Due to the recent discussions re hex maps, I decided to modify the CC3 Overland Hex style to enable fractal coastlines and islands.

Here's what I did:

1. Changed the sheet order, moving the sea sheets between the Symbol Hex and Borders sheets, added a color key effect and inside glow effect to the sea sheet.
2. Created 2 new drawing tools; a Sea, default fractal and an Island, default fractal.

Here is the .FCW file so you can see exactly what I've done.

Investigating further, it seems two versions of the module were published, one in 1981, the other in 1983, with some minor variants between them. Both featured hex-maps for the overland areas, all done in black-and white, with basic representational symbols, typical for the time. Quite a number of people have reworked the maps for themselves over time in colour, as a quick search online will show, not always as hex-maps. This is a low-res view of the main island map I found on Pinterest (other places tend to either not show one at all, or just an extract; this gives a better general impression):

What I liked about this original Isle map, in common with most others around in the late '70s and early '80s, was that it isn't a simple hex-map, in that not everything is subservient to the hex-grid. Certainly a lot of the land has one marker per hex to show what's there, but the coastline, rivers and major inland features (lakes, a plateau, a zone of tar pits), along with coral reefs around the coast, were drawn more naturalistically. Partial hexes thus created on land sometimes have reduced terrain marker symbols, or none at all. Fascinating. So I set-to.

Given that this had all been prompted by Ralf's use of the CA43 Hex Overland style in a recent ProFantasy YouTube livestream, that was to be my chosen mapping style here as well. So, a quick import of a suitable base map to a new BITMAP Sheet and Layer to help with tracing, and about three mapping sessions later, this was the result:

One initial complexity was the original map was done with vertical hexes. Setting-up the map thus in CC3+ though meant the symbols would be angled over at 30°, so wouldn't be upright in their hexes any longer. That didn't look right, so I changed the CC3+ map to have horizontal hexes instead. That, of course, created further problems, because the hexes no longer aligned with the original. However, even using the vertical hexes, that had been the case as well, and some quick checks with the Distance tool on the imported bitmap image showed that the original map's hex-grid wasn't perfectly standardised across it. It looks fine when that's all you're using as a GM, but as soon as the precision of CAD hex-lines gets involved - oh dear...! So a degree of interpretation was required to make the whole look OK and sufficiently similar to the original.

A few other oddities are obvious. One is the curiosity of only a single main river being shown. Given the amount of jungle here, there should surely be more. However, at six miles to the hex, it's perhaps forgivable that more aren't shown, possibly complicating the map still further. If I'd been drawing it for myself, I'd have added more, but this was to be simply an experiment in hex-mapping, using the original map as the primary source.

Other curiosities include the relatively few marked items of interest, although wandering monsters are liable to spring-up anywhere, as ever with D&D (there are especial lists for those two red "Danger Zones", for instance). Even the villages in the southeastern part of the Isle are quite widely-separated. This though was not dissimilar to how many overland adventuring areas were set-up back in those times, so it's not really something to worry over now! It does leave plenty of space for GMs to develop further ideas, of course. I did like that the overall look of the Isle suggested massive outpourings of lava in past times, creating the multiple limbs of the Isle from that Central Plateau (an extinct/dormant volcano - there are "minor" volcanoes still active on it and some of the offshore islands too).

For reasons I don't quite understand, in the 1983 version, the Sea (actually "Water") Dragon was changed to a Water Hydra (which sounds still more menacing, so I kept both, hinting at ambiguity with the label, as to what tales might have come from survivors of an attack). However, the Giant Squid was changed to a 5-foot-long (1.5 m) Water Termite which seemed a pretty feeble alternative to me, while the Sharks were changed to Crocodiles, again something that lessened the threat here, given they were initially meant as a sea menace.

The Catfolk are feline humanoids, some of whom ride sabre-tooth tigers. The Rock Baboons are somewhat more intelligent apes, able to use a few basic tools/weapons (such as clubs). The Winged Apefolk are actually gliders (rather like flying squirrels), about half-Human-sized, looking like a cross-between a monkey and a racoon, and are intelligent, living in platform-built settlements in the jungle trees. The Aranea are especially dangerous, as they're intelligent, magic-using, giant spiders. Most other things are probably fairly self-explanatory.

