Tell me all about your DnD campaigns!
MatthewBertram
🖼️ 5 images Traveler
As I'm sure most (well, maybe most) of you picked up CC3+ for creating your own worlds for DnD and other TTRPGs, I'm curious to see the maps you've made and hearing the lore about the worlds you've created! I myself am creating a (rather ambitious) campaign featuring 5 different planets and many quests for all of them! I'll keep y'all updated as those come along. Excited to use FT3 and Cosmographer 3 for those when the time comes!
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Hello! I made a new world within the last year. I made a map of the western half of the continent in which they started. I kept the details of the other lands sparse. When the party needs information about other places, I can reference material or make it up to fit their needs. That way, when I make another map, it fits their needs. I love doing it that way. I kept the city names spread out and rather sparse so that I can zoom in CC3 and make smaller maps with a little more detail as they explore. It's gone well.
I have played D&D off and on since around 1980, but the last longer campaign I was in ended around 2009 or so. Some time around 2016, I decided to start building my campaign world in preparation for getting a new group together. I spent some time researching mapping software before settling on Campaign Cartographer. In the years between buying the software and finally learning how to use it, I was writing up a lot of the lore for my campaign world, first in MS Word before finding a few Wiki plugin for my WordPress website. Lots done in the Religion section, along with some in History and Geoscience.
Still haven't actually DM'd in this world yet. Another group of friends who I had never played with invited me to join a campaign they were launching. We had a few sessions before COVID hit, and then tried one remote session on Discord that was a complete disaster, and everything fell apart. So I got back into my own worldbuilding (which can be a fun activity in its own right), and then started getting into map-making. I admit that Campaign Cartographer has taken over my hobby time and I've neglected the world-building.
Meanwhile, the old group that I played with in the early 2000s is getting back together. One friend who was part of that group, and whom I've played with off and on since 1989, moved back from New York and decided to DM a Pathfinder campaign for us. So my world is still off on its own as I dive into his world...but my Wiki still exists. And so I present to you: the World of Adnati.
@Royal Scribe, have you considered running something online? For example Roll20 or PlayByWeb (shameless plug). I've used both, and they can be good outlets for this kind of creativity. My Roll20 games that haven't been pre-made have mostly used my sci-fi maps. It's gone well overall.
@KertDawg I haven’t really given it thought. I’ve never played with people where I wasn’t already friends with at least most of them in real life. Maybe! I will see how much time this Pathfinder game takes first.
I've played since like 82, when I got Basic. I then bought all the 1st edition books.
Forgotten Realms come out in 87. I was hooked. Then second edtion came out. Still my fav system 5th is pretty awesome as well.
I created my own world around 2000, but I keep that to myself. I have my characters, their timeline of events and around 180 00 words writen so far. The timeline is a few hundred years, all detailed on a spreadsheet.
I only really talk about the forgotten realms. Greyhawk is ok as well.
Like a couple of others on this thread, I started playing in the AD&D days (late '70s for me), stopped for a few years, picked it up again during the 2nd edition (really 2.5), the stopped for much longer before picking it up once more almost a decade ago with the 5th edition. About a year and a half ago, I decided to start DMing for the first time since I was in high school.
It's a homebrew world. Very briefly, every millennium cultists seek to return a demon lord to the world to try to bring about eternal night. The last time around, a network of dwarves succeeded in disrupting the grand ritual, but at great cost -- many died, others corrupted. Now, nearly a thousand years later, the PCs are working to rediscover what the cultists are up to and what the dwarves had done to prevent the demon lord from returning last time.
My only previous post on this forum was a year ago or so when I sought help in making my first overland map. After that, I took Duane Wilkey's map of Freeboro using the Cities of Schley symbol set and tried to figure out how he had put that together, adding and subtracting a few buildings and other symbols of my own to create the city that I wanted. That helped me then tackle creating a few floorplans using Dungeons of Schley (with other symbols pulled in from an annual or two, if I remember correctly).
I like the stylistic cohesion of the Schley symbols for most of the maps I'm using in my campaign, but I have found uses for a couple of annuals as well. The PCs discovered an old dwarven map identifying the approximate locations of the outposts the dwarves had used 1000 years ago to stop elements of the cultists' grand ritual, and for that I wanted a relatively simple, stylistically distinct, and evocative style. I chose Ancient Realms Revisited from January. I love the look of that symbol set. The new map was based on my original one, but in addition to marking the dwarven locations, some geographic features have changed in meaningful and relevant ways (giving a PC an excuse to use her cartography proficiency):
Then, I wanted to create a treasure map where one side would have a fake map leading to a trap and the other side a message written in druidic explaining the real route (borrowing a homebrew druidic script I stumbled across). Here I used the Treasure Maps style from the 2011 Annual.
My skills are still pretty rudimentary at this point, but I've really enjoyed the variety of styles I can use in CC3+.
@boffo, I love this approach of using different annuals and styles for found maps — whether it’s an ancient map found in some archives, or a sketch given to the adventurers by a ruffian in a tavern. Gives you the opportunity to stick with a particular style for your main campaign maps while still getting to use other annuals and styles.
Thanks, yes, I'm pretty sure I'll find uses for more styles in this campaign. Probably Parchment Worlds at some point, as well as a b&w style like Pencil Sketch, both from the 2024 annual. Part of the fun is imagining the purposes of different mapping/document styles in this world.