Welcome cartographers to the April newsletter! Shall we have a look what is in store for this month? Of course, we shall.

News

• We have two new Master Mappers among our ranks: Joe Sweeney (for 2017) and Christina Trani (for 2018). Congratulations!
• The Tome of Ultimate Mapping has been updated with a completely revamped list of commands, and new sections on Dioramas 3, the Source Maps products and the Token Treasury.
• The April Annual with Pär Lindström’s Moody Mansions style is available for download.

Resources

• Remy Monsen starts a new series of articles for those who want to program add-ons for CC3+. Take a look, it’s easier than you think!
• We have a new selection of Maps of the Month for April.
• Want to create isometric maps with Perspectives 3? Get inspired by these examples from the user community.

Articles

• Sue Daniel shares some of her mapping secrets in this article on Special Effects with sheets.

The Perspectives 3 add-on has a special place in the Profantasy software library: it is the only one in the arsenal (except for one Cosmographer 3 star map style), which does three dimensional maps – even if it’s not full 3d viewing, but an isometric projection. The resulting map are wonderful to look at, give a great sense of space and really fire the imagination, but they can be a bit challenging to design. While Perspectives 3 makes the basic drawing part easy, the overall planning and layout can be a bit harder.

As a result the community output of isometric maps has traditionally been lower than for classic 2d maps, but recently some beautiful Perspectives maps have cropped out, which we would like to share to inspire more mappers to try their hand and isometric layouts.

Jean-Michel Bravo (aka Joachim de Ravenbel) is the undisputed master (and a master mapper to boot) of the isometric map. He cerate a lot of custom content to use with Perspectives 3, just look at this Egyptian tomb map.


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April is approaching its end and it’s high time to highlight another set of user maps that have been posted over the last month. Enjoy these beautiful artworks!

Lakeside Leg by Erik Korwin Z Ślepowrony Wroblewski

Erik posted this beautiful battle (?) map in the Dungeons of Schley style on the Facebook group. A lovely way to depict the water!

The Continent of Dorina

A brief note about this article

The main reason I have never written about the special effects I use in my maps before now is because they have to be applied differently on each new map I draw. Differences in map style and the random variability of the way I chose to warp the colour scheme each time have made it very hard to nail down any particular method to the point of there being a right or a wrong way of doing it, and it’s nearly impossible to make a definitive set of instructions when nothing is set in concrete. I have often used similar combinations of effects on similar sheets in different maps once I discovered a useful result by experimentation, but I don’t think I have ever used exactly the same settings on any two maps. So what follows is more a train of thought and an explanation of my method as I develop two example maps of the same place in two different styles in tandem. However, and having said that, there are a few simple instructions on how to generate and process sea contours in the first of the special effects to be described.

This article focuses on two versions of the continent of Dorina shown above in the Mike Schley style (MS) and the Herwin Weilink style (HW). I have chosen these styles because they are available to all CC3 mappers, and because they are so different in nature that the special effects will have to be applied differently to each one. By describing this process and providing the finished FCW files for reference purposes, I hope that those of you who have requested tutorials about how to get similar special effects to mine in their own maps may at the very least gain some useful information and ideas.

The effects I will be working on in this article are oceanic contours, global colour shifts, contrast adjustments, snowfields and something I’ve called ‘midnight’, which entirely changes the nature of the map in a way that makes it vaguely reminiscent of a view seen under brilliant moonlight.

First off, then, I should probably start with the basic stuff – how much I have already warped the default styles to produce the initial maps before we get started on the special effects. Please note that for some reason I set the scale of these maps completely wrong, but it was too late to go back and start again by the time I got to the finishing touches. I didn’t realise until I was adding the scale bar and it was out by a very large factor.

Dorina – MS

The MS style is beautiful in its clean and radiant pastel colours. Unfortunately for me it is those very same pastel shades that make doing the kind of special effect I do quite difficult to achieve on an MS map. While I can appreciate the loveliness of many very different styles my personal taste tends more towards richer, darker colours. If you open the Dorina – Mike Schley.FCW file you will see that the sheets have been dramatically altered, so that while I tried very hard not to take it too far away from the intended appearance as to be unrecognisable as an MS map, I have used lots of Adjust Hue/Saturation and RGB Matrix effects. I have also swapped out some of the textures for others in the same set and changed their colours accordingly. I love the grassy texture of the Marsh_MS fill, and so I have abused it by using it for anything that is at all grassy in nature. There are other fills I’ve substituted, but even though I’ve bashed it about quite badly (and I cringe to think of what the purists would say) all the fills are MS fills and part of that style. There is nothing there that doesn’t come from the Mike Schley mapping style.