There are clear hints of Conan-Doyle's "The Lost World" just from the look of the map and some of the labels, including that great Central Plateau - something I rather fancy many RPG GMs will have either created, or been tempted to do, over the years. I know I have! To suggest the great cliffs around it, I used the linear hatching familiar from the CA26 Fantasy Realms style. As with several features on the original map, that Plateau was given its own more detailed map in the module as well. Thus I thought I'd try reworking that in the same hex-style:

Despite its tropical location, the Plateau is high enough to have more temperate vegetation, and that central ridge surrounding the caldera lake is sufficiently tall for there to be ice and snow on its top. The Cliffs are almost a kilometre high, so that's one heck of a climb for the player characters! There wasn't a huge amount of detail shown on the original map, so I've extrapolated things a little here, just to give some variety to the hex colours and textures. As we can see though, the Plateau also gets its own, separate, wandering monsters list!

I had a minor battle to get the fractal lines of the Great Cliffs to all look solid here, as the too-many-nodes problem caused a lot of the lines to lose definition, or seem hollowed-out, resolved either by completely redrawing, or clicking repeatedly per line to get rid of enough nodes to look OK at this, and higher, resolutions. Better-res copies of both maps are in my Forum Gallery.

So, objective achieved, mapping completed, that's that, surely? Well, not quite, as I thought it might be nice to see what the Isle looked like done using Ralf's Hand-Drawn overland style. We'll get to that next time!

Come join in the chat live on Youtube here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Ds1rtFOKc

Or watch it here on the forum if you prefer, though we don't monitor this thread during the show.

The correct date and time for your region will be shown in the left margin of the forum.

Is this new-look going to be rolled-out across the whole PF website in the near-future?

Haven't been doing much mapping lately; constant connection issues between my Mac and work PC using Miscrosoft Remote Desktop, plus a general lack of creative enthusiam, have led to this current cartography hiatus.

Anywho, to resolve the connection issues, given I'm working from home pretty much full-time ATM (due to the various powers that be doing their absolute best to bring about Armageddon and hence, the End Times & causing havoc with fuel availability and pricing here in Oz) I talked my boss into getting me a new laptop, a Lenevo Thinkbook 16 G7 ARP 16GB RAM 500GB SSD, running Windows 11 Pro.

I'm getting back into RPG creativity mode and am installing CC3+. SS1 is not installing, however.

The 1st time I tried installing, I had to download a Microsoft .NET framework or some such. Unfortunately, I did not make a note of the details. I have since tried repairing, removing & reinstalling -multiple times-to no avail. The installer runs, seemingly with no issue but when I click to run CC3+ the last map opens with a black background. I have tried starting a new overland map but SS1 is not listed as a map type. In the CC3+ Program Data folder, the Symbols folder is bereft of any SS1 symbols.

Any ideas?

I've got a fantasy world I've been tinkering with in some form or another for the past forty years. Oldest notes did not survive a house fire in 1999. I had a friend in the 90's that had nearly the full kit of Aide de Camp, but I never could get past the learning curve for something so massive as this project world.

I toyed with AutoRealm in the early aughties but didn't get too far. It sat langishing around in the dark corners and file cabinets of my mind until about three years ago when I pulled it out for the setting of a NaNoWriMo (before the fall) story that has turned into around 120k words worth... Alas, I digress.

I'm at the planning stages and managed to start setting the major land masses on CC3+. I remembered from high school drafting classes about how the real strength in CAD is the scope of the working space and hope that I might leverage that sort of use here, especially since I need a number of reference points to make per elevation.

Now that I've outlined the history, let me start by saying that I'm certain I'm not using layers correctly and I thought I was. It doesn't seem to work in the same flow as layers do in Photoshop or GIMP. I'll think I've got the correct layer set, start drawing, change layers, and poof! Progress lost... only for me to find it when I turn on a layer I didn't even touch.

So to lay things out, here are a summary list of 'levels' about the world, from top to bottom:

• Highest peaks of the High Mesas (there are cities here)
• High Plateau of the High Mesas (there are cities here)
• Cliffsides of the High Mesas (transitional space)
• Interior of the High Mesa Massifs (underground cities, highways, and dungeon complexes)
• Highest peaks of the Lowlands (there are ruins here)
• Low Plateaus of the Lowlands (there are cities here)
• Meadowlands (agricultural areas on the major continent)
• Sea Level (Navigational markings)
• Archipelago islands (various)
• Submerged shallow sea (similar to the Caribbean, there are cities here)
• Abyssal Depths (Here be monsters)
• Sea floor (tectonics and such)
• Undercrust (below everything and everyone else)

As you can see that is a lot of 'levels'. They need to coordinate at certain points, because the major land masses have subterranean waterways and voids possibly open to the sea.

