Welcome to 2024 and a new year of mapping goodness with the Cartographer’s Annual Vol 18. We are starting the year with a reimagination of an older style: Fantasy Realms by Allyn Bowker.

As the editions of the most popular role-playing game change, so do the artists and the styles used for their maps. Allyn captured the flavor of the current style of 2009, and this reimagination changes the existing look to get closer to the style of 2024, coincidentally created by Mike Schley. We have added many new symbols, changed the used bitmap textures and generally updated the style to take advantage of the CC3Plus’ newer features which weren’t available in 2009.

The January issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2024 yet, you can still do so here at the early subscriber discount (until January 10th).

The Cartographer’s Annual subscription for 2024 is now available, and you can subscribe at a reduced cost. If you are a current subscriber, be sure to check your email, as you should have received your re-subscription offer that way. Otherwise, visit the Annual 2024 web page for the early subscription discount.

We have the first three issues lined up, starting with a reimagined version of the Fantasy Realms style by Allyn Bowker from 2009. We add lots of symbols and combine the tools with textures by Mike Schley, resulting in a very different look, that is still excellent for displaying local to regional maps of any Fantasy setting.

Next in line is a new parchment overland style combining symbols by Robert Altbauer and new textures. And then in March Sue Daniel provides a great new style for city sewers. If you want some input into that, check out her style development thread on the ProFantasy forum.

As always, subscribing to the Annual will give you access to all twelve monthly issues as they are released, plus a bonus issue at the end of the year. If you want to see an example of all the great content you will receive, check out the Annual 2023.

Subscribe to the Cartographer’s Annual 2024 now.

Every year we make one of the Cartographer’s Annual issues available for free to give everyone a taste of the great mapping inside.

This year we decided on the City Under Siege map pack from November, which details a large isometric city map, and includes both additional tools for Symbol Set 6 and a description of the city with lots of adventure ideas.

This Annual issue can now be downloaded individually from the Annual page and is included in the Free Annual Sampler.

To make up to all our loyal subscribers, we add a bonus issue to the year’s roster. This year we offer additional Wilderness map tiles and a template to make quick and easy use of the materials from this bonus issue and the December Annual.

The Bonus issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2023 yet, you can do so here.

You can subscribe to the Cartographer’s Annual 2024 now at a 15% early subscriber discount.

The December 2023 Annual issue presents a set of templates, tools, and instructions to create a basically unlimited set of tiling wilderness maps that you can print or export for use in virtual tabletop environments. The issue also comes with a set of pre-constructed tiles that you can use out of the box. The accompanying 6-page mapping guide details the process of creating many more tiles like these using the Forest Trail style by Sue Daniel.

The December issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page.

If you haven’t subscribed to the Cartographer’s Annual 2023 yet, you can do so here.

P.S.: The re-susbcription offer for next year’s Annual will be sent out mid-December.

The November 2023 Annual issue brings you a large city map in Mike Schley’s Isometric Cities style. Inspired by the recent free “Breached Walls” symbols for the style and many beautiful maps created by the user community, we’ve taken size and detail to the next level with this map. To make it even more useful as a gaming resource, the map comes with a 13-page guide describing many locations and presenting adventure hooks keyed to them.

The November issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page.

If you haven’t subscribed to the Cartographer’s Annual 2023 yet, you can do so here.

(Download the FCW file)
Welcome to the Darkbelow mappers! Happy new month, and with that new All the Annuals. This month’s annual is a favorite of mine. I remember when it first came out, I had a new map done before the end of the day. Anyway, the Darkbelow is my version of a very large TTRPG company’s region of the world below (you know the one 😊 ).

I found myself playing around with this annual more, tweaking here and there to get the dark, gloomy look I was going for. I found, that despite looking dim and dark on my screen in CC3+, once I saved to a png file, the fills really lightened up. For this reason, when you look that the .fcw, it looks nearly black, but when saved, it lightened up just a bit to get that look I was going for. This one took a lot of trial and error, but I was really satisfied with the results. Hope you are, too!

About the author: Lorelei was my very first D&D character I created more years back than i’d like to remember. When I decided to venture into creating maps for my and others rpgs, I thought I owed it to her to name myself Lorelei Cartography, since it was her that led me to the wonderful world of tabletop gaming in the first place. Since then I have been honored to have worked with companies such as WizKids, Pelgrane Press, and ProFantasy.

The October issue of the Annual 2023 expands the Monkey Frog Overland (July 2023) style with a large set of structure symbols and new terrain fills. 95 detailed bitmap symbols from huts and campfires to castles and walled cities allow you to properly populate your Monkey Frog style overland maps, and a set of new terrain fills gives you more options for the natural landscape.

The October issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page.

If you haven’t subscribed to the Cartographer’s Annual 2023 yet, you can do so here.

The September issue of the Annual 2023 extends April’s “E Prybylski Watercolor” style with another 50 symbols for non-human settlements, more mountains and other artwork.

Add giant elven tree cities, dwarven mountain strongholds, orc camps and cozy halfling cottages to your map, populate your oceans with monsters and hazards, and have a cat (yes, a cat) shove ships off the edge of the world. The accompanying mapping guide takes a look at the new symbols, and details additional methods to decorate your maps.

The September issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page.

If you haven’t subscribed to the Cartographer’s Annual 2023 yet, you can do so here.

In the August issue of the Annual 2023 we return back to some (visually) simpler maps in black and white. Draw ruins, floorplans and dungeons with faux-inked lines and easy to use black and white symbols.

Related to and compatible with 2020’s Inked Dungeons, the Inked Ruins style allows you to build surface ruins and outdoor areas that can be easily printed and comfortably read even at relatively small output sizes.

The August issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page.

If you haven’t subscribed to the Cartographer’s Annual 2023 yet, you can do so here.

It seems to be the year of new contributors in the Cartographer’s Annual 2023. Please welcome Monkey Frog Studio with their new overland mapping style in the July issue.

Cleverly named “Monkey Frog Overland”, the drawing style comes with over 200 new symbols and we are planning to expand it even further, with lots of structure symbols later this year. As always the accompanying mapping guide takes you through creating a Monkey Frog Overland map step by step.

The July issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page.

If you haven’t subscribed to the Cartographer’s Annual 2023 yet, you can do so here.