Over at Pelgrane Press and Fire Opal Media, they’ve been working hard on a new supplement for 13th Age code-named Battle Scenes. It is a collection of icon-themed encounters for all levels of play, packed with dangerous hand-picked foes on terrifying terrain, and I’ve been one of the people to help bring this “terrifying terrain” to life, not least because I’ve been using the playtest version of the book for my own games, as seen here.

For me these battle maps required a lot of special terrain effects, for which I had to import new bitmap fills, create lots of new sheets with specialized effects, and generally had to think outside the box of a specific drawing style. Naturally we’d like to make these ideas and tools available to more CC3+ users, so we created the December Annual issue to make that happen.

In addition to a tutorial with chapters on combining assets from different styles, custom artwork, working with water effects, showing elevation and cliff faces, creating multiple layers in one map, and lighting effects, the December Annual also contains 4 highly detailed example maps (2 of them straight out of Battle Scenes). Here is anther scaled-down example out of
High Magic & Low Cunning: Battles Scenes for Five Icons.

“Have you read the manual?” We know this can be an annoying question, and many of us would much rather dive into a new piece of software without such hassle. That’s a bit like learning to drive a car without any instructions – certainly possible, but likely to cause frustration (luckily it’s not as dangerous). Trust us, the CC3+ manual is easy to follow along and extremely helpful to familiarize yourself with CC3+.

In fact, we have (or actually Remy Monsen has) been silently updating manual will all the new features and changes to the interface that have arrived with CC3+ and made the book even better. If you own CC3+, you can download the fully-indexed and hyperlinked, 97-page manual from your registration page right now.

If you don’t own CC3+ yet, and want to check out either some of the differences to CC3, or just want to an impression of how our software works, we’ve got a 12-page excerpt for your, the chapter on creating “Our First Map.” You can download the pdf from this link:
CC3+ Manual – Our First Map.

And here’s the map that you can create from just following along those 12 pages. I case you own CC3+, you can find this map in your /Tutorials/UserManual/ directory of your CC3+ program data folder.

Perspectives is clearly dominating my desk this month, so let’s take a look at what’s coming in this new edition of one of my favorite add-ons.

Four Styles

In addition to the two old vector styles that Perspectives Pro came with (vector symbols in color and in black and white) Perspectives 3 offers two new bitmap-based style. One is based on the artwork from Dungeon Designer 3. In fact the artist, Kai-Uwe Wallner, created 3D models of almost all the DD3 symbols and exported these in 8 views to serve as our isometric symbols. This means you can create matching isometric views of your DD3 dungeon maps!

The other bitmap style was created by Herwin Wielink, in the same look as his Isometric Dungeon style from the Annual Vol 6. In fact, the two can be combined for an even greater variety of available symbols. And unlike the Annual style, floors and walls can be freely created at any angle in Perspectives 3.

Aligning Bitmaps

In fact getting bitmap styles to behave properly in isometric view has been one of the major design challenges, but we are happy to report that these have (mostly) been overcome.



A little programming remains to be done, but even without it Perspectives 3 performs wonderfully in creating isometric bitmap-based maps. Doors and windows for example, just like their vector predecessors, align to angled walls by simply moving the mouse cursor over the wall baseline when placing them.

Casting Shadows

Taking a cue from City Designer 3, the Global Sun option will also create dynamic shadows and lights on the walls, allowing you to adjust these on the fly. The difference in shadows in the image on the right has been created with only a quick adjustment on the Global Sun direction.

Like in Perspectives Pro, all the these tools and styles will be available to create outdoor maps with buildings. We’ll incorporate lessons that have been learned in the Source Maps line of maps into the tools and the manual to make this even easier and quicker.

The Plan

Our plan is currently to have Perspectives 3 ready for pre-order before Christmas, and then do the full release early next year. I hope you’re looking forward to it as much as I do!

ProFantasy software is a small company, but our network of contributors is incredibly international ranging from part-time editors in Australia through freelance artists in Germany and Sweden to shipping and programming in the US. While the headquarters and office are in London, much of the day-to-day work is done from a small town in Germany. To give you a little insight what goes on at that German ProFantasy office, I am starting this column on the RPGMaps blog where I intend to five you a monthly status update on what is on this cartographer’s desk at the time. I hope you enjoy it, and feel free to ask any questions in the comments or over at the community forum.

