Well, I will not go down the path of multi-sheets for the time being, I think: colour sheets are highly chaotic with regards to how I configure them - but contours are a constant.

First template below. City wall will go brrr. As far as distractions go, this one is turning out to pay off quite a lot :)

You know what, I am not ruling out it could pass for an encounter map after all...

Anyway. This Water's Edge exercise - which supposedly is a means to propel the Quay Thing into greatness - has lead to the discovery that patching together cells of a certain shape is not really applicable for larger tiles of less structured patterns. So for slabs of this size, or greater, "folding" a single straight path by way of node insertion I find is not only meditative; the natural lack of precision ensures there will be gaps, and those gaps kind of will do for slab texture what closed fractalized polygons do for contours.

But what fascinates me the most is that it lead to my, finally, realising that custom symbols is a sound investment after all, @Loopysue. :)

Here's what I didn't get at first, everybody, because stupid:

This is all those lines and polygons turned into a symbol, as per the Symbols -> Define Symbols operation: it grabs everything and turns it into - in this case - a circular object which displays whatever was put into it as one single visual representation.

And that means everything goes into the same sheet as one single object too. While possible to force a Sheet destination for the symbol, you would neeed seperate symbols for each individual element to get the colour effects I am pushing with this style of map design. For the tower (as well as the rest of the piece) I am using sheets for Contours, Base Colour, Toning Colour and also Smudged Colour.

Furthermore, since it's just one symbol object - there is nothing to manipulate other than its size, placement and mirror-copying it. You can't add nodes to a symbol, trace along its edges, or remove things from it etc.

Alltogether not very positive for this particular approach to designing maps in Campaign Cartographer. Karma, I guess :D

Above, however, is the symbol in editing mode, accessed from the Symbol Manager. It's all there: lines, paths, and polygons. All drawn to specifications as per the moment of making a symbol of them.

Removing all the colour polygons, then, I am left with the very basics of the design in question: the contours.

And this is what I want from a symbol. I want a pattern clone which I can freely manipulate. And I can, because copying from the editor means I get to copy the lines and paths as such, rather than as a symbol object.

This tower can now be kitbashed into the basis for a wall turret or a ruin or whatever. Colouring is no time at all!

And so, the Symbol catalogue becomes the Mandala catalogue. For my flannelgraphing.

I seem to have failed designing a ship.

Absolutely never will be a sea-worthy encounter map.

But the beach is coming along nicely and I think that it, at the proper zoom level, could pull off some rather neat area map qualities.

Sure thing!

For fractal paths I use a custom tool since it allows for dialling up or down on the frequency, but the rest is the standard arc/smooth/etc - everything but the pencil tool, really.

Colours primarily on the one sheet (smudge/embellishments go elsewhere). This of course allows for flannelgraph maneuvers with a minimum of covering-up.

It's very much this:

Arcs, fused with paths and then some fractal paths. Adding colours for bells and whistles like so:

Process isn't too bad, for time, once you get where you want to be visually.

And here's a section of the water's edge folly for comparison:

Process very much in progress for water's edge specifically, but the working theory of the proto-dwarf portal thing above shows (I think!)