The September issue of the Cartographer’s Annual has just been released. With it we celebrate the end of summer with a new dungeon and battle map style for some frigid caverns and icy waters. Let your players explore glacial tunnels, high mountain caves or the caverns beyond the mountains of madness.
The Ice Caverns style can be used as an extension to Dungeon Designer 3 or own its own. Either way, it is setup for ease of use making drawing some natural caves a snap.
The August issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2022 yet, you can do so here.
One of the nice upgrades CC3+ brought with it back when it was released was the ability to include drawing tools in your symbol catalogs. Now, this is hopefully not news to you, as this is used quite a bit in the official symbol catalogs used in most styles. But this fact does make the symbol catalog window a bit smarter, since drawing tools can do quite a bit of things, like I discussed in my article about Advanced Drawing Tools earlier this year.
This means that the tools we add to our symbol catalog doesn’t have to be limited to drawing shapes that fit the theme of the symbols in the catalog, but also tools that can do powerful things like running macros to almost everything we want.
The feature of putting drawing tools into the symbol catalog is simple enough, it is the possibilities that this opens that make it exiting.
Here I am back in Germany from GenCon, finally over the jetlag, looking back at my first transatlantic journey in three years, and trying to think of how to describe the trip.
It’s strange, in most ways it was totally the same as other GenCons (take a look at my detailed description from 2016), but on the other hand it was new and exciting, as I was finally able to meet so many friends again. Seeing them in person is so much different from just communicating vial email, phone and video.
Travel to and from the show was mostly painless. I missed a connecting flight on the way to Indy, but got on the next easily and arrived just a little later than planned on Tuesday evening. Wearing a mask all four days was a bit annoying (if of course warranted), but discipline was high, and everyone I know and know of managed to avoid getting Covid at the show, so I count that as a clear win.
It was a bit quieter than usually, with only about 50,000 visitors as opposed to around 70,000 before the pandemic, but still lively enough and the vibes were good. Everybody was just happy to be back at the show.
Downtown Indianapolis has definitely suffered a bit in the last two years, with several restaurants going out of business and other springing up in their place. I did miss the Rockbottom Brewers, as it had been my favorite haunt on recent visits, but we found another great place to eat: Nada’s a Mexican place with excellent salsas and tacos.
As usual I didn’t get to game much at the show, but managed to sneak in a session of “The Thing” with Canadian friends on Saturday evening. It’s an excellent adaptation of the 80s John Carpenter movie and we had great fun with it, though us humans lost and brought the alien thing out of Antarctica to take over the world.
If you want to see my personal gallery of pictures with lots of miniature and game pictures, you can find it here.
Dear map-makers! Freshly back from GenCon and safely over the jet lag, I’ve now had time to check out all the community-made maps of July. You’ve been really busy, haven’t you!? Here’s just a small and pretty random selection of maps that caught my eye. Sorry to all the others I missed!
I chose two maps by EucalyptusNow, because I couldn’t decide which I liked better, the Oasis Town of Dekunu or Pamberton on Twynne. Continue reading »
The third month (August 2022) of year two of the monthly free material includes symbols for a town or village marketplace with a variety of market stalls which can be combined with different types of merchandise, a large market tent, a speaker’s platform and a pillory.
Note that the example maps included with the 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 the last link in the list. All the content of year two up to and including August 2022 is included in the one download.
You can always check the available monthly content on our dedicated page.
The August issue of the Cartographer’s Annual has just been released. Sue Daniel returns to her Creepy Crypts with new symbols for her beautiful dungeon floorplan style. They mesh seamlessly with the Dungeon Designer 3 style, so it can be used to extend our big dungeon add-on even further. If you don’t own DD3, you can still use the style fully, you might just notice a few missing bitmap fills if you are going through the fill styles of the templates.
As the name implies, the Creepy Crypts focuses on tombs, graves and burial sites, with the second part adding more symbols for containers, statuary, skeletons and lots of other material.
The August issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2022 yet, you can do so here.
Comments Off on Annual 2022 – August: Creepy Crypts 2
Most of you have heard about macros. If you are an existing CC3+ user you’ve used them, knowingly or not, and you might even have written your own. For some people, the word macro may sound a little scary because it is associated with programming, but they’re really not that complicated.
Macros are used in a lot of places in the program. For example, when you start a new map or load an existing map, CC3+ uses a macro (stored in the OnNewMacro/OnOpenMacro map notes) to show you the appropriate toolbars and load the filters needed for the style of the map. A lot of the drawing tools uses macros to accomplish the more complex stuff, for example the forest drawing tools use a macro to call the commands to fill the area with trees, or the fields drawing tools in several styles use a macro to align the fields to the first edge of the polygon (These macros are stored with the drawing tools).
Lastly, CC3+ also has a macro file that contains named macros. These are often called from the toolbar buttons and menu elements in the program, so editing this file may change how the program behave.
The second month (July 2022) of year two of the monthly free material includes symbols for a smith’s workshop with forge, anvil, tools, and supplies for a classic village smithy floorplan.
Note that the example maps included with the 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 the last link in the list. All the content of year two up to and including July 2022 is included in the one download.
You can always check the available monthly content on our dedicated page.
Comments Off on Free Monthly Content: Smith’s Workshop
The September issue of the Cartographer’s Annual has just been released. With it we celebrate the end of summer with a new dungeon and battle map style for some frigid caverns and icy waters. Let your players explore glacial tunnels, high mountain caves or the caverns beyond the mountains of madness.
One of the nice upgrades CC3+ brought with it back when it was released was the ability to include drawing tools in your symbol catalogs. Now, this is hopefully not news to you, as this is used quite a bit in the official symbol catalogs used in most styles. But this fact does make the symbol catalog window a bit smarter, since drawing tools can do quite a bit of things, like I discussed in my article about 
Here I am back in Germany from GenCon, finally over the jetlag, looking back at my first transatlantic journey in three years, and trying to think of how to describe the trip. 
Most of you have heard about macros. If you are an existing CC3+ user you’ve used them, knowingly or not, and you might even have written your own. For some people, the word macro may sound a little scary because it is associated with programming, but they’re really not that complicated.
