ProFantasy's Map-Making Archive

Maps have been an integral part of the fantasy role-playing hobby since its inception, but often we think of the classic gridded dungeon map as the basic map that is used during the game. The overland map is secondary, showing the overall lay of the land, and is perhaps just used to find out the travel distance between the town the adventures starts in and the next dungeon.

But there is another type of map that can see heavy use during the game session: the overland hex map used for a so-called hexcrawl. What is a hexcrawl do you ask? It is a type of game where the adventure consists not of an overarching plot or a specific dungeon that the heroes follow or delve into, but of a region that they can freely explore via a hex map. They go from hex to hex, encountering what the GM or adventure has in store there and then decide where to go next.

I first encountered this type of game (and the accompanying hex maps) not in fantasy gaming, but in science fiction. We used to play Traveller in the day, and hex maps where a big part of the game. Since then, I’ve always loved them but admittedly used them in my games fairly rarely. But now I am starting a new campaign game, and guess what it is in large parts a hexcrawl game. That means I’m looking at creating my own hex maps again, as you can see in our latest YouTube live mapping session.

Hex grids have been a part of Campaign Cartographer for a long time, and in CC3 we introduced special hex symbol functionality to make creating such maps even quicker and easier. Check out the Overland Hex Map style from the Annual Vol. 4, Overland CC3 Hex Maps in Vol. 7, Mike Schley Hex maps in Vol 12, and of course a large variety of hex styles in Cosmographer 3.

None of these are exactly what I’m looking for, so I’ll be creating a new style for my own use, fitting for the Cloud Empress game I’ll be running for a while. That way I can expand the published game world with my own content without breaking the visual style.

I’m looking forward to sharing my progress here and on the ProFantasy forum. Have you used and created hex maps yourself? Do you like creating them, or is their layout too abstract for your liking. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

The current bi-weekly roleplaying campaign I am running is the excellent “Borellus Connection” for Pelgrane Press’ Fall of Delta Green game. I had the pleasure to create some of the maps in the published book, from the heroin smuggling routes of the 1960s, via a drug lords compound to a Beirut warehouse floorplan.

More maps were created by other talented mappers, meaning the book has plenty of material, but I still found myself wanting more as our campaign progressed – you can never have enough maps!

Especially one location in Marseille tickled my fancy, as it is very interesting geographically, but at the same time difficult to put into a map – and the book didn’t have one. So I sat down, fired up CC3+ and used my trusty Dracula Dossier modern floorplan style to map the villain’s lair in Marseille.

Now, the location has some otherworlds components and the description is vague enough to make any mapper question their sanity, so I decided to not try to pin down everything to the inch. Instead I focused on the relative position to things to each other and convey the atmosphere of the place (one of a claustrophic maze). It worked quite well in practice during the game.

So in case you need a labyrinthine hideout for your games, or you are even running the Borellus Connection campaign (which I highly recommend), you can grab the FCW map here.

by Ralf Schemmann

If you are reading this, it is highly likely that you are – like me – a fan of maps for role-playing maps. If you are also present on social media platforms at least a little, it is also highly likely you have been – like me – presented with many ads for collections of thousands of rpg maps, promising the right kind of map for every occasion in your games. It’s always been obvious to me, though not expressively stated in those ads, that those maps were AI generated, as otherwise it is basically impossible to create such numbers of maps and not sell them at less what they cost to produce. While your opinion may differ, this always ruled them out for me as a possible purchase, because if I buy anything, I want to pay a real artist for their work and not support the creation of heaps and heaps of AI generated art. Even those who use AI generated art can create it themselves – they don’t need someone to do it for them, and disguise it as human-created work.

More recently, with the further expansion of generative AI into text-based areas, more and more full game publications have appeared among those same kind of advertisements, and the method to create them is perhaps a little less obvious. I do not intend to grace or support any of these publications with a direct link, but “Orkenspalter TV“, a German rpg YouTube channel, recently reviewed (and rightly panned) one of these products. They very rarely do negative reviews (instead focusing on a positive attitude towards the hobby), but decided it was necessary to make people aware of this new trend, because it borders on scamming, if not crossing over into that territory.

Orkenspalter cited an excellent blog article on Grimm’s Grimoire on the subject, which led me back to the aforementioned map bundles, because the article also looks at one of those products in detail. Not only does it confirm my impression that the content is obviously AI-generated, but also finds that some of the map designs in the bundle are clearly stolen from real human artists. As the creators of these bundles are obfuscated and/or sitting in hard to legally reach places, it is highly unlikely anything can be done about this, but I felt it was an important topic to talk about. I highly recommend taking a few minutes to read the article yourself: The 1 Million Dollar RPG Maps Bundle Scam

Public Domain image taken from Wikipedia

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!

