As we wanted to be as impartial as possible, we’ve asked fantasy cartographer Mike Schley to be the judge for our January competition. He took his job very seriously and came back to us with the following results:

First, I would like to thank Profantasy for inviting me to serve as judge for this mapping challenge. When approached by Simon to decide the results of this competition I jumped at the chance. Then, upon seeing the work, I realized how difficult the task would be. Assessing each entry in a logical manner and narrowing the field to two pieces would require making tough choices on the narrowest of margins.

My methodology for examining the submissions came directly from my own cartographic practice and relied on the three criteria by which I judge my own work. These measures include aesthetic appeal/creativity, visual readability, and usefulness of the information provided. Given the straightforward parameters set down for the competition, “create a map of an island, less than three miles wide” scoring the entries by these criteria made for a process that, though difficult, was fairly straightforward and analytical.

So without further delay, the winner is… entry #17 Cloister Island, followed closely by the runner up, entry #15 Smugglers’ Island.

Of all the submissions, I felt that the Cloister Island map functioned best as both a visual information system and an inspiring illustration of its setting. Even though the cartographer left off a compass rose and scale bar, the overall work felt the most coherent and provided numerous levels of information. Like an onion, the island and story revealed themselves in layers, giving the reader an opportunity to explore deeper and deeper into an immersive world. On top of this, I’m a sucker for hand drawn isometric maps.

Choosing a runner up was probably the hardest part of the job since there were a number of maps that I felt had quite a lot going for them. I selected Smugglers’ Island mainly because it’s design and presentation of information felt more unified than the other entries. The visual details work well together and the cartographer’s choice of font, embellishments, and patterning add up to a striking, if somewhat cluttered, image.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone that contributed work to the competition and encourage them to keep at it. Designing worlds is something dear to my heart and it was a joy to see so many thoughtful approaches to the assignment.

Sincerely,
Mike Schley

So the winner of the competition and the new holder a full ProFantasy Patron License is xianpryde. Congratulations!

The runner-up, dfahr, receives a ProFantasy store voucher worth $100. Also congratulations.

And thanks to everybody for their submissions. Your work was all wonderful!

These are the entries for the January competition. Scroll down below the gallery for the detail images.

#1 Cinnamon Island

#2 Drakken Isle

#3 Skull Island

#4 Isle of Breva

#5 Fort of the Frost Duke

#6 Hobb Island

#7 Gulguthee Island

#8 Sci-Fi Island

#9 The Island of Belmore

#10 Harper Island

#11 Chan Turix

#12 Fulger Island

#13 Griffendon

#14 Hand

#15 Smugglers’ Island

#16 Last Hope’s Landing

#17 Cloister Island

#18 The Islands of Sorrenport

#19 Timecorps: Project Deadalus

#20 Hujan Island

#21 The Isle of Quelivos

Interested in the history of cartography and the quest of mapping the earth’s globe on a flat piece of paper? Want your imaginary world to have a touch of realism or believability? Than the March Annual issue is for you. Check out more than a dozen new templates, showing different map projections, and instructions on how to convert these into your favorite mapping style.

If you are an Annual subscriber, log into your registration page to download it. If not, you can subscribe to the Cartographer’s Annual 2014 here.

In February last year, Mark Fulford and I flew to Phoenix to meet CAD guru Mike Riddle and expert programmer and ProFantasy mainstay Peter Olsson. Serendipitously, cartography Mike Schley lives in Phoenix, so we agreed to meet.

By this stage Mike Schley was developing an overland map style for use in the forthcoming CC3+, but as a result of our conversation we also agreed that he would create an entirely new symbol set, too. It’s an unashemedly fantasy-oriented dungeon-bashing style, with the complete set of symbols you get with DD3 and Fantasy Floorplans.

We’ve kept this one under our hat, but we are now ready to announce, The Dungeons of Schley!

We’ve still got to do some work perfecting the effects to make it look just right, but here are some sneak peaks:

Click on the main dungeon map and symbol selection for a higher res version.

As many symbols as Character Artist 3 contains or how many we may add in the future, the incredible variety of role-playing games, settings and campaigns means there will always be need and room for more.

The obvious – but not always simple – solution to needed symbols is to create them yourselves, either by drawing them from scratch or adapting existing artwork to your own requirements. Because the Character Artist 3 catalogs and symbols have a pretty specific setup, we are offering this guide to their creation. It takes you through the steps of adjusting existing png artwork for use in CA3 and importing it as a symbol.

Download CA3 Symbol Creation Guide mini-installer (contains pdf and support files)
Download CA3 Symbol Creation Guide pdf

It’s time for the monthly parade of user maps posted to the ProFantasy forum – again we have some lovely work to show off, thanks to the community!

As described elsewhere, TolrendorDM finished off his 2013 Annual Challenge with this map of the “Barrens of Gorak” in the 1930’s travel guide style.

