The Master Mapper award has been on hiatus for a few years, but certainly not because of a lack of awesome cartographers out there! It’s our fault due to being busy with other things and not being able to make our mind up who among so many great Campaign Cartographer users we should single out. Well, we are certainly going to change that and start out by awarding the honor to not one, but two deserving mappers! For that we are going back a bit in time …

Master Mapper 2017: Joe Sweeney

Awarding Joe Sweeney the Master Mapper title for one specific year is like saying “D&D was the most popular role-playing game this year” – it’s true, but it doesn’t say much! Joe has been a great asset to the community for years, creating templates, maps, free resources and videos.

As Joe has been supporting the CC user community for ages and we felt it was high-time we properly recognized that contribution.

So we just picked a recent year and declared him Master Mapper of 2017 for:

• Helping oh so many mapper with his highly instructive video tutorials.
• Designing templates for highly re-usable dungeon and starship stiles.
• Drawing beautiful maps.
• Hosting and contributing to a tiled texture collection for anyone to use.
• And running a whole Master Mapping Class website.

We can’t thank Joe enough for the support he has provided to the Campaign Cartographer community over the years. You are a true Master Mapper in all meanings of the word!

Master Mapper 2018: Christina Trani

When looking at all the beautiful maps submitted to the community in 2018 we at first felt overwhelmed at all the material. How could we decide on a Master Mapper from among all those great cartographers? But one did indeed stand out when we looked a little closer. There are so many consistently beautiful maps created by Christina Trani (Lorelei on the forum), it became clear to us she is indeed the Master Mapper of 2018.

The Master Mapper award for 2018 goes to Christina for:

• Creating a large number of amazingly beautiful maps.
• Pushing the boundaries of what can be done in Campaign Cartographer, expanding the horizon of all its users.
• Being active in the Facebook user group and the community forum.
• And for supporting and contributing to the Community Atlas project.

Thank you Christina for being such a great part of the Profantasy user community. Please continue amazing us with your beautiful maps and pushing the boundaries of CC3+. Continue being a Master Mapper!

If you want to check out which user have been awarded the title of Master Mapper in the past, check out the Master Mapper page which lists them all.

As we are slowly heading into spring here in the northern hemisphere, it’s time to take another look at the wonderful maps the mapping community has produced. Here are five maps that caught our eye this month. Be sure to check out the forum and the Facebook group for lots more!

Thiatas Ashadarawesh produced this amazing world map in Fractal Terrains 3. Worthy of a “Best Coastline” prize.
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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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Part III: The Warlock’s Castle and the Crater of Ghorm

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?

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.