[Download the FCW file]
Well met, Mappers! I come in peace. This month’s issue of the 2015 Annual is SciFi Downport. This issue, by Steph Mclea has drawing tools and symbols that allow you to put together a starport map for you sci-fi rpg campaign needs in no time at all. Truly, this map took me less time than maybe any I’ve ever worked on, and sci-fi is not my typical rpg genre to play or DM in.
It’s spring here in the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York, yet I am currently hunkered down at home during Spring Break (I work in a school now) watching the SECOND snow storm since the beginning of spring blow outside my office window. It’s snowed more this spring that all of winter combined (our last storm on the 2nd day of spring brought me 20” of snow). With that in mind, I’ve been doing a lot of “winter” themed mapping and decided to do this starport on a polar planet, engulfed in snow and ice.
Using the river to divide residences and the “industrial” sector of the port, I simply placed some road where I wanted buildings to be and began dropping the easy symbols in this set. I noticed there is a drawing tool for “monorail” so I decided to create an elevated monorail by adding a sheet and adding a drop shadow to it. I also created a sheet for elevated buildings, such as the terminals and landing pad, and put a drop shadow on those as well.
This issue is super user friendly, and I recommend it for beginners and experts alike for your Sci-Fi tabletop needs.
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.
“To me, every hour of the Day and Night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.” I wonder if Walt Whitman ever thought of battle maps when he was speaking of how perfect both night and day are? Day or Night, what better way to be prepared for battle in your game than with the Day and Night issue of the 2015 Annual?
You know, as a DM your players can just go off the rails far, far off the tracks of your diligent, carefully thought out prep material … left turns to right, good turns to bad, up to down, and sometimes day turns to night. No problem! You can easily alter any existing map of yours to accommodate the shifting shadows of night creeping in on your planned daytime encounter.
Now, I won’t even go into explaining how to do this….as I, who has been using this program for YEARS, Master Mapper me, could not figure it out at first. After reaching out to our beloved community, Sue and Remy got back to me right away … kindly pointing out my mistake, and Voila! Day became night on my map and I got set to placing light sources. For more detailed information on how to set up the lighting, I suggest the 2008 Annual with Lighted Dungeons or my go to The Tome of Ultimate Mapping, of which I simply cannot give more praise in helping with some really great beginner, intermediate and expert tips and techniques. Truly, it’s worth the purchase, in my opinion.
So, I used Mike Schley’s Dungeon style and also a few Forlorn Cottage and free monthly content symbols for this map. It’s a generic, simple end street in any village town or city that I like to keep at hand for the unexpected stops in a village or town I hadn’t fully fleshed out yet. Getting caught off guard and by surprise as a DM is not uncommon or unexpected, but having that ability to change the time of day this easily is a great tool for all game masters.
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.
Black and white mapping is not in my wheelhouse, to say the least. I love taking textures and layering them, creating new colors in the color palette. But, with every new adventure we learn new things and experience new options in mapping. Working with this style was pretty simple. It’s great for printing out maps at home, especially if you like to conserve ink, like I do. You can easily do a DM and Player versions in less than an hour.
For this map, I used an online generator of dungeons and simply traced out my rooms and added a little bit of flair (I just can’t resist trying to make things look “pretty”). The mapping guide is simple and even the newest of beginners can work with this style early on in their CC3+ learning journey.
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.
Comments Off on All the Annuals: OSR Dungeon (January 2015)
Merry meet, Mappers! We’re down to the style for 2016, bringing us to the Dark Realms Annual. This set is meant to stand alone, yet it also can be used in combination with two other styles in this year’s annual, Scorching sun and Realms of Legend by TJ Vandel, both of which I’ve given you basic sample maps. This wraps up the overland styles for 2016 available in this amazing annual.
I just love this one, along with the Scorching Sun. The textures are some of my favorites for overland mapping. The little bunches of woods and forests are just…..chef’s kiss adorable for me. As usual with overland mapping, I struggled….these maps tend to take me much longer than my worth in mapping sometimes, but I stick to it, to improve and get over my geographic anxiety of where and why everything goes where it goes. For my own personal use…..my players no nothing about nor do they care about where mountains are, or if the rivers flow rightly….plus I can use magic and supernatural explanations for the aberrations in geography. For a map I am putting out there on the internet for the world to see? For the River Police that once plagued, and may still, a popular cartography web page? Well, that just stresses me out. After getting over my anxiety, I just relaxed and mapped what felt right. I think it looks good, and I sure hope you do, too.
The only thing I did here was make a few adjustments in PS to the png with the contrast. I love how my maps look on my screen in CC3, but once saving them, they often change appearance, especially since I save at such high resolutions, so that my maps are still clear enough for VTT play when I size them down to the usual 20MB limit most VTTs have, sometimes I make some minor adjustments outside of this incredible program.
