I didn't find any real missed marketing opportunities among the Annual descriptions personally, but you are probably correct to suggest most folks come to the Annuals after they've been using the main Campaign Cartographer software for a while - so the lists of what each contains mean perhaps rather more than they might for someone coming to them "cold". Certainly, those, plus the text descriptions and illustrations were enough to sway me. But I have long been a sucker for a pretty map anyway!

As for the Forum contributor connections, there may be earlier discussions I don't recall now, but there was an interesting What Are Everyone's RPG Connections? topic started back in June. And there are quite a number of writers/novelists who are active here too - making maps for their books, especially.

I'm not aware of anyone having tackled a map of Vienna for any time period so far in Campaign Cartographer, and a quick search has confirmed that general absence online, although there could be something hidden away I've missed, of course.

As for creating one yourself, that very much depends what you're wanting to accomplish with it. If you've a map (a historical map, for instance) you want to duplicate and amend in CC3+, and have a good-quality image of that (as a JPG or a similar bitmap file), you could simply import that into a CC3+ drawing and hand-trace the various elements you want to reproduce in the program. If it's a modern map that interests you, you may be able to circumvent parts of the drawing process by using digital vector mapping data, although that is quite an involved process. Ralf recently did a live mapping video session doing just this, albeit that was for a much larger region than a city (Australia!).

If you can be more specific with what you're wanting to achieve with your map, it may be someone here can advise you better, however.

That's certainly a fresh possibility, although having tried it out recently, I think the Annual 121 B&W Fantasy set provides a broader range of mapping options, given it's a normal style, and not hex-based, so you can fit symbols to the hexes, yet still have it look more naturalistic. It's what I used for my Whispering Wastes map at least. Even so, that style would benefit from expansion with a wider range of symbol options too (then again, we always want more symbols, don't we 😉?!).

So far as I'm aware, yes. I've done it before certainly.

Yes, I find I have to be very focused to make sure projects get finished. That may be why I have projects that are many decades old that are still, theoretically, "in progress", however...

Downside to that is remembering to update the spreadsheet, of course...

In case Remy doesn't spot this, from the original post way back on Page 1: The competition ends October 1st 2024, 12:00 UTC.

So that's 20 full days as I type this, plus a bit (the exact amount depending on how UTC = Greenwich Mean Time correlates with your local clock time).

You could perhaps try Avalon Quest, Cagliostro or one of the Mason Serif fonts as an alternative to Copperplate (they're all fine for Atlas use).

The river lines seem a little too regular presently, which is accentuated where the kingdom border lies alongside them, leading to some unlikely sharp corner angles in places that look unnatural as well, including the non-river angle NW of Mt Feynon.

The shading effect to highlight the kingdom looks good. It might work better if you were showing the entire kingdom on this map, as it looks a little strange to have the border heading off two map edges, suggesting this is only one small part of a much larger area. The title scroll so close to the right map edge also implies this.

To an extent, yes. At this scale, they don't need to be substantial necessarily, but long straight lines, and those arcing curves (those between Mounts Haymish and Beck, under the Gongodur banner, and northwest from Middleham) look artificial. They'd be fine as canals; not so much as natural rivers.

I think this is accentuated, for me at least, because many of the road lines have more natural-looking small curves and slight changes of direction along them than some of the rivers.

Actually, looking closer at the roads, that long curving line between Tuncaster to the Jolly Hedgehog clips the foot of one of the smaller peaks on the western side of the Wirbel Mountains (about opposite the Dhegburim Mines), so might be tweaked a little to avoid it, since the rest is in the broad valley there otherwise.

Sue's saved me having to comment about the fonts - thanks Sue! - but for the labelling in general, because there's quite a lot happening mostly in the mountains, I'd suggest thinking of moving the labels, where practical, out onto the plain grassland green areas, which might help with the font style & colours issues. I'd also be inclined to think of shortening the title scroll, and moving it too onto the plains, so it's hiding less of the "interesting" terrain it currently partly overlies.

The river lines are definitely improved now. That around Mt Haymish and Tuncaster is a little too angular in places though (Beck River). Where that same river curves towards Middleham, it may look better to have it follow the break in terrain fills, instead of cutting through them. You might find it easier to erase and redraw this river using a smooth-path river drawing tool, instead of trying to adjust it where it is now. I usually end up doing that, at least!

On the political borders version, the edge colours are very distracting, and make it hard to know where the river lines are. I suspect it would look better with just the shading effect on the areas outside Gongodur, as that'll still highlight where the borders are sufficiently, with luck. You may need to add some new shading to the areas on the east and south map edges, however. This would avoid the oddity of the mountain peaks being overlain by the border colours (though you could move those lines to a sheet below the mountain symbols instead, of course).

Unless there's a strong plotline reason, it may be worth reconsidering having the southern Gongodur border cutting through the symbol in the Valley of Dread, as presently.

EDIT: Forgot! The compass indicator probably needs enlarging, and again moving to somewhere less terrain-interesting. It's rather too well-hidden where it is now (which is naturally why I forgot it 😉).