Dorina – HW

You might think the HW style is made for me, with my already stated preference for darker, richer colours, but my taste is less subtle and a couple of degrees lighter in tone. I have done exactly the same thing with the HW map as I’ve done with the MS style – lots of colour changing sheet effects aimed at making everything a little brighter than before. I haven’t swapped out so many of the fills, but I do very much like the grassland fill and I’ve used it in several shades on different sheets. There are couple of sheep and cows and a horse that remain from the MS version where there is no HW equivalent.

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The Master Mapper award has been on hiatus for a few years, but certainly not because of a lack of awesome cartographers out there! It’s our fault due to being busy with other things and not being able to make our mind up who among so many great Campaign Cartographer users we should single out. Well, we are certainly going to change that and start out by awarding the honor to not one, but two deserving mappers! For that we are going back a bit in time …

Master Mapper 2017: Joe Sweeney

Awarding Joe Sweeney the Master Mapper title for one specific year is like saying “D&D was the most popular role-playing game this year” – it’s true, but it doesn’t say much! Joe has been a great asset to the community for years, creating templates, maps, free resources and videos.

As Joe has been supporting the CC user community for ages and we felt it was high-time we properly recognized that contribution.

So we just picked a recent year and declared him Master Mapper of 2017 for:

• Helping oh so many mapper with his highly instructive video tutorials.
• Designing templates for highly re-usable dungeon and starship stiles.
• Drawing beautiful maps.
• Hosting and contributing to a tiled texture collection for anyone to use.
• And running a whole Master Mapping Class website.

We can’t thank Joe enough for the support he has provided to the Campaign Cartographer community over the years. You are a true Master Mapper in all meanings of the word!

Master Mapper 2018: Christina Trani

When looking at all the beautiful maps submitted to the community in 2018 we at first felt overwhelmed at all the material. How could we decide on a Master Mapper from among all those great cartographers? But one did indeed stand out when we looked a little closer. There are so many consistently beautiful maps created by Christina Trani (Lorelei on the forum), it became clear to us she is indeed the Master Mapper of 2018.

The Master Mapper award for 2018 goes to Christina for:

• Creating a large number of amazingly beautiful maps.
• Pushing the boundaries of what can be done in Campaign Cartographer, expanding the horizon of all its users.
• Being active in the Facebook user group and the community forum.
• And for supporting and contributing to the Community Atlas project.

Thank you Christina for being such a great part of the Profantasy user community. Please continue amazing us with your beautiful maps and pushing the boundaries of CC3+. Continue being a Master Mapper!

If you want to check out which user have been awarded the title of Master Mapper in the past, check out the Master Mapper page which lists them all.

The April issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2019 is available now. Between dusky bookshelves, rickety doors and moldy armchairs, Pär Lindström’s new style “Moody Mansions” is perfect for creating building floorplans for horror- or mystery-themed adventures and stories.

Whether your players are investigating that haunted house on the hill, or your story revolves around that last lonely occupant of a deteriorating home, the “Moody Mansions” style will create a matching map.

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

Dear map-makers! Here is the March newsletter with the latest from your favorite mapping software!

News

• Take a preview of the upcoming months of the Cartographer’s Annual 2019.
• The March Annual issue SciFi Bases is available.

Resources

• Check out these highlights of the community’s maps in the Maps of the Month.
• Remy Monsen considers the use of CC3+ at the gaming table in his monthly column.

Articles

• Ralf Schemmann takes a look at the resources for the Traveller rpg that are available in Cosmographer 3.
• And in a second article, Sue continues here tutorial on how to create new house symbols for City Designer 3, including dynamic roof shading..

The ProFantasy monthly newsletter typically features a map gallery, articles on map creation and development news. If you sign up to be notified by email, you’ll get exclusive offers, too.

