For September we are happy to present a new contributor to the Cartographer’s Annual: Hans Anders Bergström. His maps caught our eye in the ProFantasy community with their unique watercolour look, which is very different from that is normally created with Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus. We approached Anders, and he agreed to let us create an Annual issue from his innovative work, even supplying a wonderful walkthrough of his process, which comprises the majority of the mapping guide.

At first glance it’s hard to believe Anders’ maps were actually created with Campaign Cartographer 3+, but his innovative work with sheets and sheet effects is really not that difficult once you know what he’s doing. And that’s exactly what this Annual issue does: it teaches you how to recreate Anders’ Techniques for your own beautiful watercolour-style maps.

If you haven’t done so already, you can subscribe to the Annual 2019 here. If you are already subscribed, the September issue is available for download on your registration page now.

Campaign Cartographer 3+ is an outstanding tool that excels in helping cartographers, authors, artists, and hobbyists bring their ideas to life. I imagine we all know this well!

It’s also a fabulous tool for the well-prepared DM/GM, for creating homebrew maps or spawning maps for existing published content that better fit the needs of a particular gaming group. Drawing maps and exporting or printing them before a gaming session is a wonderful way to immerse your players in a tabletop roleplaying experience, whether you prefer “theatre of the mind” style combat or gridded battlemaps with miniatures.

But did you know that CC3+ is also an excellent tool during a gaming session? This article explores the many ways that DMs can use CC3+ as a “game-time”, not “design-time”, gaming aid.

Overview: CC3+ During Your Gaming Session

There are several advantages to using CC3+ to help power your next gaming session. Some of these require a bit of advance preparation; others can be used immediately no matter what maps you use.

1: Dynamic battlemaps for sprawling or unexpected encounters.
2: Easy-to-hide secrets.
3: In-person VTT capabilities.

Solution 1: Dynamic Battlemaps

If you’ve been a dungeon/game master for any length of time, you know that no matter how much you prepare, and how many different paths you predict and plan for, the players are going to do whatever they damned well please. While that element of surprise is arguably the best part of a tabletop RPG experience, it can also be very frustrating–not only for the GM who has to scramble madly to accommodate the unexpected, but for the players, who one minute are dealing with elaborately-drawn battlemaps and the next minute are using hastily-scribbled pencil drawings on a pizza box. (This latter example may sound extreme, but in middle school I resorted to drawing encounter maps on the lids of pizza boxes all the time. If my seventh-grade self could have seen what CC3+ made possible, he would have exploded in envy!)

Succinctly, then, the problem is, no matter how many different individual battlemaps you prepare ahead of time, PCs’ actual use of those in an encounter could very easily expand beyond the boundaries you drew. This is especially true in open-air or wide-space encounters: plains, wilderness, ocean, mountains, and expansive underground chambers and caverns.

How, then, can CC3+ help this phenomenon during a gaming session?

Simple: don’t export JPGs or print out battlemaps before a session. Use CC3+ to display the battlemap that applies, on-screen, DURING the gaming session.

I started using this approach during gaming sessions as an extension to my “Unified Battlemaps Approach” to drawing maps. You can check out a complete description , but essentially, instead of drawing individual battlemaps, you have a single, giant map file for an entire “level” or region of your game. Then, you zoom into pieces of it as areas of interest, and flesh them out with detail.

If you take this approach, you’ll end up with a massively-detailed regional map, and you can zoom into it for individual battlemaps. But even if you don’t take this approach, you can still use Dynamic Battlemaps during a gaming session using CC3+.

The approach involves the following steps:
1A: Create Named Views
1B: Use Named Views
1C: Zoom & Pan as Needed

1A: Create Named Views
Sure, you can use Zoom Window to get a close-up on a particular map region. But if you have certain areas of interest you know the PCs will have encounters in, you can save yourself some time by creating Named Views, so you don’t have to draw the zoom window precisely during a game session.
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Dear mappers, welcome to ProFantasy’s August newsletter! We have released Symbol Set 5 – Cities of Schley and some great articles for you this month.

News

• Symbol Set 5 – Cities of Schley is available for general purchase.
• The August issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2019 (Ancients Tombs Isometric) is available for download.

Resources

• August’s Maps of the Month showcase more amazing maps by CC3+ users.
• Remy Monsen explains symbols in CC3+ and how they work, giving you insight into an integral part of CC3+’s workings.

