Beyond what Royal Scribe mentioned, if you've only used basic graphics manipulation programs for mapping before (such as Inkarnate), you may struggle to get to grips with CC3+ at first, because it's a true CAD software package, and works in a rather different way.

If you haven't already, I'd definitely recommend reading and working your way through the tutorials from the PDF CC3 User Manual (despite the name, it is written for CC3+ users; you'll find it in the Profantasy => CC3Plus => Documentation folder, or just click the "Help" drop-down menu in an open CC3+ window, then click "User Manual"). I can't stress enough the importance of doing this, rather than simply trying to make your own way through the program, if you have no prior experience with CAD software. Many folks (including myself) tried that, and ended up hugely frustrated until we sat down and actually learnt these basics properly.

There are other written tutorials available on the Forum and the ProFantasy Blog. This topic has a list of options, although they are mostly dealing with specific elements, not just how to map with the software.

Good luck, and if you get stuck, feel free to ask again here!

Careful, Jim:

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Two places I haven't seen mentioned here yet are Chaosium's Glorantha (which has so much lore it's effectively a real place for many who RPG there; plus avoid all those silly mapping projection problems in a world which is on the upper face (only) of a cube!), and of course out own Community Atlas world of Nibirum. Not everyone provides detailed descriptions for their maps there, but some do (I've been adapting bits and pieces from my own nearly 50 years of RPGing to what I've added there, for instance), and even without that, those maps are always worth exploring.

Well, I did already tinker together a few symbols for overland undersea use like this, which are available as part of the Atlas download pack. You can see some of them in-use on my deep sea-bed Errynor Map One - The Cliff map in the Atlas. If you dig around among the other seafloor maps from that one, you'll see I carried out a few more experiments with home-made undersea symbols, and the reuse of non-undersea symbols as undersea ones too!

I have to say too, that making new vector symbols for this kind of mapping is far easier than making bitmap ones 😁!

That's what we like to see - people solving problems before we can leap in with the wrong explanation! 😁

Glows can be tricky beasts, I've found, which sometimes don't work well with other Effects even when they're on different Sheets on a map, and in variable ways (so they might affect some things on a Sheet but not others; I have no explanation for this...). Always worth experimenting though, to see what works best for what you want.

For @DoubleDouble and anyone else interested, this page on ancient port structures has some notes on the archaeological/historical use of constructed breakwaters and other artificial port structures, beginning around 2600 BCE (Egypt, Gulf of Suez). I'd recommend taking time to check through the other links and references if this subject catches your attention, though your life can end up taken over by such matters without due care...

Mystara rather passed me by @Tonnichiwa, as I'd moved on to my own version of D&D, and other RPG systems, even by the time it first featured, as the Known World (in Module X1 "The Isle of Dread" according to online sources, in 1981). I have gone back in more recent times and looked over some of what was published for the Known World/Mystara setting, though after getting back strongly involved with D&D only when 5e appeared, I've concentrated more on finding past details for the Forgotten Realms setting, because of its intimate connection with 5e from the outset.

I suspect my (ongoing) connection to miniatures (and scenery, and everything else that goes with it) is because I started out as a model-maker, and only got involved in wargaming proper a few years after that, at the end of the '60s and early 1970s. Many tabletop rule systems are, and always were slow, but most of what I've done has been for my own interest and solo, so that was never a great issue for me. And a lot of the larger-area battles are fought using the miniatures as little more than markers, so I quite understand your "scale" problems.

I never understood why so many wargames have to be "balanced", when reality very rarely is (unless somebody's really screwed-up their reconnaissance and planning), which I think is why I never took to needing a group to game with. That was just too much like chess to me, whereas I wanted to try to better understand real, or potentially real, situations.

"A" looks more natural to me too, Sue.

The cross-hatched decoration (don't know what the proper term for it is, sorry!) seems undamaged despite the roof holes beneath it. As this seems to be of fairly flimsy outer surface material (compared with the depth of roof thatching), it seems unlikely it would have survived intact when the entire thatch below it has rotted away - even if it had just broken and raggedly partly fallen-in, say. I'd guess in some cases it might partly survive sort-of intact, but not always.

It does also look a little odd that none of the holes are where the greenery is; the extra weight and implication that that's where water's collecting, so mulching the thatch down into a growing medium plants can root into, might suggest that kind of area would be ripe for collapse as well.

@mike robel commented:

It does Mike, but it actually creates a Symbols Along line to do so (assuming you're meaning CA84 1930s Overland Maps). There are detailed instructions on how to set this up in the PDF Mapping Guide that comes with this Annual issue, which is worth carefully reading and following, to get the best from this style.

Map Units are simply what CC3+ recognises as the number to be used for the size-ratio of the area of your map. For an overland map, the default is that CC3+ calls 1 Map Unit 1 Mile (or 1 Kilometre if you opt for metric). This has nothing at all to do with what physical size anything will be in whatever final printouts you choose to do.

You simply draw your map to the correct ground scale and size using only Map Units (so ONLY Miles or Kilometres; forget the "inches" thing; forget the "scale ratio" thing - at this stage they're irrelevant), including any hexes, so the hex has the correct scale-size for the map as you're drawing it. If the hex has to represent an area 100 metres from flat side to flat side, say, you can check that the distance across it is exactly 100 metres using the drop-down menu's "Info - Distance" option.

If you're tracing an imported map image, make sure that's correctly scaled in the same way before you start copying it, so the scale CC3+ is using is exactly the same as that on the map image you're copying.

Once you've finished mapping, you can then export an image of whatever size and resolution you need for your final printout using the drop-down menu's "File - Save As..." option. This is the point you can finally switch to thinking about what inch-size you'd like your hexes to be; just don't worry about it before this point. At all!

Simplest way for this is probably to choose one of the "Rectangular section" graphic image export options, PNG or JPG, say, as the dialogue box allows you to set the size of your export by width and height in either pixels (and you can set the pixels per inch or per centimetre at the same time too) or physical dimensions (again, inches or centimetres). Then just select which area you want to export from your CC3+ map. If you've set your snap grid correctly, you can just use that to help draw the area you want.

If you need the hexes to be a specific physical size on the final print graphic, say 1 inch from flat side to flat side, and there are 20 columns of hexes across either the width or height of the map that fit flat-side to flat-side, it's clear you need one of those dimensions to be 20 inches. The other has to fit the hex width, which is usually around 1.15 times the flat-flat size, thus about 1.15 inches per hex, times however many columns/rows of hexes in the area you need the graphic to be.

Remember, what you're drawing in CC3+ is a map, NOT a hex-board printable for gaming on. Only the final exported graphic - which you can always resize precisely in a separate graphics-manipulation program, if you're happier using that - is where you need to worry about what inch-size what feature is meant to be.