In December 2012, we released The Festive Three – a bundle of our top three products, Campaign Cartographer 3, Dungeon Designer 3 and City Designer 3.

We’ve often debated the effect of releasing this particular combination of products – the more conservative view point being that they would eat into our other sales, but we decided it was worth a try. It didn’t have that effect at all – in fact our sales in December were unusually good – so we are continuing our bundle under the more prosaic title of the Top Three for another month, at least. It’s a case of the customer is always right.

So why not try this tasty combination to get the full range of overland, urban and floorplan map-making for a 20% discount?

A Merry Christmas to all from ProFantasy. Thank you to Character Artist 3 contributor Rich Longmore for this image.

The Annual 2012 is our fastest selling annual since we started producing Annuals in 2007. We’ve had amazing user maps created and proudly displayed on our forum. Why? Well, I think the maps and comments speak for themselves. Here are my favourite styles for this year.

Herwin Wielink‘s overland style was the single most popular style every created for the Annual, measured by the amount of maps shown on the forums. So popular in fact, that we published an extension of the style with more symbols and textures. Use Elothan said here “It is a dream to work with i must say, I originally got it for the isometric dungeons, but this style is good at it is almost worth the price of the annual alone”

Herwin also created another of my favourites – his isometric dungeon style is just extremely clever and beautiful. I used a map created in this style for my annual mammoth D&D session.

The user map in Herwin’s Overland style was done by Modric, and the isometric dungeon here by forum member Tommek, who even commissioned custom symbols for his map from another artist. There are other amazing maps in this style.

On top of this we have the 13th Age style – a look I didn’t think even Ralf could reproduce, but he surely did, and Clercon here shows us how to use it.

And these are just three of the many styles available from the 2012 Annual.

The latest articles and news from ProFantasy for the festive season.

News

• The Cartographer’s Annual vol 6 is out now. See this year’s highlights.
• The forthcoming Annual 2013, which will include includes a new style developed by Jonathan Roberts, is available for subscription at 10% off until December 20th
• Renowned cartographer Mike Schley is developing a complete overland style for CC3

Resources

• This month’s selection of user-created maps.
• Learning CD3 by Par Lindstrom
• Kartotum – creating an amazing city map
• Deadlands Battlemap by Ralf Schemmann

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[Ed: Mike Schley is a renowned game cartographer with clients such as Wizards of the Coast, Paizo and Scholastic and  aworking on a complete new overland style for CC3+]

As a professional artist, I’ve produced a large body of work over the past decade and a half for clients ranging from game developers to public universities. Most recently, the majority of my fantastical cartography has been for publishers such as Wizards of the Coast and Scholastic Books. The opportunity to work with Profantasy came as a wonderful surprise since not only does it allow me to develop what I believe will be an awesome new addition to Campaign Cartographer, but it will also let folks that already like my work use a new style of it to let their own imaginations run wild. What could be better than that?

Years ago, when studying art in college, I would have never thought my career would develop into drawing intricate worlds and mythical lands. Now, as a full-time fantasy illustrator, I have difficulty imagining doing anything else. When I sit down to work every day, it’s like I’m transported back in time to being a kid again and drawing campaign maps for D&D or custom boards for all-night sessions of Risk. World building and visual storytelling are two of the most fun things I can imaging spending my days on and the fact that my audience gets a kick out of what I do is icing on the cake.

Combining the use of digital and traditional media, I try to convey a naturalistic visual style while benefitting from the clean and quickly editable properties of the digital format. For my work, it should look hand drawn, even if it’s done exclusively in Photoshop. I love the greats of the golden era of illustration like Rackham, Mucha, Pyle, and Wyeth and although I’m working in front of a screen and not an easel, it’s their art that informs my tastes. As for my cartography, it might also help that apparently I have ancestors such as Jacob van der Schley who also were enthralled by map making as far back as 18th century. Hooray for maps!

[Ed: Bill Roach is best known in the CC3 community for creating the free Terraformer enhancement to Fractal Terrains 3. Here he turns his attention to water courses; a features which is often added to maps without much thought.]

A PDF of this article is available

(Images in this article not created by the author are either courtesy of the EPA, FEMA, USGS, or NOAA, or are licensed as Public Domain, or under the GNU Open Document License by their respective authors.)

