One of the more common questions from CC3+ users is about how to extract a region from a large-scale map and develop this region as a more detailed local map.

The basics for doing this is already explained in the User Manual that comes with CC3+, but for this article, I am going to go a bit more into detail and explain the various tools and processes involved in doing this.

The basic principles behind this operation is to create a new map of the desired size, then copy over the entities from the existing map, trim down these entities to fit the new map size, and finally add additional detail to the new local map. Let us explore the tools and procedure for doing this.

The main tools you’ll need for doing this is Clipboard Copy, Trace, Break and Split, as well as some minor Node Editing.

Let us get started. For this article, I’ll use the example map from the User Manual. You’ll find this map in @Tutorials\UserManual\Example.fcw (remember that the @-sign refers to your CC3+ data directory). My goal is to take the area marked with the red rectangle and develop that into a local map of that area. The marked area here is 30 by 20 miles.

Note that all images in this tutorial are clickable to see higher resolution versions to more easily see what the text describes.

If you are new to this, I also highly recommend loading up the same tutorial map I use and try to follow along with this tutorial, exporting the same area, rather than try directly on your own map. Following along on this map lets you more easily see that things happens the way I describe them, and lets you build familiarity with the tools before starting on your own map.

There is also a video accompanying this article, showing me perform the steps described herein. Note that this video is not intended as a stand-alone video tutorial, but rather as a visual aid to help you see how things are supposed to work. You do not need to watch the video to take full advantage of this article, it is completely optional.

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“For the vast majority of users, Dioramas 3 will not be the main reason that they buy CC3+ for. Yet, for those who cannot opt for the ridiculously expensive plastic or resin miniature terrain it is an absolute game-changer, welcoming them to real 3D landscapes. Just make sure that both your printer and your fingers are nimble enough.”

Prolific game reviewer Antonios S. has been busy checking out more ProFantasy and posting his reviews on RPG.net. Check out his impressions of:

• The Cartographer’s Annual Vol 11 (2017),
• Perspectives 3, and
• Dioramas 3.

Joshua Plunkett (Josh.P. on the Profantasy community forum) is an avid CC3+ user and map-maker, and one of the instigators and organizers of the Realmworks project that incorporates a host of maps from the ProFantasy community atlas project. We’ve asked him to present the project for the rpgmaps blog and here are his words:

Campaign Cartographer 3+ is fantastic for making maps for basically anything but it tends to really appeal to a certain group. That group is Dungeon Masters. Regardless of the system or the numbers of sides on the dice we roll one thing is common… we all need beautiful maps.

The ProFantasy Community Atlas Project was such a great idea and has turned into an amazing resource for DMs across the planet. Within our CC3+ community though we have a sub demographic of users. The sub-group use CC3+ and Realm Works together!

Realm Works is campaign management software, it lets you take information from everywhere and put it all together into a single digitally cross-referenced digital DM binder. Specifically, though it has some great functionality in regards to maps. You can load maps in and pin out specific locations. You can then link those pins to topics where you can describe the area as much as you like with full text write-ups and supporting pictures. You can link regional maps to town maps and town maps to building maps all the while including the text and pictures to describe each location. It provides the templates and structure necessary to manage a large world building project.

When we saw the ProFantasy Community Atlas Project we therefore became excited with the possibilities of combining the CC3+ community project into an extension Realm Works community project. We sought permission from a handful of the Cartographers involved and got to work transferring the excellent maps already made by the CC3+ community into Realm Works. We then opened the doors to the Realm Works community encouraging them to help with creating the textual content around each map.

It came to life really quickly with people from both communities coming together to create new content for the continent of Artemisia. Before we knew it, we had entire regions, cities, towns and dungeons starting to take shape. The realm is available for free to all Realm Works users who want to check It you. You can DOWNLOAD IT FROM HERE and import it into a new or existing realm.

The project is open to anyone who wants to contribute. Be that CC3+ users contributing maps to the ProFantasy Community Atlas Project or Realm Works users who want to help build out the details of the world as part of the Realm Works Community Campaign World Project. To get involved simply follow the links and read up on how you can get involved.

While we are working to setup our booth at GenCon in Indianapolis and the Best Four Days in Gaming, we won’t forget the Annual’s August issue is due. We are presenting the “Dark Fantasy” symbol pack, and if the name sounds familiar, that might be because you’ve seen it before as a symbol set for CC2 Pro and CC3. Now updated for CC3+ it has also been expanded to be a full drawing style with its own template and drawing tools.

Visit the demon-scorched, orc-infested and undead-haunted lands of darkest fantasy. Probe the forbidding cities of alien insectoids, clamber through the ruined ice-fortresses of a forgotten race and brave thorn-choked bramble forests of the most dangerous lands.

You can subscribe to the Annual 2018 here. Once you have subscribed, the August issue will immediately become available for download on your registration page.

I’ve made quite some styles for the annuals over the years. I actually don’t remember exactly how many but I think it is around 15 styles so far. Whenever I make my maps I always wonder if the map I make can be made into a style for CD3. Most of my styles have been made this way. Two examples are the maps I made for the Trail of Cthulhu RPG campaigns Mythos Expedition (September ’14) and Cthulhu city (December ’17). Both those mapping styles where later turned into styles for the monthly annuals. Most of the time I have to flesh out the styles with more symbols then the ones I’ve used in my maps, so that the style will work on its own.

