area map, but still want your players to know where key locations are, then if you want, you can break it down further using the Local Area Maps, which also comes with this Annual.
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.
As promised we start the new year 2025 with a return to free symbols for dungeon floorplans, specifically Mike’s Dungeons of Schley style. It looks like a summoning has gone awry here, with a demon and a fire elemental arguing over the dead body of the summoner. This month contains a set of symbols for your summoner’s lair, with summoning circles, summoned creatures and various paraphernalia and ritual props.
Note that the example maps included with this free content make use of Symbol Set 4 to showcase the symbols in proper surroundings. If you don’t have SS4 installed, you won’t see these correctly, but you can still use the symbols on other maps. Symbol Set 4 – Dungeons of Schley 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 listed there. All the content of year (so far only January 2025) is included in the one download.
You can always check the available monthly content on our dedicated page.
Create sweeping world maps with a couple clicks in Fractal Terrains and then export them to Camapaign Cartographer for detailing! With the February issue we are focussing on Fractal Terrains 3+ for a change, with a mapping guide, settings and colorings to produce parchment-style worlds maps in FT3+ and export them easily to CC3+. The included Fractal Parchments Worlds style is based on last year’s parchment worlds, but focuses on larger world maps and can be used with last year’s Annual as well.
One nice thing you can do with CC3+ maps is to have multiple views embedded in one map. For example, in the Forest Trail annual style, you can choose if you want to see the treetops, like you would normally see a location in a forest if viewed from above, or if you want to hide the canopies so you can see what actually goes on under the trees, quite important for a battle map.
There are also cases where you want to make a map with private information for the gamemaster, and a public version of the map for the players.
Or maybe you need an overland map with a lot of information, perhaps showing both political information, economical information and climate information, but showing it all at the same time looks pretty messy.
Of course, if you have used CC3+ even just a little bit, you know that I am talking about hiding and showing sheets here. For the overland map, you can have one sheet with a political overlay, one with economic information, and one with a climate overlay, and only show the desired sheet, simple enough. For your GM’s secrets, just put them on a sheet by themselves that you hide when you export the player map.
But, what if your view requires switching on and off multiple sheets? Due to different effects, that political overlay may actually consist of one sheet with political borders, one sheet with the text associated with the information, and maybe another sheet with symbols related to this overlay. Once you have multiple sheets involved, it can get a bit harder to turn on/off the right sheets for any given occasion, which is what we’ll have a short look at today.
One nice thing you can do with CC3+ maps is to have multiple views embedded in one map. For example, in the 