As we’ve announced a while ago, we are working on a new Symbol Set by Mike Schley, titled “Isometric Cities” and we are getting close to release now. The artwork by Mike is all done, Sue Daniel has created all the varicolor versions of the symbols, and yours truly is working on the bitmap fills and integrating everything into one coherent package.

The style consists of a large number of isometric building symbols. Each comes in four different views, which can be easily rotated to show the buildings from the four cardinal directions.

The symbols range from glorious gigantic structures like the cathedral above, to small details like graves, boats and market stalls. Naturally – because they are all created by Mike – they fit the Symbol Set 4 and 5 styles very well, and can potentially be used to illustrate cities that you’ve already create with Symbol Set 5 in an isometric view.

Look for the release Symbol Set 6 at the end of the month or in early November. Of course we’ll announce it here and in our newsletter, so keep an eye on those to not miss this new wonderful Symbol Set by Mike Schley.

Our freely available small monthly symbol sets, created by Mike Schley have been very popular (no surprise there!), and we are now nearing the completion of the first full year. The big example map that I use to try out and show all the symbols has become a wonderful, sprawling mess depicting lots of weird places and happenings.

So far all the symbols have been for overland maps and we are considering a variation in theme once we reach June and the second year of the program. There are still lots of ideas for overland maps, but we would also like mappers to profit from the free symbols, who are not doing so many overland maps.

It will still be Mike doing them, and currently we are thinking of doing dungeon symbols for a while, complementing his Dungeons of Schley style. But of course we’d like to hear from you, what you would like to see in the free monhtly symbols.

Should we stick with overland symbols for a while? Is the idea of Dungeon symbosl fine? Or would you like to see something else entirely. You can also submit more specific ideas for what should be in the sets, like what you would need in an overland map or dungeon floorplan.

Send us an email, post in the comments here, or head over to the Profantasy community forum and reply there.

Have you marveled at the beautiful city maps that Mike Schley has created for the D&D role-playing game and other brands? If not, head over to his web page to see a great selection. Myself, I am a particular fan of his isometric city views like the Candlekeep map you see as the first listed on that page. They give a great overall impression of the location, while also haviong enough precise information to make them really useful as a gaming tool.

Of course I’ve been advocating for a symbol set using this art style for a while here at Profantasy, and I’m now more than happy that I have the first symbols on my desk for by an upcoming set by Mike himself. He’s been busy creating the inked outlines ofr the buildings and kindly provided a few colored ones as well, that I can show off here. Take a look!

So far my job concerning this product has mostly been looking over the incoming symbols, nodding and saying “Yes, they are great, thank you” by way approval. I’m looking forward to diving into creating all the symbols for CC3+ when more of the colored versions come in, and trying my hand at creating isometric city maps with them myself.

What it’s in the works here are Profantasy HQ at the moment do you ask? Well, apart from behind the scenes work on Campaign Cartographer itself, the ongoing Annual development and the daily routine, we are getting close to finishing the next installment of the Token Treasury series.

The artist, Rich Longmore, has delivered as wonderful new collection of nasties (and not so nasties) for your games and maps, and I am now converting them to CC3+ format, creating varicolor versions and building catalogs. Look for the release later this month! You can check out the first installment of the Token Treasury here.

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

I’m sure you all would like to know what is currently in development and when the next add-ons for CC3+ will arrive. Well, I can report that Cities of Schley is very close to completion now and that the next Token Treasury is chugging along nicely.

Cities of Schley

Mike has finished almost all the symbols for the set, and is now working on the bitmap textures that we need to go along with them, so the City Designer house tool can create matching buildings.

Sue Daniels has been helping us with creating the roof maps and as you can on the right, they look great. She’s also suggested a great way to give you more variety in the roof shapes without compromising the shadow’s on the city map (as mirroring a symbol within CC3+ would do).

Token Treasury 2

Seeing that there is still a vast army of fiends and critters lurking in the shadows to pounce on hapless heroes, we’ve decided to drag a few more into the light of the virtual tabletop.

Rich Longmore is creating another set of monster tokens and I’m always delighted when a new one charges through the doorway (or slithers through a crack in the wall).

We do have a few slots for new monster available in the list, so if you have something special that you would like to see as a token, let us know in the comments below!