Articles

• Ralf Schemmann takes a look at the old Mappa Harnica fan-made toolkit, looking for ideas on how to bring it to CC3+, as well as highlighting the Cities of Hârn project by Columbia Games.
• Jason Payne talks about using CC3+ as your presentation tool at the gaming table.

August is coming to an end – a busy month with GenCon and the release of Symbol Set 5 – Cities of Schley – so let’s take a little breather and see what beautiful maps the user community has come up with in this time.

Joshua Plunkett‘s first Cities of Schley “Zelkor’s Ferry” map is a beautiful little village map, enhanced by the great post-work.
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“Mappa Hârnica” probably sounds familiar to many of our old-time users and brings up fond memories. It was (or is) an awesome fan-crated add-on for Campaign Cartographer 2 Pro, which allowed the creation of overland maps, cities and floorplans in the style of Columbia Games’ Hârn RPG. Unfortunately it was never updated for CC3, mostly because it included such a wealth of content which was not very easily transferable into CC3’s new setup of sheets and drawing tools.

But we’ve never forgotten about it, and we would really like to see a new edition of this tool set for CC3+. Currently we are looking at the possibility of re-developing the Mappa Hârnica styles, either as a stand-alone mini add-on or as Cartographer’s Annual issues. If you are interested in helping with this project and perhaps know a thing or two about the maps of Hârn, let us know, and we’ll make sure to keep you in the loop. Especially if you’re one of the original authors, get in touch with us!

If you are interested in the wonderful cartography of Columbia Games and Hârn, check out their current Cities of Hârn Kickstarter:

Cities of Hârn is a collection of 7 different urban environments.

You can start using Shiran right away, for one dollar, which you will receive shortly after pledging!

Curious what’s around the next street corner? Let us show you.

From the sprawling imagination of award-winning cartographer Mike Schley comes a whole new style of cities for Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus, featuring leaning shanties, decrepit ruins, gleaming palaces and soaring towers.

Unashamedly old school in outlook, but with the quality and beauty you’d expect from a master mapmaker, The Cities of Schley features more than six hundred high-resolution symbols and textures and all the tools, effects and templates you need to create breath-taking cities of your own. A simple setting allows you to transform a full-colour map into a black & white illustration, or a sepia-colored parchment. There are houses, workshops city walls, tombs and crypts, boats and wagons, shrubs and trees – everything you need to design great cities.

Check out the SS5 product pages for more information.

Weepingford Eample Map

Briarpond Example Map Detail

Step into the streets, if you dare, of the Cities of Schley!

For the August Issue, our Master Mapper Jean-Michel Bravo continues his Ancient Tombs series, now with isometric versions of those Egyptian-themed catacombs! Hundreds of isometric symbols and dozens of bitmap textures allow you to create wonderful perspective maps haunted by mummies and filled with traps!

If you haven’t done so already, you can subscribe to the Annual 2019 here. If you are already subscribed, the August issue is available for download on your registration page now.

Dear mappers, welcome to ProFantasy’s July newsletter! We have news on Symbol Set 5 – Cities of Schley for you and lots of beautiful maps to look at.

News

• ProFantasy will be at GenCon 2019. Find us at booth 1417.
• Symbol Set 5 – Cities of Schley is going into beta testing.
• The July issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2019 (Pär Lindström’s Renaissance City) is available for download.

Resources

• July’s Maps of the Month showcase more amazing maps by CC3+ users.
• Remy Monsen gives sage advice on managing your symbol catalogs in CC3+.

Articles

• Christina Trani talks about Craft Mapping, i.e. turning your digital maps into amazing props on the gaming table.
• Jason Payne has some interesting ideas on how to combine regional and battle maps into one cohesive endeavour.

It’s an extremely busy desk that the Cartographer is dealing with at this time: Not only is the next Annual issue waiting to be published and GenCon getting very close, there is also the latest Symbol Set to finish up. Everybody is eager to get SS5 Cities of Schley into their hands and I’m happy to report that the first beta version has been sent out to the testers. The chance to pre-order Mike Schley’s new symbol set and get your hands on the early access copy will arrive very soon after GenCon. In the meantime, here are two example maps created with the color version of the Cities of Schley style:

The Town of Weepingford

The Village of Briarpond

Dear Cartographers, before we head off to GenCon next week, let’s take a quick look at some beautiful maps that have been posted in the Profantasy community!

Lorelei (Christian Trani) and LoopySue (Sue Daniel) collaborated on the amazing Sanctuary city map. While it has been featured in this series before, it is now fully complete and featured in the Community Atlas project, so we thought it need to be seen again.
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