Welcome to the second part of the Shore and Ocean Effects for Overland Maps series.
The example map for this tutorial is Arokan and Demorak, and was created using the Herwin Wielink overland style.
Creating ocean contours will take you a little longer than applying the edge striping sheet effects described in the first part of this series, but I hope you will agree with me by the time you have completed your first contoured ocean that the process is still very much worth the time spent creating them. Continue reading »
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The Shore and Ocean Effects for Overland Maps article series covers a range of techniques that can be used to modify the appearance of the open water in an overland map to make it work in greater harmony with the rest of the map.
The example map, the Allaluna-Meloa Isles, was created using the Mike Schley overland style that comes with CC3. Links to the different versions of this map have been included in this article for you to examine at your leisure.
Recently – with Update 25 – we included a few new styles with basic Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus. As these were styles in the Cartographer’s Annual before, they all come with a mapping guide and example maps, and we want to highlight these to get you started using the styles as comfortably as possible. Let’s take a look at each of the in turn.
Jon Roberts Overland
This overland style created by was created by fantasy cartographer Jonathan Roberts (famed for his Song of Ice and Fire atlas) specifically for Campaign Cartographer. Jonathan’s evocative style comes alive for CC3+ users with a full selection of overland symbols and background textures, organized in an easy-to-use drawing style.
The included mapping guide walks you through the whole process, from setting up the map in the new map wizard through outlining the continent, adding rivers, mountains and settlements, all the way to labeling the map with text. You can download this mapping guide here.
The included example map show the the Bay of Ormal and surrounding lands. Download it as a pdf file or in native CC3+ format.
Jon Roberts Dungeons
Seeing the popularity of his overland style, it was only natural to follow up with a dungeon style and Jon was happy to oblige us. It includes a set of almost 150 symbols from rocks and stones of a cave floor to furniture to populate the rooms, as well 40 textures to depict walls, floors and terrain.
The mapping guide, which you can download here, teaches you to use the style by going through the process of creating a tavern and inn layout.
The style comes with two beautiful example maps, one showing the Dread Dungeon (pdf) and the other the Crossroads Inn (pdf) featured in the mapping guide. Download them in native CC3+ format here and here.
Jon Roberts Cities
Having an overland and a dungeon style, we of course needed to complete the classic trinity by adding a city style. Jon was able to produce that for us in 2012, and it remains one of the most beautiful city styles in Campaign Cartographer 3+. 37 textures and more than 70 symbols combine to make up a great resource for city mapping.
The mapping guide, which you can download here, takes you through the process of creating a city, and as such complements the City Designer 3 Essentials Guide very nicely. The St Aurelius example map is also available as a pdf and in CC3+’s format.
Naomi Van Doren’s Floorplans
The fourth style included in Update 25 is another floorplan and dungeon style, created by map maker and graphic artist Naomi VanDoren. Her clear style lends itself excellently to illustrations and battle maps, and is featured in the 13th Age battle map products by Pelgrane Press. More than 200 symbols and 20 bitmap textures are included, and the mapping guide that teaches you how to use them is available here.
Two example maps are included: The Broken Shovel Tavern (png) and Owen’s farm (png), of course also available in CC3+ format here and here.
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Recently we have begun to experiment with live video streaming map-making sessions in the Campaign Cartographer 3+ Community on Facebook. In two sessions, Ralf demonstrated creating a dungeon and a small town with the Jon Roberts Dungeon and City styles respectively. You can still watch the archived videos here.
Creating a dungeon with the Jon Roberts Dungeon style
Mapping a town with the Jon Roberts City style
We will be scheduling future videos via ProFantasy’s Facebook page, so you don’t have to be a member of the community group. Please feel free to suggest videos you’d like to see in the comments.
As a result of the outbreak, until further notice, our flagship map-making software CC3+ is half price.
There’s never been a better time to map out the worlds of your imagination. ProFantasy’s software has always been good value, but not affordable for everyone. We’ve decided to include new, free dungeon and city design capabilities with our core software CC3+, and offer it at half-price – just $22.45 for a permanent commercial license. This is everything you need to start making great maps.
