Realistically, and much as Sue already said, if you're aiming for a hand-done pen and wash style illustration, it should look like a watercolour painting, where the wash sometimes covers the line, sometimes runs short of it. There isn't a voting option for that, and I really don't see this as an "either or" choice. So sometimes that'd be "A", sometimes "B", but more often a mix of both, with some additional overlap too.

Long preamble post today, sidling-up to the area map.

It's never been a secret where the underground map's to go, but the Duin Elisyr area in Doriant is huge, so clearly I needed to zoom-in to find somewhere suitable as an actual location. This is where Duin Elisyr is (the orange rectangle is about 1,000 by 800 miles):

Nibirum's equator runs through this area, so from early on, I was contemplating vaguely warm to hot tracts of jungle-like vegetation, perhaps with savannah stretches, and of course mountains, as the whole area is somewhat elevated (albeit fairly modestly compared with other mountainous areas of Doriant). So it was something of a surprise to open the Duin Elisyr map and find only typical temperate vegetation symbols had been used there, even into the lower lands in the map's southeast corner, not that far from the near-desert lands a little further south.

However, that's what the map showed, and it didn't have a great bearing on my choice of a humanoid bee-folk as the inhabitants of the caverns. So I simply hunted around for a suitable spot, not too near any habitation, to create a new small area map, as no other smaller maps linked from this one when I arrived there. Snag was, my typical choice of about 20 miles square for such a map looked tiny in this vast region. I doubled it, only to find that still looked ridiculous, as just covering half the mountain pass zone I was looking at. Thus - gulp! - I doubled the horizontal length again to be now 80 miles by 40...

The Duin Elisyr map, complete with my selected rectangular zone:

And a closer look:

The new map's name had become obvious as "Evth Pass" by this stage, and suddenly those innocuous-seeming bee-folk had become bee-folk raiders, waiting to snare passing travellers using the mountain route from their hidden cavern lair, in this corner of rather peripheral lands to the Uthold Dwarfen realm.

For map-planning of course, we need a still closer view, and preferably without the labels:

Ordinarily, I'd hand-sketch the proposed area onto graph paper, having set an appropriate scale for each square first, which is typically a mile or two. As I'd intended to present the process here on the Forum this time though, I decided a version others might make sense of would be useful instead, so I simply added a two-mile-square grid to the area, thus:

As usual, I then rolled to see what random squares might contain points of interest at this mapping level. I choose a rough percentage value first of all, dependent on the overall terrain and what indications of habitation there may be nearby, which is normally between 10 and 20%. Here, as this is pretty wild country without substantial nearby settlements or farmland, I opted for 10%, of which I decided around 12% might be surface settlements of some kind (this proportion I often vary between roughly 8 to 20%). In this case, that meant rolling quite a lot of D10s (any 1s = the required 10%), and then checking which of those might be settlements by rolling a D8, with again "1" allocated as the determinative.

Once that was done, I had to identify what each feature actually was. The settlements were decided using my own random tables, but for everything else, I opted to use various published sets of information cards. One was a newly-arrived set of Monte Cook Games' "The Weird" cards (like their random RPG tables book of the same name that I've used before, but adding a whole fresh array of options for people, places and things beyond what's in the book). The others were seven different sets of Inkwell Ideas "Sidequest" decks with 52 to 54 cards in each, which provide an array of ideas for enlarging into RPG adventures. The choice of deck was rolled randomly from this group of eight, and then a random card from the relevant deck selected. From that, an option, or sometimes more than one, was picked, or adapted, to fit the map and what terrain the spot was in.

After completion, and some time spent poring over what all this showed, allowed the sketching-in of some basic river lines too (living settlements need a water source of some kind, after all). Which brings us to:

Here, white squares are the surface settlements (8), the white triangle is the bee-folk cavern location, and the numerous white circles are all the other points of interest (68), just a little under the expected random average of 80 items in all. The blue lines, of course, are the potential watercourses (including a substitute place-holder for the one actual river from the original map, up in the top left corner.

As the "new" river lines suggest, the terrain symbols here are simply being used to indicate raised areas and valleys now, and as if being viewed from top-down, not from their pictorial side-on appearance.

All of which (as I warned at the start😊) lengthy preamble means choosing the style and starting the area mapping will have to wait now till next time!

