The March issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2021 is now available and we are happy to present to you a new contributor: David Castedo Gomez (Medio on the Profantasy Forum).

David has taken the Worlds of Wonder style from the 2019 Annual and re-worked and expanded it immensely; so much in fact we consider it a whole new style, and called it Erdan Worlds, the name of David’s own fantasy setting. The style comes with a full new set of symbols (more than 140) and – of course – the mapping guide that teaches you how to use it.

The March 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.

Jason Payne from the CC3+ community has documented the overland mapping for his Realm of Aquilae fantasy setting in a terrain mapping guide, which you can get as a “pay what you like” product on DriveThruPG.com. It can be a useful resource for anyone creating their own terrain setup in CC3+. Check it out!

So, for my last map of the 2018 Annual, I decided to just create a small map highlighting the use of Sue Daniel’s bonus Domes addition to the 2018 Annual. I, personally, have used these domes in so many of my own maps, including our cooperative project Sanctuary, and I cannot say enough how much I love using them.

(Download the FCW file)

Sue’s done a lovely job on these, giving the mapper a variety of domes to choose from, including transparent domes. For this map, I’ve created a small, walled school of magic by using the varicolored Gothic style houses in CD3 and adding a variety of the domes on the multi-leveled sheets. I started this map, however, in the Asian Town style that comes along with this year’s annual rather than CD3, as I love Sue’s textures and vegetation.

I’ve done nothing special for this map other than, I’ve added a new tool, the Wall Round, for my walls by using the 10’ Wall tool as a template, and then changing the Draw Method to Ellipse/Circle. In Options, in Draw Method, I changed the Eccentricity to 1.00. In Outline Properties I made the outline an Extra Entity, changed it’s Properties to a 2.5 Fixed Width and put the outline on the proper Layer and Sheets I wanted. I then just placed the Wall Round on the corners of my walls and there you have it.

And so, dear reader, another year’s mapping of All the Annuals series has come to a close. I hope you’ve enjoyed the variety of maps I’ve been privileged to create for you using the 2018 Annual. It has been, as usual, a welcome challenge stepping out of my dungeon mapping comfort zone, and I hope I’ve inspired some of you to do the same and try out this annual. Happy mapping, Cartographers!

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.

News

• The brand new Token Treasury – Monsters 2 has just been released
• The February issue of the Annual 2021 is available.
• The Community Atlas project is running a mapping competition until the end of February where you can still win great prizes..

Resources

• Check out the most recent live mapping videos in our playlist on YouTube.
• Browse through the community’s Maps of the Month for January.

Articles

• Christina Trani continues her journey through the Cartographer’s Annual Vol 12 (2018) with the November and December issues, creating an asian town map, a set of deckplan geomoprhs and the resulting starship.
• Remy Monsen takes an in-depth look at the RPG Matrix process sheet effect in CC3+.

We are happy to announce the release of Token Treasury: Monsters 2, our second release in a line offering tokens for CC3+ and supporting virtual tabletop software with ready-to-use artwork.

The Token Treasury line gives you a huge selection of creatures and characters to populate your maps, with frames and varicolor backgrounds to customize your virtual tabletop tokens. The art is available as CC3+ symbols and as PNG files for any graphics package such as Photoshop and GIMP. The Token Treasury is designed for use with any virtual table top software such as roll20, Battlegrounds, d20pro and Fantasy grounds.

Token Treasury: Monsters 2 contains 100 creatures drawn by fantasy artist Rich Longmore, in rectangular and circular forms, as well as a set of token frames for depicting the creatures role and position in combat for your fantasy maps.

Token Treasury: Monsters 2 can now be ordered from the ProFantasy store.

The full feature list includes:

• More than 500 symbols for use in CC3+ including the 100 creatures and 32 frames/arrows frames in 4 symbol catalogs, and templates and drawing styles for creating more token combinations.
• More than 700 tokens, consisting of 100 creatures and 32 frames/arrows in various configurations, for immediate use in any graphics software such as Photoshop or GIMP.
• Ready for use in virtual table top (VTT) application such as roll20, d20pro, Battlegrounds and Fantasy Grounds.
• Frames for melee, ranged, magic and bosses to denote the creature’s role in combat, and arrows to indicate their facing.
• A guide introducing you to the Token Treasury both within CC3+ and in other applications.
• If you own CC3+, TT:M also installs symbol catalogs, templates and drawing tools. Create custom tokens with varicolour backgrounds and add your own frames. Mirror the symbols to add variations.

This is the full list of creatures. Normal creatures are 300 x 300 pixels, large creatures are 600 x 600 pixels, and huge creatures are 600 x 900 pixels.

Every week we do a live mapping session on YouTube, showcasing a certain style or set of tools in CC3+. Here are the most recent Live Mapping videos with Remy and Ralf, as archived on YouTube:

Welcome dear mappers to another selection of wonderful maps created by our mapping community. See some of the beauty they produced in January!

The Temple of Isxiltahar (I pray I never have to pronounce this) is just one of the serials of jungle maps by Arcwynd on the community forum, which you definitely need to check out.

Continue reading »

Well, this issue had me worried. First, I had no idea how to go about putting together Geomorphs (it’s not a feature of CC3+ I’ve ever needed to use). And, second, I had NO idea what the deckplan of a ship should look like. So, I went with the trusty Mapping Guide for this one.

(Download the FCW file)
I’ve got to say, I’m pleasantly surprised how much I like this set of maps and how easy it was after I read about Geomorphs. I didn’t really put much thought into this, as I followed the mapping guide, and also cheated a bit and followed along with Ralf’s example map’s tiles.
Once I had my tiles of the ship’s rooms created, I set about creating the ship map. I opened a new map and made the background pretty large in comparison to the ship, as I knew I wanted to include a legend. Then I simply began inserting the deckplans by using Draw>Insert File>*choosing your own tile files*, and then laying them out on the starfield.
(Download the Geomorph tiles)

After I had my rooms arranged, I used the drawing tool for the Mirrored Hull. I really like this tool – all you need to do is draw the outline on one side of the ship for your Hull and it instantly mirrors it on the other side. I then added a few walls and an outer hull so I could have a maintenance tube along the outer wall with some entry hatches.

For a final touch, I decided I wanted a more sci-fi looking font, so I went online to one of the many free font websites out there and found this one with a public domain license, called Edge of the Galaxy. Otherwise, you reader, will get the standard font for this annual.

There you have it. It’s pretty elementary, but for a first starship? I am more than satisfied with my work and I hope those of you that have been hesitant to branch out of the “fantasy” world and into the “sci-fi” realm….go for it. I’m glad I did.

The second Annual issue of 2021 is a huge collection of symbols created by Sue Daniel: More than 300 ribbons, scrolls and seals to serves as titles, labels and other map ornamentation. Banners can be places at different widths, and parts can be combined to create multi-line scrolls and ribbons. The symbols can be used on an any map and the accompanying guide teaches you how to make the catalogs available in any style.

The February 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.

(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.