Here’s a new selection of user maps that caught our eyes this month. Enjoy!
We’ll start out with an awesome “first” by Facebook community newcomer Kristinn Agnarsson. Looks at this simple, but wonderful tavern map created with Dungeons of Schley and DD3.
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Welcome to a new year of user map’s from the Profantasy community. We spotted the following this month or at the end of last year and hope they inspire you to create your own great maps with CC3+!
The coastlines for Richard T Drake‘s beautiful map were created in Fractal Terrains 3, imported into CC3+ and then completed using an amalgam of the Herwin Wielink and Jon Roberts styles.
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Before I come to the next two symbols I need to explain a bit about the background story of RdW, especially about why its name is ‘Call of the Warlock’:
In the beginning of the world of Tanaris the eight gods didn’t interfere into the things of the humans, elves etc., but one day the god Thongmor started playing around in the world and the other gods had to react. As they didn’t want to counter Thongmor’s action personally, they created the Warlock. This is a person with godlike abilities, immortal and invulnerable, his task was to fight against Thongmor. Over the years, with changing Warlocks and with the beginning of the war of the gods, the initial task of the Warlock was forgotten and now he is an independent entity.
But as the gods didn’t want to create another god, they gave him one ‘weakness’. They created the Swordmasters, a group of people with outstanding abilities in swordfighting, who always know where the Warlock is, they always hear the ‘call of the Warlock’. If one of them fights the Warlock and defeats him in a duel (this is the only situation where a warlock can die), the winning Swordmaster will become the next Warlock.
The Swordmaster is a Player Class, which means a player can become Warlock. Unfortunately the requirements for playing a Swordmaster are so hard (while creating a character you have to role dice epic…), no one in my group ever played one.
The home of the Warlock is the castle ‘Sign of the times’, which is settled on a mountain range overarching the ‘black lake of buried hopes’ (in the night you can hear the screams of the dead souls of all the Swordmasters who lost their fight against the Warlock). The feature with this castle, mountains and lakes is, that the warlock can teleport this ensemble anywhere he likes. When the map is done, I will see where exactly I will place it:
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Welcome to the December round up of user maps that caught our eye. As usual this is based as much on random chance as anything else. If you want to see more, join the Facebook community group or sign up in our forum!
Christina Trani (Lorelei) produced a set of wonderful building floorplans based on a single symbol in a city map: The Blue House.
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November doesn’t let up… our users are still producing many, many new and wonderful maps. Here’s just a very short collection of examples. If you want to see more, join the Facebook community group or sign up in our forum!
Linda Böckstiegel continues to produces wonderful dungeon and floorplan maps, but the Tomb of the Troll Gods is an special highlight. Quite literally, check our her awesome lighting work!
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Part I: Foundations of the map
‘Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there as an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!’
Robert E. Howard, “Conan the Barbarian”
It was back in the 90’s: We were young, we played RPGs and we listened all evening to one album – the Soundtrack of ‘Conan, the Barbarian’. We played Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye) and Ruf des Warlock (Call of the Warlock – RdW).
RdW was released in 1991 and is heavily influenced by the novels of Tanith Lee, especially by the Tales of the Flat Earth series. You can breathe the spirit of the 80’s and their special way of high fantasy, which was a ‘fantastic’ fantasy and not a ‘realistic’ fantasy, like a lot of contemporary fantasy literature tends to be, with a focus on character development instead of creating fantastic places and persons.
While Das Schwarze Auge became the big German rpg success, RdW is a niche game. As far as I know there are only a few people left playing RdW and sooner or later it will probably be forgotten. Maybe with my maps I play the role of a bard, singing the tales of a lost world. If it is so, I do my best that this song will be dignified. For this sake it is on me to be the chronicler and so I want to invite you to follow me and to let me tell you of the days of high adventure.
The map I make is a regional map of the northwestern part of the world of Tanaris, the world of RdW. When I make a new map, I usually start in the Jon Roberts Overland style, as it is my favorite one. But from the start I use the immense freedom CC3+ gives its users.
For some time I wanted to try the mountains by TJ Vandel (Annual issues 81, 84, 106, 107, 119 & 120), so I added these catalogs to the mountain symbols button to make the mapping process easier.
The next step is to choose a background. I delete the default frame and choose a parchment background. My resulting starting point is this:
It is always a great moment to see the blank parchment in front of me: The world is empty, the story unwritten, and it is on me to create. So let’s go! Continue reading »
Here is another set of awesome user-created maps that caught our eyes this last month. As always, selected by the elaborate and top secret processes of ProFantasy’s evaluation method (summed up as “Hey, that’s cool!”). Share your own on the Profantasy community forum or the Facebook user group.
