Wyvern
Wyvern
About
- Username
- Wyvern
- Joined
- Visits
- 3,151
- Last Active
- Roles
- Member
- Points
- 5,378
- Rank
- Cartographer
- Badges
- 24
-
Flooring Maps
Glad you got that sorted. Those are nice-looking floorplans!
Ellipses are fairly straightforward in CC3+. Just right-click on the Circle drawing tool icon - |CC2CIRP| - to call up the options list, and there's an Ellipse tool right there.
Spirals are a lot trickier though. Remy Monsen wrote a blog post about creating a macro to draw a spiral here, and although writing macros like this is pretty advanced stuff compared to simply drawing things and placing symbols using the program, they will let you automate much more sophisticated tasks with elegance. That blog post is the third in a short series of three on using macros, and you may find it useful to read through all of them (there are links at the end of that "spiral" post) if you're unfamiliar with how they're written before embarking on spiral design tests. And as usual, if you get stuck, just ask again here!
-
Wyvern's Wood - A Handdrawn Fantasy Map
Seeing the maps appearing on the Forum using this new style already, it's perhaps unsurprising I've felt the need to join in, as much as anything because the main sample map that comes with the Handdrawn Fantasy Annual style included The Wyvern's Wood!
In a break with my usual mapping too, this one isn't intended for the Community Atlas (although it's possible it may eventually feature there, probably in a variant form). That orange outlining square shows the region I picked to illustrate from the sample map.
Having had a long fascination with woodlands for fantasy mapping and scenario designing, I was somewhat spoilt for choice as to which of my previous RPG-related settings to draw upon in creating this map. What I went with was a selection of items from a storyline drafted in 1993. I'd intended it originally as a one-off scenario, run using the Call of Cthulhu rules, for a twice-yearly gaming convention I attended for much of the 1990s. The design though grew into something that needed a longer timescale as a short campaign instead, and ultimately, it was never run at all.
That scenario was a modern-day one, set initially on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, England, and which included various loosely Arthurian and mythological items, then increasingly introducing horror and surreal elements, rising to a chaotic finale. What I've extracted from it here are specific significant locations, adding them to the new map in no strong order, since the originals were designed to be encountered in only a rough order anyway - and in some cases repeatedly. Most of that detail and pathway structure has naturally been omitted here.
So this is what I came up with:
As is obvious though, I had to draw on other handdrawn styles from SS1 in identifying the various features, to highlight them sufficiently, and their sizing is of course hopelessly out of scale, as so often happens with this kind of pictorial map. Maybe though some of these added symbols might give some ideas for future expansions of the new style!
-
Flooring Maps
You can use Ctrl+C or the drop-down Edit menu's Copy command, select the items you want to copy over, and then click "Do it", picking a suitable point to copy them from.
You will need to prepare a new map file first (just set up a blank map in the correct style, and of a suitable size), and have both it and your existing map open together to do this more easily. Providing you open each map separately, that won't be a problem (just use Windows Explorer to find the files you need, for instance).
-
Floor Question
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.
-
Community Atlas: Selenos, Statrippe, Artemisia
And so lastly, we have the dungeon, linked by a rubble-hidden trapdoor from area B2 in the Castle, Crabwell Delve:
Jon Roberts Dungeon again, with a hint of Token Treasury 2! A nice, simple layout, and while it would have been pleasant to have more symbol options, a top-view statue of a Platinum Basilisk was always going to be unlikely, together with a gigantic Crowned Crab statue to fit over the top of, and around, the well. Hints of magic, fun and weirdness to be found in this long-abandoned, indeed long-lost, piece of subterranea, however, courtesy of those Story Engine card decks!
Next time, I'm apparently staying in the tropics, if a bit further south, to visit somewhere on the large island of Ethra in southwestern Doriant...






