Italian boardgame company VentoNuovo Games has been publishing Block & Hex wargames for a couple of years, and they’ve been using Campaign Cartographer 3 for two of these now (Blocks in the East and Blocks in the West). Recently I helped them out a little with some technical support and advice (just within my normal job) and they then asked me whether I’d like a copy of the recent map. Sure, I said, it’s always nice to look at the finished thing.

What I did NOT expect was to get this huge poster in the mail, that won’t even fit my gaming table! It looks gorgeous and I have trouble getting an adequate photo of the thing. Many thanks to Emanuele and VentoNuovo Games for this!

We are very happy to announce the winners of our recent “Lairs” competition. This time we asked Annual contributor and accomplished fantasy cartographer Pär Lindström to be our judge. Here’s his verdict:

I was asked by Simon to be the Judge in the latest competition (April to June 2014). I gladly accepted, and actually felt quite honoured that he asked me.
First of all I must say that I am impressed by the overall quality that the community has, and selecting one winning piece wasn’t an easy task.
When deciding which map I thought was the best I looked for what I would have liked to see in an adventure. That didn’t really make the choice easier but after having looked at the maps for a long time there were three maps that kind of stuck out. The Tomb of the Witch-King, the Necromancer’s lair and the Troglodyte lair.
And in the end, having to choose between three very good maps, I decided for The Tomb of the Witch-King as the winner. What I really like with that map is the general layout, the flow of the map. Also the water makes a very good contrast to the rest of the map which makes it catch your eyes. When I look at it I really want to use it for my players to explore, which usually is my children, and maybe having them fight a skeleton or two.

Congratulations to our winner Gary Barker (Raiko), who receives an Unlimited Patron License, meaning he’ll be automatically getting any past and future Campaign Cartographer-related ProFantasy products for free.

And not to forget the runners up: Oliver Piotrowski (o1i) with For his Necromancer’s Lair and Flavio Hickel (anomiecoalition) with the Troglodyte Lair. They each win a $100 voucher for the ProFantasy web store.

Thanks to all participants for your amazing work!

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

It’s high time to showcase the great maps from our user community again, since we haven’t done so since April! So without further ado, let’s take a look…

Steve Travis posted on the first maps drawn in the Dungeons of Schley style of Symbol Set 4. I love it, as well as other great maps for the “Das Schwarze Auge” game.

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Here’s the next collection of user maps from our forum. My, these guys have been busy again! Please note that I’m not including the competition entries in this this list, they are listed in a previous blog post.

Clercon posted one of his gorgeous city maps, a combination of work in City Designer 3 and Photoshop.

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As we wanted to be as impartial as possible, we’ve asked fantasy cartographer Mike Schley to be the judge for our January competition. He took his job very seriously and came back to us with the following results:

First, I would like to thank Profantasy for inviting me to serve as judge for this mapping challenge. When approached by Simon to decide the results of this competition I jumped at the chance. Then, upon seeing the work, I realized how difficult the task would be. Assessing each entry in a logical manner and narrowing the field to two pieces would require making tough choices on the narrowest of margins.

My methodology for examining the submissions came directly from my own cartographic practice and relied on the three criteria by which I judge my own work. These measures include aesthetic appeal/creativity, visual readability, and usefulness of the information provided. Given the straightforward parameters set down for the competition, “create a map of an island, less than three miles wide” scoring the entries by these criteria made for a process that, though difficult, was fairly straightforward and analytical.

So without further delay, the winner is… entry #17 Cloister Island, followed closely by the runner up, entry #15 Smugglers’ Island.

Of all the submissions, I felt that the Cloister Island map functioned best as both a visual information system and an inspiring illustration of its setting. Even though the cartographer left off a compass rose and scale bar, the overall work felt the most coherent and provided numerous levels of information. Like an onion, the island and story revealed themselves in layers, giving the reader an opportunity to explore deeper and deeper into an immersive world. On top of this, I’m a sucker for hand drawn isometric maps.

