Macros in CC3+ can be used for a variety of tasks, so today I thought I would explore macros by having a little bit of fun. I wanted to write a macro that could decorate my maps with randomly placed tiny snowflakes in spirit of the winter season.
In this case, I made a macro that draws small snowflakes in random location all over the map, each snowflake being generated randomly. The snowflakes themselves are just simple white lines, which can then be enhanced by adding sheet effects to them.
In this article, I’ll just present and explain my macro, if you are new to macros you may want to start with my Getting Started with Macros series first: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
Both the December issue and bonus issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2024 are available, bringing you a new black and white overland style and additional random dungeons.
The Cartographer’s Annual subscription for 2025 is now available, and you can subscribe at a reduced cost. If you are a current subscriber, be sure to check your email, as you should have received your re-subscription offer that way. Otherwise, visit the Annual 2025 web page for the early subscription discount.
We have the first three issues lined up, starting with a revisited Ancients Realms style by TJ Vandel from 2009 with new symbols, new fills, new effects and new and updated drawing tools.
Next in line is an issue that combines FT3+ exports with new templates in CC3+ for new parchment overland maps. And then in March Sue Daniel provides a great overland style tentatively named “Bird’s Eye Overland”. If you want to provide some input and feedback for that, check out her style development thread on the ProFantasy forum.
As always, subscribing to the Annual will give you access to all twelve monthly issues as they are released, plus a bonus issue at the end of the year. If you want to see an example of all the great content you will receive, check out the Annual 2024.
While the year is quickly churning towards its end, let’s pause for a month, look over the shoulder and enjoy the maps the community shared in November.
As usual, we close the year with the Annual’s bonus issue and make one issue available for free (which this year is actually the bonus issue). The bonus issue adds the Random Dungeon generator for the DD3 Dungeon style that comes with Dungeon Designer 3. The Random Dungeon command was introduced as a free download, but only included the style components for the Jon Roberts Dungeon style.
This Annual issue expands the options and also contains instruction on how to implement it for any other dungeon style, so you can use your favorite style for it.
The Bonus issue can now be downloaded by all subscribers from their registration page, and it is also freely available from the Annual page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2024 yet, you can do so here.
Resubscription to the 2025 Annual will become available next week.
Greetings Mappers! Christina (Lorelei) here with another All the Annuals, version 2015. This month’s annual is the well loved (by Quenten for sure 😊 ) Local Area Maps by our beloved Pär Lindström. This style is perfect for mapping smaller areas for your players or your own needs. Mapping out smaller areas of your home world is a great way to be able to include all the neat areas you’ve invented in your world in a condensed map, making navigating the region much easier for your players.
This palette, fills and symbols of the style is very story-like and whimsical, making it perfect for many different campaign settings. I especially like to play with muting some of the colors when I want a map to seem a bit darker, in nature, not only color, which is why I added a Saturation/Hue to most of the terrain Sheets, taking the green down a notch with some grey, which instantly takes the fairytale nature out of the map, if you’re dark and morose, like me 😊
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.
For those of you who haven’t seen them, we do a live mapping session on YouTube most weeks, showcasing a certain style or set of tools in CC3+. Here are the most recent Live Mapping videos, as archived on YouTube:
The December issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2024 is now available and brings you a wonderful new overland style by C.C. Charon. It is inspired by pencil sketches like you might find in a cartographer’s notebook and includes more than one hundred stylish black & white symbols which combine with easy to use drawing tools for quick and simple pencil sketch maps. Two examples maps show you the beauty that the style creates and the 5-page mapping guide takes you through the whole process of using it yourself.
The December issue can now be downloaded by all subscribers from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2024 yet, you can do so here.
Symbols in CC3+ comes with a lot of advanced functionality beyond simply placing down an icon in your map. One of of the entries on that list is symbol attributes.
Symbol attributes are text entities that are embedded into the symbol, but allow the user to set their value when placing the symbol. This allows a single symbol to have a kind of dynamic content. this can be used for many purposes; one of the more common one is for scale bars. By default, most scale bars in CC3+ are designed to be 100 miles or feet long. But instead of hard-coding the number 100 in the symbol, the scale bars use attributes, so if you need a shorter scale bar, you can just place it at 0.5 scale and type 50 as the attribute value. This means you only need to define a single symbol, and it can be used for multiple scales, instead of having a small fixed set with common values. The text you enter becomes part of the symbol, so it will follow along if you move the symbol around.
Other uses for attributes are placeable signs with user-defined text, modern military unit counters with identification text, and much more.
Do you think cities, towns and villages are not enough to adequately depict the glory and splendour of an alien hive civilization? So do we! So Mike has drawn more structures from temples and workshops to brood halls and ruins and we’ve done a second set of hive settlements from them. We hope you enjoy them.
To download the latest free symbols 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 the current year (January to October 2024 so far) is included in the one download.
You can always check the available monthly content on our dedicated page.
Macros in CC3+ can be used for a variety of tasks, so today I thought I would explore macros by having a little bit of fun. I wanted to write a macro that could decorate my maps with randomly placed tiny snowflakes in spirit of the winter season.
Symbols in CC3+ comes with a lot of advanced functionality beyond simply placing down an icon in your map. One of of the entries on that list is symbol attributes.