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.
Comments Off on All the Annuals: Dark Realms (December 2016)
Hello Cartography Friends! We are down to our last two sets….both Overland. Not my favorite, as you would know if you’ve been following along and have read my blurbs. However, I usually do my best work under pressure….I guess that’s why I trained as an Emergency RN as my nursing career choice, lol. Organized chaos is my Roman Empire 😊
Anyway, this style is one of three ins a set overland styles offered this year, along with Scorching Sun and Realms of Legend. All three of these sets, created by the talented TJ Vandel, were made to work alone, or in combination with one another. In this example, I’ve just followed along with the mapping guide, so as to decrease my stress of where I wanted things to go. It just flowed nicely. I really like the clean look of this map and decided to keep it simple and free of clutter.
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.
Comments Off on All the Annuals: Realms of Legend (November 2016)
This black and white style is perfect for your spooky season one-shot this year! Planning a Cthulhu themed game? This style easily puts together a quick, clean, modern floorplan for your gaming needs. As per my usual, I did a search for an olde tyme floor plan from days of yore on the internet and dropped a png image onto my map for me to easily trace. After tracing the basic plan, I deleted my pic and just filled in the rooms with some of Pär’s assets, such as the broken furniture for any murder mystery you might be planning for your gaming party!
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.
Comments Off on All the Annuals: Horror House (October 2016)
Hello mappers! Another month, another annual. This monthly installment of the 2016 Annual is Alyssa Faden’s City Streets. This annual is perfect for mapping a section of a city in your world, for some zoomed in, regional maps your players can use in planning their way through city streets and shops.
For this map, I decided to map out a small district in a large town in my homebrew world. In this area, there are shops galore for my players to enjoy – know your players – mine love a shopping session. I just love the color scheme this annual affords. It’s bright, vibrant and by adding a tiny little Multiply 5% in Blend Mode, the map pops perfectly. I also darkened the buildings and the cobblestone background, as I prefer a darker map with more contrast, personally. This map took no time to put together and any mapper, from novice to master can easily put together a quick map for their gaming needs.
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.
Comments Off on All the Annuals: City Streets (September 2016)
A few months ago, I started the Rails & Trains mini-series of articles. In the two prior installments (part 1 – part 2), we looked at how to make the tracks themselves, now it is time to round it out by looking at rail cars.
We’ll have a look at how to draw the insides of a rail car based on a real blueprint, giving us a nice scene for a handout or battle. I am going to base my drawing on a blueprint from the early 19-hundreds. I mainly picked these because it is difficult to find older blueprints online with proper dimensions, and because the trains of that time still had the same basic layouts as earlier trains, making it easy to adapt them to earlier times. Of course, my procedure here works fine with any blueprint, so if you’re mapping for a modern train, just grab the appropriate blueprint and possibly a different drawing style better suited for modern maps, such as SS3.
(Download the FCW file)
Hello mappers! Welcome to this month’s All the Annuals, Scorching Sun. This overland set is fantastic. I love the color palette with this set. What’s also great about TJ’s fantastic style is that this annual works really well with another annual that came out at the end of 2016 – don’t worry, we’ll get there – giving you so many more symbol options and fills to play with.
For this map, I actually used a font I downloaded from one of the free sites online, as you can see by the middle eastern flair font in the png. Your map, should you download this one, will come with the standard font from the annual, but I wanted to show you in this particular font so you can see it’s super easy to add more font choices to your maps, if you choose.
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.
Comments Off on All the Annuals: Scorching Sun (August 2016)
Behind the scenes we’ve been working on a new feature for Campaign Cartographer: a random generator that allows you to generate complete maps by just a few clicks. This version is a taster of what we’ll introduce in CC4. We are very happy that we were able to recruit the help of the designer of the Watabou series of random map generators. The first of these, a Random Dungeon generator, is now at a stage where we are happy to release it into the public as a beta, for you to try out and make use of.
Note This is an enhanced output from a version still under development. Current beta output will look a bit different.
You can download the Random Dungeon generator from your account at profantasy.com. It is a small, simple executable that will add the functionality to your current CC3+ install.
When you run CC3+ after installing it, a sample map will come up with a link to an introductory guide to the Random Dungeon command. Click the link to open the pdf or download it from this link: Mapping Guide – Random Dungeons.
We’ve also done a live mapping session on using the first version of the Random Dungeon generator. You can view it on YouTube now:
We will further develop this random generator and add other ones in the future. Join the community forum and/or subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with the development. Send us feedback by posting on the forum or by email. We are looking for anything from bug reports to feature requests.
In the meantime enjoy creating some random dungeons!
