A couple of months ago, I wrote an article about using the random dungeon feature for a map depicting the innards of a magical artifact.

I decided that just randomly exploring it could end up being a bit boring, so I decided to give the players a bit of guidance, to give them targets to search for without giving them too much information about the dungeon. And what better medium for this than a player handout that is a hastily drawn partial map of the dungeon found on the corpse of some poor adventurer who never made it?

So, I dug into the list of styles available to see what could be useful for something like this. I was looking for something that looked hand-drawn, but also something that looked like it was done somewhat quickly, maybe with a bit of care, but not some map drawn by a cartographer sitting at his desk for hours. In the end, I decided on the Sticky Note Dungeons from the 2024 annual. It might sound like a weird choice initially as sticky notes don’t really scream medieval dungeon, especially since this was an in-game map supposedly drawn by an NPC. But that makes this style really work for this purpose is the fact that it has drawing tools and effects that allow you to draw lines that look hand-drawn, and the included symbols also looks like something someone could draw quickly. So I decided to used that as a base and customize it for my needs to get what I needed.

Starting the Map

The first challenge when starting a new map in this style is that you cannot change the map dimensions in the new map wizard. The reason for this is that it is being set up with an elaborate lined paper background, which looks great if you want it to look like a a modern-day sketch of a game dungeon, which is what this style was made to do. But don’t let this discourage you, we can change all that after creating the map, so simply start a new map in this style.

Now, I am simply going to erase everything currently in the map. I don’t want the current background. And in case you are not aware of it already, one secret about CC3+ is that maps doesn’t actually have a fixed size at all. The size you set in the new map wizard is just the size it will give the map border, but you may have noticed earlier that it is actually possible to draw outside the map border as well. So what happens when I delete everything in the map is that I end up with a size-less map. Now, some effects and drawing tools do rely on the set map size, so this is something you should be careful with, but for this style, it is completely fine. If you are making a more regular kind of map though, I don’t recommend doing this, instead make it the size it should be, or use the Resize Drawing Area in the File menu to change map size.

So, to erase everything, I first go into the Layers dialog and remove the F in the checkbox for the LINES layer, as if it is frozen, it can’t be deleted. After that, I simply use the erase function, select everything in the map, and erase it. Voila, blank map. (Don’t use the zoom controls after doing this, without any entities in the map it is easy to get “zoomed away”, wait until you have actually drawn anything before using these again so you have a reference entity)

The Walls

Now, with size out of the way, just start drawing. I started by putting in the walls. How I did it was just copying the walls from my original dungeon map, and then using the Walls, Default Sharpie tool to just draw the walls using the walls from the original map as a guide. Normally, I would just have changed style on the original walls, but since the drawing tools in this style creates a fractalized entity to make it appear hand drawn, it is more than just a question of fill style and effects, which is why I drew it again. Do note that much of the thickness of the pen is added by effects, so it looks quite thin until you issue a redraw command or zoom/scroll the map.

I also wanted a partial map, so I didn’t draw in all the original walls. So, in the end I ended up with the walls as in this image. Of course, since I did draw over the original walls, it means that my proportions are exact compared with the actual dungeon. Maybe an NPC wouldn’t be able to be that exact since he don’t see the dungeon from the bird’s eye perspective as I do, so you may wish to just redraw the map by eye instead. This can also lead to interesting “errors” in the handout, like doors that don’t line up, and either the mapmaker has had to put in arrows to show what links up, or simply a surprise to the players when they though the door linked to room A, but they ended up in B. Much potential here.

Symbols

With the walls handled, we can place the symbols. Since this was a sketch map, I didn’t want to fully furnish the rooms, but rather place some symbols that gave a general idea what this room was about, which might still leave the players guessing what this was really saying.

The Sticky Notes Dungeon style have some nice symbols that fit very well for this purpose. Unfortunately, I could desire a bit more variety as it didn’t have all I needed. Fortunately, you can use symbols from other styles as well, so after looking a bit around and conferring with Sue, I found the symbols from OSR dungeon to be an adequate fit. The style itself wasn’t appropriate for the map I wanted to make, but using some of the symbols in the Sticky Notes style did work pretty well.

To use symbols from a different style, just hit the Open Symbol Catalog button above the symbol catalog, and browse to the right catalog. In my case that would be @Symbols\Dungeons\Annual OSR Dungeon\All.FSC. With symbols in place, the map starts to look much better.

At the same time, I also added text to some of the more important rooms.

Background

Since this was going to represent a map drawn in-game, the NPC would obviously have drawn it on something. So, my first thoughts was just to throw a nice parchment in the background. Depending on what annuals and add-ons you have, you should find various parchments in @Bitmaps\Backgrounds\Parchments. The one I went with is @Bitmaps\Backgrounds\Parchments\CA132A Sues Parchments\Scroll 04.png.

Now, you can insert an image into your map by going to Draw -> Insert File and just pick the file to insert and place it in the map. Usually you would activate the BACKGROUND sheet first (and make sure BACKGROUND is near the top of the sheet list) to make sure the parchment ended up behind everything else. But if you do that, you may notice a small problem, as shown in the image here. Notice how some of the symbols have a white background? This happens because the symbols themselves are designed this way, but this does not really fit what would happen in a hand drawn sketch map like this.

Fortunately, there is a rather simple trick that allow us to deal with just this issue, while at the same time also improve the visual effect of the entities actually being draw on the parchment.

First of all, delete the image you just inserted and save your map if you haven’t done so recently.

Now, click the FS indicator in the top right to open the fill style dialog, and go to the bitmap files tab. Hit the New button to create a new fill style, and name it Parchment. Now, use the Find button and browse to the parchment you want to use as the background, just as you did with Insert File earlier. Now, if it is a scroll image like the one shown in my map, make sure to set it to “Expand to fit” and uncheck the Scaled box, since you don’t want it tiling, you want to show it once filling up the area you specify. Of course, if the parchment is designed to be tiling, then you can set it to Tile to Fill with an appropriate scaling instead.

Now, just hit OK in the dialog. Your new fill should stay as the active fill.

Next up, create a new sheet called PARCHMENT and place it as the very last sheet in the sheet order. Now, add a Blend Mode effect to that sheet, and set the blend mode to Multiply. Make sure your new sheet is active before closing the dialog.

Now, simply use the Box tool to draw a rectangle large enough to encompass your entire map. This rectangle will be filled by the parchment bitmap, so make it large enough that your map elements won’t appear on top of the rolled up parts. After drawing the rectangle, make sure to Redraw to see the result as it will initially cover up everything when you draw it. If you are not happy with the position, just delete and redraw it. The final result should be similar to my map below.

What blend mode does is that instead of the last thing in the drawing order (the parchment in this case) simply appearing on top, it actually gets blended with what is below instead. There are many different blend modes, but using Multiply basically removes white areas (Mathematically it is like multiplying a number with 1, no matter what you multiply with 1, you are still left with the original number), and also mixes the rest with the parchment giving a better visual effect that it is drawn on the parchment, preserving the texture rather than just being a flat color on top of it.

If you have questions regarding the content of this article, please use the ProFantasy forums. It can take a long time before comments on the blog gets noticed, especially for older articles. The forums on the other hand, I frequent daily.