“To me, every hour of the Day and Night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.” I wonder if Walt Whitman ever thought of battle maps when he was speaking of how perfect both night and day are? Day or Night, what better way to be prepared for battle in your game than with the Day and Night issue of the 2015 Annual?

[Download the FCW files: Day Version and Night Version]

You know, as a DM your players can just go off the rails far, far off the tracks of your diligent, carefully thought out prep material … left turns to right, good turns to bad, up to down, and sometimes day turns to night. No problem! You can easily alter any existing map of yours to accommodate the shifting shadows of night creeping in on your planned daytime encounter.

Now, I won’t even go into explaining how to do this….as I, who has been using this program for YEARS, Master Mapper me, could not figure it out at first. After reaching out to our beloved community, Sue and Remy got back to me right away … kindly pointing out my mistake, and Voila! Day became night on my map and I got set to placing light sources. For more detailed information on how to set up the lighting, I suggest the 2008 Annual with Lighted Dungeons or my go to The Tome of Ultimate Mapping, of which I simply cannot give more praise in helping with some really great beginner, intermediate and expert tips and techniques. Truly, it’s worth the purchase, in my opinion.

So, I used Mike Schley’s Dungeon style and also a few Forlorn Cottage and free monthly content symbols for this map. It’s a generic, simple end street in any village town or city that I like to keep at hand for the unexpected stops in a village or town I hadn’t fully fleshed out yet. Getting caught off guard and by surprise as a DM is not uncommon or unexpected, but having that ability to change the time of day this easily is a great tool for all game masters.

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.

Welcome to the 2015 Annual, mappers! So we wrapped up last annual (2016) with TJ Vandel, and we start 2015 with them 😊

(Download the FCW file)

Black and white mapping is not in my wheelhouse, to say the least. I love taking textures and layering them, creating new colors in the color palette. But, with every new adventure we learn new things and experience new options in mapping. Working with this style was pretty simple. It’s great for printing out maps at home, especially if you like to conserve ink, like I do. You can easily do a DM and Player versions in less than an hour.

For this map, I used an online generator of dungeons and simply traced out my rooms and added a little bit of flair (I just can’t resist trying to make things look “pretty”). The mapping guide is simple and even the newest of beginners can work with this style early on in their CC3+ learning journey.

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.

Merry meet, Mappers! We’re down to the style for 2016, bringing us to the Dark Realms Annual. This set is meant to stand alone, yet it also can be used in combination with two other styles in this year’s annual, Scorching sun and Realms of Legend by TJ Vandel, both of which I’ve given you basic sample maps. This wraps up the overland styles for 2016 available in this amazing annual.

I just love this one, along with the Scorching Sun. The textures are some of my favorites for overland mapping. The little bunches of woods and forests are just…..chef’s kiss adorable for me. As usual with overland mapping, I struggled….these maps tend to take me much longer than my worth in mapping sometimes, but I stick to it, to improve and get over my geographic anxiety of where and why everything goes where it goes. For my own personal use…..my players no nothing about nor do they care about where mountains are, or if the rivers flow rightly….plus I can use magic and supernatural explanations for the aberrations in geography. For a map I am putting out there on the internet for the world to see? For the River Police that once plagued, and may still, a popular cartography web page? Well, that just stresses me out. After getting over my anxiety, I just relaxed and mapped what felt right. I think it looks good, and I sure hope you do, too.

The only thing I did here was make a few adjustments in PS to the png with the contrast. I love how my maps look on my screen in CC3, but once saving them, they often change appearance, especially since I save at such high resolutions, so that my maps are still clear enough for VTT play when I size them down to the usual 20MB limit most VTTs have, sometimes I make some minor adjustments outside of this incredible program.

(Download the FCW source file of the map)

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.

Hello Cartography Friends! We are down to our last two sets….both Overland. Not my favorite, as you would know if you’ve been following along and have read my blurbs. However, I usually do my best work under pressure….I guess that’s why I trained as an Emergency RN as my nursing career choice, lol. Organized chaos is my Roman Empire 😊

Anyway, this style is one of three ins a set overland styles offered this year, along with Scorching Sun and Realms of Legend. All three of these sets, created by the talented TJ Vandel, were made to work alone, or in combination with one another. In this example, I’ve just followed along with the mapping guide, so as to decrease my stress of where I wanted things to go. It just flowed nicely. I really like the clean look of this map and decided to keep it simple and free of clutter.

(Download the FCW source file of the map)

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.

Well met, mappers! This next monthly installment of the 2016 Annual was timed perfectly with Spooky Season … Pär Lindström’s Horror House!