The border outpost of Tarkas is Texas Jake‘s first village/town/city map created with CC3+ and it looks wonderful, not least to the great background texture that he created himself.
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We were sent this wonderful little pirate treasure map via Facebook by CC3+ user Marilyn Velez, together with the following delightful story – fit for Halloween. This was just so nice a gesture, we had to share it with the community:
‘Tis The Great Isle of The Northern Seas, otherwise known as Missing Bone Island. Legend says, if you stare long enough at its reflection, a great beast with ripping jaws, and no eyes, stares back at ya, and you’re never heard from again, much like Davy Jones’ Locker, except this beast drew pirates to their death, but if lucky, a great treasure is to be had. Yes. That’s right, a treasure, indeed, but not just any treasure. The treasure of the worlds’ most notorious pirate, Bearded Jack, and if lucky, you’ll even find yourself some Grog and Clap of Thunder to drink along the way, but don’t go gettin three sheets to the wind on me now, and if you see him, blow the man down! Keelhaul and cleave him to the brisket! Oh, what’s that? why you ask?
Well, the story goes, a long time ago a pirate by the name of Bearded Jack roamed the twelve seas; looting gold. He became known as one of the richest pirates throughout history, but with so much gold, enemies were sure to follow, and so one night, while all slept aboard The Bearded Doubloon, he grabbed a cutlass, killing all his men. Red ran the steel of his blade as the haunting screams of his men echoed throughout the sea.
However, the tales didn’t cease there matey. They say Bearded Jack not only killed his men, but impaled them by the Olde Salt Point so that their haunting stares would cause great fright, and cease anyone from entering or nearing the shores. They claim he scattered his treasure throughout the island, burying it deep beneath, where no one would find it; not even the best of hunters. However, as the years passed, sailors say coins resurfaced containing the stain of Bearded Jack, some, even had his face. Till this day, they claim all who gape long enough into his eyes are visited by his spirit.
Thank you, Marilyn!
P.S.: Do you have maps you want to share and perhaps see featured on the blog? Come over to the Campaign Cartographer Facebook community, or the ProFantasy community forum, and you’ll find a superbly friendly user community.
We skipped a month in August, so I had to look through even more awesome maps to present you for September! As always the selection is very hard and I’m not generally choosing by “best” or “most artistic criteria”, but simply by what catches my eye. It may be a great first map, an idea I’ve never seen before or anything else really. Enjoy!
Danel Yeaman created this dockside building and shared in the Facebook community. I love the simple little ship docked there at the Old Fishery!
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Joshua Plunkett (Josh.P. on the Profantasy community forum) is an avid CC3+ user and map-maker, and one of the instigators and organizers of the Realmworks project that incorporates a host of maps from the ProFantasy community atlas project. We’ve asked him to present the project for the rpgmaps blog and here are his words:
Campaign Cartographer 3+ is fantastic for making maps for basically anything but it tends to really appeal to a certain group. That group is Dungeon Masters. Regardless of the system or the numbers of sides on the dice we roll one thing is common… we all need beautiful maps.
The ProFantasy Community Atlas Project was such a great idea and has turned into an amazing resource for DMs across the planet. Within our CC3+ community though we have a sub demographic of users. The sub-group use CC3+ and Realm Works together!
Realm Works is campaign management software, it lets you take information from everywhere and put it all together into a single digitally cross-referenced digital DM binder. Specifically, though it has some great functionality in regards to maps. You can load maps in and pin out specific locations. You can then link those pins to topics where you can describe the area as much as you like with full text write-ups and supporting pictures. You can link regional maps to town maps and town maps to building maps all the while including the text and pictures to describe each location. It provides the templates and structure necessary to manage a large world building project.
When we saw the ProFantasy Community Atlas Project we therefore became excited with the possibilities of combining the CC3+ community project into an extension Realm Works community project. We sought permission from a handful of the Cartographers involved and got to work transferring the excellent maps already made by the CC3+ community into Realm Works. We then opened the doors to the Realm Works community encouraging them to help with creating the textual content around each map.
It came to life really quickly with people from both communities coming together to create new content for the continent of Artemisia. Before we knew it, we had entire regions, cities, towns and dungeons starting to take shape. The realm is available for free to all Realm Works users who want to check It you. You can DOWNLOAD IT FROM HERE and import it into a new or existing realm.
The project is open to anyone who wants to contribute. Be that CC3+ users contributing maps to the ProFantasy Community Atlas Project or Realm Works users who want to help build out the details of the world as part of the Realm Works Community Campaign World Project. To get involved simply follow the links and read up on how you can get involved.