The last set of Embra "Places" maps is that for the Constructed Places of Interest, linked from central segment 7 on the "Official Guide" map:

This is the busiest set for individual locations of any of the Places groups, with seven, leaving a mere three to be condensed onto the eighth "Streets" map.

The Celtic knotwork border was adapted from one in the, by-now-famous, Dover Clip-Art "Celtic Borders on Layout Grids" book, providing a completely connected square, to complement the original circular design used for the Village maps. That seemed an appropriate method of "book-ending" the entire set, as well as tying-in with the idea of both being constructed places, if of somewhat different sorts. In altering the design from what had been a vertically-elongated rectangular one to the required square here, I discovered when looking at the finished piece with its colouring, that I'd accidentally produced an asymmetry in the patterning. I did wonder briefly about amending that, but liked the look of something slightly off-kilter as apt for a Faerie setting, and so left it. The hours of effort it would have taken to change it had, of course, nothing to do with that choice...

Next to be mapped was the Castle Peris area, various locations in which had a scattering of weird and wonderful items added to them thanks to the random card draws.

There are three main parts to the map, the Harbour (most of which has fallen into the sea), the Village (much of which has only had building foundations laid, and may never have been inhabited - or not for long, at least) and the eponymous Castle itself. Living here much of the time is that now-amended, card-derived "Chieftain", who has become Hypatos, the isle's sole permanent humanoid inhabitant, a self-exiled, hermit-like Human, and former chief sage, who successfully predicted a major eclipse and planetary alignment in the past, but being imaginative and forgetful, he then failed to warn of an abdication crisis he believed these celestial events portended, somewhere on the mainland (he is quite vague as to when and where all this took place). He still wishes to right the wrongs he thinks followed that crisis. He is convinced there is something on the isle that will help him resolve those perceived wrongs, although he does not know what (possibly that Talisman at the Watchtower of the Sea). He is also the sole priest, of sorts, for The Twisted Torchbearer, and is apparently under her protection. He is very knowledgeable about the isle, and seems to have been here for a very long time, although his appearance suggests no great age, merely late middle-age...

Further notes will be in the final Atlas version.

The drawing itself was done using the Jon Roberts Dungeon style from Annual 54, since it allows the easy draughting of surface areas like this as readily as underground ones. If it had building roof options, I might have been tempted to add those too, but the cross-sectional, ground-floor-only plan views are in-keeping with the original "Castles" book maps, at least!

Next time, the little dungeon map proper.

If you're struggling to work out the general sizes of things as a whole, you might find it useful to look through some real-world maps, like an atlas, a map of your local area and your own town, for instance. That should give you some ideas about the amount of detail visible on different area-sizes of map.

It might help you too to draw out some sketch-maps by-hand first of what you're wanting to create in CC3+, as that way you can get a rough idea of what size of map is going to better-fit the map you're wanting to draw once you start-up in the program. Even if you don't get it right this way, you can always resize the map in CC3+ if you find the area's too large, or not large enough. We've all been there!

Thanks very much Remy!

Since I've had a couple of queries about the Inkwell dice sets outside the Forum, and to clarify for those interested here, the simplest solution is to visit the DungeonMorphs page of the Inkwell site. As you'll discover there, the designs are available also as cards and fonts, and there are books with descriptions and ideas for the more recent sets as well.

In addition, and because I think he actually started the whole concept of geomorphs with this ten-space design (that's ten spaces per side on the design), it's worth looking at the past postings on Dyson Logos' blog, as he's provided illustrations showing many - now maybe all - the designs he's produced over the years, including those he's done for Inkwell. There's a "Geomorphs" tab under the "Navigation" sidebar on his blog, but that only covers the 100 designs he did for a personal challenge in 2009-2010, all collected for easy download in one place. Using the "Post Categories" search box, the Geomorph Mapping Challenge has 217 blog entries, which goes WAY beyond those he's been commissioned to do for Inkwell and those 100 earlier maps!

After a bit of digging around (it's actually SS3, not SS2, which confused at first!), the SS3 Bitmap A and B styles both have wall features like doors, so will cut the walls. SS3 Blueprint Floorplans has no door symbol options, so won't have any wall-cutting tools (so that symbol catalogue comes up as blank).

