For the crystal city concept, it may depend exactly how you envisage it. For a large-area map such as the Dungeon Worlds Annual will let you create, you could perhaps repurpose some of the standard CC3+ overland map symbols, like glaciers or icebergs (though you may have to get creative about hiding what are intended as water lines for the latter!), and making use of the varicolor options to recolour other features - and also with CD3 house symbols, for instance, if you wanted to map the city itself, or parts of it, in more detail.

It's definitely worthwhile to take some time to look through all the symbol catalogues you have available, and make a note of any symbols that might work in such map creation, even if that's a long way from what the symbol was originally meant to be! As you can resize any symbol in CC3+, imagine too how it might look if a given symbol were larger or smaller, or a different colour (which you can set and see while you're browsing through each symbol catalogue that includes varicolor symbols).

Just as well Wyverns can fly 😎🐲

And now the Sticky Dungeon has been released into the wild, as the October 2024 Cartographer's Annual issue!

Many congratulations to C.C. for this fantastic achievement!

As you might tell from my frequent use of random options in my Community Atlas maps, I've been a long-time fan of such random design systems, for all they can need a bit of nudging sometimes to get things to work out OK. I've not used the 5E system as yet, though almost exactly 20 years ago (July-August 2001), I created a classic 12-level dungeon using the random system in the original (1979) AD&D DMs Guide, each level filling an A4 page of graph paper. All done by-hand then, however. I did make a start converting it to CC3 not long after I got the program, around 2014 or 2015, I think, but that was very slow going, as I hadn't the option then to scan the hand-drawn maps to trace in CC3.

Have to say that your map looks a lot more elegant and less cluttered than any of my old ones from that dungeon set, so the 5E system may be something I should experiment with in future, perhaps...

Can't really do more than reiterate what Sue's said already re you and your mother's ongoing situation, and to hope things settle for you very soon.

With CC3+, I think we all feel for you too. Even a short spell away, and I find I've forgotten something critical... If time and circumstances allow, it might be worth checking-in on one or two of the live PF mapping sessions on YouTube - or checking them later as VOD - as Ralf usually goes through all the basics of setting up a new map, as well as whatever the session's about, for instance, which might help get you back in the swing of things a bit quicker.

When mapping large areas like this, it's important to decide exactly how much detail is worth showing, and what the map is going to be used for (both of which go hand-in-hand).

A settlement will always require farmlands of some kind nearby, so any settlement means there will be such areas around it, even where the map doesn't show them. Then you can use the actual farmland areas to show those places that are particularly important farming areas - key places that the whole country/nation may rely upon, for instance. There, you wouldn't need to show any but the larger or most significant settlements (e.g. like the hamlet the party will be starting from!); all the other hamlets and villages can be assumed as present scattered among the farmland region without you needing to show each one.

For the non-cliff coastlines, I'd be inclined to soften the edges somewhat, maybe with a small Edge Fade effect, or reintroduce the "coastline" blue line for them. Softening the land edges on the cliff coasts wouldn't go amiss either, perhaps.

The aerial floating island looks interesting. Depending on how your floating lands like this work, you might also consider adding some crystal symbols (e.g. from one of the Dungeon sets, suitably enlarged of course!), or by using varicolor mountain symbols. With the settlement on top, it may be worth placing that directly onto the rocky mountain symbols, or with only a much smaller area of grassland fill texture behind the settlement image, then using just the mountain symbols (probably on their own, new Sheet) to cast a suitable drop-shadow. If the grass needs to definitely run right to the very edge of the stony platform, maybe make that more ragged, to closely match the symbol lines underneath indicating where that edge is.

For the Church, the pillar shadows could use some adjustment, as right now, they're passing over and through the walls, which is confusing.

On the upper floor (which might benefit from labelling as such), the stained-glass window patterns thrown on the floor need adjusting, so they cover only where the wooden flooring is - where they shine into the air beyond, there should be nothing.

Additionally, not all the windows should be showing these at all on either floor, only where the light will be shining directly through them, and that should match with where the floor shadows lie as well.

It might be helpful to add dashed or transparent lines on the lower floor image to indicate where the upper balconies are on the lower map view.

One alternative you might try would be not using the RGB Matrix effect, but setting up a simple rectangular polygon that covers all the map on its own, new, sheet, setting the polygon to have a solid red colour, and then adding a Transparency effect to that sheet. If you move the sheet to be below the text, but above the rest of the map sheets, that might work. You'll probably need to keep adjusting the Transparency, and probably also the colour of the polygon (likely somewhere in the reds and oranges range) to get to something you're happy with. Not guaranteed to work ideally, but it should give you more control over the final colour of your text, at least.

Odd, as I was having the discussion about using random designed dungeons with another colleague online only yesterday!

I started with purely random designs back in the mid-late '70s, because I had no ideas to work from otherwise, having only just seen the original D&D booklets for the first time. As those who've followed my Atlas maps especially will be aware, I'm still a great fan of random design mechanics to stimulate ideas, or sometimes to better work out why some things aren't working well enough otherwise.

The Donjon system's a fun one, and there are plenty of other generators to try out if you've a mind to.

I've long found that the two elements - creator/occupier and layout plan - go hand-in-hand, and can be used to modify one another along the way. Thus a random idea might spark-off something still more interesting that follows a more logical pathway, until you reach a point of ambivalence, when more randomness can be brought in once more.

The sole comment I'd make about the map here so far is the secret doors are all far too obvious. Move the actual door to the nearest flat (room) wall junction, not at the end of a short passageway (add a second door for the one into/out of Room 9, as the approach could be from either side, so one flush door in the 9 wall, the other in the corridor wall to the west).

Been a very long time since I did any spacecraft designs. General principles still apply though, remembering this is a self-contained, self-reliant unit, so essentially you need everything you'd have on a normal ship with a sizeable crew - they need to eat, sleep, stay clean (clothes and person; toilets as well), exercise, medical facilities, a means of controlling each system on the vessel, a means of communicating with other vessels and shore/planetary/orbital bases, a means of carrying out the vessel's primary and subsidiary functions, emergency escape facilities, emergency handling facilities (e.g. fire, flood, general damage control), a means of observing whatever is around them outside the vessel, and as you obviously already have, propulsive engines and fuel sources. This list is not exhaustive! And almost all this has to fit within the outer hull somehow.

Spherical and rounded hull shapes are a nightmare to design for. About 40 years ago, I drew out by hand a spherical free-moving spacecraft intended as a planetary defence vessel, one of a fleet, and that was horrendous, as (well, if you're me anyway) I had to keep checking how the outer circumference affected the internal space for different parts of every vertical level, and having to keep changing things because they'd no longer fit at the size intended, and so forth.

Unless there are strong reasons not to do so that make sense in-game, there's no physical necessity from our reality to have streamlined forms for spacecraft at all. Doesn't look so "Hollywood movie pretty", I grant you, but...