No, it was just as if it were a glitch that happened when I reopened the Dark Fantasy map today Sue. I think it's somehow been a hangover from the Handdrawn Fantasy style I was using the day before, as if the program was somehow "remembering" that, instead of only using the correct set of tool templates.

I wanted to flag it here, since it seems possible there's something going on in the software causing this to occur, as I couldn't think of an alternative explanation for why it happened.

After it switched back to the correct tools, it never happened again, as I was reusing the river drawing tools (as amended) for some time after that. As I said though, weird 😁!

You should though check your card provider's terms and conditions before carrying out the transaction, as you may find there's a small extra fee to convert the currency (about 3% of the transaction value is common, though not universal). Like Loopysue, I'm in the UK, but have carried out transactions this way for some years for US, Canadian and New Zealand Dollars and Euros, for instance, and the transactions have always been pretty straightforward.

Also, if you're concerned, you can pay through PayPal (even if you don't have a PayPal account), and that shows you exactly how much you'll be paying in your own currency, including the conversion fee (and your card provider shouldn't charge you any extra).

As mentioned elsewhere on the Forum, I've again been mapping with this new style recently. So here it is, Blackmarsh (higher-res version in my Gallery):

Like the previous Wyvern's Wood map, this isn't intended for the Atlas, since as those familiar with RPG settings may realise, this is actually my own redrawing of the map from the free PDF of the Blackmarsh setting, published by Bat In The Attic Games, and available here on DriveThru RPG.

I've had a soft spot for this for some years (I mean, c'mon, it has undersea features as well as those on land!), as it's heavily based on the old Judges Guild "Wilderlands" maps and settings from the late 1970s. That's not surprising, because Blackmarsh's author, and owner of Bat In The Attic Games, Robert S. Conley, knew and worked with one of the two founders of Judges Guild, Bob Bledsaw (Snr), and until a few years ago, had his own published updated versions of those old Wilderlands settings and maps available also on DriveThru. The fact they're no longer available came about for reasons those familiar with the sad history of Judges Guild after Mr Bledsaw died, will need, nor wish for, any reminders. Those unfamiliar are perhaps better off in that happy state of ignorance.

I've had a print-on-demand version of Blackmarsh for some years, following a Kickstarter run by Bat In The Attic. While I've tinkered around with the setting a little since, I've been prompted to actually compile a proper new map for it now, with some of my own tweaks, because Robert Conley is currently running a fresh Kickstarter for the Northern Marches setting, from his own Majestic Fantasy Realms world. This Blackmarsh area is just one small part of that whole. For anyone interested, it's easy enough to find on Kickstarter without a link here, and the project runs till June 28th this year. It's already doing very well, and for those keen on the older style of simpler setting descriptions and maps (though these latter are more sophisticated than the old Judges Guild style - and they're in colour!), it could well be worth a look. While the original had only hex-maps, I felt this hand-drawn style seemed ideal for this translation.

If you want to find out more about Blackmarsh, the free PDF is the place to go, since all the mapped locations are described there, and you can then discover what the great significance is of that Mountain That Fell...

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!

And so finally...

My original idea was to set this dungeon map up as a cellar to the Tower. However, the use of portals to navigate between the main Tower maps, suggested this one could be set up instead as a further level, whose separate nature, while hinted-at by the need to use the golden talisman from Level Seven to operate the portal from Level Nine to it, would only become fully obvious once it began to be explored. It also leaves open the question as to whether this is genuinely just another main Tower level, one with a more secure, semi-secret accessway, and even whether most of the Tower levels might be on a completely different plane of existence to the outside that connects with Level Five.

Regardless of that, this is the final map, whose base was generated by a trio of the Inkwell Ideas Dungeonmorph dice faces from the Adventurer set, here with a few minor tweaks and adjustments:

As the labels indicate, there are alchemical aspects here that survived from my initial thoughts on this layout, now added-to by golems - and there are several of those here, including some variant levitating Iron Golems that can also freely teleport within this Level (only). There's also something horrifyingly vast and terrible magically held in stasis in the Great Holding Chamber. You'll have to read the notes in the Atlas version to find out more, but it's known as The Devourer of Deserts (no, not "Desserts"...) thanks to The Story Engine card draws.

There's a lot more weirdness here, including what seem to be randomly inlaid dark metal symbols in the floors, walls and ceilings in places (another card-generated idea), as well as more conventional dark metal inlay designs, courtesy of our own Loopysue's Marine Dungeons! Some of the accessways are incredibly narrow (that between chambers D and E is barely 18 inches, 45 cm, wide, for instance), raising questions as to how some of the large, bulky equipment ever got into the inner western and northern parts of this complex. Which is just as it should be for what's clearly an anciently-created place belonging to a highly powerful magic-using person/creature. Who seems to be nowhere at all in the complex currently...

The golems are intended to function much like the other guardians elsewhere in the Tower, in stasis until required to tackle intruders, except here, there are often passwords required to stop them activating, not to mention the silver amulet needed to open the door to and from the Entrance Chamber (A). The whole Windy Tower project was though a fascinatingly creative exercise, tying-together (sometimes very loosely!) the randomly-generated card-draw concepts, as well as the oddities of the dungeon layout.

One final piece of weirdness I only found an explanation for after consultations with Loopysue and, indirectly, Remy Monsen. It's been a very long while since I mapped using the Mike Schley Dungeon SS4 style. When I came to draw the Level Thirteen map, as usual, I imported a JPG version of the hand-redrawn dice design as a base to work from in CC3+. I always check the sizing of that, and adjust it when done if needed, using the drop-down Info menu's Distance command, measuring the separation of the graph-paper grid lines using the ortho setting. Ordinarily, that calls up an information panel that looks something like this (I'm just picking random points here to demonstrate):

However, what came up was this:

I thought I must have hit some unrecognised shortcut key by mistake, but then I couldn't find a way to reset it, either using the CC3+ Help menu, or anything in the Tome.

It turns out though that there are actually two commands you can type into the command line to find distances like this, DISTANCE (which gets you the first panel above) and DIST2 (which gets you the lower panel). Now quite why DIST2 has been set as the default in SS4 is a mystery nobody seems able to resolve, given that (thankfully!) it isn't used anywhere else like this. There probably are circumstances where being able to measure both bearing and distance together might be useful, and also the vertical and horizontal distances simultaneously, but it is appallingly confusing to have this thrown at you when all you want is a straight distance measurement. In this instance, it's fairly obvious, if not intuitively so, as to which is the correct value for what was being measured, although that wouldn't necessarily be so obvious under different circumstances. Something to be aware of when using SS4, though - and if you do just need a "normal" distance measurement, simply type-in DISTANCE to get it!

Now it's time to leave Doriant for the time being, and head off to Lanka in Kumarikandam for the next maps in this project...