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).

This style follows the original Hobbs's Architecture book from 1876 (a free PDF of which comes with this Annual issue), and that indeed just leaves gaps for the doorways, which the style mimics.

For advice on using this issue, or indeed any Annual issues, see the accompanying PDF Mapping Guide. You can find this Guide, and any sample maps, images or other associated information files, wherever you've told the program to install the Annuals. On a standard default Windows installation, this will be in the C:\ProgramData\Profantasy\CC3Plus\Annual folder, after which you need just look for either the number or the name (the first year's Annuals only have a number) to find the correct sub-folder with all those details.

If you can't find, or remember, the issue you're after, check Sue's image wall of all the Annuals elsewhere on the Forum here, which covers up to the middle of 2o24 currently.

And so lastly, we have the dungeon, linked by a rubble-hidden trapdoor from area B2 in the Castle, Crabwell Delve:

Jon Roberts Dungeon again, with a hint of Token Treasury 2! A nice, simple layout, and while it would have been pleasant to have more symbol options, a top-view statue of a Platinum Basilisk was always going to be unlikely, together with a gigantic Crowned Crab statue to fit over the top of, and around, the well. Hints of magic, fun and weirdness to be found in this long-abandoned, indeed long-lost, piece of subterranea, however, courtesy of those Story Engine card decks!

Next time, I'm apparently staying in the tropics, if a bit further south, to visit somewhere on the large island of Ethra in southwestern Doriant...

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...

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.