Spiel’15 in Essen, the big boardgaming fair, definitely dominated the first half of October, meaning I was out of the office for a week. Prior to that, helpers had to be organized, stock brought in and assembled, and my absence to be planned for. You can read up on my time at Spiel here. Let me just say that it’s always fun, but also a very exhausting affair. Back from Essen, I was busy with putting material back into storage, settling the accounts and reporting back to HQ. Unfortunately I brought a stubborn cold back with me, which took the whole next week to leave my system. Crowds are dangerous!

Next up on the desk was getting out the CC3+ compatibility update for Symbol Set 3 – Modern. This also required preparing the next update for CC3+ (version 3.69). While the majority of work, like beta-testing and building the installations, had been done before Spiel, I still had some fine-tuning to do and the actual release to prepare. As I type this, SS3 and Update 3 should be safely out and available to our users.

But the big thing lurking on my desk is another beast: Perspectives 3. After Spiel I dived back into assembling catalogs, fine-tuning symbols, creating varicolors and all such things for an add-on with thousands of symbols. I’m currently producing a rough working version, so we can tackle some necessary programming work that using isometric bitmap artwork entails.

As you can see from the little sample, Perspectives 3 will not have one, but two new bitmap artwork styles – doubling the symbol work, yay! What you can’t see is that one styles will also have 8 directional views for each symbol, instead of the 4 in Perspectives Pro. Even more, yay! Hopefully next month the cartographer will have a couple more elaborate samples of Perspectives 3 on his desk. Until then!

This is my after-action report from this year’s Spiel convention in Essen – the biggest board game event around the world.

“Spiel was very nice, though tiring this year. I’m pretty sure they’ll be announcing a new visitor record again, but there were some problems due to so many visitors and some train troubles (due to a fire in a big rail center). Friends reported 45 minutes wait times (and more) for shuttle services from parking to the halls. Each morning the center would announce they’d be opening the doors 15 minutes early due to crowding at the entrances.

We didn’t feel the crowds so much at the Profantasy booth. Our part of the hall was relatively quiet for most of the time, and I wasn’t too thrilled that were we wedged between several mead, wine and beer booths and the big UltraPro (card sleeves and folders) stand. I’d have much preferred a space adjacent to one of the smaller German RPG publishers like Prometheus, Uhrwerk or Mantikore. That’s not to say that those exhbitors weren’t very nice – they actually were very kind and a little mead-tasting is nothing to be sneered at. It’s just that I think we supplement the rpg publishers so well.

Setup and all technical prep went without problems. Gordon helped with setup on Wednesday and Carsten arrived on Thursday morning (with a little delay due to the afore-mentioned shuttle service). Despite the crowds, Thursday and Friday were a bit slow, giving us time to have a look around the halls in turns and do some more leisurely demos at the PC. Traffic picked up heavily on Saturday, for one of busiest days (on our booth) in recent years. Sunday morning started extremely slow, but then came a big rush around 2pm with kept going for at least 90 minutes, where all three of us were constantly talking, demoing and selling stuff. That made Sunday a very good day too, bringing 2015 up to par with last year which was also a very good year (where the first three days were all similarly good and then saw a sharp drop off on Sunday).

Overall we had a few more individual sales than last year, but less overall product sold. Prices were a little higher due to the weak Euro, which might have contributed to people buying smaller bundles.

I had the large 13th Age map in Mike Schley’s style on the table and that was a big draw. People love his style and were (as usual) very impressed of how quickly you can put together a good-looking map with his symbols. Feedback of existing users on CC3+ was also very good, with equal praise going to the new artwork and the improved performance.

The focus at Spiel continues to be on new customers. There’s about an equal number of people who’ve never heard of Campaign Cartographer and those who’ve seen it before and are interested. Existing customers are a few less, and they usually have bought everything they want via the web store already. Some turn up with questions or problems, or to check what’s upcoming, others
just to say hello. Only a subsection of these buys stuff at the booth.

We had good fun together, especially with Gordon’s daughter at the booth. Gordon and Nicole (his wife) always take great care of me. Together with Carten and Annue we went out for the Profantasy dinner on Saturday to our usual haunt and took Cat with us. We are all looking forward to next year.

