I first joined the forums a year ago after months of watching YouTube tutorials (and years of owning the software but too intimidated to learn it). Map-making has become a soothing respite for me. The process taps into both my analytical side (figuring out all of the techniques to make things work) and my creative side (creating a work of art from a blank canvass). Thank you all for being such an important part of my year.

Apropos of Ralf's tutorial today (go "like" and subscribe!), I wanted to share my own holiday maps I designed for cards. You can see more in my galleries.

My first attempt was a country inn celebrating the Yuletide.

But I have found that for friends and family who aren't used to role-playing games or fantasy books with maps, some find the top-down maps to be a little confusing. I decided to go with a more isometric route using Spectrum Overland. This is the one I ended up putting on my cards. I call it "The Toy-Maker's North Pole Workshop."

(A friend commented that the castle is snowflake-shaped, which hadn't occurred to me. Love it!)

And for a more pagan solstice vibe, I also did this henge in a snowy forest. The henge radiates a magical purple glow.

Thank you, everyone, for your kindness and support this last year. I am very happy to have found this community.

That makes sense about making sure the major things are captured on the map, while being able to add smaller ones on the local area maps. And naming the features as well. I will have to come up with some names that aren't subconsciously lifting from literature. (Can't tell you how many times over the years I've thought, "Oh, Imladris is a good name for my elven kingdom -- no, wait!") I keep a running list on my phone of potential NPC character names. Some of those names may be suitable for place names instead (especially since so many place names are named after people.)

Here's the map as it stands with more hills in the "midwest" area, more rivers and settlements, roads and a few major bridges. (My thought is that except if I name where a road crossing a river something like "Blah Blah Blah Ford," there's a bridge there, but I added a few bridges that are meant to be unusually grand ones.)

Let me know if you spot anything weird or geographically improbable, or if there's anything missing. I also need to double check the Atlas maps to the north of the area I claimed to make sure there aren't features like hills or rivers that extend past the southern edges of those maps.

Here's a look at it at night, with lights added. I experimented with adding a moon like Jeff B did with his contest entry, but it was creating weird banding effects that I couldn't resolve. Instead, I played with the Shadow-Transparency in the Global Sun settings.

This is 35:

This is 50:

Went in to change the outside landscaping in the second floor file and noticed that I forgot some of the windows, especially on the main entrance side. @Don Anderson Jr., does this achieve what you recommending with the landscaping for the higher floors: keep the fence but eliminate the foliage? I kept the fence and added a Solid 20 fill (which I could change to Solid 10 if it looks too strong).

One thing I use layers for is to simultaneously reveal or hide things that because of different sheet effects need to be on different sheets. I once designed a five-level sewer system with each level of the sewers involving multiple sheets on a single layer for each level. Or a mountaintop covering a dungeon that can be hidden or revealed with a single layer.

For Forest Trail, I had to bring in the cottage from Darklands City, and the bones/debris from DD3. I struggled with two things: the riverbed and the ripples around trees growing in the water. For the ripples, I used the rapids symbols that come with the annual. For the riverbed, I tried three different versions.

Here are all three together:

The first version uses the riverbed fill from the annual. It doesn't look particularly swampy to me, though.

The second version uses a mud fill from the Forest Trail annual:

The third version uses a mud from Creepy Crypts:

I like the mud from the second two, but I'm not sure it's clear that the trees are growing out of muddy water and not just mud. Maybe if I added more waves, or played with the water effects?

Before attempting to do my entire campaign world in the new Fractal Parchment Worlds style, I wanted to try it out with a familiar spot: the Republic of Lumadair.

For this one, I exported Lumadair from Fractal Terrains in the Fractal Parchment Worlds style that Ralf demonstrated in today's Live session. But I also exported a contour map of the same view, and then copied a few of the elevation contours over, then used the Draw Like tool to convert them to the proper contour appearance.

Okay, I have furnished the first floor. Couple of other changes, too:

1. I reduced the size of the label numbers and mostly moved them outside the room (and the villa) that's being labeled. I hope it's clear enough what the number is labeling.
2. I added a semi-transparent parchment sheet to semi-0bscure the exterior areas, similar to what I did when I mapped the interior of the wizard's tower. (It's a different parchment than that map, though -- the original was from the Beaumaris Castle annual and I didn't want to have the parchment be the only thing from that annual.)
3. I split the Legend in half, and because they weren't showing up very well on the parchment, I placed them on a marble background. I tried different effects to really make them look etched in stone (like removing the drop shadow and changing the glow from inner to outer), but it made it harder to read, imo.

Probably won't have a chance to finish this by the end of Halloween, as I had planned, but that's okay. Here's the second floor. It has a few guest bedrooms and some common space for the family: an office, a library, and a solarium or sun room. The ballroom extends into this level, as it has high ceilings, but it is from this level that the family and VIP guests can make grand entrances into the ballroom from the stairway.

Not really sure why my roads outside now have a visible white line down the center. I tried changing the color to brown, but that didn't work.

Just noticed that in addition to failing to furnish the office, I also neglected to put in a doorway!

Still to come: floor 3 (bedrooms), the top floor of the tower, Basement 1 (kitchens, wine cellar, staff quarters, etc.), a secret Basement 2, and the sewers that connect everything together.

I decided I didn't want to redo the entire tower, so I did some stairs ascending around it from the courtyard as a proof of concept. I do like the idea of stairs winding around a tower. Wonder if I can make it go around multiple times? I have some thoughts on how to do that, but I will save them for another map.

In the meantime, here's how it turned out:

(It's subtle, but beneath the railing there are railing posts, which you can't really see but they cast a subtle shadow.)

Anyway, I'm rushing out the door, but I will make any tweaks when I return and then re-export the maps that show the tower.