(Download the FCW file)

This black and white style is perfect for your spooky season one-shot this year! Planning a Cthulhu themed game? This style easily puts together a quick, clean, modern floorplan for your gaming needs. As per my usual, I did a search for an olde tyme floor plan from days of yore on the internet and dropped a png image onto my map for me to easily trace. After tracing the basic plan, I deleted my pic and just filled in the rooms with some of Pär’s assets, such as the broken furniture for any murder mystery you might be planning for your gaming party!

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.

(Download the FCW file)

Hello mappers! Another month, another annual. This monthly installment of the 2016 Annual is Alyssa Faden’s City Streets. This annual is perfect for mapping a section of a city in your world, for some zoomed in, regional maps your players can use in planning their way through city streets and shops.

For this map, I decided to map out a small district in a large town in my homebrew world. In this area, there are shops galore for my players to enjoy – know your players – mine love a shopping session. I just love the color scheme this annual affords. It’s bright, vibrant and by adding a tiny little Multiply 5% in Blend Mode, the map pops perfectly. I also darkened the buildings and the cobblestone background, as I prefer a darker map with more contrast, personally. This map took no time to put together and any mapper, from novice to master can easily put together a quick map for their gaming needs.

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.

(Download the FCW file)
Hello mappers! Welcome to this month’s All the Annuals, Scorching Sun. This overland set is fantastic. I love the color palette with this set. What’s also great about TJ’s fantastic style is that this annual works really well with another annual that came out at the end of 2016 – don’t worry, we’ll get there – giving you so many more symbol options and fills to play with.
For this map, I actually used a font I downloaded from one of the free sites online, as you can see by the middle eastern flair font in the png. Your map, should you download this one, will come with the standard font from the annual, but I wanted to show you in this particular font so you can see it’s super easy to add more font choices to your maps, if you choose.

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.

(Download the FCW file)
Happy new month, mappers! This month’s All the Annuals has me giddy. I LOVE this map I’ve created. Yes, I said it. I just love it. It might be a bit busy, but it’s super close to my heart, so it’s perfect.

Last year, I left my home of Long Island and moved upstate to the Adirondack region of New York. I’ve spent many summers up there camping, hiking, and just enjoying the outdoors and rich history this area has, most especially American Revolutionary history. Walking around my town a few months ago, I saw these real woodcut maps of our beloved Lake George. They were just amazing. I wanted to purchase one, but they were dearly priced and out of my meager nurses salary. Well, enter the Woodcut Maps Annual.

I traced out an image of the lake and used mostly current town/city names, but some go back to the Revolutionary War times, so it’s not exactly accurate. I also played around with the stripping setting a bit to get it where I wanted them. All in all, I couldn’t be happier with my little local map of our gem of a lake here in the beautiful Adirondacks. Come for a visit! The fall foliage up here is the best in the nation!!!

(Download the FCW file)
Welcome to the Darkbelow mappers! Happy new month, and with that new All the Annuals. This month’s annual is a favorite of mine. I remember when it first came out, I had a new map done before the end of the day. Anyway, the Darkbelow is my version of a very large TTRPG company’s region of the world below (you know the one 😊 ).

I found myself playing around with this annual more, tweaking here and there to get the dark, gloomy look I was going for. I found, that despite looking dim and dark on my screen in CC3+, once I saved to a png file, the fills really lightened up. For this reason, when you look that the .fcw, it looks nearly black, but when saved, it lightened up just a bit to get that look I was going for. This one took a lot of trial and error, but I was really satisfied with the results. Hope you are, too!

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.

(Download the FCW file)
Hello mappers! This month’s All the Annuals has Naomi VanDoren’s annual on display. It’s the perfect annual for those last minute maps. You know those sessions I speak of Game Masters… It’s game night, you’ve been doing your “adulting” all week and didn’t have time to prep for your game. The game, that your wonderful players derailed and ended up somewhere you never thought they would. Well, have I got an annual for you. I actually made this map up in the middle of session. Yes, in the middle of a game session. We often take a mid-game break – you know drink refills, a smoke if anyone partakes, bathroom breaks, returning texts, checking on the kids, whatever. Well, while my players were off doing those things and preparing their next move… I was silently clicking away at my keyboard and came up with this perfect, on the fly, tavern.

With this annual, considering my time constraints, I didn’t so anything off the beaten path. Stuck right with the basics and dropped this map in my VTT in no time and we were back at it, encounter ensues. Good times, great annual.😊

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.