Welcome dear cartographers to the latest monthly community maps, i.e. the Maps of the Month from April. Thank you for all your great contributions to our forum and the Facebook group!

I always love maps with lots of forest on them, so let’s start with this great example by Ricko Hasche, using Mike Schley’s overland style.
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Mike Schley created a new set of dungeon symbols for the free monthly content and your pleasure. Take a seat on one of these symbols to feel like royalty, but beware, the throne might crumble beneath you and dump you unceremoniously on the floor! The April symbol pack “Royal Seating” contains 20 new symbols for the Dungeons of Schley style, and provides a range of sumptuous thrones to seat that royalty – or show its decline and fall with the destroyed versions.

Note that the example maps included with this free content make use of Symbol Set 4 to showcase the symbols in proper surroundings. If you don’t have SS4 installed, you won’t see these correctly, but you can still use the symbols on other maps. Symbol Set 4 – Dungeons of Schley 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 listed there. All the content of year (up to April 2025) is included in the one download.

You can always check the available monthly content on our dedicated page.

The May issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2025 is now available. This month brings you a new overland style, by yours truly. I’ve been inspired to sit down with pencil and inks, create some hand-drawn symbols and then create a fresh new style from them. In addition to giving you a nice and easy-to-use overland style, it will allow me to show the whole process of creating and using your own artwork in CC3+. I will also be able to easily expand the style with additional symbols in the future.

The May issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2025 yet, you can do so here.

Last month, I looked at how to add information to your city map by using demographic coloring. Today, let us see how we can add descriptions for map features, like a building, that can be shown with a click.

For example, this can be used to add a note to each house describing who lives here, or if it is a business, what they do, what they sell, opening hours, prices, and more.

The basic idea here is that we will use CC3+’s map notes to store the actual information, and then we will add a hotspot to the relevant buildings to make it clickable and display the text. There are several variants around this, like making the hotspot open up a webpage or hide/show text placed in the map itself, but let us stick with map notes for now.  Continue reading »

News

• The April issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2025 is now available, bringing you a colorful, comic book-like overland style.
• Humble Bundle is currently running a mega-bundle, including almost all of the products of ProFantasy Software.

Resources

• Watch or re-watch the recent live mapping video from our playlist on YouTube.
• Check out the community’s Maps of the Month for March.

Articles

• Remy Monsen starts a new series of articles about information in maps, and start with a look at city demographics and how to display them.

From the Archives

• If Remy’s articles tickles your interest, check out Ari Gilder’s excellent article series on city mapping.

Reminders

• CC3+’s current version is 3.98. Check in Help > About and if your version is older, run Update 28 for CC3+ available from your registration page.
• Join our community of map-makers on the Profantasy forum and/or the Facebook group.

Humble Bundle has just extended the current super-bundle of our software, so there’s still a chance for you to grab this amazing offer of CC3+, FT3+, all of the add-ons and symbol sets, as well as almost all of the Annuals for an unprecedented low price.

If you were waiting to jump into CC3+, this is a great opportunity to get it at an awesome price. Even if you already own CC3+, this can be well worth it to fill out your selection of add-ons. Part of the cost goes toward charity, Save the Children.

If you’ve missed any of the live mapping sessions we do on YouTube most weeks, showcasing a certain style or set of tools in CC3+, you’ll find them archived and organized into playlists on YouTube. Here are the most recent ones:

Welcome dear cartographer to the latest monthly community maps, i.e. the Maps of the Month from March. Thank you for all your great contributions to our forum and the Facebook group!

We start with this amazing map of the world of Krynn by Dak. He’s used Sue Danie’s latest Birdseye Overland style for the map.
Continue reading »

The April issue of the Cartographer’s Annual is now available. Bubble Gum Fantasy is a whimsical and colorful style by new contributor Will B. Quick and easy to use, the style allows you draw maps like illustrations in computer or mobile games.

The April issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2025 yet, you can do so here.

Everyone loves a pretty map, even me. But there is also more to maps than their visual appeal, it is the information they convey. An aerial photo of your hometown may tell you exactly how it looks visually and how it is laid out, but it provides very little information about what can be found where in the town. And this is what separates a map from a photo, the additional information it contains that explains what we see in the map.

Today I’ll look into a feature from City Designer – City Demographics. City Demographics in CD3 is a coloring system that lets you color buildings by function (for example residential, commerce, accommodation). This is also a toggle feature which means you can show a nice pretty map for illustrative purposes, and when you need demographics, you can simply turn it on temporarily. Continue reading »