Other times I’ve made some styles when I’ve felt that I’m missing something in Campaign cartographer 3 or any of its add-ons. One example is my latest style, City ruins for City Designer 3. One of the things I really like is to just make different versions of villages and cities. It’s actually something I can sit and play with just for fun, dreaming up different places and try to make them as good looking as possible. But sometimes I feel that the styles in the program miss some bits and pieces, for example I had an idea of a map that I originally got from an old map of Firenze in Italy where people lived among the ruins from the Roman times. After the fall of the Western part of the Roman Empire the population in many towns shrank and a lot of the old buildings started to fall apart or where used as quarries. But in the middle of those fallen cities life continued and people built new houses among the ruins. This was the kind of city I wanted to draw. But I needed more ruins.

So I started making my own ruins to be able to make the map I wanted. After a while I thought that this might be something others miss too so I decided to ask Profantasy if they might be interested in making a style out of the symbols, which they were.

So how do I make the actual style? Well first of all I have to decide on what kind of symbols I need to draw. This is usually a process that continues during the whole time I’m making the style, since I seldom come up with all ideas at once. Another way of coming up with ideas for a style is actually to ask you, the users of the program, which is possible now since I found the Campaign Cartographer 3+ Facebook User Group on Facebook. This is the perfect place to find out if there is anything the community would like to see in the style.

When I have come up with enough ideas for symbols I start to sketch them out in Photoshop. Usually I have a square grid as a bottom layer which makes it easier to make straight lines and to get the right scale on all the different symbols. After having finished the sketches it is time to ink the symbols. This I will do on a separate layer. Usually all steps will be made on different layers, which will make it much easier to change things later if necessary. After inking the symbols I add a layer for colours, sometimes I also add a layer for shadows, if needed.

When I have all my different layers done, the symbols are finished and I cut them up in different files, one per symbol, and send them over to Ralf who will do the magic of turning them into a style for all of you to use.

I hope you will like all the ruins, I sure will, and now I just have to make that map of the ruined city.

Welcome to another detailed tutorial by Sue Daniel, looking at how you can create the shading for complex shapes – in this cased domed roofs. As the tutorial is fairly detailed we are providing it in pdf format for ease of access and printing.

About the author: Sue Daniel is active as a cartographer and artist both on the ProFantasy community forum and the Cartographer’s Guild. There, she has won 1 Lite Challenge and 3 Main Challenges, and just recently one of the annual Atlas Awards for most creative map in 2017. She has produced many beautiful art assets for CC3+ (such as the “Sue’s Parchments” Annual issue) and mapping in general that are free to use for anyone.

Here is this month’s collection of maps that have caught our eyes. They are taken from the CC3+ Facebook community and the ProFantasy forum, and as usual are just a quasi-random selection from the multitude of maps that have been posted. Enjoy!

Camp Cedarcrest by Jason Place is a wonderful example of mapping a real-world place in Campaign Cartographer and thereby giving it that little fantastical spin.

Another camp, but this time a fully fictitious one, the Forest Camp map by Jonathan Garrison serves as a beautiful location or battle map for that night attack on the heroes’ resting spot.

Linda Böckstiegel created this awesome map of an everburning ruin. I don’t even know what resources she used, but the Dungeon Walls Annual issue must have been one!

Jensen’s campaign map “Die Kronlande” is a blast from the past for me, since it is based on a very old German rpg.

ScottA has produced another beautiful map with his Huntsman’s Green village map. Great use of City Designer 3!

When you make a map, you may desire to have different kinds of views for it. For example, if you make a floorplan, you may wish to be able to see the roof of the house too, or if you make a dungeon map, you don’t want to show your players the version that also includes all the traps.

For this article, we’ll see how we can easily make features in our maps togglable. As an example, I will take a small building from CD3 and make a floorplan from it, and then add a togglable roof and trap.

I start by picking the building symbol I want to use as a base. After that, I start a new dungeon map, and simply use the dungeon room/wall/floor tools to draw the floorplan on top of the building I just inserted to make it match the building shape (I could also have used the automatic floorplan generator from CD3 to make this based on the outline).

Once I am happy with the floorplan, I simply make a new sheet to hold the building symbol, naming it ROOF. Then I move the building symbol to this new sheet, and finally hide the sheet since I don’t want to see the roof as I am working on the floorplan.

Next, I draw the floorplan. For my trap, I place a pit trap just behind the door, and then cover it up with a carpet.

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The World War 2 Interactive Atlas has always been the odd one out in our range. It mostly appeals to WW2 aficionados and history buffs, since it is a huge collection of historical maps on the largest conflict of the 20th century. Its maps are all linked together and referenced to a timeline of events. In that capacity as a reference work, it installs as a stand-alone product.

But the Atlas also contains tools, templates and symbols to use in Campaign Cartographer, to create similar maps or edit the existing WW2IA maps. This functionality has previously not been usable in CC3+, but a compatibility update makes it available now. If you own WW2IA, you can download it from your registration page.

With WW2IA the last of the add-ons has now been updated to work with CC3+.

The release of Dioramas 3 is imminent and we’re celebrating the occasion with a map and tutorial pack of a Bridge Diorama. The 9-page tutorial takes you through the design, construction and assembly of a multi-part bridge model. By printing and assembling as many parts as desired you can create a bridge of any required length.

The July issue of the Annual 2018 previews a few of the new bitmap textures included in Dioramas 3, and once that is released, you can replace or expand the included textures in the drawing with the full set. The model is included both as a FCW file and a set of three A4/US Letter pdf pages that you can print as often as you like and need.

You can subscribe to the Annual 2018 here. Once you have subscribed, the July issue will immediately become available for download on your registration page.