ProFantasy's Map-Making Archive

We’ll shortly be crowdfunding a new version of Campaign Cartographer 4, along with new versions of Dungeon Designer and City Designer. If you are an existing user, we’ll send you a link to a secret backer level with a modest discount if you are signed up to our newsletter.

The latest version of our legendary map-making software, CC4, features:

• An updated interface with improved dialog boxes, icons and a shiny new sidebar which gives you access to settings and information to assist your work flow.
• Virtual Table Top support which includes major VTT platforms, with full support for light sources.
• Entirely new map styles with symbols and fill styles handcrafted for overland, dungeon and city maps.
• Automated creation of dungeons, villages and towns, so you can get started on your map-making in minutes – not based on generative AI.
• Automatic river creation with natural flows and tapering width,

Your backing will mean more and better features – and we have an extensive wish list! More symbols, more styles, more features.

We’ve released a new collection with Humble Bundle, quite different to the others we’ve done, which were mainly collections of our products. This one is a treasure trove of maps, in high resolution format, with CC3+ fcw files where available.

There are more than 450 maps, including dungeons, floorplans, cities, overland and lairs. Some of these were commissioned specially for the bundle, some are from Pelgrane Press, others are user maps which have been selected and enhanced for the bundle and a few were included on this blog or in annuals.  A more complete break down follows below.

The Bundle also includes a copy of CC3+ with the new Random Dungeon Generator. If you have CC3+ already, you can get the RDG from your registration page, and you are welcome to give your serial key away to a friend, as long as you let support@profantasy.com know.

A breakdown of what’s new and what’s not:

• Campaign Cartographer 3+ (and the Random Dungeon Generator). The RDG is available as a free download to existing CC3+ customers.
• The Encompass maps were previously published on DriveThruRPG (they are the ones with the brown covers on the Humble Bundle.) This was a series of detailed maps with supporting material published under a different imprint. Three of them had previously been published by ProFantasy as CC3+ files. They are included in the Bundle as is.
• 37 maps by the excellent Christina Trani were published in the All the Annuals series on the ProFantasy blog as CC3+ files and low resolution pngs. The versions in the Humble Bundle are much higher resolution and available in labelled and unlabelled format.
• 109 maps were from Pelgrane Press’s 13th Age Battle Scenes products, available as PDFs.Two of these were included in the December 2015 Annual. The Bundle includes them all as high resolution unlabelled pngs.
• Five maps published in the 13th Age adventure Shadows of Eldolan published by Pelgrane Press. The Humble Bundle includes the CC3+ files.
• Eight maps were from Pelgrane Press’s Ashen Stars RPG. One of these was also published as a Cartographer’s Annual. The HB versions include all the CC3+ maps as well as high resolution PDFs.
• 83 of the maps were published on DriveThruRPG by the brilliant cartographer, Alyssa Faden.
• 42 are newly commissioned maps, and the rest are maps which are enhanced versions of maps published online by CC3+ users.

ProFantasy’s sister company Pelgrane Press publishes the award-winning 13th Age roleplaying game.

Written by the co-designers of 3e and 4e, it’s the game that that they play at home. 13th Age combines the best parts of traditional d20-rolling fantasy gaming with new story-focused rules, designed so you can run the kind of game you most want to play with your group. Combat is fast and exciting, skills are simple and flexiblew and based on the character’s history, and each character is tied to the setting and the powers of the world – the Icons.

If you play D&D, it won’t take you long to get started.

Free 13th Age Maps and Tools

ProFantasy worked with Pelgrane to produce some amazing cartography for 13th Age.

We’ve bundled up this CC3+ content for you free to celebrate the 13th Age Humble Bundle. It includes a map-making style, map collections and the 13th Age QuickStart rules.

You can download it here.

The 13th Age Humble Bundle

The 13th Age Humble Bundle includes almost everything for the 13th Age roleplaying game line at a low, low price.

Combining streamlined combat with excellent indie story game design, and packed with a collection of beautifully-crafted books, music, digital maps, and more such as 13th Age, 13 True Ways, and the 13th Age Bestiary, take your character from a plucky adventurer all the way to become an epic hero! Plus, your purchase will support Oceana (supporting the reduction of plastic pollution).