The only bad thing I took home with me is a nasty cold which is coming out now. My voice is still gone and I’m sneezing quite a bit.”

A larger gallery of pictures from Spiel can be found on G+.

P.S.: That cold lasted the week after the show, but is (mostly) gone now!

Some quick impressions from this year’s GenCon:

Pelgrane and Profantasy’s booth space before setup

CC3 community member RA jacobs wrote a detailed article on Basic Select Techniques in CC3+ on his blog Funny Shaped Dice. Check it out, it is very informative and especially helpful for new users of CC3+.

Basic Select Techniques, Part 1
Basic Select Techniques, Part 2

For my current 13th Age rpg campaign (a short break from our Ashen Stars game) I recently created several battle maps, because while the game does not use a grid movement, it profits from a good visualization of the combatant’s positions relative to each other. Looking back I realize that I used a variety of different ways to actually bring the maps to the table, as time and resources dictated. I thought it might be useful to look at the different methods.

For the first session, I had a generous time frame and needed to have some professional posters done anyway, so I went for the most luxurious way: I had the two battle maps for the game printed at a poster printing service (Posterjack.com). Click on the image on the right, to see a close up view. The paper quality is great, the colors brilliant and of course everything is in one piece. The scale can be a bit off, if you go for the cheapest poster size/format option, but this map was not meant to be printed at exact miniature scale anyway. The downside: it’s a bit more expensive of course (€10 per 80cm by 60cm poster) and takes time get printed and sent back.

For the second session I was much more pressed for time, and I also didn’t want to spend that kind of money again. So I went to my trusty home inkjet printer (a Canon Pixma iP4800) and printed the next battle map on nine pages of A4, trimmed and glued them together. You can see the result on the left.

The colors are more muted, and you can see where the pages have been glued together, but it still looks very nice. Of course it uses up a good bit of ink and still requires some time to assemble (I can do these in 10 minutes now though). Generally, this is my go to method, which I have used over the whole Deadlands Reloaded campaign that I finished last year.

Still, I had a couple more encounters planned for the evening and didn’t want to print even more stuff. So I came up with a new way to use the map at the table. I would display it on the TV screen for all the players to see and have a Noteboard on the table with a quick sketch of the same map. The TV display would provide the flavor and atmosphere for the map, while the Noteboard would allow for the tactical positioning. Click on the image on the right to see the set up.

I used Chromecast and my Android phone to quickly cast images to the screen. This turned out quite well, better than expected on my rather modestly-sized TV set, and I used it for the final two encounters of the adventure. I’m sure I’ll revisit this method in upcoming sessions. While it’s not quite as nice as having the minis on the color map, it definitely saves on money and time.

Note that the Noteboard area is a bit smaller than your A1 poster map, but with 13th Age you don’t mind really. There is no counting of squares or hexes nor any measuring of distance that would need an accurate and consistent scale.

This is another bit of synergy between the sister companies Profantasy Software and Pelgrane Press. Pelgrane’s Kickstarter project for the “Dracula Dossier” was a huge success, and for the many locations detailed in the campaign, they needed a unified map-style that different cartographers could use.

Realizing that the same would be useful to ProFantasy’s user base, we set about creating a floorplan style which could also be published as an issue of the Cartographer’s Annual. The style had to adhere to a few guidelines from the Dracula Dossier art direction: A clear and straightforward look, that fits the game’s modern setting, legibility at a variety of different scales and in various environments (books, pdfs, web), and of course matching the book’s layout and color design.

You can see the first map in the new “Dracula Dossier” style on the right (click the image to see a larger scale version). It details the underground remains of “Carfax Abbey”, Dracula’s estate during his stay in England. You can read a preview of the site’s description here.

The Dracula Dossier annual style will be available later this year, closer to the release of this exciting campaign for Night’s Black Agents.

by Steve Townshend

I began using Profantasy software around 1999 when Campaign Mapper, a basic version of Campaign Cartographer, came bundled with TSR’s AD&D Core Rules 2.0 CD. That program sparked my passion for the software and I purchased virtually every release over the next decade. In 2009, changing technology and changing lifestyle changed my hardware needs, and when my last (very big) desktop PC broke down I replaced it with a (very small) Macbook Pro. While that machine was the right choice for me, I could at first only run Campaign Cartographer via a slow, quirky virtual machine, and with sadness I gave up CC3 almost entirely. Until now.