It looks, though, as if you're actually using the Vector style, as in the Symbols > Modern > Floorplans Catalogue are two vector wall features catalogues Wall Features 31 and Wall Features, both of which have wall-cutting features.

For unknown reasons, using the symbol catalogue icon doesn't call-up either of the Vector Wall Features catalogues in a new Modern Vector Floorplan map I did as a test, so at least I can say it's not just your system!

You can navigate to the symbols manually, or you can add either of those files to your map using the drop down Symbols - Symbol Settings... option, which calls up this panel:

In which I simply added the word "Floorplans" after "Modern" in the "Master filter" box and browsed to the correct FSC file under "Catalog setting specifications", saved that, and the catalogue now shows up when I click the :CC2SYMPATH: icon.

Hopefully, this will help with your mapping.

@Don Anderson Jr. - The line with the horse icon will only show up if you have the various non-ProFantasy symbols from the CSUAC, Dundjinni, Bogies, etc., items installed.

You'd need a bitmap image version (BMP, PNG or JPG) of the map you could import into the CC3+ drawing on one of the lower Sheets, and then resize it to fit the size of map you're intending to draw, but yes, this is eminently practical.

To import the bitmap, make a new Sheet and a new Layer both called BITMAP in the FCW file you'll be working with, and make sure both are checked to be the active Sheet and Layer.

Then to import the bitmap, use the drop-down "Draw" menu, and click on "Insert File". Navigate to wherever your file is stored, click on it and click OK.

You'll then have it on the cursor in your map. Click once to secure its top left corner, and then move the cursor to enlarge the bitmap to the size you need, and click again to finish the command.

You might find it helps to set up a snap grid of a size to be useful in finalising the bitmap size, and make use of that during the import process.

You can then check the image size is correct by using the CC3+ measuring tools against items of known sizes on the image. You can rescale the size of the drawing very precisely after import too, if necessary.

And if you get stuck, just ask again on the Forum!

One final thought. You might like to check around on the Forum for topics created by @mike robel who's done a lot of high-quality work of exactly the kind you're wanting to do, specifically to create board wargame maps using CC3+.

While I know some folks that comment and contribute here like to present and view Work In Progress topics, I rarely map in a way that allows this, as I tend to simply change things as I'm going along and don't record what's been done or when. It also needs extra time and effort, which is something I rarely have available either. However, when I started the second of the 40 250 x 200 mile maps for "my" corner of Alarius, that did seem a rare opportunity to try to do a bit more in this line. So while not a WIP thread as such - because the map's already completed, and will be submitted for the Atlas shortly - it may be of interest to some to have an overview of how it got to be as it is.

When I started preparing for this whole Errynor project, one of the first things I did was to set up the grid for where the 250 x 200 mile maps were going to be on Shessar's Alarius map:

I then hand-drew onto squared paper details extracted from this map for each of the planned 40, including things like where the exact lines for the different background terrain fills lay on land, where the edge of the contour-colour fills were for the sea, and so forth. Although these wouldn't be so critical for the later mapping (the edges of the fills being softened in the map as shown above here means there will always be a degree of leeway in such things), they were important for some of the more detailed features I wanted to add, such as creatures which tend to be biome-specific.

Zooming in to the Map 40 area (lowest right corner of the full gridded map above) showed what I'd be dealing with here:

The yellow line that's just peeping out from under the lowest outer orange line is for the southern limit of the Errynor mapping area (it also extends up the right-hand edge of Map 40, but is better hidden there), while the thinner white line extending south of the right-hand corner of Map 40 is because when this mapping began several years ago, the area east of Errynor had been reserved by another Atlas mapper. Ultimately, the person who was hoping to map that region had to drop out unfortunately, but Shessar subsequently stepped-in and completed part of it, although that no longer extends south to the southern edge of my Errynor area, as a comparison of where the major river (now named as the Faerie Run) lies in relation to the lowest corner of the illustrations above and below this paragraph. On the following extract from the bottom left corner of Shessar's "Alarius North Central" map, I've added a 250 x 200 mile orange rectangle for scale:

The left edge of this rectangular area immediately adjoins part of the right edge of my Map 40, and also part of Map 32 to Map 40's north.

