[Download the FCW file]

Well met, Mappers! We are working our way through the 2015 Annual and this month’s style is City Panoramas, by TJ Vandel. This style is modeled off the 16th century publishers and engravers, Braun and Hogenberg, famous for their “birds-eye view” maps of cities from all around the world. I will admit, I did a bit of a Google deep dive looking at their maps, and they are fantastic, and I highly recommend you all taking a look.

For this map I didn’t do anything special out side of the provided Mapping Guide. I really like this style, and think if you get yourself into an editor and have the skills (of which, I do not 😊 ), anything free will do, you could get this map to have that old, antique look of the original Braun and Hogenberg works.

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 annual in the 2015 set is Black & White Towns by one of our favorite resident artists, Pär Lindström.

Following the Mapping Guide, I started first by creating the water, and then adding some elevation symbols around the banks and in the outer corners. I quickly decided that I would tie in this map to the OSR Dungeon map I had done earlier in the 2015 Annual series and sticking with the black and white theme, I added a section of ruins. Once I got in my main road of the hamlet, I used the Random Street tool to line the road with some houses. I then removed a few and inserted some of the symbol houses that come with the set to mix up the housing look of the hamlet. Some bushes, some trees and some accessories and 15 minutes later and this map was done.

Despite my love of color and texture blending, I oddly love this style more than I’d like to admit. I am going to quickly work up copies of many of my villages in my homebrew world, making printing up maps for my players so much easier and cost effective.

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 the July Annual issue community veteran Quenten Walker revisits the Watabou Cities tool pack and style. The style referenced the Watabou online random village, town and city generator and leveraged it to create city maps in CC3+. Since its inception, the Watabou map generator has been changed and developed further. Quenten has taken it on himself to revise the style to take the changes into account and expand it to offer more tools and options.

The new style does not only contain a new bitmap fill selection, more drawing tools and more detailed instructions, it also leverages improved options of the Watabou Cities Generator to make creating cities, town, and villages randomly even easier in CC3+.

The July issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2024 yet, you can do so here.

Let’s welcome a new contributor to the Cartographer’s Annual: C.C. Charon has been sharing wonderful maps on the Profantasy forum for a while, and we were especially intrigued by his “Sumerian City” maps. Now you can create cities in the same wonderful style, as the June Annual adds his creation as the new “Ancient Cities” drawing style to CC3+.

New symbols, bnew drawing tools and a fresh application of bitmap fills in conjunction with detailed sheet effects make up this new style. Two big example maps and a four-page mapping guide give you plenty of guidance to create your own maps in C.C. Charon’s style.

The June issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2024 yet, you can do so here.

We are very happy to have another beautiful style by Pär Lindström in this year’s Cartographer’s Annual, with this month’s Parchment City style. Based on Pär’s work on a 19th century map of Stockholm, the style is very easy and quick to use thanks to to whole city blocks and symbols. You can hen dive in and add special landmarks and individual pieces at your leisure. Of course the accompanying mapping guide tells you how to do all that.

The April issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2024 yet, you can do so here.

The November 2023 Annual issue brings you a large city map in Mike Schley’s Isometric Cities style. Inspired by the recent free “Breached Walls” symbols for the style and many beautiful maps created by the user community, we’ve taken size and detail to the next level with this map. To make it even more useful as a gaming resource, the map comes with a 13-page guide describing many locations and presenting adventure hooks keyed to them.

The November issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page.

If you haven’t subscribed to the Cartographer’s Annual 2023 yet, you can do so here.

For this month we have a few very useful symbols for the Symbol Set 6: Isometric Cities (but which could also be used on overland maps). These Isometric Bridges can be extended to variable length to span any width of river, gorge or similar terrain feature.

Note that the example maps included with this free content make use of Symbol Set 6 to showcase the symbols in proper surroundings. If you don’t have SS6 installed, you won’t see these correctly, but you can still use the symbols on other maps. Symbol Set 6 – Isometric Cities is available for purchase here.

To download the free content go to your registration page and on the Downloads tab, click the download button for Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus. Mike’s new symbols are the last link in the list. All the content of year two up to and including February 2023 is included in the one download.

You can always check the available monthly content on our dedicated page.

The February issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2023 is now available for download. We have a new, beautiful town style by Pär Lindström for you, venturing out into the heat of the desert this time. The “Desert Oasis” style contains hand-drawn buildings, ruins, palm trees and gigantic monuments, alongside bitmap textures to build an oasis settlement, an ancient ruin, or similar locations in a desert setting.

The February issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page.

We are excited to release the final version of the latest Symbol Set into the public, with hundreds of amazing symbols by Mike Schley. Symbols Set 6 – Isometric Cities let’s you soar across the rooftops of your cities, giving you a unique new perspective.

Symbol Set 6 – Isometric Cities comes with these features:

• • 128 different city buildings in full color, varicolor and inked versions, each individually drawn in four different views.
  • A total of more than 800 color and 450 black & white symbols.
  • More than 30 bitmap fills, 88 drawing, and 4 templates across two styles.
  • An Essentials guide introducing you to creating maps with the Isometric Cities style.

• Symbol Set 6 can be used with or without City Designer 3 and Perspectives 3.
• If you don’t own Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus, you can still use the PNG artwork included in this add-on, installed as a stand-alone resource folder.

Get more information on the Symbol Set 6 product page. If you want to take a look at SS6 in action, check out our live mapping video here.

Get Symbol Set 6 – Isometric Cities now!

Newsletter Subscribers have had access to SS6 for a while, and the CC3+ community has already created lots of beautiful maps. Here is a collection of some of them:

Murder At The East Gate by Grimur Fjeldsted

The Village of Orin by Gerri Broman

Shurav and Evorah by Ricko Hasche

Rattenzwinge by Micha Hofmann

The Village of Humbolt by Luke Zitlofsky

The City of Aeniar by Jeffrey Beiderbeck

And finally, an example map included in Symbol Set 6.

Have you marveled at the beautiful city maps that Mike Schley has created for the D&D role-playing game and other brands? If not, head over to his web page to see a great selection. Myself, I am a particular fan of his isometric city views like the Candlekeep map you see as the first listed on that page. They give a great overall impression of the location, while also haviong enough precise information to make them really useful as a gaming tool.

Of course I’ve been advocating for a symbol set using this art style for a while here at Profantasy, and I’m now more than happy that I have the first symbols on my desk for by an upcoming set by Mike himself. He’s been busy creating the inked outlines ofr the buildings and kindly provided a few colored ones as well, that I can show off here. Take a look!

So far my job concerning this product has mostly been looking over the incoming symbols, nodding and saying “Yes, they are great, thank you” by way approval. I’m looking forward to diving into creating all the symbols for CC3+ when more of the colored versions come in, and trying my hand at creating isometric city maps with them myself.