Several users over on the ProFantasy community forum have recently posted tutorials on various aspects of their map-making. These are wonderful resources for any mapper, and we are sharing them here for your convenience and ease of access.

Charley Wayne Robinson has a huge project going on, mapping his fantasy world in intricate detail. He discusses creating mountain ranges in a two-part tutorial, as well as creating rivers, and – a specialty of his – misty areas. You can download the pdfs from these links:

• River Tutorial
• Mountains Tutorial 1
• Mountains Tutorial 2
• Mist Tutorial

Ever-industrious Shessar posted two excellent tutorials on drawing streams and cliffs in DD3 Battlemaps. Both are difficult features to depict on a static, 2d map, at least if you want to make them look really good, but Shessar shows you exactly how to accomplish that.

• Streams Tutorial
• Cliffs Tutorial

As always kudos and many thanks to our wonderful user community, and here especially to Charles and Shessar. You can find more user tutorials on the Profantasy website.

And here is another tutorial by ArgoForg, showing the detailed river work of his country-scale maps.

• River Tutorial

Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus gets a new free update and you a new drawing style with it! Originally published in the Cartographer’s Annual, we’ve decided to share Herwin Wielink’s overland style with a wider audience. It’s a style of lovingly crafted, playful bitmap symbols and high-detail textures. With more than 250 symbols, 30 textures and and more than 60 drawing tools, it is one of the largest drawing styles we’ve ever published in the Annual. Click the image on the right to see a high-detail version of an example map in Herwin Wielink’s style.

To get the new update download it from your registered user’s page. Some of you may have recently downloaded Update 4; it’s 4a you need to get the new style.

Apart from the new style and some bug fixes (see the Readme file for details) Update 4 prepares CC3+ for the release of Perspectives 3. We needed to update specialised components needed to handling up to 8 different isometric views for one symbol, add light and shade and support angled fill styles.

Here is another big example map in the Herwin Wielink style:

The Perspectives 3 pre-release offer is coming soon – look at for an email from us!

We have the Feburary Annual issue ready for you to download and enjoy: the overland style Empire of the Sun. It’s a wonderful design by TJ Vandel that lets you create overland maps in a quasi-historical style reminiscent of Japanese and Chinese cartography. With more than 350 symbols, the style allows you to easily put together varied landscapes and coastlines.

The February 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.

The December Annual is now available for download. Check out an 8-page mapping guide on creating deluxe battle maps, with tips and tricks on merging different map styles into one, adding new sheets and effects for features like cliffs, water, height transitions and multiple floors, and using lighting to give your maps that bit of extra polish.

The December issue is available both for CC3 and CC3+ (sample FCW files CC3+ only). You can download both setups from your registration page on the Subscriptions tab. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2015 yet, you can do so here.

“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.

Shall we take another look at what maps the Profantasy users shared last month? Of course we shall, what kind of stupid question is that? So without further ado, here are the user maps of November.

Kalnaren‘s series of maps for the Rise of the Runelords adventure path are a glorious place to start. They’ve been drawn with the Jon Roberts Dungeon style and complimented with a selection of DD3 symbols.



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The next compatibility update is here: Symbol Set 3 – Modern is now available for CC3+. Symbol Set 3 provides a variety of styles modern maps: 3 different floorplan styles (two bitmap-based, 1 vector) and two overland styles, one for Ordnance Survey-style topographic maps, the other for modern political maps.

Click the example on the right to see a large-scale version of the bitmap-based floorplan style created by Jonathan Roberts for Symbol Set 3, and click the left image below for an example of the modern political style, based on the work of Brian Stoll. The right image shows an example of the Vector Ordnance Survey style.

If you already own Symbol Set 3, you can simply download the setup for CC3+ from your registration page. If you do not own SS3 yet, you can get a copy here.

The installation of Symbol Set 3 for CC3+ requires the latest update (CC3+ Update 3). Make sure to download and install it from your registration page before SS3.

We’ve got great news from the Vintyri project, a cartographic collection of free, open RPG symbols and fill patterns for use with Campaign Cartographer™ 3 and 3+. I’ll let Mark Oliva, the leading man behind the project, explain the details:

We’ve entered a new release phase with the free, open gaming Vintyri (TM) Cartographic Collection for Campaign Cartographer 3+ and Campaign Cartographer 3 from ProFantasy Ltd. All of the releases are available for free private and commercial use under the Open Game License 1.0a. These symbols will give CC3+ and CC3 cartographers the ability to make maps in the style of the Joerdhgardh campaign setting.

Mark Oliva
Webmaster, the Vintyri Project (TM)
Internet: http://www.vintyri.org
E-Mail: info@vintyri.org
The Vintyri Project is a non-commercial service

We’ve got another round up for user maps from the Profantasy community forum. Take a look and wonder at the creativity of our prolific users!

Let’s star with jedius wonderfully atmospheric map of the Wildbyrne Outpost at night. He makes great use of CC3+’s lighting effects and light sources.

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We are happy to present the October Annual issue, a wonderful new overland style by TJ Vandel. In fact the style is so pact with goodness, we had to split it over two installments. You get a fully working, highly detailed overland style this month, and with the next issue we’ll add a load of gorgeous little location vignette symbols.

This month’s mapping guide is also the first in the Annual series that is written based on it’s implementation in CC3+, and it highlights a number of the new features in this latest version of Campaign Cartographer.

The October issue is available both for CC3 and CC3+. You can download both setups from your registration page on the Subscriptions tab. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2015 yet, you can do so here.