I was going to render a part of my Fractal Terrains campaign world in the new Sarah Wroot Revisited style, just to play around with the new style, but I decided to wait until Ralf has a chance to do a tutorial first. In the meantime, I went back to the January 2024 annual that I never really played with, Fantasy Realms Reimagined, to try it with that.

I was going to render the Republic of Lumadair area of my map that I have done before in the Parchment Worlds, Jerion Shading, and Mike Shley styles, but I decided that it was too massively oversized for this style. Those maps are 6,109 by 2,445 miles! (I think we calculated that Lumadair is slightly smaller than Australia, and the map includes part of the mainland continent of Lenoch, which I wanted to include to be able to do more mountains and rivers.)

So I picked a prominent river in the main kingdom I am developing, the Achalus River, and decided that it would run through a duchy named after the river. This is a much smaller map than Lumadair, but it is still 1,343 by 537 miles.

Anyway, here is the Fractal Terrains output in both the Jerion and Schley styles, just for frame of reference:

And here is what I did in Fantasy Realms Reimagined:

I copied over a mid-level elevation contour from the Jerion export to serve as a temporary drawing guide for the hills, and then another higher elevation as a temporary guide for the mountains. This style doesn't actually have a hills or mountains background the way the Schley style does (I mean, it does, but just for the individual hill or mountain itself: it renders onto a layer for the hill or mountain itself, with the ridge lines going on another layer). But I decided it was helpful as more than just a drawing guide, so I changed the hill background to brown and the mountain one to gray, put them on separate sheets, and added Edge Fade and Blur effects.

The coast looks blurry, but that's just because the map is so large. Here's how it looks zoomed in (it has a bevel effect on the LAND sheet instead of having a separate outline on a Coast sheet):

Even though I labeled this post as a Work in Progress, I probably won't do much more on this particular map. We'll see how much more I do when I have a chance to revisit it with the Sarah Wroot Revisited style. I may end up adding all the extra stuff when I flesh out the entire kingdom, which I suspect I will do in the Mike Schley style. This was just for fun and practice -- and it gave me a chance to use a style from this year's annual that I haven't really worked with before (other than using the hills in a back-burnered rendering of the Wizard of Oz map that I'm working on).

Here are the Pilae Stacks using an outer glow instead of a wall shadow. As with the shadow, the stronger glow is just on the lowest of the three tiles in the stack -- putting it on all of them was just too strong. I set up enough sheets to have ten tiles stacked up for each, but it didn't really gain enough after the third tile to make the effort worthwhile.

Way back in March, I took a section of my campaign world called the Republic of Lumadair, and used a Fractal Terrains export of the coast to render it in three different ways in CC3+. One version was in this year's Parchment Maps style. Another was to used beveled shading as Ralf demonstrated in this video. And the third was to do it in Mike Schley's style.

I thought about creating a fourth version now using this month's Pencil Sketch style, but decided the scale of the other maps didn't work as well. The other maps were 6,109 x 2,445 miles! Even if I zoomed in to just include Lumadair and not the lands on nearby continents, that still would have required a map that was about 3,100 x 1,800 miles. So I decided to just do a section of Lumadair, the part where the nation's capital city is located.

For reference, here's that portion as exported from the Mike Schley version:

I love how this style can supplement other styles of maps. I had the idea that maybe the adventurers stumbled across someone else's sketch, like a treasure map. Or maybe they've been sent on a quest and they sketched this from a map in their benefactor's fortress.

With the other maps, I imported the Fractal Terrains coastline (lots of nodes!) as well some of the contour lines (tons more nodes!). For this map, I deliberately didn't do that. I imported a JPG bitmap of the Schley map as a drawing guide but then used the Land tool to manually redraw the portions of Lumadair, the southern continent (which is Lennox), and the islands. It's supposed to be someone's sketch, after all, and not an exact replica of every node!

This style has light mountains (just outlines) and dark ones (filled in). I wasn't sure if there was an expected usage for each, but I decided to use the light ones for the taller mountains, as if they were the snow-capped ones.

