The monthly symbols by Mike Schley have been very popular and of course we continue this tradition into the new year. From the isometric city symbols we return to artwork for overland maps for a while, with a fiery first collection of volcanic symbols.
20 new symbols depict active and dormant volcanoes both for land-bound mountain ranges and volcanic peaks rising directly out of the sea, as well as lava pools and fiery chasms leading down into the bosom of the earth.
To download the free content go to your registration page and on the Downloads tab, click the download button for Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus. Mike’s new symbols are the last link in the list. All the content of the current year (only January 2024 so far) is included in the one download.
You can always check the available monthly content on our dedicated page.
Last year’s Cartographer’s Annual – Volume 17 – is now available as a complete setup, all monthly issues collected into one single package.
Subscribers who downloaded all the monthly issues don’t need to do anything, but if you skipped some issues or are a fresh owner of Volume 17, you can install everything in one go now. The setup is available from the registration page as usual. If you didn’t subscribe, waiting for it to become available as one single package, you can now purchase it from the Annual’s page or the store as usual.
Last year we saw some excellent new artists in the Annual, like E Prybylski, DM Geezer Jim and Monkey Frog Studios, along staples like Pär Lindström and Sue Daniel, as well as occasional contributors like Jon C Munson II. Topic and themes ranged from desert villages (oases) to winter trails and from steampunk streets to classic fantasy overland maps. My personal highlights this year were E Prybylski’s Overland style along with Sue’s Winter Trails.
As for my own work I probably had the most fun building Bairnemouth, the isometric City Under Siege, as I love coming up with a proper story for a map as I’m creating it. But revisiting the 13th Age style was also great, and with the Wilderness Tiles I got to use Sue’s battle map artwork from last year extensively, which I also enjoyed a lot.
For the coming year we are still looking to include more new talent and are actively looking for artists who are interested in creating an Annual issue style for us. Simon’s call here is still relevant.
The current Annual 2024 subscription has now started and the January issue is available. So if this retrospective on 2023 did wet your appetite, check it out here.
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Before the year runs out let’s take a relaxed look back at all the lovely mapping that the community shared in November. Without further ado, here are the Maps of the Month!
Matt Finch‘s lovely ruin of an abandoned tavern is own highlight of the month (just personal taste). Great work, Matt! Continue reading »
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.
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.
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.
Perhaps it’s not a siege that is damaging your city, but a disaster like a great fire? And you want to show the conflagration as it is happening? Then these latest free fire and smoke symbols will come in handy!
20 new symbols depict flames and smoke as they rise towards and darken the skies above. Done for the Isometric Cities style, they can just as well be used on an overland map in the Mike Schley style.
The example maps included with this free content make use of Symbol Set 6 to showcase the symbols in proper surroundings. If you don’t have SS6 installed, you won’t see these, but you can still use the symbols on other maps. Symbol Set 6 – Isometric Cities is available for purchase here.
To download the free content go to your registration page and on the Downloads tab, click the download button for Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus. Mike’s new symbols are the last link in the list. All the content of year two up to and including July 2023 is included in the one download.
You can always check the available monthly content on our dedicated page.
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.
We’ve released a new collection with Humble Bundle, quite different to the others we’ve done, which were mainly collections of our products. This one is a treasure trove of maps, in high resolution format, with CC3+ fcw files where available.
There are more than 450 maps, including dungeons, floorplans, cities, overland and lairs. Some of these were commissioned specially for the bundle, some are from Pelgrane Press, others are user maps which have been selected and enhanced for the bundle and a few were included on this blog or in annuals. A more complete break down follows below.
The Bundle also includes a copy of CC3+ with the new Random Dungeon Generator. If you have CC3+ already, you can get the RDG from your registration page, and you are welcome to give your serial key away to a friend, as long as you let support@profantasy.com know.
A breakdown of what’s new and what’s not:
Campaign Cartographer 3+ (and the Random Dungeon Generator). The RDG is available as a free download to existing CC3+ customers.
The Encompass maps were previously published on DriveThruRPG (they are the ones with the brown covers on the Humble Bundle.) This was a series of detailed maps with supporting material published under a different imprint. Three of them had previously been published by ProFantasy as CC3+ files. They are included in the Bundle as is.
37 maps by the excellent Christina Trani were published in the All the Annuals series on the ProFantasy blog as CC3+ files and low resolution pngs. The versions in the Humble Bundle are much higher resolution and available in labelled and unlabelled format.
109 maps were from Pelgrane Press’s 13th Age Battle Scenes products, available as PDFs.Two of these were included in the December 2015 Annual. The Bundle includes them all as high resolution unlabelled pngs.
Five maps published in the 13th Age adventure Shadows of Eldolan published by Pelgrane Press. The Humble Bundle includes the CC3+ files.
Eight maps were from Pelgrane Press’s Ashen Stars RPG. One of these was also published as a Cartographer’s Annual. The HB versions include all the CC3+ maps as well as high resolution PDFs.
83 of the maps were published on DriveThruRPG by the brilliant cartographer, Alyssa Faden.
42 are newly commissioned maps, and the rest are maps which are enhanced versions of maps published online by CC3+ users.
Behind the scenes we’ve been working on a new feature for Campaign Cartographer: a random generator that allows you to generate complete maps by just a few clicks. This version is a taster of what we’ll introduce in CC4. We are very happy that we were able to recruit the help of the designer of the Watabou series of random map generators. The first of these, a Random Dungeon generator, is now at a stage where we are happy to release it into the public as a beta, for you to try out and make use of.
Note This is an enhanced output from a version still under development. Current beta output will look a bit different.
You can download the Random Dungeon generator from your account at profantasy.com. It is a small, simple executable that will add the functionality to your current CC3+ install.
When you run CC3+ after installing it, a sample map will come up with a link to an introductory guide to the Random Dungeon command. Click the link to open the pdf or download it from this link: Mapping Guide – Random Dungeons.
We’ve also done a live mapping session on using the first version of the Random Dungeon generator. You can view it on YouTube now:
We will further develop this random generator and add other ones in the future. Join the community forum and/or subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with the development. Send us feedback by posting on the forum or by email. We are looking for anything from bug reports to feature requests.
In the meantime enjoy creating some random dungeons!
Once those walls are broken, the city has been plundered and the attackers have moved on, what do you get? Ruins of course. Monsters will settle there, amass their own hoards and then adventurers come by to steal that loot. 16 new symbols depict ruined towers that create more variation for the city or castle ruins in the Isometric Cities style.
The example maps included with this free content make use of Symbol Set 6 to showcase the symbols in proper surroundings. If you don’t have SS6 installed, you won’t see these, but you can still use the symbols on other maps. Symbol Set 6 – Isometric Cities is available for purchase here.
To download the free content go to your registration page and on the Downloads tab, click the download button for Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus. Mike’s new symbols are the last link in the list. All the content of year two up to and including July 2023 is included in the one download.
You can always check the available monthly content on our dedicated page.
Last year’s Cartographer’s Annual – Volume 17 – is now available as a complete setup, all monthly issues collected into one single package. 