If you’re a Mac user interested in running the best fantasy mapping software in the industry, you’re in luck. The newer, faster CC3+ can now be installed and run without Windows, and aside from a few minor quirks its performance on the Mac is better than ever.

This tutorial focuses on how to install CC3+ on a Mac using the Crossover application created by Codeweavers. We’ll begin by examining a few of the other common options in brief. This installation was done on a late 2013 Macbook Pro running OS X Yosemite.

Boot Camp and Virtual Machines

In the past, a few options have existed for running CC3 on a Mac. Some users preferred to use Apple’s Boot Camp to set up their Macs with a Windows partition so that they could choose whether to load Windows or Mac OS.

Others used virtualization software like Parallels or Fusion, programs that allowed the user to load Windows on a virtual machine without the necessity of logging out of Mac OS and into Windows.

Those options may remain good choices for users that regularly work with multiple Windows applications. However, if you’re not using many Windows-specific programs on your Mac this may not be your ideal solution, as you’ll devote a large chunk of disk space for a Windows installation that you’ll rarely use. On the occasions you do use it, you’ll need to wait through the installation of multiple updates that you missed since the last time you loaded Windows. These Windows updates can take a long time to download and install. In addition, you’d have to purchase a Windows license as well as the Parallels or Fusion product.

An application called Wine circumvents Boot Camp and virtual machines altogether, placing Campaign Cartographer front and center on your machine so that it works similar to any other Mac application.

Wine

Wine is a “compatibility layer” that allows Windows applications to run in other operating systems like Mac OS without installing Windows.

Wine is open source software and free to use, and it can capably run Campaign Cartographer. Various individuals and companies have adapted their own versions of Wine, including supported, purchasable products like Crossover, which we will use to install CC3+.

If you own Campaign Cartographer and haven’t upgraded to CC3+, or you don’t wish to purchase Crossover, then the free Wineskin Winery is another option. On the Profantasy Forums my friend Ryan Sturt provides a solid walkthrough on how to install CC3 using Wine.

*Drawbacks and Limitations: Installing Campaign Cartographer through Wineskin Winery can be tricky and may necessitate a little trial and error. As usual, it’s a good idea to back up your computer using Time Machine before installing new software. In addition, running CC3 in a maximized window sometimes yields sluggish performance.

Crossover

For a smoother installation and simple interface there’s Crossover, a supported version of Wine, by Codeweavers. Use Crossover if you want the easiest and fastest Mac interface for CC3+ and you don’t mind purchasing some software in order to run it.

Crossover uses separate “bottles” to store programs. Each bottle is its own virtual Windows environment with c drive, folders, and registry, but without the Windows files that typically fill those folders.

Crossover offers a 2-week free trial with which you can install and run CC3+ on your Mac and decide whether this option will work for you. If you decide to eventually purchase the software, be sure to click the More Options button on the product page in order to see the least expensive ($40) purchasing option that includes 1 month of software support. Since Crossover doesn’t officially support Profantasy Software, paying for additional months of Crossover is not likely to be worthwhile. At your option, you can sign up for the Codeweavers mailing list; they occasionally offer promotional codes for Crossover discounts.

*Drawbacks and Limitations: While Crossover will easily install CC3+ (as well as CC2 and Fractal Terrains), it does not appear to be able to install the old CC3.

Installing CC3+ on a Mac Using Crossover

Follow these steps to install Crossover and CC3+ onto your Mac running OS X.

1. Download CC3+ onto your Mac. You can access your registered software on Profantasy’s site after you log in and click Your Registered Products. Select the Downloads & Updates tab and then download your software. You won’t install it yet, however.
2. Now download and install the free trial of Crossover.
3. Launch Crossover from the Launchpad or from your Applications folder.
4. After you open Crossover, select the Install a Windows Application button.

Alternatively you can select the Bottle menu item at the top of the screen and select New Bottle (I usually select a Windows XP bottle) or click the + sign at the bottom left side of your Crossover window and select the same option. You can name your bottle CC3+, or Campaign Cartographer, or whatever you choose. That process is a little more straightforward, but the Install a Windows Application button is more evident onscreen.

5. If you used the Install a Windows Application button Crossover will prompt you to install the application. Campaign Cartographer isn’t listed on the menu of supported applications so scroll to the bottom of the menu to Unsupported Applications > Community Supported Applications > Other Application. Then click Proceed.

