ProFantasy's Map-Making Archive

The September issue of the Cartographer’s Annual has just been released. With it we celebrate the end of summer with a new dungeon and battle map style for some frigid caverns and icy waters. Let your players explore glacial tunnels, high mountain caves or the caverns beyond the mountains of madness.

The Ice Caverns style can be used as an extension to Dungeon Designer 3 or own its own. Either way, it is setup for ease of use making drawing some natural caves a snap.

The August issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2022 yet, you can do so here.

Our Dynamic Dungeon project is moving along, and for this installment of the series, I am going to address several interesting concepts and techniques.

• Creating custom entities so we can store our settings with the map.
• Creating dialogs to change settings. Here I also show how we can use owner-drawn lists to draw comboboxes with previews of the fill from the map. We’ll also create macro versions of the settings commands.
• Accessing the drawing InfoBlock to find fills.
• Making sure our tool stop at the map border, the same way that CC3+’s drawing tools does.

I am including the interesting bits of code right here in the article, but I have made minor changes all over the code from the previous articles to accommodate some of the new features from this article, so don’t forget to download the complete project from the link at the end of this article.

To be able to follow this article series, you should have read my earlier articles in the series.

As with the previous installments, here is a short video showing our results so far.

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You can’t make a good dungeon without having some secrets, right? Hidden traps, secret doors, concealed corridors, illusory floors, invisible enemies and fake treasure. Now, placing invisible enemies on the map is dead simple (trick being not actually placing them at all) but how can I make a map with a secret corridor that I can reveal and hide at will, and not betraying it’s existence when it is hidden?

CC3+ has nice tools for adding corridors to your map, but you have do decide if they should break the wall or not when connecting to an existing room or corridor. And this is where the challenge begins. It is easy enough to temporarily hide something by putting it on it’s own layer so toggling the visibility of the corridor is easy, but if you chose to have it break the wall when placed, you would still have that hole there when the corridor is hidden. Now, that isn’t actually a good way to keep it secret. On the other hand, if you chose to not break the walls, then there will be walls blocking the corridor even when it is revealed, which look a bit weird, and we can’t have any of that, can we?

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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.

Grids are a necessity when you are making your battle maps and it is easy to add a grid in CC3+ through the Draw Menu (Hex or Square Overlay). And this is quite OK for many maps, but with just a little bit more work, one can make it much prettier. For example, a common desire is to only have the grid visible over the floors in the rooms, where the characters can actually walk. And maybe you have a tiled floor and want the grid aligned to that? In this article, I am going to discuss some of the things you can do with your grid.

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Ever wanted to have something appear as a being inscribed into the wall or floor instead of appearing on top of it? With a little bit of manipulation and a few effects, we can turn any vector symbol or basic shape into such an inscription.

We can then use this technique to decorate floors in a dungeon, or used with both walls and floors in a perspective drawing, netting us some nice way of adding decorations without overusing symbols.
Continue reading »

(Download the FCW file.)

This was a fun project. Knowing I have an Isometric version of this tomb in an upcoming annual to map out, led me to do a little research on just exactly how or what I was going to map. I wanted to find something simple, as I am not very familiar with the isometric/perspectives maps ProFantasy offers, although I do own them, I just haven’t found myself using them, which makes this project even better! Anyway, I found my way to a fantastic site, https://www.osirisnet.net/3d-tours/e_3d-tours.htm which led me to tomb QV66, otherwise known as the tomb of Queen Nefertari, one of the most beautiful tombs found to date. Continue reading »

In light of the recent world-wide developments, were many people are stuck at home, we’ve decided to extend the content in basic CC3+ to include more material for dungeons and cities, so you can use CC3+ alone to make everything from world maps via cities down to floorplans and dungeon maps. You can download this latest update from your registration page to get the additional tools and drawing styles, and the full CC3+ setup will also include them from now on.

What do you get specifically? We’ve included a selection of Annual issues, some of which were already available for free and other which weren’t so far:

• Jon Roberts Overland
• Jon Roberts Cities
• Jon Roberts Dungeons
• Naomi VanDoren Floorplans

Here are the release notes for version 3.94:

CC3+ Version 3.94
=================
– added new drawing styles to CC3+ install: Jon Roberts Overland, Jon Roberts Cities, Jon Roberts Dungeon, Namoi VanDoren Floorplans
– added city and dungeon menus to base setup
– added basic city and dungeon tools to base setup

It’s time to delve underground, but we want to make sure our dungeon walls are properly build and nicely decorated. Explore a new feature of the Symbols Along command in version 3.80 of CC3+ (see Update 14 here), that allows you to auto-generate walls built from individual symbols.

The February issue “Dungeon Walls” contains 60 new symbols for three different mapping styles, command and symbol settings to make quick and easy use of them, as well as a 4-mapping guide explaining the process. Check out the February style details on the Cartographer’s Annual 2018 website.

You can now subscribe to the Annual 2018 here. Once you have subscribed, the January issue will immediately become available for download on your registration page.

Are you looking for some house-to-house fighting with orcs or undead? Yearning to kick in that door or burn down a barn that hides an evil cult? Look no further, the November issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2017 has you covered. It contains three highly detailed battle maps that combine building floorplans with outdoor locations.

The maps were produced for Pelgrane Press’ upcoming third installment in the Battle Scenes series and highlight the options you get when combining different map types and styles into a larger whole.

The November issue is now available for CC3+ from the registration page for all subscribers. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2017 yet, you can do so here.