Campaign Cartographer 3

ProFantasy Software

Are there rocks ahead?

Campaign Cartographer 2 Pro is known for being a very powerful mapping software that takes a lot to learn how to use well. If you take the time, you could make some impressive maps although adequate maps could be done fairly quickly. A few years have passed since the introduction of CC2 Pro and other mapping packages, such as Dundjinni and Fractal Mapper, have appeared raising the quality bar on computer generated maps. ProFantasy has now released Campaign Cartographer 3 with promises of better maps and an easier interface. After a week of testing, it appears that they have succeeded admirably.

Campaign Cartographer 3 comes with a 40 page PDF manual called Essentials that steps you through the basics of creating a standard map and also a detailed dungeon-type map. The tutorials are well written and have ample example graphics, although some of the demo files it referred to I could not find. The missing files had no impact on the tutorial and all told it took about 20 minutes to go through. At the end of the 20 minutes I had a very presentable regional map and the skills to build a new map quickly.

You just follow this trail until you come to a fork.

There are many things made easier in CC3. Outlines are automatically fractalized and a press of the spacebar changes the random seed and curve of the line. An automatic fill creates textured areas quickly and there is even an automatic forest creator that puts a dark green fill and populates the area with trees. The interface is simplified from CC2 Pro and has different settings that toggle the display of less used buttons.

The textures that come with the package are a noticeable step up from CC2 Pro. Gone are the flat fills of previous maps, instead each fill has a texture to it that makes the maps much more vibrant. The symbols are likewise much improved. The older symbols looked very simple with flat fills and simple lines. The new symbols incorporate lots of shading and color techniques that make the details really stand out and the symbols can be customized on the fly. CC3 also incorporates different styles of buildings like European, Asian, Arabian, etc. so separate regions of your world can have distinctive looks. Also, new symbols can be easily imported. One wonderful addition is the ability to import bitmapped symbols with transparency like Dundjinni uses. In fact, the massive user-created library of Dundjinni art is in the process of being ported over to Campaign Cartographer 3 and adds hundreds, if not thousands, of new symbols to the program. Another exciting graphical feature of the program is effects. A simple dialog box allows you to turn such features like blending layers, putting a glow around text for easier readability, shadows, bevels, and a host of other tweaks.

One of the strong points of the Campaign Cartographer series remains the massive scalability of the maps drawn. The same continent level map can be zoomed into a group of countries, single country, or even small region all with the same crispness and detail. As a GM I love this feature since I can have my big world map and as the party travels to different sections, I can create regional maps with very little effort.

Here there be dragons.

Printing a basic map is straight forward and printing a battle map is a little less intuitive but can be done fairly easy. The ability to print the whole map or just the section viewable on the screen is a nice touch. The maps can also be exported in a variety of formats for import into other programs. A final feature is the ability to insert links within a map so that clicking on one section automatically takes you to another. This can make laying out the floorplan of something like a tower much easier as you can just click on each stair to see the next level.

The add-on programs, such as City Designer and Dungeon Designer, are still not compatible with the new version, but ProFantasy allows CC3 owners to download CC2 Pro until these add-ons can be updated, which is nice. Of course the graphical difference of the CC2 Pro add-ons and CC3 itself is very noticeable so it may be worth it just to wait on the newer add-on versions if you want higher quality City and Dungeon maps.

Like any new software package, it does take some time to learn and there some quirks in how it handles tasks, such as choosing copy before you select what you want to copy, but it is hardly a daunting task and the on-line help is very extensive. Also the Campaign Cartographer mailing list provides invaluable assistance to its members.

So where are we again?

Overall Campaign Cartographer 3 is a solid product that builds soundly on its previous version’s strengths and works hard to fix its weaknesses. There is no reason why someone could not install the package and have a detailed map printed out within an hour with just a little reading and testing. If you need to do any type of mapping for a game, Campaign Cartographer is up to the task and a solid investment.