So ProFantasy has provided yet ANOTHER overland style to work with. No matter what style map you prefer, I feel there is something for everyone here, and this Myrklund style has done just that. Now, I may have mentioned how I am not a fan of overland mapping outside of my personal campaign – since I can explain any geological aberration I install in the map as “it’s a magical, fantasy world”, so with this map, I just decided to see what I could come up with without any concern. No pressure, no cares, just started plopping down things wherever I felt like it. 😊
(Download the FCW file)
I decided to keep this map as simple and minimal as possible…..so placed some mountains, then rivers, cities, forests and any other exploration areas I thought might be interesting and easy to incorporate into a homebrew one-shot. I also lightened up some of the fills for a more wintery look.
As someone who recently got a puppy, that takes up an immense amount of attention leaving little time for mapping, this was a simple, easy, delightful annual to work with.
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.
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The November issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2020 has just been released. It expands on Sue Daniel’s Spectrum Overland (from July) with more than 200 new symbols, giving you tons more options to build your maps in this beautiful bitmap style. Let your players explore new cultures, venture into blazing deserts and the freezing ice, and scale imposing cliffs and fissures across the landscape.
If you have already subscribed to the Annual 2020, you can download the October issue from your registration page. If not, you can subscribe here.
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This is a quick and easy annual that can add just the right flair to your campaign. Having those “extras” is what makes my homebrew campaign special to my players. At least that what they tell me, lol. This set, especially was useful to me, as I coordinated my pantheon to the constellations in my personal homebrew map – and my players love it.
So, for this map, I pretty much just followed the guide… which is basically place stars, connect stars to create constellations, name constellations. Done. I mean, how easy is that? I, of course, made a few changes to the color theme as the guide, but otherwise stuck with the easy steps and got this done in less than an hour. All the extra special fluff to your world building in LESS THAN ONE HOUR!!!
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.
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So, what to do with an annual such as this? Well, I’ll tell you. First off, this is my annual 😊 I was asked to do this annual last year and it was a lot of fun putting this together for an adventure. But…what if you don’t have a Lich King in your adventure? What if the big bad in your campaign is an evil wizard? Here’s how you can easily change up an existing .fcw for your own needs. It’s pretty simple.
So, first off, I want to get rid of the dark feel to the regional map. This is a big reason I often us the varicolored symbols in a CC3 map. This way, you can select the symbols you want and change the color of those symbols, which will completely change the feel of your map. I’ve done this with the mountains, trees and hills. I’ve also changed the Hue/Sat of my fills to lighten them up some.
You can also replace symbols. In the case of the regional map, I’ve replaced the dead trees with regular varicolored trees, again to give the map a lighter feel. A name change here, a font color change there and viola! A whole new looking map for a completely different kind of campaign.
For the tower I changed the fills and decided for a “cold” feel to the Blue Wizard. So all the dirt fills were changed to greys and snowy fills. Again, the varicolored symbol’s color were changed to reflect the blue theme I was going for. Again, a few easy changes, and a whole new looking map.
For the Maze I had to put a little effort in. Aside from the fill changes, I wanted to fill this maze with mushrooms, so they all had to be placed. I made a couple of symbol changes and there you have the Mushroom Maze.
Lastly, the Vault. I used the Symbol Manager to replace all the symbols on the walls – this map uses the Dungeon Walls annual technique and you can easily swap out one style for one of the other 3 provided with the annual using Replace in the Symbol Manager as I did on previous maps. Once more, sticking with a blue, cold theme I made a few simple changes to change the feel of this map, too.
And there you have it….Four entirely sort of new maps 😊
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.
The October issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2020 is now available. Create beautiful maps of maritime, canal-heavy cities like Venice or Amsterdam with the Serpentine City style. Named after the Swords of the Serpentine game by Pelgrane Press and modeled from the the map artwork by Jérôme Huguenin for the city of Eversink, the style uses vector graphics, many sheet effects and a custom color palette to match his beautiful work.
If you have already subscribed to the Annual 2020, you can download the October issue from your registration page. If not, you can subscribe here.
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Hot dog! Here is a map I love to make, Dungeons. This map was a quick and easy map I whipped up using the Dungeon Walls Annual in the SS2 style, one of my favorites. I’ve used this style before so I didn’t need the mapping guide, but if you’ve never used it, follow the guide along once and you’ll be all set on how to use Symbols Along and get your walls done.
(Download the FCW File)
As usual, I’ve made some Hue/Sat adjustments to some sheets. And the only other thing I’ve done different is added a wall shadow sheet. Depending on how a set up a map, I sometimes do an inner glow on the floor sheet, but with multiple rooms it gets a bit tedious doing a separate sheet for each floor so each room gets a glow. Or, you can put an outer glow on a wall sheet, rather than the wall shadow. For this map, however, I left the wall shadow set on the wall sheet and then created smaller shadows on the other walls on their own separate sheet.