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We’ve added a few previews for the next months of the Cartographer’s Annual 2019.

For April we have a new floorplan style by Pär Lindström. The “Moody Mansions” style is perfect for modern horror games and similar mapping endeavors. Whether you are investigating a murder in Victorian London or hunting otherworldly horrors in Arkham, Massachusetts, the style provides the perfection location map.

May has another treat from the hand of Sue Daniel. She has created an updated and much improved version of one of the castles from Source Maps: Castles, the Welsh castle of Beaumaris. It includes floorplans for all the castle’s levels, an isometric view and individual parts to build your own fortification from.

In June we’ll be featuring an overland mapping style by a new contributor: Sebastian Breit of Foreign Worlds cartography. We love the maps he shows off on his site and look forward to seeing his work in CC3+!

As we are slowly heading into spring here in the northern hemisphere, it’s time to take another look at the wonderful maps the mapping community has produced. Here are five maps that caught our eye this month. Be sure to check out the forum and the Facebook group for lots more!

Thiatas Ashadarawesh produced this amazing world map in Fractal Terrains 3. Worthy of a “Best Coastline” prize.
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Traveller by Marc W. Miller was the among the first science-fiction role-playing games ever published and remains a popular game to this day. It’s sector maps and starship deckplans are iconic images of the rpg hobby and of course we had to include compatible material when we produced our science fiction add-on Cosmographer 3. Let’s have a look at what we included.

The Big Picture

One of the signature styles of Cosmographer 3 is the big “Galaxy Map” style, and you might be tempted to recreate Travller’s huge “Charted Space” map in its beautiful blue, white and black colors. But you’ll find that is not necessary – as were tempted just as much and included this map as an example among the drawings that come with Cosmographer 3. Edit it to your liking and print it as a huge poster map if you like. Of course the matching template is there for you, if you have your own galaxy to map!

All the Sector Maps You Need

Apart from containing normal templates for Traveller’s sector maps, Cosmographer 3 also contains a very powerful data import feature. It draws the numerical data of a selected sector from the web (www.travellermap.com) and generates a full sector map from it, including x-boat routes and allegiance codes. Watching the import and auto-generation process alone is just pure, unadulterated fun.

You can create such map in the bitmap style as shown on the left, or in the classical black and white print style of the published Traveller books.

Of course the smaller subsector maps are also available as templates, again both in traditional black and white (as on the left) or Cosmographer’s bitmap style. Wile they can’t be automatically generated like the sector maps, you can easily copy the necessary content of the sector map over into this smaller section.

Let’s Swing around the Sun Once More

One of the less iconic but no less useful type of maps used in Traveller are the system charts, showing the planetary orbits of a star system. These show the distances of the various planets and other celestial objects from their central star.

As usual the templates are available both in a black and white vector style and a full color bitmap version (depicted here). As they are much less setting-specific than the sector and subsector maps, these are useful for almost any science fiction setting beyond Traveller.

Zoom in Closer

What would Traveller be without its world maps? Well, at least a lot less iconic. Of course Cosmographer 3 includes templates of the classic icosahedral projection, subdivided into hexes. These come in a variety of sizes, scaled to the standard UWP (Universal World Profile) designations of the Imperial Scout Service.

One of the two versions of the style depicts the world as if shown in a satellite image (while keeping the hex map aspect) and the other as a clear and simple vector abstraction, ideal for planning and hex crawling. The symbols depicting the terrain features in this style were taken directly from the Traveller 5 draft document (Cosmographer 3 was released before T5).

And How Do We Get There?

Last but not least, Cosmographer 3 has the templates for the most important aspect of the Traveller setting: the starships. The classic black and white style is straightforward to use and shows everything clearly, but of course the Traveller ships can also be mapped in Cosmographer’s own more elaborate bitmap style. We’ve included templates for two of the most used ships in Cosmographer 3, the 100t Scout and the 200t Free Trader. The maps are outlines only, so any custom interior design can be added to the deckplan in minutes.

After Cosmographer 3’s release we ran a poll to see what other ships our users wanted to see and added the three most popular selections as extra downloads for free.

All of these maps and styles and much more non-Traveller specific resources are available as part of the Cosmographer 3 add-on for Campaign Cartographer 3+.