I added in a cave mouth and labeled it the "Caves of Dread." My thought is that the adventurers are starting in the southern continent's town of Avernol, and their goal is to get to the Caverns of Dread. Most likely, they'll book passage on a ship from Avernol to the capital of Lumadair and hike from there. (Whoever sketched this map didn't even know the name of the capital city.)

Anyway, my thanks to @C.C. Charron for another great addition to the annuals. I can imagine that game masters will have a lot of fun creating treasure maps and other handouts for their players with this style.

The basement of the villa.

Toggles

FURNACE ROOF layer to hide/display the roof over the furnace

FLOW ARROWS layer to hide/display arrows showing direction of hot water, cold water, and warm air

PARCHMENT layer to hide/reveal the layer of parchment that provides a sort of sepia filter over the outdoor areas.

TEXT LABELS (NUMBERS) layer to hide/display the numbered labels.

TEXT LABELS layer to hide/display the legends describing the labeled numbers. 

Files

Description

The basement of the Villa Citri and its estate.

Villa Basement

1. Villa Fountain

The base of the fountain in the villa’s peristylium courtyard, with water pipes to keep it filled even in the dry months, and a drain valve to empty the fountain for maintenance.

2. Villa Impluvium

The base of the villa’s impluvium.

3. Heating Caliduct

Heat vent brings hot air from the hypocaust to the upper levels of the villa.

4. WC Shaft

Shaft brings waste from the lavatories to the sewers.

5. Water Well Shaft

Pipes bring river water to the upper floors of the villa.

6. Cella Vinaria

The villa’s wine cellar.

7. Horreum

A storage room.

Balneae Basement

8. Frigidarium

The lower portion of the cold-water pool, with the pipes to bring water in and the release valves to drain it when necessary.

9. Caldarium

The lower portion of the hot-water pool, with the pipes to bring water in and the release valves to drain it when necessary.

10. Tepidarium

The lower portion of the warm-water pool, with the pipes to bring water in and the release valves to drain it when necessary.

11. River Water Pipe

Water piped in from the river.

12. Cold Water Tank

River water is piped to this massive tank to provide water for all of the villa’s operations.

13. Hot Water Tank

River water heated by the hypocaust is stored here to provide the villa and bathhouse’s hot water needs.

14. Sudatorium Steam Vent

This vent provides hot steam to the steam sauna above.

Hypocaust

15. Praefurnium

The wood-burning furnace used to provide hot air and water for the villa and the bathhouse.

16. Furnace Chimney

The chimney to vent the hypocaust’s smoke.

17. Firewood

The hypocaust naturally needs an endless supply of firewood to keep air and water hot.

18. Alveus

The hollow space beneath the building's floor, where hot air from the hypocaust circulates.

19. Pilae Stacks

These are the small pillars of tiles that support the raised floor above the hypocaust, creating the space for hot air to circulate.

20. Cold Water Pipe

Pipes bring cold water throughout the bathhouse and villa.

21. Hot Water Pipe

Water heated by the hypocaust. 

22. Hot Air Pipe

Hot air from the hypocaust used to heat the bathhouse and the villa. 

23. Hypocaust Controls

A complex series of controls allows water pipes and heating caliducts to be opened or shut as needed, either for maintenance or when warmer weather precludes the need for heated floors.

24. Drain Valve

Used to drain water from pools directly into the sewers.

25. Sewers

Stairs that descend into the portion of the municipal sewers that services the villa.

Okay, here's the next iteration.

I tried to use blotchy lighter sands to suggest sand dunes, like the Sahara Desert, and darker blotches to show more solid, earth-packed areas. Not sure if I should try to get them to blend in more with a partial transparency or something?

Tried to make the roads show up a little more, but I can't tell if it was that successful. I liked the idea that the guys with the camels could be used on the trails roads to indicate that it was more of a general route through the sands, where most travelers would need an experienced guide to make sure they don't get lost, since a proper road would be blown away or covered with sand. There is a more treacherous area in the southern part of the desert called the Devil's Backbone, where a proper road on more solid land passes next to a 50-mile long fissure. It's a dangerous route, beset by foul creatures that creep out of the fissure, especially at night. But the road is on solid land, and without a guide, it might be a safer route than braving the shifting sand dunes. (I put a tower next to one of the villages down there -- maybe a wizard is there that the adventurers just have to visit?)

