We are still hard at work updating all the CC3 material to CC3+. This month we have Symbol Set 1 – Fantasy Overland ready for you!

News

• CC3+ Update: The compatibility update for Symbol Set 1 – Fantasy Overland is here!
• Two new Annual issues have become available since the last newsletter: June and July.
• CC3+ Update 2 is now available, fixing some bugs and preparing CC3+ for future add-ons. Log into your registration page to download it.

Resources

• User maps of May and June
• Ralf shares two large-scale battle maps from his ongoing 13th Age campaign.

Articles

• Simon previews the new style for the Source Maps series of map collections.
• Ralf takes a look at using different way to bring your battle maps to the game table.

Our Source Maps products are packed with predesigned flooplans, cities and temples. The maps are available in cc3 format with their own viewer, or as PDF or PNG files. I’ve printed them out and used most of them over the years for my old-school D&D game and for 13th Age. However, they are are bit long in the tooth, so we’ll be updating them, starting with Source Maps: Temples! this year, in a new style and adding new maps and floorplans. Here’s a look at a recent draft of the new style, and the old style for comparison.

The current Source Maps: Temples, Tombs and Catacombs map

A close-up of the proposed new style:

We intend to released Source Map: Temples mid-June next year.

The process of converting all our products to work with CC3+ continues. This month we have Symbol Set 4 – The Dungeons of Schley available in the updated version.

News

• CC3+ Update: The compatibility update for Symbol Set 4 – The Dungeons of Schley is here!
• The next Annual issue is available: May.

Resources

• User maps of April
• Installing Campaign Cartographer on a Mac by Steven Townshend

Articles

• GamerDad reviews CC3+ together with some other electronic resources for role-playing games.
• Simon previews the new large-scale icons for CC3+ which will make the interface more suitable for very high resolution monitors.
• Ralf takes a look at the upcoming “Dracula Dossier” floorplan style.

Most of the development work we’ve been doing since release involves fixing bugs behind the scenes, many of which arise from the interaction with new versions of Windows 8. It’s not as much fun as adding new features, but we are working on those, two.

Somewhere in the middle are changes we make in response to technological advances. One such advance is the gradual introduction of super-high-resolution monitors, the most recent being 4K. On such monitors, our new 24×24 toolbar icons look a little small, so we’ve been working on 32×32 and 48×48 sizes. This will take a while, but I thought you might like to see a preview.

The May Annual issue goes back to the roots of fantasy mapping both in terms of CC3 and the maps we’ll create. Many of us fantasy mappers have originally been inspired by the maps we found in fantasy novels, from the Lord of the Rings to the Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire and so many others.

The Classic Fantasy style gives you the opportunity to draw maps those yourself, on a beautiful parchment background, so they will also make great handouts for your players. As always you can download the style from your registration page.

If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2015 yet, you can do so here.

We’ve good news for the owners of CC3+ and City Designer, our most comprehensive add-on (CD3) is now available for CC3+ users.

News

• CC3+ Update: The compatibility update for City Designer 3 is here!
• The next Annual issue is available: April.

Resources

• User maps of March
• Multipolys by Joachim de Ravenbel

Articles

• Simon celebrates the release of City Designer for CC3+ with a collection of support material for CD3.
• The second part of the CC3+ user tutorial by R A Jacob.

This is the first ProFantasy newsletter since the launch of CC3+. We’ve been very busy improving CC3+ and preparing the add-ons for their free compatibility updates. It’s a lot of work, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel… wait, looks like we are already deep within the dungeon.

Existing users: to get CC3+ at a reduced upgrade price, login to your registered users page and click the Upgrades and Offers tab.

News

• CC3+ Update: The compatibility update for Dungeon Designer 3 is here!
• The first three Annual issues for 2015 are available: January, February and March.

Resources

• The first CC3+ user tutorial is already available.
• User maps of December and January
• User maps of February
• Top-view perspective dungeon maps by Joachim de Ravenbel

Articles

• Simon Rogers gives a current Business Overview of Profantasy.
• Basic Select Techniques in CC3+ (Part 1)

We’ve been working hard on making the add-ons compatible with CC3+. It’s not straightforward, as not only maps and templates need to be updated, but interactions with our polished, updated code and the legacy code in add-on functions can cause new bugs in legacy to rear their ugly heads. It does mean that add-on code gets a polish, too. So, we are please to announce that a much faster, CC3+ compatible Dungeon Designer 3 with all-new icons is now ready.

