This was a fun little map. With this month’s annual I decided I would do a section of the ruined city Shan Drag’Oth in my homebrew campaign. It is a cursed city of ruins in a valley of evil and desecration, so a dark, gloomy theme was a must. This annual fits in with the CD3 Bitmap B symbol set, so I stuck with those fills for this map.
(Download the FCW file)
I am not personally particularly fond of the fills for this set, and they are not as gloomy as I needed for the look I wanted, so I found myself using the RGB Matrix on multiple sheets, including the sheet with my trees on it…..surprisingly the RGB Matrix worked beautifully on the tree symbols (not the bushes for some reason, so I just shrunk down the trees and used them for bushes on a separate sheet). I used a setting Sue had provided for her Isometric Town annual and tweaked it a little for the exact look I wanted. Once I had the coloring down, I then added the Texturize effect, which I am a fan of, to multiple sheets to give the map a gritty look.
Along with changing the color of the trees for this map, as usual, I used the varicolored symbols so I can change their color at any time, which can dramatically change the look of a map very simply. The ruins symbols that our friend, the talented Pär Lindström created for this annual are a wonderful addition to the city set.
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.
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After finishing the 2019 Annual, Christina Trani steps back in time to go through all of the 2018 issues with example maps and comments. Available so far are January, February, March, April, and May.
Remy Monsen takes a look at using multiple symbol styles in the same map and how to make that as easy as possible.
Recently we’ve done quite a few video tutorials and Annual issues on city mapping, and I wanted to to collect these into one conventient reference. Let’s take a look what we got:
Every week we do a live mapping session on YouTube, showcasing a certain style or set of tools in CC3+. Here are the most recent Live Mapping videos with Remy and Ralf, as archived on YouTube:
Welcome back to the Maps of the Month series, where we present a selection of beautiful and special maps created by our user community. Take a look at the great maps that have been posted to the ProFantasy forum or the CC3+ Facebook group.
This is one of the very first maps done in CC3+ by forum user simianorganism, using the Dungeons of Schley style for a virtual tabletop battle map. Continue reading »
So ProFantasy has provided yet ANOTHER overland style to work with. No matter what style map you prefer, I feel there is something for everyone here, and this Myrklund style has done just that. Now, I may have mentioned how I am not a fan of overland mapping outside of my personal campaign – since I can explain any geological aberration I install in the map as “it’s a magical, fantasy world”, so with this map, I just decided to see what I could come up with without any concern. No pressure, no cares, just started plopping down things wherever I felt like it. 😊
(Download the FCW file)
I decided to keep this map as simple and minimal as possible…..so placed some mountains, then rivers, cities, forests and any other exploration areas I thought might be interesting and easy to incorporate into a homebrew one-shot. I also lightened up some of the fills for a more wintery look.
As someone who recently got a puppy, that takes up an immense amount of attention leaving little time for mapping, this was a simple, easy, delightful annual to work with.
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.
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The November issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2020 has just been released. It expands on Sue Daniel’s Spectrum Overland (from July) with more than 200 new symbols, giving you tons more options to build your maps in this beautiful bitmap style. Let your players explore new cultures, venture into blazing deserts and the freezing ice, and scale imposing cliffs and fissures across the landscape.
If you have already subscribed to the Annual 2020, you can download the October issue from your registration page. If not, you can subscribe here.
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This is a quick and easy annual that can add just the right flair to your campaign. Having those “extras” is what makes my homebrew campaign special to my players. At least that what they tell me, lol. This set, especially was useful to me, as I coordinated my pantheon to the constellations in my personal homebrew map – and my players love it.
So, for this map, I pretty much just followed the guide… which is basically place stars, connect stars to create constellations, name constellations. Done. I mean, how easy is that? I, of course, made a few changes to the color theme as the guide, but otherwise stuck with the easy steps and got this done in less than an hour. All the extra special fluff to your world building in LESS THAN ONE HOUR!!!
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.
Comments Off on All the Annuals: Star Charts (April 2018)
This is the fourth article in my series about XP development. To understand this article properly, you should be familiar with the contents of the previous articles.
In this article, I’ll be taking a closer look at how to interface with some of CC3+’s own functionality, in this case how to set CC3+ variables and how to call native CC3+ commands from an XP. I’ll be showing you how to use the SetVar and ExecScriptCopy API calls.
So, what to do with an annual such as this? Well, I’ll tell you. First off, this is my annual 😊 I was asked to do this annual last year and it was a lot of fun putting this together for an adventure. But…what if you don’t have a Lich King in your adventure? What if the big bad in your campaign is an evil wizard? Here’s how you can easily change up an existing .fcw for your own needs. It’s pretty simple.
So, first off, I want to get rid of the dark feel to the regional map. This is a big reason I often us the varicolored symbols in a CC3 map. This way, you can select the symbols you want and change the color of those symbols, which will completely change the feel of your map. I’ve done this with the mountains, trees and hills. I’ve also changed the Hue/Sat of my fills to lighten them up some.
You can also replace symbols. In the case of the regional map, I’ve replaced the dead trees with regular varicolored trees, again to give the map a lighter feel. A name change here, a font color change there and viola! A whole new looking map for a completely different kind of campaign.
For the tower I changed the fills and decided for a “cold” feel to the Blue Wizard. So all the dirt fills were changed to greys and snowy fills. Again, the varicolored symbol’s color were changed to reflect the blue theme I was going for. Again, a few easy changes, and a whole new looking map.
For the Maze I had to put a little effort in. Aside from the fill changes, I wanted to fill this maze with mushrooms, so they all had to be placed. I made a couple of symbol changes and there you have the Mushroom Maze.
Lastly, the Vault. I used the Symbol Manager to replace all the symbols on the walls – this map uses the Dungeon Walls annual technique and you can easily swap out one style for one of the other 3 provided with the annual using Replace in the Symbol Manager as I did on previous maps. Once more, sticking with a blue, cold theme I made a few simple changes to change the feel of this map, too.
And there you have it….Four entirely sort of new maps 😊
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.
