This Saturday (November 26th) is Dragonmeet time again. Profantasy and sister-company Pelgrane Press (both long-time sponsors) will be there, at London’s friendliest role-palying convention.

You’ll find us as you enter the dealer’s hall immediately to the right. I’ll be there, and if the Royal Mail delivers, so will the Fractal Terrains 3 boxes – and I’ll of course be happy to demo it. Stop by if you want a peek, buy or upgrade to FT3, or just want to pick up your pre-ordered FT3 box (bring your order number!).

Recently we added some new entries to our Profantasy user library. Check out these beautiful new additions:

1. Richard Brunke’s Last Hold map created with the Jon Roberts Overland style from this year’s Annual.

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The November Annual issue was released on Tuesday, providing a detailed floorplan and street map of Moe’s Dive, a generic seedy bar to use in your adventures. It also contains a combined City Designer 3/Dungeon Designer 3 template for those close-up street battle maps.

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News

• If you are a Fractal Terrains 3 user, an update is already available. Log in to get it.
• The Fractal Terrains 3 upgrade price of $9.95 / £7.50 will be increased on 1st November – log in and get it while you can!
• We’ve announced a new recipient of the Master Mapper award.
• We’ve launched Fractal Terrains 3
• Here is an update on Symbol Set 3 Modern Symbols for version CC3

Articles

• Tips for the busy GM – using Source Maps in your campaign
• Creating a Fractal Terrains world with Terraformer – Part 1
• Creating a Fractal Terrains world with Terraformer – Part 2
• Read this excellent tutorial on creating a map with Fractal Terrains, Wilbur and Photoshop.

Symbol Set 3: Modern includes 50 templates and 1100 symbols for overland floorplans. For the CC3 version, we wanted to make sure an upgrade is worthwhile, so we are adding three new floorplan styles and another overland style.

CC3 allows us to use raster (paint style art), so two of those new styles will be raster-based; the third will be traditional modern-looking vector CAD symbols, to create blueprint style artwork.

Jonathan Roberts is putting the finishing touches on his style which is detailed and grimy but not photorealistic. Michael Tumey’s is clean, bright and more suburban.

In 1998 we instituted the coveted Master Mapper award for excellence in cartography. You can see the hall of fame here. One Master Mapper is a full time freelancer and ProFantasy mainstay – Ralf Schemmann; L Lee Saunders creates amazing add-ons, and other Master Mappers still contribute to the community.

We are reinstating the Master Mapper award. There is a backlog of worthy candidates, so expect to see us making up for lost time with a few select awards. This brings me to our Master Mapper, best known to the ProFantasy community as Joachim de Ravenbel, a name Jean-Michel Bravo took on a whim for RPG-related posts.

Jean-Michel is unusual even amongst Master Mappers for the breadth of his talent. He creates maps, writes macros, develops map-making techniques, supports the forum community, and has even programmed an XP – the CC3 name for add-ons.

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There is a podcast interview with Ralf here with GMS Magazine – 14:00 in. They discuss using CC3 to create the Dragon Rage boardgame map (articles here), Dioramas, Fractal Terrains 3 and the Annuals. He also mentions the Tome – and Remy Monsen is working on a new version of that for our updated software.

Fractal Terrains 3, the latest version of our world-building software is out now. It is even more robust, features an improved interface, increased speed and more export features.

FT3 is designed to create entire worlds from scratch, starting with a flat sphere or real world data, but it’s with its random world creation that FT3 comes into its own. You can change colour, lighting and random settings, and choose physical parameters such as the size of your world, then just scan through the effectively infinite possibilities until you get one you like.

My main use for Fractal Terrains, aside from creating entire worlds for Ashen Stars, is to pick out islands, with rivers, to import into my own campaign world. It really does feel like your are exploring when you seek out the perfect world or landmass, though of course you can use the editing tools to shave off continents, flatten mountains and fill in depressions. The most megalomaniac-friendly command though, is Planetary Bombartment – the ability to crater your world with asteroids.

October 2011: Treasure Maps

We’ve just released the October Annual for subscribers to download: A beautiful map style inspired by classic fiction treasure maps. It allows users to easily create handouts for their game and set their players on the trail of that elusive treasure hoard.

September 2011: Military Operations

Due to after-GenCon demands and vacation times, we didn’t get around to posting about the September Annual when it was released. Here is sneak peek at the military operations type maps that can be created with its included style.