Tweaked the text for the ones I saw that were too close to the border. I will have the borders set to be on, but the political borders and names of the other countries are all on the same layer, so they can toggle on and off at the same time.

Tweaked the Marine Dungeons version a bit: darkened the deeper water a little more, added a few dead trees, added more algae, and a few more bones.

I have been working on taking a part of the world I created in Fractal Terrains and recreating it in various CC3 styles. I did a version in the Parchment style, and now I'm working on one in the Mike Schley style. (I was going to wait until it was done, but I just can't contain myself.) When that's done, I will try doing the shaded contours style that Ralf demonstrated in this video:

The portion of my world that I've been experimenting with is a great island nation called the Republic of Lumadair, a democratic republic with elements inspired by the Roman Republic. Here are exports from Fractal Terrains. (Note: this map is about 6,000 miles wide, so the rivers shown should be considered to be only the very largest ones. That said, I may still add more to the island later.)

And here it is again, recreated in CC3 using the Parchment Worlds style:

It is intentionally scant on civilization details other than labeling the capitol and a mysterious and foreboding area of magic.

Hi Reddog! Welcome.

I'm pretty new here myself — though I’ve owned the software for many years, it’s only been about six months since I realized I couldn’t learn it simply by experimenting. The tutorials really, really helped me.

I’ll let others with more experience guide you, but my two cents: it sounds like Dungeon Designer will best achieve what you want. The name implies old-school D&D dungeons and caverns, but it's really great for any type of inside or outside floorplan (a house, a temple, some crypts, a section of a forest road where bandits are lurking to attack). If you want something that you can use figures on, whether to print out to use with miniatures or to use on screen with a virtual table top, Dungeon Designer will probably suit you best.

As for tutorials, which is how I learned: the new ones are great but I would start with some of the older ones to get the basics down. On the Video Tutorials page, you'll find a really well organized list. I started with Joe Sweeney's, which did a great job starting with the basics. They are old, and some tips have been superseded by software advancements. (For example, Joe made a point in the older videos of talking about placing symbols from the back and moving forward, but now there's a "Sort Symbols on Map" function that makes that advice no longer necessary.) But they really helped me get the concepts down.

The Learning CC3+ videos will give you a good grounding in the basic tools. I would then proceed to the Quickies section. With the Campaign Cartographer Concepts and Blog Videos, I would recommend going to specific ones once you've got the basics down and have a specific question about a technique or tool.

The Live videos are really great, but each one covers lots of different techniques, and many of the newer ones assume some basic knowledge, so I wouldn't start with them. Once you've gotten the basics down, you might want to look at the names to see if there are some tackling stuff similar to what you're doing. For example, if you're designing a dungeon, "Creating dungeon with the Jon Roberts style" and "Livemapping: Dungeon & Cave" would be useful. I've gone through almost the entire archives of Live videos and I learn something from every single one, but you'll want to have the basics down first.

Okay, the first thing I did was back another backup of the FCW in case I didn't like the fractalization and couldn't undo it. ;-)

The fractal command isn't something I've used that much, and when I tried it on this map earlier, I wasn't sure of which settings to play with. While I think the smoother map works for a map of this scale, I rather like the Depth 2, Strength 40, smooth result on the rivers. Fractalized a few of the roads but not all -- there were some where it just made the road look overly-caffeinated.

With the place names: I added names for the settlements and rivers that were missing them (let me know if I missed anything important). I've played with the Glow settings a bit. I'll post the FCW, too, if anything has adjustments to recommend.

Here it is without the borders:

And again with the redrawn borders:

I am ready to submit the Kingdom of Gongadûr area map for the Atlas. At least one village that I will be submitting to the contest will be within this region. (I have active plans for two others in this area but we'll see if time permits.)

The parent map is the Gold Coast map at the top of this thread.

Primary Style: Mike Schley Overland

Toggles: "Borders/Political" layer to turn on/off the political borders

I'm still practicing and experimenting with different maps of all sorts. Just for fun, I thought I would take a stab at designing a castle on a cloud. (Maybe it's a cloud giant's castle? Undecided.)

I started with an overland map set at 250 x 200, I believe. (Maybe I will do a city map of it later for a closer look, or perhaps a dungeon map.) I decided to use Mike Schley's Overland style. To create the clouds, I used various foams, rapids, and waterfall mist from Sue's Forest Trail set. It's hard to see until you move in, but there's a little bit of texture to the cloud added by the foaming rapids. I put them on a new sheet that I called "Clouds," placing it below the Roads sheet, which was the lowest of all of the surface-level sheets. I tried to put a drop shadow on the Clouds sheet but couldn't get it to work (entirely possible that some or all of my cloud ended up on the wrong sheet). Instead, I drew inspiration from the manual cliffs shadows that Sue had in Forest Trails. I used the Sea Contours to draw a shadow, and then moved the "Contours (Sea)" sheet to render before the cloud.