Returning to Map 40, to the hand-drawn map of landforms and terrain features, I added randomly-rolled creatures and places using a series of tables based on ones I'd constructed decades ago, updated and amended here where that seemed necessary. The squared-paper maps had been designated so that every square would be five miles on a side, and each 5-mile square was allocated a maximum 10% chance of having something noteworthy in it at this mapping scale (variably reduced for anything less favourable than temperate surface land conditions). Of those features, about 17% - 1 in 6 - might be settlements of some sort, with a maximum 60% chance of being inhabited, or deserted/ruined otherwise, again partly condition-dependent.

All of which got me to the point where I could also begin filling-in some of the lesser terrain features based on what had been rolled-up. Settlements need a significant water supply, as would some types of creature, which allowed new river lines to be sketched-in. Certain creatures also need a lair of some kind, and that meant smaller areas of cliffs, caves, trees, marshes and lakes could be added, all again based on random rolls determined by the creatures in question. Thus the map came to look like this:

This isn't very clear at the size suitable for the Forum, and the scan I made of it has cut-off the column numbering along the top edge. This wasn't important for what I intended, as it was simply meant as the traceable background bitmap image for the CC3+ map. I can't re-scan it like this, as it's been further amended since, and indeed right into the creation of Map 40 in CC3+ changes were still being made, not all of which ended up on the hand-drawn version anyway! It is still possible though to see this is a "warts and all" sketch, with crossings-out, amendments and annotations. Even the original map isn't as clear as it might be now, and I can't remember which of the various lines represent which terrain type in places where the annotations have become too dense! Note too that the line of the map's only major river (that is, the one shown on the original Alarius map) hasn't been finalised here. It's still drawn at the scale it was, so is about ten miles wide, hence why the new tributaries end at its edge. As this also illustrates, the size of the paper means the edge of the mapped area is seven squares short of this image's right-hand edge.

Features were allocated one or two numbers as well as a written note of what each was, as I learnt early on the importance of recording these (they're the dice roll values) after making some mistakes in identifying which thing was in which terrain type, and thus what the random tables said it was meant to be... In the map's centre-top, that Yeti that became a Blood Hawk Flock with a cliff lair turned out to have been a Yeti after all, as you may be able to tell from this close-up of a later version of just the top left corner (now so you can see the top column numbers too):

If you can see some dots that don't have any annotations, or other faint markings, that's because I hand-drew all these maps on both sides of the paper, and occasionally that shows through weakly.

Selecting only the main features, such as the major settlements and ruins, as well as the new lesser watercourses and vegetation areas, was what let me build-up the final Errynor map, of which the Map 40 segment is shown below, here with its latitude lines and the southern limit for Nibirum's northern polar auroral zone (red arc). Only the cream-coloured latitude arc, for 55°N, features in the Atlas CC3+ Errynor map. The black arcs for each 1° were added in preparation for these individual 250 x 200 mile maps, and will feature there:

I'll present and discuss the final CC3+ map for the Atlas in more detail in a subsequent Forum topic. For now, merely a teaser view of the final Map 40's terrain (only) - no settlements, or creatures, or anything else. Yet!

A fresh visit to Artemisia randomly took me off to the Lampoteuo Region in the central-southern part of that island continent:

Like much of Artemisia, this area has been mapped at a regional, and often smaller, level already, so checking the existing Lampoteuo area maps narrowed down the options for where this latest small dungeon design could go. After much deliberation, heavily influenced by what I'd determined the contents of said dungeon were to be, I finally selected a cave symbol labelled as "Hopes Lost" here:

Having finally remembered there was a book of scenario suggestions that accompanied the Trailblazer set of Dungeonmorph Dice from Inkwell Ideas, the "Dungeonmorph Book of Modular Encounters: Delver, Trailblazer, & Voyager Edition", when preparing the previous map (Ruins of Shadow Keep), I'd already made use of that here prior to settling on a location. The essentials so-determined were that the place was run by Gnomes, and that it contained a planar nexus, with attendant higher-level magic-users. I reused and amended many of the details from the Inkwell book, as it provided some interesting architectural and decorative options, besides these aspects.

One complication was that one of the three randomly-chosen dice provided an elaborate tomb. Ultimately, that was converted into quarters for the Archmage and the four leading elemental mages at the complex, while retaining much of the design's layout.

A few other amendments were made, as usual, although handily, the Trailblazer set comes with one die of entrances, making an imposing way into the complex. Along the way, I'd decided this was also going to be both a teaching place for elemental mages, and a location people could come to and pay for scrying and access to other planes.

