The October issue of the Annual 2024 delivers a wonderfully whimsical and simple dungeon style by community mapper CC Charon, where colorful sticky notes represent dungeon rooms. Corridors drawn on the background paper connect them, and they are populated by handdrawn traps and monsters. 120 hand-drawn bitmap symbols, 18 drawing tools, 7 bitmaps styles and a 3-page mapping guide combine in the Sticky Notes Dungeon style to allow you paste together charming dungeon designs within minutes.

The October 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.

Anders Bergström – known as Lillhans on the ProFantasy forum – has astounded us at ProFantasy and the whole CC3+ community with his aquarelle-style drawings for a while now, with many of us having trouble believing that they were done in CC3+. Look at this map:

It’s so different from the usual battlemap styles (varied as they are), that everybody was wondering “how did he do it?”.

After creating an Annual style based on his work in September 2019, he’s now spilling even more secrets in the following article “Doodles & Drawings”. Let’s hand over to him:

Doodles & Drawings

A while back, it was suggested that I write an article about the train of thought and process of using Campaign Cartographer in what has to be among the least time-efficient ways possible. That is, using it to the best of my abilities. Not too long after, there was also a request for a tutorial being made and while a completely different script was already in the making for the first article, I figured I might as well splice thoughts and ideas. Then, a third request for popping the hood of my faux hand-drawn endeavours prompted yet another consideration of focus and approach and – would you believe it – a third iteration seemed more appropriate after all.

Anyway, here is the rather lengthy introduction. Don’t worry: there will also be some kind-of-technical stuff further down the line. And that stuff is going to be rather lengthy as well, I guess.

Continue reading the pdf article…

About the author: Occasional map-finisher, sometimes character sheet filler, and at least once every two decades talking with the others about putting the band back together. It’s probably for the best not to mention I one time was in the jury (when they still had those) for the Eurovision song contest national selections.

For September we are happy to present a new contributor to the Cartographer’s Annual: Hans Anders Bergström. His maps caught our eye in the ProFantasy community with their unique watercolour look, which is very different from that is normally created with Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus. We approached Anders, and he agreed to let us create an Annual issue from his innovative work, even supplying a wonderful walkthrough of his process, which comprises the majority of the mapping guide.

At first glance it’s hard to believe Anders’ maps were actually created with Campaign Cartographer 3+, but his innovative work with sheets and sheet effects is really not that difficult once you know what he’s doing. And that’s exactly what this Annual issue does: it teaches you how to recreate Anders’ Techniques for your own beautiful watercolour-style maps.

If you haven’t done so already, you can subscribe to the Annual 2019 here. If you are already subscribed, the September issue is available for download on your registration page now.