This was different for me and I must say I am honestly happy with it being that I am vaguely familiar with marine maps, though I’ve come to rely mostly on gps these days.

(Download the FCW map)
For this map I decided to do a section of the coast near my home, though I modified it some for artistic flair and license. Here on Long Island the shore and all it has to offer are popular to the residents of this 118 mile long island with it’s outer barrier island known as Fire Island. The inlets into the Great South Bay provide great currents of fresh sea water into the bay, along with copious marine life. A popular fishing spot in the bay is The Drink, where depths can get up to 40 feet deep, providing wonderful depths for sea life. There is also a lot of boating traffic, so buoys marking the channels are scattered throughout the bay.

Being that there are several wrecks off the coast of Long Island, I thought this a good place to map. This place has a rich early American history, such as Bellport, one of the earliest fishing villages on the island founded by Captain Thomas Bell in 1664, who incidentally, found himself there by way of shipwreck 😊. There are also several WW1 and WWII shipwrecks in this area, though I’ve mapped none on this particular 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.

In our weekly live mapping series on YouTube I’ve been revisiting the first styles that I created for the Cartographer’s Annual back in 2007. Sue Daniel took it upon herself to create new maps with these styles as examples and here are the next two beautiful results!

Sarah Wroot Overland

April saw the first style by a freelance artist which we converted into an Annual style. Saraw Wroot had been producing maps for Pelgrane Press’ Dying Earth RPG and her handdrawn style and watercoloury look translated well into the new sheet effect-powered visuals of CC3+.

(Download the FCW file)

Cave and Cavern Maps

The May Annual issue of 2007 saw me delving into natural caves, using noth Dungeon Designer 3’s style and a new modern map look, which I had kind of pioneered in the Source Maps: Temples, Tombs and Catacombs collection. Sue took the DD3 version to produce this great spiral cave layout.

(Download the FCW file)

Gosh, I really love this annual. This style is my own personal preference for player handouts. I love parchment – everything about it just screams medieval fantasy and makes me happy. Also, l LOVE the bitmap fill for the ocean/sea. I mean LOVE it. I’ve used it in countless maps in my personal homebrew campaign and for commissioned works. It gives me that pop of color I need without breaking the ink bank, and that old world fantasy look my players love in my handouts.

(Download the FCW file; Check out the Annual issue)

Once again, as most of my overland maps, I just start…..first land, then mountains/rivers, forests, structures, flavor and text. No need for my usual color manipulation, as everything about this parchment is perfect. So easy and so simply pretty. That ocean….the text and it’s effects….the parchment…..oh yes, this is one of my favorites, for sure.

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.

For this Annual, since I noticed a few of my fellow cartographers have put out maps in the more commonly known Mercator Globe template in recent days, so I decided to do a standard map, such as Ralf does in the Mapping Guide. In fact, I followed along and made no special adjustments to this map. It’s a great style, especially if you add some frame embellishments like I’ve seen some mappers do on the forums by adding some of their own textures and fills.

(Download the FCW file)

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.

Need a quick city? Dislike (like myself) laying out a city grid and dotting it with houses? Well the Random Cities Annual is for you. This annual is available for anyone who has City Designer 3. The Random City command allows you some creative license with the houses you place, though in this example, I did not make any adjustments and just used the basic CD3 Bitmap B set.

(Download the FCW-File)

After starting a map in either the Bitmap A or B styles (I chose B) you choose Random City from the City menu or just enter on the command line CITY – this brings up the City Wizard and make any adjustments to the settings you’d like, hitting next at each option. For this map, the only changes I made, were to mute the colors by adding a RGB Matrix to several sheets with different settings (I got those settings by just playing around with the adjustments one .1 at a time till it was the right shade). A quick city name at the bottom and done. A map such as this can easily be done last minute before a gaming session – this one took me 15 minutes.

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.

This month’s annual, by fellow mapper Jon C. Munson II, was meant to be used alone or in conjunction with Symbol Set 4. I decided to map out a small abandoned mine using only the symbols provided in the annual, since I realize not everyone has Symbol Set 4 available to them.

(Download the FCW file)

This map is pretty basic, with no special bells or whistles. Though I can be known for using some original, creative techniques with this program, I wanted to showcase some maps with those tricks and others with nothing but the basics, I’ve done this for the average mapper, to show that you can still produce quality maps for your gaming needs and not need the skill that some of the Master Mappers and longtime, proficient users out there.

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.