And making maps at your PC doesn’t mean you miss out on a sense of connection. Our users have formed great online communities (check the Forum and the Facebook group) which offer support and feedback to each other – get inspired, help others and have fun.
In addition, we’ve also discounted our introductory bundles further, and we’ll donate 10% of all bundle sales to The Cochrane Collection COVID-19 resources.
Virtual tabletops (VTTs) are a great way of playing role-playing games together when you can’t meet physically. They make it easier to play with people from all over the world, and are a nice substitute when it becomes impossible to bring the old gang together in the same location any more.
One of the main attractions for these programs when compared to general-purpose meeting/teleconference software is their focus on displaying maps to the the players, enabling you to fight your miniature battles digitally. And maps are always an important aspect in most role playing games. I myself actually use VTT software to display the battle maps, even if my group always meet physically at my place and roll physical dice, because I can more easily do things like display the map on a projector, and only display what the players see (automatic fog-of-war/lighting/sight ranges).
So, today we will look at how to take those dungeon maps you’ve lovingly crafted in DD3 and make them available for use in the a VTT environment. Now, there are lots of different VTT software to choose from out there, and I can’t really cover them all, but I’ve tried to cover some of the more popular ones, such as MapTool, Fantasy Grounds, Roll20 and D20Pro. And many things, especially all the various concerns when exporting the map from DD3 will be the same for most software solutions, so this article should help you out no matter the system.
We needed a little update in CC3+ for the February Annual issue and took the opportunity to include some recent fixes when we released Update 24 for CC3+. This allows more commands to be used in macros (and in consequence in drawing tools.
Here are the release notes for version 3.93:
CC3+ Version 3.93
=================
– Fixed the SETFS* family of commands to work with multiple element selections, which allows easier use in macros and draw tools.
– Changed ESCM and FRXM commands to work with multiple element selections, which allows easier use in macros and draw tools.
– Added timeout options for some status bar messages (status message displays for a fixed length of time, then disappears).
– Fixed align to first edge for shaded polygons. Combined with the SETFS fixes, allows for draw tools that have a bitmap fill aligned with the first edge of a polygon.?
– Fixed display bug with LISTDWG (would leave a vertical bar on all formatted strings after use)
– Fixed Cosmographer Bitmap Deckplan (metric) template
As is our tradition for the Cartographer’s Annual we produce an extra issue each year and make one of them available for anyone. For 2019, the bonus issue IS the free one.
The Bonus issue “Symbol Drawing Tools” takes advantage of some recent updates to add drawing tools for mountain ranges, scattered woodlands and other terrain types to the overland styles of CC3+. The updates allow the creation of drawing tools that place randomized symbols along paths and fill polygons with a random scattering of symbols. The included mapping guide teaches you how to set up these kind of tools yourself. The example map as shown on the right was drawn with drawing tools only. No individual symbols were placed.
The bonus issue is available as a free issue and can be used by anyone with Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus. Download it from the Cartographer’s Annual Vol 13 web site.
So your New Year’s Resolution for 2020 was to finally start (or re-start) using Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus, but you don’t know where to begin? Let us help you out with a selection of great tutorials and starting points.
Video Tutorials
If you are a visual learner and want to follow video tutorials, here are some we would recommend to start out with.
Josh Plunkett does a great job at introducing you to the basics of CC3+ as a newcomer in his first video.
Follow that up with his tutorial on overland mapping and you’ve got the basics down for any overland map straight out of CC3+:
For a longer look at creating a whole overland map, check our own video with Ralf describing the process of creating a map.
PDF Guides
If you prefer reading your tutorials and follow a pdf guide, there are some great choices too.
Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus comes with a pdf Manual, that is probably still one of the best ways to learn the software. Check it out here, and follow the instructions starting on page 24 to draw your first map.
A slightly less detailed, but still very useful step by step guide to creating a map, comes with the mapping guide for the Herwin Wielink style, that comes with CC3+, available in the Documentation folder or from this link.
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Welcome to the second part of the Shore and Ocean Effects for Overland Maps series.
We needed a little update in CC3+ for the February Annual issue and took the opportunity to include some recent fixes when we released Update 24 for CC3+. This allows more commands to be used in macros (and in consequence in drawing tools. 