Get the Bundle here.

ProFantasy Software has released 31 map-making products for PC. For about half of our users our flagship Campaign Cartographer 3+ is all they need to create their maps. But our add-ons give you powerful new tools and symbols to create maps in a huge variety of styles and genres and offer you hundreds of pre-made maps you can use in your campaign.

There are lots of curated bundles which include groups of products at a discount. But this article is about the Big Kahuna, the Full Monty, the Whole Shebang – our bundle of everything single thing we produce

It provides great value at a discount of more than 45% on the RRP of all the constituent products, but its price point means it’s not for everyone.

The Whole Shebang includes 31 products, featuring more than 80,000 symbols, in 163 styles and hundreds of maps across genres including fantasy, SF, modern and historical. It can create character portraits, overland maps, dungeons, floorplans. cities, villages and 3D cutaway maps. It has maps of real word castles, temples and cities. Any map you see on our website or social media, and almost all maps created by are users are made exlusively with these products.

You can use the vast library of high-res art assets in other programs such as Photoshop, too, all covered by our license.

You can get the Whole Shebang here.

We’d be happy to answer any questions you might have about this bundle – email ralf@profantasy.com for more information.

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.

We will only use this email address for sending newsletters from us and will not pass on your email address to any other organisation.

If ever you want to cancel your subscription, each email includes your link to unsubscribe.

You can read all past newsletters here.

The December Annual 2016 brings you another overland style – also created by TJ Vandel. While working perfectly as a standalone style, it also can be used in conjunction with this year’s previous overland style Scorching Sun and Realms of Legend to vastly expand your symbol and texture options.

To facilitate combining these drawing styles this Annual issue also contains a tutorial on the topic. It discusses how to combine symbol catalogs, set up new catalog settings, merge bitmap fill styles as well using drawing tools from one style in another.

The issue is now available for CC3+ from the registration page for all subscribers. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2016 yet, you can do so here.

To celebrate the 35th Anniversary of her gaming group forum user Shessar hosted a map-making competition on the forum. You can see all the entrants and the rules here on the forum thread.

Here are the winners.

Bill – The Journey Begins (3rd place)

This is a perfect vehicle for miniatures when printed out at a suitable scale.

2nd – LoopySue – Henge Portal

I love the lighting in this, which provides a sense of mystery and foreboding.

1st – Monsen – Breaking Through

This map cleverly combines the mundane modern with the archaic and occult.

Here are a couple of others which show techniques I particularly like – this shows a great use of outer glow and bevel effects on the walls, as well as glows from the symbols.

This demonstrates CC3’s lighting features, and a variety of pallets to contrast the different areas

Our Source Maps products are packed with predesigned flooplans, cities and temples. The maps are available in cc3 format with their own viewer, or as PDF or PNG files. I’ve printed them out and used most of them over the years for my old-school D&D game and for 13th Age. However, they are are bit long in the tooth, so we’ll be updating them, starting with Source Maps: Temples! this year, in a new style and adding new maps and floorplans. Here’s a look at a recent draft of the new style, and the old style for comparison.

The current Source Maps: Temples, Tombs and Catacombs map

A close-up of the proposed new style:

We intend to released Source Map: Temples mid-June next year.

Most of the development work we’ve been doing since release involves fixing bugs behind the scenes, many of which arise from the interaction with new versions of Windows 8. It’s not as much fun as adding new features, but we are working on those, two.

Somewhere in the middle are changes we make in response to technological advances. One such advance is the gradual introduction of super-high-resolution monitors, the most recent being 4K. On such monitors, our new 24×24 toolbar icons look a little small, so we’ve been working on 32×32 and 48×48 sizes. This will take a while, but I thought you might like to see a preview.

City Designer 3 is now compatible with CC3+, and to celebrate, here is a round-of maps, tutorials and resources for cities.

• An 8-part city creation tutorial- Mapping Cities part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5, part 6, part 7 and part 8.
• Learning CD3
• Kartotum – a city creation example
• Making City Maps – the styles and tools ProFantasy provides for city design
• Making a City part 1
• Making a City part 2