Not sure it will work well enough, but for the pit, you might try drawing a thin line around the top edge of it on a Sheet above the rest of the pit, and apply the same Wall Shadow Effect to it as the rest of the level's walls already have. That should shade the pit the same way as the walls, and hopefully make it not so flat.

If you've a suitable image you can and want to use (importing an entire spiral galaxy will likely crash your computer ?), and it's available to you as a standard image file (jpg, png, bmp), you can simply create a new Sheet in your CC3+ drawing, and then import it into that using the Draw - Insert File command from the drop-down menus. Give the Sheet a recognisable name so you can find it easily when you need to turn it on and off. You may need to resize the image to get it to fit the size of your drawing properly, but that's fairly easily done, if a bit fiddly to get exactly right.

You would probably be best to also set the file image up on a separate Layer too, but that's not essential.

Hi @Hildebrando Santos !

I don't have the old FR Interactive Atlas, so I'm not sure what the "white text" in English after you've translated it may be.

However, so far as I'm aware, you can open any older version Campaign Cartographer map in CC3+, so you don't need to convert any to CC3+ at all. If you redraw any map using CC3+, it will then save the file in that format, but that would only be a potential problem if you used an older version of the software to try to open the new map file.

You may find it easier to keep track of replies to any further questions you have by starting your own topic, or topics, on the Forum; with long-running topics such as this one, there's always the danger things will get lost along the way otherwise!

Careful, Jim:

??

There are certainly some tricks to getting the best from this style, and a few oddities about it. I explored some of these last year. I do like the overall look of the style though - so straightforward and clear (though that may be the hex-board wargamer in me, as much as the role-player).

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.

Thanks RS! I've done this quite a few times for my Atlas mapping. It's worth noting that when you're doing thumbnails, if there isn't room for the full figure, or it doesn't look right, you can always simply choose to copy over just the head and shoulders bit of the portrait, although depending on how you've created the CA3 portrait, you may need to hide some of the clothing and torso on your other map. That's what I did with the Lich Queen's Temple Tomb map in Tlok-Pik recently, for instance (link's in my posting today, just above here).

@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.