You’ll first need to update your CC3+ to the latest version (3.66). You’ll find the update among your downloads for CC3+ on the registration page. Or if you haven’t installed CC3+ yet – perhaps you were waiting for it to work with DD3 – download the latest full setup for CC3+.

Then you can download the DD3 compatibility update for CC3+ from your registration page and install it. It will add all Dungeon Designer functionality to CC3+. Enjoy!

In addition to preparing CC3+ for DD3, the Update 1 fixes some additional bugs that came up during the early adopter phase and adds some additional resources. Here is the list:

CC3+ Version 3.66

• added CC3 Overland Hex style
• added Text drawing tools to Mike Schley Overland style
• added “Open Autosave File” option to the File menu
• includes preparation for DD3 integration
• updated tutorial maps with current effect settings
• Insert File fixed to recognise @ path
• Symbol Manager display fixed to show all Symbols
• Control points fixed to work in CC3+
• Templates fixed to correctly swap fill style resolutions
• restored drawing dialogs to the Draw Menu: Path, Polygon, Circle, Arc, Lines, Offset
• fixed some DPI scaling issues in the Symbol Manager

The last time I wrote about ProFantasy business was at the end of 2011, during the world economic downturn. Our market is primarily in the US, where there has been a steady recovery. That said, I think our business depends far more on factors unrelated to the economy, and more to the tiny sector of the market we inhabit, and to some extent our own endeavours. I will continue our proud and misguided tradition of ascribing most of our success to our own endeavours rather than those outside factors.

Outside Factors

On those outside factors, first, there is evidence of the steady growth of the tabletop RPG hobby alongside the continuing of mainstream acceptance of genre media (super hero and science fiction movies and paranormal romance). It’s become easier than ever before to publish table top RPGs and there are more games and players than ever before. GenCon, which features the world’s largest concentration of tabletop roleplayers has grown year on year for the past four years by 10% a year. This year saw the succesful launch of D&D 5th Edition, which has given everyone in the hobby a boost.

Sales

This graph shows that despite the absence of new version of the software for which users have to pay, sales continued to increase slowly. December 2013 saw the release of Character Artist 3, our first updated add-on for a while, and that included a free upgrade to CC3+ when it was released. The huge spike at the end was our Jan 15 CC3+ early adopter launch – the first new, paid for upgrade since 2006.

This graph gives a clearer picture of total annual sales. Our margins were cut in 2013-2014 as we invested heavily in the new version, employing Joe Slayton on a permanent contract to improve CC3+, but the successful launch of 2015 showed that risk to be worthwhile.

CC3 sales are a pretty solid measure of new customer acquistion, which you can see increased. The 2015 orange spike is CC3+ upgrade sales – high in absolute terms, but also high as a percentage of CC3 sales to date. It’ll be interesting to see if they match the total upgrade percentage of CC2 + CC2 Pro to CC3.

Our website vistor base has fractured a little, with customers looking at our blog, forum facebook and other social media outlets. Our biggest community success is the forum – the quality and quantity of maps posted there increases month on month.

More Trends

In 2010, download sales were 25%. This has increased in 2014 to 75%. In part this is a general trend, but our download guarantee had an immediate impact when we introduced it. Media is still useful for our very modest retail sales, but we are taking steps to further eoncourage download purchases over media purchases.

The average order level increased by 10% from 2012 to 2014 driven by improved take-up in bundle sales.

The percentage of women buyers remains stubbornly at around 10% (based on comparing first names with a list).

You can get an idea of our sales spikes on product releases here.

Next up, the relative sales of our most of our products for 2012-2014 – I am surprised that City Designer 3 has overtaken Dungeon Designer 3 as our best-selling add-on.  The relative popularity of fantasy over modern and SF settings continues.

Predictions

Oh, dear. I will go out on a limb and say that this year will be our best yet (in terms of sales and margin) unless there is a huge event outside our control. I think, unlike the CC2 to CC3 transition, CC+ full versions will outsell the upgrade, though the upgrade will do well. We’ll get one new product (in addition to the subscription) out, and we will have run our first Kickstarter.