You can create a wide range of dungeons and floorplans with CC3 and its add-ons and symbol sets. This article shows you a selection, and the software you need to create them. Dungeon Designer 3, Symbol Set 2 and Symbol Set 4 have an extended set of dungeon symbols, the Annuals and CC3 have a more restricted selection.

While it’s featured in Cartographer’s Annual Vol 1, this inn is created with CC3 plus Dungeon Designer 3 (DD3).

Tendrill’s Oak Inn – created with CC3 and DD3

This next four images were created with Symbol Set 2: Fantasy Floorplans plus CC3.

Temple of the Fire Demon

Gothic Cathedral

A close up of the cathedral.

Cathedral Close-up

Chesery’s lair

Another black and white style created with CC3 plus Cartographer’s Annual Vol 4

The Blood Cult’s Hideout

This map was created by master cartographer Jon Roberts using Cc3 with Cartographer’s Annual Vol 5.

Jon Roberts Dungeons – Jon Roberts Dread Dungeon

This vertical dungeon was created with Cc3 and Cartographer’s Annual Vol 5.

If you want 3D view, this amazing isometric view created by Herwin Wielink is for you.

Isometric Dungeon

Here are a selection of images from our latest and greatest symbol set – Symbol Set 4: The Dungeons of Schley.

Dungeons of Schley

Dungeons of Schley – Detail

And finally, for that old-school look we have the The Cartographer’s Annual Vol 1 style feature in “how to create a drawing style”

Old School Dungeon

ProFantasy’s Software allows you to create a wide array of maps in historical styles, from Mercator to medieval strip maps. This article shows examples and lets you know which software is required in addition to CC3 to create them.

If there are any historical styles you’d like us to match, let us know in the comments.

This Mercator-style map captures the flair and style of 16th and 17th century hand-coloured maps. Those centuries – the so-called “Age of Exploration” – were an era of immense European exploration and expansion and the art of cartography flourished to document and publish the newly discovered information on the shape of the world.

This map was created with the Mercator Historical Style from Annual Vol 1.

This map emulates the famous town and city maps of British cartographer John Speed (1542-1629). It was created with the John Speed City style from The Cartographer’s Annual Vol 1.

Strip maps such as those by John Ogilby are created to to chart roads and journeys, they are a perfect vehicle to convey a sense of travel and adventure for your players. These are both created using the Cartographer’s Annual Vol 3 Strip Map style.

Perfect for  Caribbean swashbucklers, use this style to map the hidden coves and tropical islands.

This style emulates classic deptictions of the battles fought in the Napoleonic wars of the late 18th and early 19th century. It is featured in The Cartographer’s Annual Vol 3.

This style from the Annual Vol 5 is based on the 1920s and 1930s Baedeker guides.

Also from the Annual Vol 5 is this matching street map style.

For overland maps in a 1930s style, there is this style from the Cartographer’s Annual Vol 7.

The May issue of the Annual 2014 contains an overland style by a new contributing artist: Glynn Seal of MonkeyBlood Design. We recently became aware of his beautiful Havenland set of symbols for overland maps, and luckily Glynn was more than willing to create a set for the Annual.

More than a hundred carefully crafted symbols and a complete set of bitmap textures make this style another great selection for your overland maps. As usual for the Annual, a mapping guide takes you through drawing a map in this style step by step.

The May Annual is now available from the registration page for current subscribers. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you’ll find more information on the Annual 2014 product page.

Author Nat Russo posted the following great article on “A Writer’s Journey” and graciously allowed us to repost it here. Enjoy his excellent advice and check out his book “Necromancer Awakening“.
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From Tolkien’s seminal Lord of the Rings, to Lord Foul’s Bane and Game of Thrones, blockbusting fantasy novels need maps you can flick back to when following the journeys of the protagonists. The Fantasy Reader blog provides an index with wide selection of examples.

Campaign Cartographer has been used to illustrate novels such as Shades of Gray by Lisanne Norman, Le Temple Des Eaux-Mortes by Eric Ferris, and Johannes Cabal the Detective by Jonathan L. Howard, and writer David Brown discusses his experience with CC3 here.

