Last month, 
I talked about how to draw railroad tracks for your maps. In that article, we looked at how to draw the basic tracks and sleepers, and adding appropriate effects to make them look nice. But we can’t stop with just straight track segments, can we? Of course not, we’ll be needing to make ourselves some nice curves. Fortunately, CC3+ has the tools needed to be able to take our railroads to the next step.
News
- The June issue of the Cartographer’s Annual is available, with asymbol pack compatible with Dungeons of Schley, including trains, tracks, vehicles and lots of strange machinery.
- GenCon 2023 is drawing near and Profantasy will be there, at booth #515 of the exhibition all.
Resources
- The latest free monthly symbols by Mike Schley let you populate your city streets with a variety of wagons and carriages.
- Watch or re-watch the recent live mapping videos from our playlist on YouTube.
- Check out the community’s Maps of the Month for May, hopefully inspiring yourself for new mapping projects.
Articles
- Remy teaches us how to draw tracks and rail lines in his latest article. How convenient seeing the June Annual’s focus on trains!
- Christina Trani continues with her “All the Annuals” series going through all the Annual issues over the years. In this iteration she creates a map using the Empire of the Sun style.
Reminders
- CC3+ has been updated to version 3.98 (Update 28) which is available from your registration page.
- Fractal Terrains 3+ has been released and is available from among your FT3 downloads on your registration page.
- Join our community of map-makers on the Profantasy forum and/or the Facebook group.
The next set of free monthly symbols by Mike Schley is available now. You need a ride to that next city you want to map? Mike’s got you covered with a selection of isometric carriages and wagons. 32 new symbols showing loaded and unloaded wagons as well as mail carriages let you populate the roads in and between your settlements with horse-drawn vehicles.
Note that 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 correctly, 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 June 2023 is included in the one download.
You can always check the available monthly content on our dedicated page.
Here is the latest list of live mapping videos we’ve done on our YouTube channel.
It looks like the ProFantasy community was extremely busy in May, I can’t remember ever having that many maps to look through. Great work! Here are the ones I’ve picked out for you to browse, but don’t forget to check out the Facebook group and forum for more!
The ineffably named TheIneffableCheese shared this wonderful map in the 13th Age style, which always has a special place in my heart.
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Christina continues her series on the 2016 Annuals…
Next up, Empire of the Sun. I love, love, love this Annual. It looks like wall art, doesn’t it? For this Annual I changed nothing except the range of the text’s outer glow a teeny tiny bit. No reason to change a thing. I love the brushed watercolor look of this map.
For this map, I must admit I used my own homebrew fantasy world for this landscape. I’ve changed the names from my world, just in case any of my players make their way here, or come across this map for any reason other than within their gameplay.
About the author: Lorelei was my very first D&D character I created more years back than i’d like to remember. When I decided to venture into creating maps for my and others rpgs, I thought I owed it to her to name myself Lorelei Cartography, since it was her that led me to the wonderful world of tabletop gaming in the first place. Since then I have been honored to have worked with companies such as WizKids, Pelgrane Press, and ProFantasy.
Trains and Rails are useful for all kinds of mapping. From the humble carts on a track used in mines, to daring train heists in the Wild West, through subways and all the way to modern high-speed bullet trains. They can be used for battle maps to play out interesting encounters, as scenery in your mine maps and part of the infrastructure of your city.
In this first part I’ll be having a look at creating the basic tracks.
(I’ll also be looking at this in tomorrow’s live stream, so join the stream or watch the archived video later if you wish a video version of this)
News
- The May issue of the Cartographer’s Annual is available, with a map pack of city block locations by Jimmy Medina, using Mike Schley’s Dungeons of Schley style.
Resources
- The latest free monthly symbols by Mike Schley venture back into the Isometric Cities with a series of cliff symbols.
- Watch or re-watch the recent live mapping videos from our playlist on YouTube.
- Check out the community’s Maps of the Month for April to inspire yourself for new mapping projects.
Articles
- Remy discusses splitting and joining polygons in his latest in-depth article on CC3+ techniques.
- Christina Trani is back with her “All the Annuals” series going through all the Annual issues over the years. In this one she maps using the Here Be Monsters style by Pär Lindström.
Reminders
- CC3+ has been updated to version 3.98 (Update 28) which is available from your registration page.
- Fractal Terrains 3+ has been released and is available from among your FT3 downloads on your registration page.
- Join our community of map-makers on the Profantasy forum and/or the Facebook group.
Here is the latest list of live mapping videos we’ve done on our YouTube channel.
We have another fine selection of community maps for you. See what the community came up with in May and don’t forget to check out the Facebook group and forum for more!
Trencept Province by Stephen St John is a great showing of Sue Daniel Spectrum Overland style.
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