The map is set up to be printed up in poster size 36×24 – map size of 180’x120’ – and in order to do that you really need to emphasize the grid, or it doesn’t print up well in poster size. For this, I just add a nice strong outer glow on it in the same color as the grid itself. That is just enough to be seen printed out and not have to change the line width of the grid. Or you can hide the grid, for VTT play, like I have been doing during quarantine when we were playing online by using the grid in your VTT platform of choice. Just set up your map size to match this one and it will line up perfectly.
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.
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Well, here we are back in 2018. January, to be exact. We start the year off with an overland style map. I rather like a smaller map, so I started with a 200×200 map and decided to do a valley to keep it simple and letting me get a lot of cool adventure areas within.
(Download the FCW file)
As usual for me, I’ve adjusted many of the fills by playing around with the Adjust Hue/Saturation effect. Something else that I almost always do is to mix up the color of my varicolor mountains, hills and vegetation – I find this is more realistic, as no real forest has every tree the exact same hue as the next.
For the rivers on this map I decided to use the Color Key on the Land Sheet and bring the ocean background out as my water source. I prefer the look of a river with a Glow (outer) on that sheet than drawing on a river on a separate sheet with a Glow applied. It’s just a personal preference and using the drawing tools as is will produce excellent maps as this 😉
I always struggle a bit with labelling, specifically with color of text. Mostly that is because what I call my “Too Much Gene” kicks in and I want to use a myriad of colors and a variety of my hundreds of hundreds of fonts I’ve acquired over the years. When this happens, it’s best to stick with the standard font that comes with the annual.
I added a frame to this by creating four polygons, one on each side of the map and then added two sheets above, one for shading and one for the lines effect and copied those polygons to each sheet. I made the frame a solid color, the overlay I used the Horizontal and Vertical Brush Patterns bitmap fill with a transparency effect and the shading solid fill 10, 20, 30, & 40.. I was trying to get the look of wood grain without having to hand draw in the lines. The frame is currently hidden for those who aren’t into the aesthetics and just want and good old map. 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.
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For the September Annual issue Sue Daniel a series of connecting cliff symbols to include in city maps.
We have updated the ProFantasy Forum with a new version of the Vanilla forum software, which adds a lot of useful functionality. Check it out if you want to join our community.
Resources
We’ve switched to YouTube for hosting our Live Mapping video tutorials, and of course they are all available for viewing.
Check out our selection of last month’s community maps here.
Remy Monsen’s article on symbol groups (see below) is also available in video format.
Articles
Christina Trani wraps up the rest of Annual 2019 with her maps for the October, November and December issues.
Remy Monsen looks at symbol groups and how to leverage them for your own use.
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The December 2019 Annual, last official one of the year, brought us back to Worlds of Wonder – expanding the first of the year’s Worlds of Wonder style. On this map I really didn’t do much other than alter a few of the Effects settings and adding an Edge Fade here and Color Key there. I used both options for land masses to depict the colder, sparser element in the southern region. Then, I added a few sheets for use on the southernmost landmass for LAND SNOW and a LAND FOREST SNOW sheet to top off some of the forests with snow closer to the Realm of the Frost Giants, where it is obviously, blustery cold.
I really enjoyed, despite some trepidation on the annuals featuring tools I’ve never used before such as the Perspectives styles or most recently using FT3 and Wilbur, taking me far from my comforts of my very own personal style of hacking DD3 to do almost anything I usually map, doing this project immensely. I think, that’s what is perfect about these annuals, trying out styles you’ve never considered before and discovering you will use them again and again in the future. Now go try one of those styles you’ve never used before….who knows, maybe the SciFi Base will inspire a space themed campaign for your gaming groups next adventure, or a Watercolour map to use as the background for your upcoming novel cover….the possibilities are endless with a 12 annuals to inspire you every year 😊
Well, I’ve completed a year’s worth of annual maps and I can tell you all, I feel pretty accomplished. I’ve always wanted to make a map with all the annuals, but never seemed to find the time or a reason when there was always a map I could be making for my long running homebrew campaign or contribute to the Community Atlas in a style I have mastered using. This year’s annual gave me the opportunity to really challenge myself and overcome many long standing, mapping anxieties I’ve had. I’ve found styles I really, really loved using and never though I would ever use, let alone love the end result so much I’d use it again on personal maps.
I challenge all of you to do the same! Map along with me, if you please 😊 I’ll be continuing along and mapping my way back to the year 2018 and would love to see what you all make along with my weekly maps.
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.
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