The elevation map is a beast too, but the short, short version is that the High Mesas look like the geological features of the American Southwest (Grand Canyon, Painted Desert, and so forth) but massively exaggerated in vertical elevation to the tune of about 20k feet in altitude between the 'surface' level of the submerged sea to the base of the High Mesa Plateau with those peaks adding another ten or twenty thousand feet more. To try a different way to put it, about 20% of the intelligent life lives on the High Mesas, about 15% in the submerged civilizations, and the rest in the 'Lowlands' which are not swamps but a comparative nominative.

So, I've got a planet to map out, contours and biomes and all that, but if I cannot master how to make sure that my Prime Meridian marker stays where I need to, then having common markers for each level is kind of impossible.

Where do I start?

So I thought starting a fresh topic to discuss this very matter would be appropriate!

To get things rolling, I'm no stranger to hex maps myself, given that even before I discovered RPGs 50 years ago, I'd been using them for counter-and-map board wargames for five or six years before that. That they quickly started to feature in RPGs from very early on was scarcely surprising, as RPGs developed during the early 1970s from tabletop figure wargaming, and drew on various standard mechanics from those.

In more recent times, I've done a few Community Atlas hex maps, including for the Whispering Wastes in Peredur, the Seer's Hall in Ezrute, and the Barrows of the Ferine Magi in Alarius. All of those have a few notes on constructing hex maps in CC3+, but the discussion I began about a year before the first of those, Hexcrawling starter maps, perhaps says more about hex-mapping for hexcrawls than those other topics.

There are, of course, many more topics on hex-mapping elsewhere on the Forum - a quick search for "Hex maps" brings up around nine pages of options to explore alone!

So, hex maps - do you draw/use/love/hate them? Discuss!

Hey all,

This is my current project. My gaming clan is gearing up for a game set in the theme of Hiero's Journey by Sterling Lanier.

I found a bitmap of the map from the book online, imported that in and then chose to use Spectrum Overland style. Quickly discovered I needed different fill styles, because of the size of the map. It is 1500 miles by 1500 miles. From this, I will make various regional maps with all the details.

Of course, I dislike the rivers and am considering options and layout is not yet final. The GM is ok with the rivers, but I'm not heh.

Anyway, any critique advice is quite welcome.

thanks

Cal

Normally I'd wait until I had more done before sharing, but I'm kind of tickled by how this part turned out. I decided to have my gnomes invent a gondola that would carry them up to an astronomy observatory. I managed to cobble one together using assets from Munson's Mines (Annual 11, 2017). Works reasonably well - better than the rowboats I toyed with using at one point.

(Related: there's actually a gold mine in Northern California about a mile from the Oregon border called Munson Mine.)

I now need instructions how to replace it in proper size, meaning, I need exactly the same standard (stock) two-tone (dark brown/beige) looking picture-frame type frame around the map, as defined by the existing grid rectangle. The way it looks by default when you start a new map.

Everything else survived the resizing just fine, it is only the frame which misbehaved. If I cannot bring the frame back, I figure I'd have to recreate the map by painstakingly copying sheet for sheet over into a fresh map in desired dimensions, and this I calculate would be creating even more headaches than doing a new frame over the old/resized one. Hence I hope I find a solution with your help for the frame issue.

Come watch the show live on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5ydgIuz-Yk

Or you can watch it here if you prefer, though we don't monitor this thread during the show.

The time and date for your region will be shown in the left margin on this forum.

I'd like to have more than 4 recent files near the bottom.

Is this doable?

I am currently working on a new city and I am having an issue which I am sure is a simple fix. When placing a building symbol, I get real close to where I want to place it and with an ever so slight move of the mouse, the symbol seems to jump over the gridline doing a complete 180. The snap and attach are turned off. Is there any way to stop this feature?

Thanks

I would like to know if there is a way to use .JPG type files for Fill Styles (e.g.: floors) in CC3+?

I've tried to add them as new styles for my map, but CC3+ doesn't recognise them as options. I can only choose those that are in .PNG format. I could convert the file type, but that is a tedious work which I'd like to avoid if possible.

I'm sorry if this has been already discussed or described somewhere, I couldn't find any lead on it.