Choosing a runner up was probably the hardest part of the job since there were a number of maps that I felt had quite a lot going for them. I selected Smugglers’ Island mainly because it’s design and presentation of information felt more unified than the other entries. The visual details work well together and the cartographer’s choice of font, embellishments, and patterning add up to a striking, if somewhat cluttered, image.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone that contributed work to the competition and encourage them to keep at it. Designing worlds is something dear to my heart and it was a joy to see so many thoughtful approaches to the assignment.

Sincerely,
Mike Schley

So the winner of the competition and the new holder a full ProFantasy Patron License is xianpryde. Congratulations!

The runner-up, dfahr, receives a ProFantasy store voucher worth $100. Also congratulations.

And thanks to everybody for their submissions. Your work was all wonderful!

These are the entries for the January competition. Scroll down below the gallery for the detail images.

#1 Cinnamon Island

#2 Drakken Isle

#3 Skull Island

#4 Isle of Breva

#5 Fort of the Frost Duke

#6 Hobb Island

#7 Gulguthee Island

#8 Sci-Fi Island

#9 The Island of Belmore

#10 Harper Island

#11 Chan Turix

#12 Fulger Island

#13 Griffendon

#14 Hand

#15 Smugglers’ Island

#16 Last Hope’s Landing

#17 Cloister Island

#18 The Islands of Sorrenport

#19 Timecorps: Project Deadalus

#20 Hujan Island

#21 The Isle of Quelivos

It’s time for the monthly parade of user maps posted to the ProFantasy forum – again we have some lovely work to show off, thanks to the community!

As described elsewhere, TolrendorDM finished off his 2013 Annual Challenge with this map of the “Barrens of Gorak” in the 1930’s travel guide style.

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We love getting customer feedback but nothing is as satisfying as when happy CC3 users send us the maps that have been important to their gaming. Like Nick P. does with these words:

“Hi! I love CC3 so much! I spent a long time making the attached map. It’s no masterpiece, but I’m proud! I had to do the text in Photoshop to make it bendy, but just wanted to drop a line to let you know I love your product – it has helped bring my latest campaign to life.”

He can certainly be proud. I love the whimsical detail of the map and the great care all the symbols have been placed with.

And I was happy to to provide a little tech support too: Curved text can be done in CC3 with the “Text along a curve” command (found in the Draw menu or by right-clicking the text button).

Thanks for map and the kind words, Nick!

It’s been a while since we did a collection of users maps here. First the convention season didn’t leave us enough time and then the Character Artist 3 release took a lot of resources. But now we’ve been able to take a breath over the holidays, we’ve looking at the forum again and there are so many nice maps. Here’s the collection:

suntzu created this amazing set of isometric dungeon and outdoor maps with Herwin Wielink’s Isometric Dungeon style.

This beautiful little gem of a Knight’s Crypt was posted by Modric.

This interesting cave map is the result of work in DD3 and Photoshop by Avotas. It’s being created for a commercial D&D/Pathfinder adventure, therefore the grey watermark overlay.

Drednort posted a stalwart adventuring party, freshly created with Character Artist 3. You’ll find more character portraits in the forum thread when you click on the image.

While deceptively simply this black and white map of the world Maioria by Miafeya is one of my favorites. Designed for a 2-page spread in a book, it suits that purpose very well.

TolrendorDM shared several maps for his Annual 2013 challenge, you’ll find them in the thread linked through this example of the CC3 Overland Hex style.

I’m always happy to see star ships created with Cosmographer 3 and craigo730‘s Mercury-class Battlestar is no exception.

KenG shared another great dungeon map, King Ranier’s Vault with the community. And it comes with a complete adventure!

He also created this collection of boats and rafts, very useful if you need a quick way to get across that river on your battlemap!

I don’t really need to say much about Clercon’s (Pär Lindström) New Year Village map, after all he’s done several Annual styles already. But his city and village maps are always particularly impressive.

Educational use of CC3 always delights me, so I was thrilled to see languard and his students create these SciFi tiles for a boardgame of their own making.

What would a user map collection be with one of Sadizm‘s gorgeous Deadlands battle maps. A lot less exciting that’s for sure!