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.

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

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.

Continue reading »

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*.
Continue reading »

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

Dear Cartographers, welcome to the February newsletter!

News

• We are announcing the Dungeons of Schley, a new symbol set in development.
• The February issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2014 is available, bringing you an in-depth look at creating paper miniatures with the help of Characater Artist 3.
• Profantasy’s January map-making competition is still open until the end of the month. Enter to win one of our Unlimited Patron Licenses by submitting your map on the forum.

Resources

• Check out The January collection of community maps, again including great artwork from our users.
• Download the Symbol Creation Guide for Character Artist 3. It provides a detailed tutorial on how to create and import your own bitmap symbols to use in CA3.

Map-making articles

• Read some wonderful feedback and see a gorgeous map from one of our users.

In February last year, Mark Fulford and I flew to Phoenix to meet CAD guru Mike Riddle and expert programmer and ProFantasy mainstay Peter Olsson. Serendipitously, cartography Mike Schley lives in Phoenix, so we agreed to meet.

By this stage Mike Schley was developing an overland map style for use in the forthcoming CC3+, but as a result of our conversation we also agreed that he would create an entirely new symbol set, too. It’s an unashemedly fantasy-oriented dungeon-bashing style, with the complete set of symbols you get with DD3 and Fantasy Floorplans.

We’ve kept this one under our hat, but we are now ready to announce, The Dungeons of Schley!

We’ve still got to do some work perfecting the effects to make it look just right, but here are some sneak peaks:

Click on the main dungeon map and symbol selection for a higher res version.

I created another battle map for our ongoing Deadlands Reloaded campaign: A city block from Chinatown in the Weird West’s Portland. The group hasn’t reached this part of the story yet, so no battle has taken place, but I hope it will next session.

For this map I used an area movement setup instead of the traditional gridded layout. Adapted from the FATE rules, this is a user-suggested rule for Savage Worlds that I want to try out. You can download this version as a full-size A1 pdf by clicking the image above. If you prefer the traditional 1″ square grid, click here.

This map uses symbols and textures from Dungeon Designer 3 and Symbol Set 2: Fantasy Floorplans. You can download the original CC3 file here (both add-ons needed to properly view it).

I continue my series of battle maps for our Deadlands Reloaded campaign with this A1 map of a longhouse set on a snowy clearing.

Click on the image above to download the full size pdf.

It saw action last Friday, when the player characters stood side by side with the Klickitat tribe to defend the longhouse against a wolfling attack. It was an exciting battle!

Last Friday’s Deadlands Reloaded campaign session saw a tough battle against a Chinook – a weather-controlling cross between a wolverine and a Kodiak bear in the Deadlands setting. It was fought on the shore of a mountain lake and I created this battle map for the occasion, making special use of the snow and ice bitmap fills includes in Symbol Set 2 – Fantasy Floorplans. The tree symbols are from CSUAC.

Click on the image to to download a full-size miniature-scale pdf and go to the ProFantasy forum to download the CC3 file.