sashabilton of Axe Initiative Games asked me whether I had a tavern floorplan lying around to use as a battle map for an upcoming Raiders Guild adventure. I remembered an old CC2 floorplan I had drawn ages ago and quickly converted it into a battle map, using a Symbol Set 2 style. I think it turned out nicely. Click on the image to download the 25mm scale battle map.



You can also download the CC3 source file.

Shameless self-plug: I recently did an interview with Kobold Quarterly, which you can now read at their website.

As Simon posted on his blog, we'll be releasing two free new mapping styles for registered CC3 users next week. It occurred to us that at least one of these should come with a "mapping guide", as we do for the Cartographer Annual styles. This is the map that I created while writing the mapping guide:


(Click on the map to see a larger version)

The mapping guide will be included with the download of the new CC3 styles next week.

A few weeks ago, Simon came across a beautiful piece of cartography work in the Cartographer's Guild forum by Pär Lindström. It was done in Photoshop, but when asked he was happy to provide us with the source image, so we could transfer it to a CC3 mapping style. He even volunteered to produce more bitmap artwork for us, to make it a complete new bitmap style.

It was a very interesting process to convert his work into CC3 format and I like the result a lot. It will be released next month as the April Annual issue.
( Take a peek behind the cut to see a comparison between the work in Photoshop and in CC3.  )

Just recently I became aware of boxninja's game "3:16 - Carnage among the stars", a small press rpg about space troopers fighting a never-ending war among the stars - obviously inspired by classics like Starship Troopers, Traveller, Aliens, Warhammer 40k, Space Crusade and others.

I read the the short-but-intriguing session report by robin-d-laws and consequently picked up a copy at Dragonmeet. I read it through on the train back home and really liked what I saw. Hopefully I'll get a session together here soon.

I really dug the combat system and the neat range placement mat. And of course the cartographer kicked in, itching to create a CC3 version. So I took the star system template from October's Annual issue and played around with some effect settings to create this little thing (posted with Gregor's permission).



I think it came out pretty nice. Click below to download the large version and see a shot of the printed map with some old Space Crusade minis I dug up.

( Click for more pictures )

Next Saturday is Dragonmeet time in London (Kensington Town Hall), and I'm looking forward to my annual visit at ProFantasy headquarters, meeting Simon, Sasha, Steve, et al. In addition, I'm excited to see Robin D. Laws and Kenneth Hite again who are special guests this year.

This year we'll be taking the Eurostar through the Chunnel. Hopefully the trip will be more relaxing than the usual airport security hassles, cramped Ryanair seating, and annoying Stansted Express transfer.

The third session of my new Jhendor campaign is looming tonight and you will find the third map of the "a-map-a-session" program ( behind the cut ).

Remember my a-map-a-session program?

Well, my Jhendor campaign's next session is scheduled for tonight and I didn't have my map for the session yet. So I whipped up a quick village map with City Designer 3. This took me about 30-40 minutes, including printing.

( Map behind the cut )

A little teaser image for the October issue of the Cartographer's Annual 2008.

The next role-playing campaign looms on the horizon ... and I have a new-campaign's resolution. I want to create at least one map for each session. I have neglected mapping for my own games (and my own enjoyment) far too much in recent years. It's time to change that.

Although the first game session is not scheduled before September 19th, I have the first map for the "A Map A Session" program ready. It's an overview of the general area the campaign will take place, and shows a lot of places the characters have visited in previous campaigns and their geographical relation to each other.

( See the map behind the cut... )