We’ve recently stumbled across this wonderful little video tutorial by Jason Hibdon (Eugee on the community forum). Jason creates a quick battle map for a virtual tabletop game, using the free “Jon Roberts Dungeon” style from the Cartographer’s Annual.
You can download the free Annual issue here.
This month’s symbol pack is brought to you by fantasy cartographer TJ Vandel, also known as Schwarzkreuz on the Cartographer’s Guild forum.
We loved his idea of creating a dungeon symbol set specifically for dwarves. The style works on its own, but can also be used as an extension to the Dungeons of Schley style from Symbol Set 4, as TJ has carefully crafted the symbols and textures to mesh with Mike Schley’s wonderful artwork, without sacrificing his own touch. 190 symbols, 29 textures and more than 50 new drawing tools allow your dig deep into the mountains and fortify your halls in fine dwarven style!
As a subscriber you can download the September Annual issue from your registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2014, you can do so here.
We are very happy to announce the winners of our recent “Lairs” competition. This time we asked Annual contributor and accomplished fantasy cartographer Pär Lindström to be our judge. Here’s his verdict:
I was asked by Simon to be the Judge in the latest competition (April to June 2014). I gladly accepted, and actually felt quite honoured that he asked me.
First of all I must say that I am impressed by the overall quality that the community has, and selecting one winning piece wasn’t an easy task.
When deciding which map I thought was the best I looked for what I would have liked to see in an adventure. That didn’t really make the choice easier but after having looked at the maps for a long time there were three maps that kind of stuck out. The Tomb of the Witch-King, the Necromancer’s lair and the Troglodyte lair.
And in the end, having to choose between three very good maps, I decided for The Tomb of the Witch-King as the winner. What I really like with that map is the general layout, the flow of the map. Also the water makes a very good contrast to the rest of the map which makes it catch your eyes. When I look at it I really want to use it for my players to explore, which usually is my children, and maybe having them fight a skeleton or two.
Congratulations to our winner Gary Barker (Raiko), who receives an Unlimited Patron License, meaning he’ll be automatically getting any past and future Campaign Cartographer-related ProFantasy products for free.
And not to forget the runners up: Oliver Piotrowski (o1i) with For his Necromancer’s Lair and Flavio Hickel (anomiecoalition) with the Troglodyte Lair. They each win a $100 voucher for the ProFantasy web store.
Thanks to all participants for your amazing work!
Here is the list of entries for the latest ProFantasy competition, entitled “Lairs”. We announced it to celebrate the release of Symbol Set 4: The Dungeons of Schley and Simon’s brief went as follows:
Create a small underground lair – a bandit hide out, a cave taken over by a dragon, a mine used as a cultist HQ. The whole area the map covers including map embellishments should be no more than about 100 m / 300 ft square. The best will win an unlimited patron license to all our cartography software forever; two runners up will receive vouchers.
– It can be in any style, past, modern or future.
– You have to create it with CC3, and any other ProFantasy map-making software you wish to use – annuals, symbols sets, whatever you like,
– It can include third-party art as symbols or fill styles long as that art is available for commercial use by anyone.
For large-scale versions of the competition maps, click on the images below.
#1 Troglodyte Lair
#2 Tomb of the Witch-King
#3 The Betrayer’s Cave
#4 Kobold Lair
#5 Brownie Bandits’ Hideout
#6 Necromancer’s Lair
#7 Underground Fort
#8 Wizard’s Lair
#9 Weeping Rock Springs
To celebrate the release of The Dungeons of Schley, we’ve devised a competition. Create a small underground lair – a bandit hide out, a cave taken over by a dragon, a mine used as a cultist HQ. The whole area the map covers including map embelishments should be no more than about 100 m / 300 ft square. The best will win an unlimited patron license to all our cartography software forever; two runners up will receive vouchers.
