Funny, that’s what I was doing all afternoon. Went down to the Old San Francisco Mint to take pics, because the floor plans I found online had conflicting info about the exterior. (Some had fountains outside that I don’t remember seeing — must have been when it was an operational mint up into the 1930s.) Then I went to the main branch of the public library to see if they had floor plans of the original main branch (1917-1993, which is now the Asian Art Museum) — and they did! Lots of mapping inspiration.

I have previously done the Republic of Lumadair, a portion of my campaign world, in many different styles. (There's an album in my galleries showing the different approaches.) I find it helpful to compare styles with a consistent coastline and terrain.

Anyway, here's a first pass at trying it with the new Ancient Realms Revisited annual.

I ended up using tower symbols instead of cities to show the major unnamed cities. I've only done a few of the icon symbols for major points of interest, though I can do more. Instead of putting the icons exactly where the locations would be, I put them off to the side with a dotted line to the actual location (similar to how I approached my Modern Journeys map).

This sort of forest approach rather than individual symbols isn't my favorite approach, but it's growing on me. For the coastal cities, maybe I should trace the coastline rather than being more freeform? Ralf brought in some Mike Schley symbols (Asian settlements) in his video tutorial, so maybe I will try that with Mike's tree symbols. I'm worried, though, that those tree symbols would make this look too much like a knockoff of Mike's overland style and not its own thing.

I did one custom symbol of a dragon, but I'm not thrilled.

I used a parchment background but maybe a solid color would be better? (The icon background is on a separate sheet, so I could see if a texturize effect helps.) Or I could put a tower icon as the main icon with a dragon over it. If anyone knows of better dragon symbols to use, let me know. (I thought about the heraldry icons from CA15, but I'm not so sure.)

I have noticed a side effect from mapping with CC3 for a year (your mileage may vary). I have always been interested in cool architecture, but now when I am out and about, I am much more aware of little architectural details. Specifically, I find myself wondering, "What would that look like from a birds-eye view...and what techniques would I use to render that in CC3." 😉

In my opinion, it’s well worth the investment. Fractal Terrains is great, but limited without also having CC3. The community here has been so helpful to me. Lots of experienced mappers ready to give advice. But also: the staff is fantastic. I’ve never used a software product where so many people on staff were so ready, willing, and able to offer support on techniques, not just software bugs. As I understand it, most or all of the folks on staff were end users before moving the company.

On Ralf's 2025 Ancient Realms Revisited tutorial this morning, there was discussion about using the Color Key rivers tool (where a magenta river is placed on the LAND sheet, cutting through the land to reveal the sea below). It was mentioned that the terrain sheets have to go over the land, and that means that you have to draw terrain around the rivers or using the regular rivers fill instead of the cutout.

I tried to do an experiment. On the left, I drew blue rivers over a swampy terrain. Not bad, but you do have to connect it properly to the coast for it to look right. But then on the right, I tried a different approach. I used the Color Key Cutout rivers on the land. Then I drew a swamp over it. Then I added the COLOR KEY effect to the LAND FEATURES (SWAMP) sheet (moving it to be the first effect), and then copied my magenta rivers to that sheet as well.

Both work well but I really like how the river pops in the swamp on the right. Quenten's CC4 wishlist idea in the chat of allowing color cutouts to cut through multiple sheets is a great idea, but in the meantime, copying the cutout to multiple sheets seems to work well.