In December 2012, we released The Festive Three – a bundle of our top three products, Campaign Cartographer 3, Dungeon Designer 3 and City Designer 3.

We’ve often debated the effect of releasing this particular combination of products – the more conservative view point being that they would eat into our other sales, but we decided it was worth a try. It didn’t have that effect at all – in fact our sales in December were unusually good – so we are continuing our bundle under the more prosaic title of the Top Three for another month, at least. It’s a case of the customer is always right.

So why not try this tasty combination to get the full range of overland, urban and floorplan map-making for a 20% discount?

Mark Wolnik, a fresh member of the ProFantasy community offered to write a few sentences about his initial experience with the Campaign Cartographer 3 and we gladly accepted. Here are his words. Thanks, Mark!

Since my youth, one of my favorite parts of reading fantasy books and playing fantasy games over the decades, has been poring over the maps that add that extra amazing amount of immersion. I would marvel at the skills needed to draw something in a manner that looked like a gifted and patient elven hand was at work here.

Thank you so much!
Mark Wolnik

And as a special treat, here is the very first map that Mark created with CC3:

A Merry Christmas to all from ProFantasy. Thank you to Character Artist 3 contributor Rich Longmore for this image.

Downloads from ProFantasy make great gifts. As the buyer, you don’t have to do the actual download yourself. Instead, you can give the recipient some simple download details that are included in your online receipt. These details allow the one receiving the gift to download the software and documentation themselves, at anytime and anywhere.

The download details are available to you as soon as you complete your order, with no waiting around or having to be in for deliveries. They don’t include pricing and you can send them by email or print them out for a card or to put in a gift box. You can make a wrapped present out of a download!

Download delivery has no media to worry about losing or damaging and we keep orders safe on our systems so that you can retrieve them whenever you need. We use Amazon’s Web Services infrastructure to make sure our software downloads are very reliably available worldwide at high speed.

Step by step, this is how you can give downloads as a gift

1. Choose your items and place your order.
   We offer some great starter bundles for users new to our software. At the checkout, choose delivery by either download or download + shipped media.
2. As you complete your order, our website sends you a confirmation email and a link to your online payment receipt.
3. Looking at the receipt, next to Serial Numbers, click Send to email.
   
4. Moments later you’ll receive a second email that includes the download details for your purchase. These are the details your recipient needs. You can forward the email, print it out or simply copy the key details into a card.

In the payment receipt there’s a very tempting Register button. Don’t click it! As this is a gift, leave registration for your recipient.

The Annual 2012 is our fastest selling annual since we started producing Annuals in 2007. We’ve had amazing user maps created and proudly displayed on our forum. Why? Well, I think the maps and comments speak for themselves. Here are my favourite styles for this year.

Herwin Wielink‘s overland style was the single most popular style every created for the Annual, measured by the amount of maps shown on the forums. So popular in fact, that we published an extension of the style with more symbols and textures. Use Elothan said here “It is a dream to work with i must say, I originally got it for the isometric dungeons, but this style is good at it is almost worth the price of the annual alone”

Herwin also created another of my favourites – his isometric dungeon style is just extremely clever and beautiful. I used a map created in this style for my annual mammoth D&D session.

The user map in Herwin’s Overland style was done by Modric, and the isometric dungeon here by forum member Tommek, who even commissioned custom symbols for his map from another artist. There are other amazing maps in this style.

On top of this we have the 13th Age style – a look I didn’t think even Ralf could reproduce, but he surely did, and Clercon here shows us how to use it.

And these are just three of the many styles available from the 2012 Annual.

Here is another battlemap from my ongoing Deadlands campaign, this time of a mountain glade bisected by a small stream. It was created with Dungeon Designer 3, the Dungeon Symbols issue of last year’s Annual, Symbol Set 2, and the CSUAC.

Click the map to download an A1 pdf of the map, ready for printing.

For outdoor maps I usually prefer hex grids over square, as this map shows. As the Savage Worlds game system is flexible in this regard, switching bweteen the two is no problem at all.

We’ve just released the final issue of the Annual 2012, and a fine one it is! Pär Lindström – creator of our popular Fantasy Worlds style – has created a beautiful mapping style for regional maps.

We’ll be releasing information on next year’s Annual soon!

It’s time to take another look at the beautiful user maps posted on the Profantasy forum. The numbers have risen again, and it’s possible I may accidentally skip the occasional map. Check out the Show and Tell category on the forum to see them all!

Henrie61 created this map of the Flow Country in Djekspek’s overland style from the Annual 2012

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[Ed: Mike Schley is a renowned game cartographer with clients such as Wizards of the Coast, Paizo and Scholastic and  aworking on a complete new overland style for CC3+]

As a professional artist, I’ve produced a large body of work over the past decade and a half for clients ranging from game developers to public universities. Most recently, the majority of my fantastical cartography has been for publishers such as Wizards of the Coast and Scholastic Books. The opportunity to work with Profantasy came as a wonderful surprise since not only does it allow me to develop what I believe will be an awesome new addition to Campaign Cartographer, but it will also let folks that already like my work use a new style of it to let their own imaginations run wild. What could be better than that?

Years ago, when studying art in college, I would have never thought my career would develop into drawing intricate worlds and mythical lands. Now, as a full-time fantasy illustrator, I have difficulty imagining doing anything else. When I sit down to work every day, it’s like I’m transported back in time to being a kid again and drawing campaign maps for D&D or custom boards for all-night sessions of Risk. World building and visual storytelling are two of the most fun things I can imaging spending my days on and the fact that my audience gets a kick out of what I do is icing on the cake.

Combining the use of digital and traditional media, I try to convey a naturalistic visual style while benefitting from the clean and quickly editable properties of the digital format. For my work, it should look hand drawn, even if it’s done exclusively in Photoshop. I love the greats of the golden era of illustration like Rackham, Mucha, Pyle, and Wyeth and although I’m working in front of a screen and not an easel, it’s their art that informs my tastes. As for my cartography, it might also help that apparently I have ancestors such as Jacob van der Schley who also were enthralled by map making as far back as 18th century. Hooray for maps!

ProFantasy Software will be at Dragonmeet 2012 (Kensington Town Hall, London) this Saturday (December 1st).

As always, I’m looking forward to this small, but extremely friendly convention that marks the end of the year’s convention circuit. I get to meet up with Simon and the Pelgrane crew, and it’s a nice chance to talk to some of our customers from the green and pleasant isle.

So if you’re in London on the weekend, stop by and say hello at the ProFantasy booth, which is immediately to the right as you enter the exhibitor’s hall.