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!

Are you using a PC with Windows 10 or 11? If so, that shouldn't cause any problems such as you mention, unless there's a problem with one of the files you're trying to open, and that's what's causing the program to crash.

As a test, I opened one CC3+ file I've been using today through Win Explorer - just double-clicked on the file to open it, as Sue said - and then right-clicked the cursor while over the CC3+ icon in the toolbar to bring up the list of recent CC3+ files, picked one of those at random by clicking, and it opened immediately, so I currently have two different maps in two separate CC3+ windows open while I'm typing this.

Again, as Sue mentioned though, you can't open multiple files from an open CC3+ window, as that simply replaces whatever map it's showing with the other one (after asking if you want to save the first one before doing so).

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.

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...

I've no real recollection of what started my interest in maps, mostly because I don't remember a time when I wasn't aware of them. The earliest maps I recall, from when I was very young, were maps of the night sky and maps of the region around where I was born, as my parents had these, and I was encouraged to look over them from then onwards. The particular blue of the 1957 Philips' Star Chart is what I still associate with maps of the night sky. The fact books often had maps in, notably, if not exclusively, fantasy fiction ones, kept that momentum going until I discovered D&D in 1976, along with interests and studies in physical geography and geology, by when drawing my own maps by hand was just something I did. Never quite got round to stopping.

When I started having increasing dexterity issues from 2010, I looked around for computer mapping options to help accommodate those, and discovered CC3, widely-held as the best there was, and still the most powerful fantasy mapping tool from what I've seen. I've been using it since 2013. Most of the maps I draw with it now are items for the Community Atlas, something I'd hope to continue with, although I always seem to have ideas and plans for more that time rarely allows to bring to fruition...