The rivers on your overland maps will be the life blood of your simulated world. Most of the plant and animal life on your maps will cluster next to them, near them, and around them. Settlements, towns, and cities will grow alongside them, and fishermen, hunters, trappers, farmers, and merchants will depend upon them for their livelihoods. They will act as major arteries of commerce, major zones of cooperation, and points of contentious, sometimes vicious geopolitical dispute. In peace they will be places of celebration – and in war, they will be places of intrigue. They will be signposts for travelers, and form the borders of nations. They may even be the focus of religious pilgrimage. They will be some of the most important and essential key elements of your maps.

When you design your overland maps, also remember that your riverways, lakes, and seas will influence weather.Agriculture depends upon rain – and farms are typically found in water rich places. Rivers and lakes mean farms, farms lead to hamlets, villages, and towns, towns give rise to cities, and cities give rise to nations.

Continue reading »

The latest articles and news from ProFantasy from September.

News

• Recent Releases – Symbol Set 3 and the Tome of Ultimate Mapping-last chance to get them at current prices
• Character Artist 3 update and an art poll. Please vote.
• The latest developments in forthcoming products from the code pit
• This month’s Annual – a gorgeous overland style inspired by the forthcoming 13th Age RPG

Resources

• Free Random City Generator by L Lee Saunders for City Designer 3 users
• Latest user maps for August and September
• From the Support Desk: Second Hand Software

Map-making articles

• Catacombs of evil – a short DD3 tutorial
• Overland mapping part 2 (part 1 is here)
• A new map in the 13th Age style

The Tome of Ultimate Mapping and Symbol Set 3 are on sale at a lower price until 21st September. Get them at this price while you can!

• The monstrous 600-page Tome is still priced at $13.95 / £8.95, increasing to $19.95 / £10.95 on Friday.
• Symbol Set 3 with over 1000 extra symbols is currently $21.95 / £12.95 going up to $24.95 / £14.95

Tome of Ultimate Mapping

The Tome of Ultimate Mapping has been updated by Remy Monsen (the author of the CC3 Full Manual) to cover Campaign Cartographer 3 and all version 3 products up to Fractal Terrains 3 (Dungeon Designer 3, City Designer 3, Symbols Sets 1 and 2, Cosmographer 3 and Fractal Terrains 3). The chapters on the other add-ons will be updated after their new versions are released. Symbol Set 3 is obviously the next on the list. You can see half a dozen example pages of the Tome here.

Symbol Set 3

Symbol Set 3 – Modern comes with two completely new bitmap drawing styles for floorplans, with about 500 symbols each. One was created by Jon Roberts, the other by Michael Tumey. There is also a snazzy new blueprint-style for realistic looking player handouts, a Modern political overland style, and the old vector style has been updated to work with CC3’s sheet effects and drawing tools.

Once a month or so someone emails us having bought a second-hand copy of CC3, or more usually, older versions of Campaign Cartographer. Usually, these purchases do not include a serial number. Such purchases are worthless. Occasionally this is deliberate, but more often it’s a mail order copy – these don’t include the serials, just the media and documentation. Ebay is a very typical source of unlicensed copies.

Now, in common with most software, when you spend money on Campaign Cartographer, you are buying a license to use the software – so the important thing is the unique serial number. You can transfer our license to another person, as long as you let us know and the transfer includes all versions of CC3 that the original licensee has purchased. This prevents mutiple individuals buying an upgrade for a product. We’d be happy to email any potential seller confirmation that they have a legitimate copy, and arrange for a license transfer.

So, if you are in any doubt, or even if you’ve been stung, we’d be happy to help. Just email the support desk.

Master Mapper and developer L Lee Saunders has been working on a random city generator for City Designer 3 for a while now. It’s a tough nut to crack – it’s hard to make human(?) environments which look plausible. But we are ready to release the latest version, the first public beta of the Random City Generator. To get the generator, which requires City Designer 3

1. Go to the ProFantasy registration area, and login in or register
2. Register your CD3 if you need to
3. Download the Random Generator and install as Adminstrator
4. Launch CC3 and start a new map based on a city template
5. Type CITY at the command prompt and press Enter

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