Late response to a query by Bill Harm on the March 30th PF livestream regarding making stains on parchment map backgrounds. I couldn't recall which Annual issue it had been on during the stream, but it's the Parchment and Paper one from June 2007!

This is an old sample map I made back in 2015, and which I've shown on the Forum before, for an ancient wargame campaign set in and around Anatolia, regarding some of the peoples and places mentioned in various versions of the story of the Argonauts:

It's not a complete set of everything you can do with it, but it gives a few ideas what was presented with that Annual issue.

Dee-licious! 🍳

So far as I recall from modelling the 8- and 6-rad armoured cars (i.e. also from period images and information), the aerials were fixed in position, and at a height above the turrets all the time. These are the early-war "bedstead" frame aerial types, not the later war smaller "star antennae" which were retrofitted to some models, incidentally.

Oh - and belated congratulations on your ascension to Master Mapper status @Lillhans ! Very well done!

This style follows the original Hobbs's Architecture book from 1876 (a free PDF of which comes with this Annual issue), and that indeed just leaves gaps for the doorways, which the style mimics.

For advice on using this issue, or indeed any Annual issues, see the accompanying PDF Mapping Guide. You can find this Guide, and any sample maps, images or other associated information files, wherever you've told the program to install the Annuals. On a standard default Windows installation, this will be in the C:\ProgramData\Profantasy\CC3Plus\Annual folder, after which you need just look for either the number or the name (the first year's Annuals only have a number) to find the correct sub-folder with all those details.

If you can't find, or remember, the issue you're after, check Sue's image wall of all the Annuals elsewhere on the Forum here, which covers up to the middle of 2o24 currently.

Enclosed Place of Interest 3 is the Floating Dale Park:

This can be used as a typical real-world park, with opportunities to wander around, or play outdoor games on the central Playing Fields, whose unusual shape may call to mind that Faerie outdoor games and sports may not be quite those familiar from the Mortal Realm.

There are a handful of surface-level buildings scattered around the map's centre, as one of the map toggles will reveal:

These include the Pavilion, where equipment for playing sports and games is available, as well as a restaurant in the central octagon beneath the building's dome. And yes, some of the vegetation is actually intended to be of living glass in Glass Tree Forest. And again yes, those ARE bridges made from rainbows over the River Clack. As ever, the text and PDF files will explain a little more about both facets, and others, from this map. In case this seems not very "Enclosed", there ARE boundaries to the Park which are deliberately less obvious than some.

Well, as it's turned out, not quite "next time" for Level Thirteen after all!

As I was drawing the various Tower levels, and especially when setting-up the cross-level hyperlinks, it soon became obvious I was relying on my own hand-scrawled schematic showing how all the levels connected with one another to manage that. This suggested a further such properly mapped schematic might be helpful for GMs trying to run the Tower with the portals active in the sequence shown on the maps. Thus we also have the Windy Tower GM's Guide map:

Although it was relatively simple and quick to draw (especially compared with setting up multiple macro hyperlinks per level!), it proved a little more complex than anticipated, thanks to the number of crossing arrow lines. Plus the whole went through around six different hand-sketched iterations before settling on this layout, to try to keep the arrow-line patterning as relatively simple as possible.

Now it's done though, it has been quite entertaining to use it to navigate using the FCW file's hyperlinks between the levels, when checking them in comparison with the text notes ahead of the final Atlas submission.

And so REALLY next time, Level Thirteen!

Just finished catching-up with today's livestream on replay. Didn't manage to get along in time for it, unfortunately.

I've been mapping a lot with this style over the past week, beyond my Wyvern's Wood map earlier, and as Ralf asked for extra symbol suggestions, these are things that occurred to me that I either needed (so had to hunt for them elsewhere) or felt would be useful as possibilities along the way.

• The style really needs some ruins markers to accompany the array of settlement/structure options.
• A non-Oriental temple/shrine.
• A shipwreck.
• A whirlpool.
• Options for undersea features more generally would be good - such as settlement markers for merfolk. If there were some ordinary flat-topped hills, they'd work as seamounts too, for instance, but coral reefs would be a nice addition, and although the conifers can be used in a pinch, some "genuine" giant kelp would be handy.
• The creature sketches are good now, but it would be useful to have more. Such as, from the "cave art" concept, bears, lions (how can there not be a big cat - yet?!), bison, humanoids (a varicolor option for these could work for different types of fantasy humanoids; actually, varicolor options for all would be useful). Not sure if boars would be needed, given I just used the wolves as boars earlier (and deer for nomadic centaurs)! The sketchy nature of these really works well, so one design will often work for multiple creature types.
• Might be interesting to have a skeleton option in the creature sketches as well. And maybe a dragon or two (one of which would obviously be a wyvern 😉), perhaps a hydra and a roc (which would work as an eagle or any other larger bird of prey). And giant ants...
• Some more rustic settlement designs - including a single hut for those witches, warlocks and hags to lurk in - and some nomadic-tent/campsite options.
• On the terrain side, something to represent farmland would be useful.

I'm sure others will come up with far more as well!

Just finished catching-up with today's video, as I wasn't able to be there for it live.

I've used Character Artist quite a bit over the years, and it was a shame to discover there are no plans to update or expand it, if perhaps understandably so, given it is something of a "luxury" add-on, compared with the primary mapping purpose of CC3+ in general.

Reviewing the video so soon after it was posted means the chat wasn't available to view (it sometimes is lost anyway, if the video is later edited before its final YouTube posting), but I don't think it was mentioned there that there is also the original Character Artist Pro, which has many more drawn-symbol options than CA3, and is much easier to draw your own additions onto, because it uses the far simpler vector drawing style. I suspect many now wouldn't feel it to be "pretty" enough, compared to the more modern hand-drawn version, unfortunately, but it is a versatile tool that shouldn't be ignored - to me, at least!

It shouldn't create a misalignment if you use the snap grid properly, but you may need to mask the second grid in places. Or you could just draw one grid across all, and mask those areas of the grid that lie beyond the structure's walls.

As with most things in CC3+, there isn't just one option for solving issues like this - it's which one you're more comfortable with that typically wins the day.

Thanks very much Sue!

I wanted the cliffs here to look different to yours, which I'd already decided to use for the red sandstone types at Embra, as the Palace Heights ones are meant to be a harder, volcanic type of rock. Actually, a Faerie type of volcanic rock, which has different properties and abilities to "ordinary" volcanic rock, so I also wanted the forms here to act as a reminder that something a little different to normal was involved. I also used a similar style of cliff drawing in one of the Crossing Places Streets - the Rocky Vale under Seafield Road there, again because the Vale is a weird place that can't be reached, another reminder of something odd happening there.