While there are no descriptive notes for the Lampoteuo map, there are general notes for Artemisia touching on who and what is around in this region, which beyond Lampoteuo city-state (central to the second map above), comprises a number of semi-nomadic tribes. Thus a new backstory developed. The complex originally had been a cave system in some rocky hills, in which was an oracular shrine where the local tribes would gather for an annual celebration. Generations ago, a disaster occurred during one festival, killing most involved, with the few survivors left to tell only conflicting tales. All were clear the site could never again be used, as the oracle had been either destroyed, or buried too deeply.

More recently, some Rock Gnome prospectors turned-up, and found there was something magically unusual here. The Rock Gnomes were chosen as having magical and physical expertise in handling rocks, precious stones and general stonework. Gnomes aren't mentioned as major inhabitants of Artemisia, and came just from the Inkwell book's ideas, as well as making a change from the more prevalent Dwarves.

The Gnomes set-to, called-up more of their folk, and reworked/rebuilt the lost caves into the current subterranean complex, reopening the planar gate in the process. So to the map:

Much in the dice design was strongly rectilinear, so that became a distinctive feature, with straightened rock cliffs faced with granite brickwork, the spilled-over granite-brick fill around the complex hinting at how the former cave area had been reopened and restructured. The area outside then became levelled-off granite, with a great white marble stepped platform leading up to the way in.

I picked the DD3 Dungeon Digital style for the map, only to discover this was quite tricky to use, as rather than presenting the older-style vector symbols (I think from the "Filled" set of DD3 options; that's what I used, anyway), it tended to default to the normal DD3 raster ones instead. It does encourage use of the SS2 set as well, and that was heavily pressed into service. Being vector sets, there are plenty of options for all manner of objects. Dungeon Digital does use the DD3 bitmap fills too, partly why I'd picked it, because I knew there were going to be several square-tiled areas.

For the black-and-white marble in area 1 though, I drew out a series of small squares using the two marble textures, gradually combining them into larger strips to duplicate over the whole floor using the snap grid. I did try the standard chequerboard fill (in areas 2, 3, 4 and 8) with an RGB Matrix Process set to greyscale, but this looked a bit too washed-out compared to the white marble platform, black marble pool base and wall tiling of area 1. Then for the red and white check carpet in area 7, I selected a suitable red rug, enlarged it, and added a series of white, square cushions across it, as they gave a slightly textured look to the whole, more soft-carpet-like than the tile textures. A row of small rectangular white panels were added at the carpet's long ends, because the cushions didn't fit perfectly to both length and width, after a couple of quick trials.

Area 9, the Statue Room, is the planar gate. It has five 10-foot-tall statues in it, each of a different, loosely humanoid, creature from a different plane. When four of the five's "hands" are linked (their arms, only, can be moved and repositioned), this opens the gateway within the centre of their ring. The floor is decorated with a mosaic of an unknown world, as stated in the original notes, so I found a nice vector planet among the Cosmographer 3 designs that didn't have the spherical shading that so many do, and added that. The blue is intended to be lapis lazuli, the browns sardonyx. The Inkwell book provided various options for the planes involved, and I picked five that are a little unusual: Ash (a mix of Fire and Negative Energy), Dust (Earth + Negative Energy), Lightning (Air + Positive Energy), Minerals (Earth + Positive Energy), and Radiance (Fire + Positive Energy). It's also suggested in my notes for the Atlas that these may change, along with the statues, over long periods. I wanted to suggest that whatever had happened in the past to wreck the ancient oracle, was still having an unusual effect here.

The white marble southern part of the subterranean area was a design choice from the Inkwell descriptions for the original tomb there, including the wall-tiling, and it seemed to me the luminous look this gives the whole was delightfully striking. As is obvious, there are two staircases down from it, and they're weirdly located, because they're off the standard geomorphic connection points by 10 feet each. They should be where the two shallow indentations are in the adjacent walls of rooms 12 and 16. This is most unusual among the Inkwell designs, and initially caught me by surprise, as I thought I could simply rotate the design, and have this white marble area be at a lower level than the rest - except of course, the stairs don't fit to the entrances from areas 5 and 10! So that meant I needed to design a Lower Level as well. We'll come to that next time.