Thoughts?

I am ready to submit the FCW for the Eknapata Desert for the Atlas, knowing that it won't be processed until after the contest ends (though it is a parent map for a village I am submitting to the contest).

Here is the FCW, along with a PDF Description and a plain text file (with accents replaced with standard ASCII characters).

I forgot that I wanted to have the feast happen at night. Just used the Solid 60 transparency rather than fussing with lighting effects. Went back and forth on whether the reflection from the stained glass windows should be above or below the trees. I guess it depends on how high the room is. Maybe it's on the second floor?

In a previous thread, Ralf encouraged us to post ideas for future annuals and artists we’d like to see. I know there’s been threads of these sorts of ideas before, but I thought I would take the opportunity to start a new thread, and I hope folks will add their own thoughts.

There’s this one artist whose style I really love. She’s super busy right now, but if she ever has a spare moment, I always love new additions from … Sue Daniel! ;-)

This month’s annual highlighting Mike Schley’s Overland symbols really emphasizes how much of his stuff we have to work with – not just overland, but city and dungeon, too. Since he’s been a longtime D&D designer, his style is great at capturing the same vibe when designing your own maps for D&D campaigns. In deciding what style I want to use for a new map, I often gravitate to his because of how much variety there is to work with. (If he’s looking for city and dungeon level ideas, I would love more Greco-Roman buildings and furnishings.)

So in that spirit, I would love to see more annuals with stuff that is compatible with other styles, particularly Darklands City and Spectrum Overland. I know that might be tricky to do an expansion of an annual released years ago. When an annual has an expansion, it’s generally in the same year (Marine Dungeons, Darklands City, Forest Trail, Monkey Frog Overland, etc.) so that a customer doesn’t have to buy two annuals to use both sets together. But what about expansions designed to stand on their own but also work complimentarily with previous sets? I’d love to see more settlement and adventure-hook symbols that are compatible with Spectrum Overland, and more structures/buildings for Darklands City (and the snowy versions for Winter Village). Right now I’m on an elves & dwarves kick, so elven/dwarven Darklands City structures would be awesome.

Other ideas:

Jungle/Swamp Adventures: something compatible with Creepy Crypts & Forest Trails, but with more jungle elements – palm trees, tropical trees, swamp trees (like trees in water with the ripple effects from Marine Dungeons), bright flowers and other foliage, monster/beast footprints, vines, traps, treasurers you might find adventuring in ruined temples.

Castle Construction: something like CA149 Beaumaris Castle, but with design tools and more castle-specific symbols. Symbols like gargoyles, varicolor flags & banners, crenellations (like the way Marine Dungeons lets you drop crenellations onto walls), machicolations/murder holes, plate armor, thrones, weapons, murder holes, siege/warfare equipment…

Inlays: I’ve mentioned this before, but I would also love more varicolor vector symbols that could be used for so many things like heraldic charges, floor inlays, stitching on fabric (rugs, banners, etc.) – animals, weapons, flowers, runes (in dwarven and elven styles), Celtic or elven design patterns, astrology and astronomy symbols, etc.

Oh no! Calamity! In the immortal words of Nancy Sinatra:

You keep playin' where you shouldn't be playin'

And you keep thinking that you'll never get burnt, ha!

Looks like someone's been messin' where the shouldn't have been a messin'.

And it gave me an opportunity to use not only the evil and broken thrones, but also some of Mike's other symbols from this year that I haven't had a chance to use yet.

Oh, fantastic! I will try that.

As soon as I posted it, I had an idea for how to do a semi-circular one using drawing lines to draw an irregular building that was 1/12th of a circle, and then copying 12 in a circular array. But yours will allow me to do an oval-shaped stadium. Thank you!