Thanks for the kind help.

More to be done on the map - this is the start.

Obviously, the map isn't quite finished. But it's getting there.

It may also have contributed to me doing this the fact that I wanted to see if I could create a range of characters which were similar enough in appearance when needed (knights, wizards) and have a proper identity at the same time. I hope I made it.

Some technical details: all the faces and upper torsos were created in CA3+, slightly modified in PS, and laid out on an old paper texture with in-game details.

Enjoy!

Also, for future reference, which character do you like the most, aesthetically speaking, and why?

However, this was originally unintended. Over a year ago, while checking through the list of what was still to do in this project, I realised (despite previous double-checking) there was a duplicate location set for this map to one already completed. Luckily, I'd kept a list of "possibles" that hadn't made the final cut for sites to place maps, hence this one's choice.

This proved especially interesting, as drilling-down through the extant Atlas maps for Fisher Island, it became practical to zero-in on an unusually small area. So, the Island itself led to Basher Bay:

Which led to South Basher Bay:

And finally to the Silent Forest:

From where I opted to zoom-in to an identified, but unmapped, spot, The Crushed Keep:

The final three maps shown above here, from Basher Bay to the Silent Forest, were all constructed by JimP, who also provided some interesting notes for them, including that the Silent Forest was so-named as the Old Wizard there dislikes noise, so there are no animal or bird calls hereabouts, that other towers, now ruined, had been built close to that central Tower (which nearby area Jim had also mapped) to keep watch on the Wizard's activities, and that further away, nobody was really sure if the Old Wizard still lived or not, hinting that his Tower too might well be ruined by now. This though was mistaken! Jim's notes for Crushed Keep mentioned for all it was a ruin, there was no debris or mislaid items there, as might be expected ordinarily, and it looked as if it might never have been inhabited, so there was enough mystery here to play around with.

That orange square outline on the last map above was to be my one-mile area map, and such an unusually small region provided the opportunity for a different mapping style to the normal overland ones I often force into smaller spaces than they're used to, which was to be Sue's Ferraris Style from Cartographer's Annual 158. After gridding the area, and randomly choosing places to add a few extra features (not many, as this is meant to be a largely uninhabited wilderness), I sought inspiration from cards drawn randomly from three of Inkwell Ideas' Hexploration Decks, "Into the Wilderness", "Settled Lands" and "Beyond the Pale", with a couple more from two of the Creature Decks, "Fey, Constructs, & Wildlife" and "Animals & Vermin". These ideas were then adapted to fit the overall pattern from JimP's notes, with a few extra thoughts of my own.

Thus the area map:

Of course, the Ferraris Style is really intended more for settled places than areas mostly devoid of habitation, but it seemed to work nicely here anyway, with a few repurposed symbols, and a road line that really represents a collapsed subterranean tunnel.

I decided from the start that I wanted to respect Jim's use of broken, almost spiralling, patterns in the way the woodlands are laid out, while appreciating they were drawn within the constraints of the symbols in his preferred mapping style. I did though add some minor topography, to help mix-up the colours and look a little more. The tiny ponds were from Jim's original map, and I added a couple more of my own. Jim's notes on them give leeway for such additions: "A number of small ponds. Unknown depths. Anything falls in, the leaves close back up. No signs of anything nor anyone had come by there." So ones that have closed must also periodically reopen, where nothing had been mapped earlier!

There are other oddities here as well, and the card ideas included several connected with fungi, which seemed an interesting concept, perhaps further helping to deaden sounds in the region. The map's notes for the final Atlas version will, as ever, say more.

Mapping in the Ferraris style took a degree of getting used to, mostly because there are a lot of options for how things can be drawn, the different fill styles, effects and so forth. I kept both the sample maps that come with the style's package open while I was drawing this to help keep me right. Despite that, the map went together really quickly, after some brief experimentation, so this isn't a detailed WIP topic for once!

One thing I did test out at the end though were the options for different final looks to the map, by selecting three hidden Layers the style has built-in. While I was happy with the "vanilla" map, as above here, I also rather liked these three alternatives too, so hopefully, each can be toggled in the final Atlas FCW file as well. Thus we have a faded look:

A worn and dirty look:

And a yellowed with age look:

Next time, we'll delve beneath Crushed Keep's small hill...

I've started laying out the first floor. I'll add the outdoor details later, once I have the interior finished.