In our weekly live mapping series on YouTube I’ve recently begun to revisit the first styles that I created for the Cartographer’s Annual back in 2007. Sue Daniel was inspired to use these herself for some example maps, and as you’d expect the resulting maps are gorgeous pieces of art. See for yourself!

Mercator Historical

The very first Annual issue took the maps of perhaps the most famous cartographer of history as inspiration for some large-scale overland mapping. You can see me using it here.

Here is the map Sue came up with using the default Mercator style.

(Download the FCW file)

Not satisfied with the looks, she expanded on the style with colours and effects to produce this beautiful variant.

(Download the FCW file)

If you want to recreate Sue’s version, you can take a look at her sheets to see the effects she implemented, and you’ll need this little symbol catalog for the decorations on the map border.

John Speed City

The second Annual style was inspired by another historical cartographer: John Speed. The live video showing its use is here.

Sue used the John Speed City style to create a map of the early modern town of Dorchester.

(Download the FCW file)

Again, there is a symbol catalog with the extra material that Sue created for the map.

This was a fun map that I put together in a couple of hours, and honestly most of my time was spent on names thanks to the Mapping Guide [HighSpace Galaxy].

(Download the FCW file)

I basically followed along Ralf’s guide and made a few personal touches here and there with some color changes. But otherwise I’ve done nothing special and this map came out pretty good, I think. This month’s edition couldn’t be any more user friendly for anyone looking to put together a map for sci-fi based game.

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. 

For the Wild West Annual I decided to try something a little different and include a horizon within the map. I’ve done this before on a map I contributed to the Community Atlas, and I loved how it looked that I thought I’d do it again. Once I saw the lovely blue faded bitmap fill used for the water, it reminded me of the tinges of orange you can see in a sunsetting sky and knew I had to use it for this purpose. After some trial and error with glow effects on my Sky sheet and adding another sheet for the sun’s own glow, I got the look of the horizon and of the setting sun I was hoping to achieve and then just began mapping from there.

(Download the FCW file)

The cliff symbols inspired me to create a large river akin to the Colorado River in the U.S., so I just placed them to layout the path of my river and finished the opposite banks off with some hill symbols on a polygon fill on it’s own sheet over the river sheet.

After adding a few of my favorite effects on the Whole Drawing option in the Drawing Sheets and Effects tab, such as adding a Blend Mode (Multiply) and Texturize (I’ve used the Concrete fill in the Filters folder) I added a map key to the side and used a favorite addition I picked up from our very own Shessar on the forums, is to add a symbol within the Map Key for a little extra flair. I’ve added a 50% transparency to Key symbol’s sheet to give the symbol a bit of subtlety.

This is a great style and really inspires me to play a Deadwood themed one-shot. Anyone else?

Lucky mappers! Another free wizard’s tower. As if there isn’t at least one wizard’s tower to be explored in a tabletop rpg campaign, am I right? So, since the February 2017 issue is a conversion of an older CC2 map to CC3+, I figured I’d go one step further and do a super fast conversion for another alternative to a wizard tower for your gaming needs.

(Download the FCW file)

This conversion took me less than 30 minutes. I took Ralf’s map and first added some rock symbols from DD3+ in a grey color off to the side, just to get them in the Symbol Manager (I deleted them afterward). Then I went into the Symbol Manager and replaced all the vegetation symbols with those newly placed various sized rocks. I also hid all sheets but the SYMBOLS, SYMBOLS FLAT and SYMBOLS RUNE sheets, then went to Change Properties and choose Change Color, and selected all symbols. If any were varicolored, it would change them all to whatever color I chose, which was a grey in this map.

I then went to the OUTSIDE sheet and changed the fill styles to more grey hues for each fill Ralf included in his map, as well as added some color changes using the RGB Matrix effect on the BACKGROUND sheet. Hiding all sheets but the WALLS sheet, I selected all polygons and changed the fills style to the grey wall cobblestone fill. I then repeated this process for the FLOORS sheets. For the attic walls and floors, I created their own sheets so I could apply a color effect using the RGB Matrix and the Hue/Sat effects on them to give them a grey color to match the cobbled walls I choose.

Lastly, I used the Tolkien font and replaced all the text by using the Edit Text function. After making a few adjustments with placement, and making a few name changes for the purpose of “recycling” a map and I was finished. I’ve recycled so many .fcw’s that I’ve gotten this technique down to a science. It’s the best way to get individualized maps fast and free for your home 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.