The castle, with its extra towers, was added to a "Symbols on Cloud" sheet that I created. I also had a Flying Lowest and Flying Low sheet above the Cloud sheet, and Flying and Flying Highest sheets below it. I thought the four different flying sheets would allow me to show things at different altitudes with different drop shadows, but I ended up only using one of them for the birds (maybe Giant Eagles or Giant Hawks?), which from the cartouches from Forest Trails.

Anyway, there's my first pass at something I haven't see here before.

I'll be starting on the actual Haunted Mansion part of this Haunted Mansion Map today. But first, here's the rest (almost) of what's going on in the church and graveyard.

Here's the first level of the church's basement.

It may seem odd that a basement has so many windows. This basement is only about 75% below ground. The top 25% is above ground, and that's where windows to let light in are located -- close to the ceiling from the inside, but at foot level from the outside. There's a set of double doors connecting to a interior ramp that leads out to the graveyard. The mortician has two rooms here, one for preparing the deceased for funerals, and another that connects to a lower storage room in Basement 2. This level also has a few offices for the priests and clergy staff, a few storage rooms, and lavatories. Other than the doors from the graveyard, it is primarily accessed from the four stone spiral staircases (the two southern ones going all the way up to the bell towers, and the two northern ones going to balconies for the choir in the main chapel.

Continuing down into Basement 2, we find the mortician's storage rooms (including a stack of unused coffins) and the church's crypts for VIP decedents. I kept the shafts for the wells here so that I wouldn't accidentally create passageways through them. The two shafts that aren't connected to the crypts come from the lavatories in Basement 1 as well as the drain in the mortician's room. They connect to the not-yet-mapped sewers one more level below. (Sinister Sewers will come in handy again!)

But wait! Not all is as it seems here. There are two secret passageways off of the mortician's storage rooms. (I love that the cut-away polygons used to carve out tunnels can be moved to the "Secret" layer so that they can be hidden or revealed so easily.) The passageway heading west connects to a secret spiral stairway entrance to the Rectory. Who knows how many generations ago it was put in -- the church's current head priest, who lives in the rectory, doesn't even know it's there! The second passageway heading north connects below the Brambleheath Tombs, created by the Brambleheath family who also built the now-haunted mansion.

But wait again! One more secret here. If you remove the lids to the sarcophagi and coffins, you'll notice that a few have moldering remains but most are actually empty. They all have proper plaques naming the supposed occupants. It's unclear if the bodies were remove after burial, or if they never made it into their coffins. One on the northern side is filled with rocks, suggesting for that one, at least, it was interred without a body.

The sewers will come later, after I've done the Mansion. For now, let's head over to the Brambleheath Tomb. When you enter the tomb, a Glyph of Warding protects it from graverobbers. For a family tomb, it's surprisingly small: one large sarcophagus on the floor, two smaller ones on ledges to either side of it, and two urns with the cremains of other ancestors.

Visitors who make it past the Glyph of Warding can trace their finger along a sigil on the sarcophagus lid that activates a temporary levitation spell, raising the lid to reveal a staircase heading down. (I love this symbol set!)

The lower level of the tomb reveals a "small"" family crypt.

But wait, more secrets! A passageway heading south on the eastern side (this is the passage that connects to the mortician's storage room beneath the church, and another passageway that heads down stairs and then turns to head beneath the graveyard towards the mansion. If we open the coffins and sarcophagi here, we see that most do have bodies. It's hard to tell because they're in shadows, but the northeastern-most one was buried with a sword, and the one next to it was buried with a staff. Plot hooks!

That's it for now. Haunted Mansion and sewers still to come...

Here's how it's progressed so far today. (Still not wed to the name.) Still need to do more in the middle area that I am mentally calling the Midwest, even if it's just adding some hills with tiny rivers coming out of them. Trying to figure out where to place my existing maps and the future ones I'm planning.

I redid the two northern forests to add rivers, a road, and a few smaller settlements...and a henge of stones. That northernmost forest will be an elven community that is outside of the kingdom. (This style doesn't have a political borders tool, does it? I may have to create one, or just rely on labeling.) There's a tepui at the northern edge of the second forest. I haven't decided what will go on top of it. Maybe a castle? Maybe a temple with an oracle, like the Oracle of Delphi?

Here's a closer look at the desert. You can see where I plan to place my ziggurat. The obelisk to the south is apparently all that remains of an ancient temple that was long-ago swallowed up by the sands.

Added some cliffs near the coast. The whirlpool on the western side is about where my Octopus' Garden will go. The upper island, as I said before, will be a playground for the rich and famous, like a Monte Carlo.

And I made a little swampy river delta with a settlement akin to New Orleans that I envision being rife with smugglers and ne'er-do-wells.

In the southern mountains, which is outside of the kingdom's borders, there's a dwarven fortress. You can't see it, but you can see the pair of towers (towards the southeast corner of the map) that guard the mountain pass leading up to the fortress.

Let me know if you have thoughts, feedback, or ideas for more adventure hooks to add.

Okay, I think it was just one mountain that was mirrored and needed to be switched so the shadows were consistent. I tried to look at all of the hills and trees, too -- please let me know if you spot any with aberrant shadows.