Continue reading »

We love getting customer feedback but nothing is as satisfying as when happy CC3 users send us the maps that have been important to their gaming. Like Nick P. does with these words:

“Hi! I love CC3 so much! I spent a long time making the attached map. It’s no masterpiece, but I’m proud! I had to do the text in Photoshop to make it bendy, but just wanted to drop a line to let you know I love your product – it has helped bring my latest campaign to life.”

He can certainly be proud. I love the whimsical detail of the map and the great care all the symbols have been placed with.

And I was happy to to provide a little tech support too: Curved text can be done in CC3 with the “Text along a curve” command (found in the Draw menu or by right-clicking the text button).

Thanks for map and the kind words, Nick!

The February issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2014 has been available since Saturday (log in to your registration page if you are a subscriber). It contains pre-assembled paper figures to use in your games. Created with the new Charcater Artist 3 add-on, a selection of generic heroes is opposed by a wealth of stock monsters. Character Artist 3 is not necessary to enjoy this issue, but it also contains the CA3 source files so you can quickly create more variations if you do.

You can subscribe to the Cartographer’s Annual 2014 here.

So, “Spiel”, you ask, how is it, the biggest games fair in the world? It’s big: more than 150,000 visitors, 828 exhibitors from 39 countries (numbers from 2013), 4 days of gaming madness. You’ll also notice that I’m not using “convention” to describe Spiel, since it differs from events like GenCon or Dragonmeet, in that playing games itself is not the primary focus. Sure, a lot of gaming does happen, but the main activity is presenting, selling and buying games.

I’ve been working the ProFantasy booth at Spiel since 2000, first helping out, and then from 2002, running it. Its four days from Thursday to Sunday alway go by in a whizz and whir of activity. ProFantasy usually has a booth in the “Role-playing and Import Games” hall, which in recent years also holds a lot of LARP supplies and miniature games. Boardgaming is a much more mainstream activity in Germany than in other countries, and accordingly many visitors to Spiel are families and “casual” gamers.

Role-playing is much smaller segment of that hobby, and our hall attracts only part of the great Spiel crowd. You notice that in the differences between the weekdays and the weekend. On Thursday on Friday, the hall is much quieter and we have time for detailed chats with individual customers, but on the weekend the aisles are sometimes thronged with people just glancing at the booths and pushing through. The other halls are often dominated by the large publisher’s enormous exhibits where they present the newest releases. But there are also a lot of retailer booths and smaller publishers tucked away between the large booths and in the corners.

If you want to visit Spiel and have a good chance to play some nice boardgames, come early. The seating for demo games is limited and it can be hard to find an open spot for the more popular games. Coming on Thursday or Friday also helps, as the halls are less busy. On the other hand if you come to buy games the Sunday is the best for you can sometimes find a good deal as the merchants are eager to get rid of their stock. But beware, the most sought after releases tend to sell out quickly on the earlier days.

[Photography by Gordon Gurray]

Oh, and one thing is very different from conventions in the US like GenCon. We have beer booths in the hall!

It’s been a while since we did a collection of users maps here. First the convention season didn’t leave us enough time and then the Character Artist 3 release took a lot of resources. But now we’ve been able to take a breath over the holidays, we’ve looking at the forum again and there are so many nice maps. Here’s the collection:

suntzu created this amazing set of isometric dungeon and outdoor maps with Herwin Wielink’s Isometric Dungeon style.

This beautiful little gem of a Knight’s Crypt was posted by Modric.

This interesting cave map is the result of work in DD3 and Photoshop by Avotas. It’s being created for a commercial D&D/Pathfinder adventure, therefore the grey watermark overlay.

Drednort posted a stalwart adventuring party, freshly created with Character Artist 3. You’ll find more character portraits in the forum thread when you click on the image.

While deceptively simply this black and white map of the world Maioria by Miafeya is one of my favorites. Designed for a 2-page spread in a book, it suits that purpose very well.

TolrendorDM shared several maps for his Annual 2013 challenge, you’ll find them in the thread linked through this example of the CC3 Overland Hex style.

I’m always happy to see star ships created with Cosmographer 3 and craigo730‘s Mercury-class Battlestar is no exception.

KenG shared another great dungeon map, King Ranier’s Vault with the community. And it comes with a complete adventure!

He also created this collection of boats and rafts, very useful if you need a quick way to get across that river on your battlemap!

I don’t really need to say much about Clercon’s (Pär Lindström) New Year Village map, after all he’s done several Annual styles already. But his city and village maps are always particularly impressive.

Educational use of CC3 always delights me, so I was thrilled to see languard and his students create these SciFi tiles for a boardgame of their own making.

What would a user map collection be with one of Sadizm‘s gorgeous Deadlands battle maps. A lot less exciting that’s for sure!