So, which are the best CC3 styles to use to sketch a world for your frontispiece? Most likely it’s black and white line are, though greyscale might work. Here are some suitable suggestions for overland maps.

This prosaically named Overland B&W style is a perfect example of a simple style with which you can create a first fantasy map, It’s very straightforward to use.

Annual 2008 Overland B&W Style

Following our map-making competition, we asked the winner Christian, whether he would allow us to transform his beautiful island map into a new style for the Annual. He happily obliged us, and the April issue is the result of that. Titled “Volcanic Islands” in honour of the competition, the style of course allows to draw all kinds of islands or regions and especially suited for small to mid-sized areas. Check out the example map on the right (click for an enlarged version).

The April Annual is now available from the registration page for current subscribers. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you’ll find more information on the Annual 2014 product page.

We’ve asked Christian, the winner of our map-making competition, to share a few words on his map and the competition and he was so kind to oblige. Here’s what he has to say.

* * * * *

The cloister itself is about 300 feet on one axis, making the hypotenuse around 500 feet. Since you can line up 30 of the little cloister images end to end and have them stretch from one side of the island to the other, the island winds up being about 3 miles across.

As we wanted to be as impartial as possible, we’ve asked fantasy cartographer Mike Schley to be the judge for our January competition. He took his job very seriously and came back to us with the following results:

First, I would like to thank Profantasy for inviting me to serve as judge for this mapping challenge. When approached by Simon to decide the results of this competition I jumped at the chance. Then, upon seeing the work, I realized how difficult the task would be. Assessing each entry in a logical manner and narrowing the field to two pieces would require making tough choices on the narrowest of margins.

My methodology for examining the submissions came directly from my own cartographic practice and relied on the three criteria by which I judge my own work. These measures include aesthetic appeal/creativity, visual readability, and usefulness of the information provided. Given the straightforward parameters set down for the competition, “create a map of an island, less than three miles wide” scoring the entries by these criteria made for a process that, though difficult, was fairly straightforward and analytical.

So without further delay, the winner is… entry #17 Cloister Island, followed closely by the runner up, entry #15 Smugglers’ Island.

Of all the submissions, I felt that the Cloister Island map functioned best as both a visual information system and an inspiring illustration of its setting. Even though the cartographer left off a compass rose and scale bar, the overall work felt the most coherent and provided numerous levels of information. Like an onion, the island and story revealed themselves in layers, giving the reader an opportunity to explore deeper and deeper into an immersive world. On top of this, I’m a sucker for hand drawn isometric maps.

Choosing a runner up was probably the hardest part of the job since there were a number of maps that I felt had quite a lot going for them. I selected Smugglers’ Island mainly because it’s design and presentation of information felt more unified than the other entries. The visual details work well together and the cartographer’s choice of font, embellishments, and patterning add up to a striking, if somewhat cluttered, image.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone that contributed work to the competition and encourage them to keep at it. Designing worlds is something dear to my heart and it was a joy to see so many thoughtful approaches to the assignment.

Sincerely,
Mike Schley

So the winner of the competition and the new holder a full ProFantasy Patron License is xianpryde. Congratulations!

The runner-up, dfahr, receives a ProFantasy store voucher worth $100. Also congratulations.

And thanks to everybody for their submissions. Your work was all wonderful!

Interested in the history of cartography and the quest of mapping the earth’s globe on a flat piece of paper? Want your imaginary world to have a touch of realism or believability? Than the March Annual issue is for you. Check out more than a dozen new templates, showing different map projections, and instructions on how to convert these into your favorite mapping style.

If you are an Annual subscriber, log into your registration page to download it. If not, you can subscribe to the Cartographer’s Annual 2014 here.

It’s time for the monthly parade of user maps posted to the ProFantasy forum – again we have some lovely work to show off, thanks to the community!

As described elsewhere, TolrendorDM finished off his 2013 Annual Challenge with this map of the “Barrens of Gorak” in the 1930’s travel guide style.

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