6. On the next screen select Choose Installer File and navigate to the place where your Campaign Cartographer download “CC3PlusSetup.exe” is stored on your machine (by default it will be in your Downloads folder) and select the setup file.

7. Before you go farther, select the Edit button beside the next menu, “Will install into a new Windows XP bottle Campaign Cartographer 3.” This will allow you to name the program. I call it “Campaign Cartographer 3.” If you don’t name it prior to the installation, your CC3+ program will appear as its file name instead (i.e. “CC3PlusSetup”). You can select any Windows bottle you like, not just Windows XP.
If you do forget to name your program, you can rename it later.

8. If you’ve ever installed a Profantasy product, the screens that follow will look familiar. Simply follow the prompts, enter your serial number (found on Profantasy’s Registered Products page), and unless you have good reason to do so, use the default directories that the installer chooses for you.

9. Once you’ve finished the installation, the Profantasy installer will typically ask if you want to launch the program. It’s usually best to UNCHECK that box. This will let Crossover finish its work (you’ll see Crossover’s progress bars reach the end).

10. Click the CC3+ icon in your Crossover menu. Time to start making maps!

* Known Issues: Right now, text doesn’t always work quite right on any version of Wine. It’s likely that you’ll need to fix text on your old maps and experiment with text spacing when making new maps.
CC3+ usually works better in a window rather than as its own desktop. For instance, if you click the green maximize circle and allow CC3+ to be its own separate desktop window, you may experience slower performance. If you instead drag the corners of the CC3+ window so that it occupies the majority of the screen, you’ll have approximately the same workspace but without the performance issues.

Installing Add-ons

Installing add-ons like Dungeon Designer and City Designer into your CC3+ program is simple once you know where to start.

– As usual, begin by downloading your software from the Profantasy site.
– Open Crossover and select the bottle where you have Campaign Cartographer Plus installed. Select the Run Command icon (or select it from the menu under Bottle > Run Command). Then, Browse for the file you’ve downloaded and open it.
– The Profantasy installer will begin. Follow the prompts to enter your serial numbers and complete the installation.

Not all of Campaign Cartographer’s add-ons are currently available for CC3+ but as the Annuals and other add-ons are updated you can continue to follow this process to add them via Run Command in your Campaign Cartographer Plus bottle.

Tips and Tricks

Locating CC3+ Files in Crossover

Finding the CC3+ files in your Finder can be tricky, and at first finding your designs can be frustrating if you don’t know where to look.

To find your files in Crossover:
– Open Finder and go to the View menu at the top of your screen. Select the Show View Options menu item. Make sure to check the Show Library Folder check box.
– Under your user folder, select Library > Application Support > Crossover > Bottles > CC3Plus > drive c > users > Public > Application Data > Profantasy > CC3Plus. Notice the files appear in that folder.

Moving the CC3Plus Folder for Easy Access

– After you’ve located your CC3Plus folder I suggest dragging it into your Favorites menu on the left side of the Finder. That way the CC3Plus folder will always be accessible with a single click.

I also keep a My Designs folder under Documents. I save my maps to this folder rather than the CC3Plus folder within Crossover, just so I have easier access to my maps—especially the ones I save as JPG or PNG files and wish to share or upload.

In the Dock

You can add CC3+ to your dock like other Mac applications by simply dragging its icon down into the dock.

Renaming the Program

If you install Campaign Cartographer and forget to rename it, you can fix this by selecting the gear icon at the bottom of the Crossover screen and clicking the Rename menu option. You’ll notice that your program icons suddenly vanish. To restore them, select the Configure menu option at the top of your screen and select Clear and Rebuild Programs and choose the option to rebuild them. The icons should reappear in your menu.

Thanks

Special thanks to Ryan Sturt, Rob Heath, and Ralf Schemmann—the true pioneers—for advice, education, and input on how to successfully run Campaign Cartographer on the Mac.

Bio
Steve Townshend is a freelance writer who has worked for several game companies including Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, Pelgrane, and Sasquatch. Recent design work includes Dungeons & Dragons 5e (Monster Manual, Dungeon Master’s Guide), and Princes of the Apocalypse for Sasquatch Studios. Here are a few of my maps.