Thanks very much Remy. And apologies for sending yet another batch of new maps to you for the Atlas yesterday... Still, this way we get to watch the Atlas grow and grow!

And I forgot to mention that next time's mapping is to be for a location in Statrippe, Artemisia, where I've already found a curious small island just offshore with a ruined castle...

Slightly surprised to find the comments earlier suggesting Greyhawk was the first world setting in/around 1979, given that Judges Guild's Wilderlands of High Fantasy setting was first published in 1977, along with City State of the Invincible Overlord. I mention these, because they were parts of the first world setting I bought for D&D as soon as they were available in the UK, in 1977-78, and there was nothing else like them for D&D at that time. They really were astonishing products, and expanded my thinking about large-scale settings considerably, and how they could be created and mapped, because of course they had lots of large paper maps! Everything published subsequently that I've seen, while having pros and cons, I've always been mentally comparing their impact on me with what "Wilderlands" had been. Probably unfair, but accurate!

That would be an option, although the ones that have survived best have commonly been accidentally baked when the buildings they were in caught fire! That would certainly get rid of most paper and electronic materials as well, of course - so maybe the ancient Sumerians really had electronic computers we don't know about too 😉!

Carved on stone might work as well.

Keep taking the tablets...

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...

Free League issued a fresh Kickstarter update for their forthcoming "Mythic Carpathia" setting for the Vaesen RPG earlier today. In that are a couple of images of maps that will be coming in that supplement. Those images are linked to higher-res versions, there are folks here I'm sure who would like to see them. The regional map is truly wonderful to my eyes! The KS link to find the two new maps is here.

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).

Don't forget to keep a separate copy of your original map file too - let's face it, you'll never be that precise by-chance again! - and it's handy in case you end up with something you're less happy with after making some adjustments to it.

There are more options in the original, vector-style, Character Artist, and it's much easier to draw additional elements when you need them in that. It is a simpler and much less "artistic" drawing style, however. It does though give you more control over what characters drawn using it look like.

In this instance, the map layout left irritating amounts of space around the main, almost octopoid, shape of the caverns, so that provided an opportunity to go more to-town with some decorative elements here than usual.

Of course, they could be used too to illustrate where dangers lie on an overland map, using a similar "roundel" look to the Ancient Realms style, for things instead of places, as another example.