ProFantasy Software offers a large, possibly even bewidering range of dungeon styles from which you can choose. All our add-ons, symbol sets and annual require Campaign Cartographer 3 to draw. Dungeon Designer 3 makes it easier to create dungeons, but isn’t required, except to use its own built-in styles. Here, then, is a selection of the some of the styles we offer and the software you need to use them.
Dungeon Designer 3 built-in style.
A few days ago my gaming group’s Deadlands Reloaded campaign ended, after 18 months and 23 sessions of play. We had great fun, despite – or perhaps because – the game system (Savage Worlds) is more combat-focused than the typical games we play. One thing it does, and it does that really well, is make use of battle maps and miniatures without slowing down combats much. To take advantage of this I decided at the start of the campaign that I would create as many battle maps for the game as possible – of course using the Profantasy software at my disposal to maximum effect.
For my maps I used Dungeon Designer 3 a lot, but also City Designer 3, Symbol Set 2 – Fantasy Floorplans, the Annuals, the free art collection CSUAC, and at the very end the brand-new Symbol Set 4 – Dungeons of Schley. All of these I printed on my inkjet printer at home in A4 tiles, then glued them together for play at the table. I ended up with more than a dozen A1 battle maps, plus a few smaller pieces. I’ve collected them here for your enjoyment and use. Just click one of the images to download the full-size pdf*.
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Need hidden depths? Have some of ours.
From the fiendish imagination of award-winning cartographer Mike Schley comes a whole new style of dungeon for Campaign Cartographer 3, featuring devious traps, lurking horrors, breath-taking hoards ancient architecture – Symbol Set 4: The Dungeons of Schley.
All users who have not opted-out have been sent a special offer. If you have not received your offer email, please contact support.
SS4 works seamlessly with Dungeon Designer 3, but can also be used on its own in CC3. It includes two complete drawing styles based on Mike Schley’s artwork, with over a thousand symbols, more than 100 texture, 350+ drawing tools, three example maps and a mapping guide on how to go about a Dungeon of Schley.
Check out the SS4 product pages for more information.
Beneath the Old Castle Example Map
Warrow’s Hideout – Black and White Example Map
SS4 Symbol Detail
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.
It’s been a while since we did a collection of users maps here. First the convention season didn’t leave us enough time and then the Character Artist 3 release took a lot of resources. But now we’ve been able to take a breath over the holidays, we’ve looking at the forum again and there are so many nice maps. Here’s the collection:
suntzu created this amazing set of isometric dungeon and outdoor maps with Herwin Wielink’s Isometric Dungeon style.
This beautiful little gem of a Knight’s Crypt was posted by Modric.
This interesting cave map is the result of work in DD3 and Photoshop by Avotas. It’s being created for a commercial D&D/Pathfinder adventure, therefore the grey watermark overlay.
Drednort posted a stalwart adventuring party, freshly created with Character Artist 3. You’ll find more character portraits in the forum thread when you click on the image.
While deceptively simply this black and white map of the world Maioria by Miafeya is one of my favorites. Designed for a 2-page spread in a book, it suits that purpose very well.
TolrendorDM shared several maps for his Annual 2013 challenge, you’ll find them in the thread linked through this example of the CC3 Overland Hex style.
I’m always happy to see star ships created with Cosmographer 3 and craigo730‘s Mercury-class Battlestar is no exception.
KenG shared another great dungeon map, King Ranier’s Vault with the community. And it comes with a complete adventure!
He also created this collection of boats and rafts, very useful if you need a quick way to get across that river on your battlemap!
I don’t really need to say much about Clercon’s (Pär Lindström) New Year Village map, after all he’s done several Annual styles already. But his city and village maps are always particularly impressive.
Educational use of CC3 always delights me, so I was thrilled to see languard and his students create these SciFi tiles for a boardgame of their own making.
What would a user map collection be with one of Sadizm‘s gorgeous Deadlands battle maps. A lot less exciting that’s for sure!
