Mapping Guide: CC3 Overland Black & White

Introduction
Welcome to this Campaign
Cartographer 3 mapping guide. If you
subscribe to the Cartographer's
Annual, you will be familiar with the
concept of mapping guides. If you do
not, here are a few words on using the
guide.
A mapping guide takes you through
the process of creating a map in one
of the many drawing styles available
in CC3 and its add-ons. It assumes
basic familiarity with the drawing The Sidebar
interface, which you achieve through
In the sidebar you will find
following the quick-start tutorial or occasional asides, including
Essentials guide. little tips and tricks, pointers
The quick-start tutorial is accessible to more elaborate
through the Help menu in CC3. The Essentials guide can be found as a pdf document in the techniques or general
documentation folder or, if you own a hardcopy of CC3, in the booklet that comes with the comments.
CD-ROM. They are not necessary for
While the mapping guide assumes you use a specific drawing style – CC3 Overland Vector drawing the map; so if you
BW in this case – the basic techniques are usually applicable to any style in CC3. Note that are concentrating on
the methods shown are usually only one way to achieve a good-looking map. Feel free to following the steps in the
experiment and come up with your own way of doing things. actual guide, feel free to
skip the sidebar.
Enough preliminary talk, let's start drawing the actual map…

Creating a Black and White Overland Map Using Vector Symbols

Starting a New Map
We'll start the new map via the New Map Wizard by clicking the
New button. Choose the map type Overland, select Decide
settings myself and click .
Choose the map style CC3 Overland Vector BW, and again click
.
In the next dialog you can
set the dimensions for your new map and add
cartouches like compass roses and scale bars. We
will use the standard size of 1000x800 miles for
this example. Click the Bottom Left button and add
the compass rose symbol, and on the Bottom Right
add the scale bar. Then hit , as we can skip
the rest of the wizard's options.
At this point we have an almost blank drawing,
containing only the map border, a compass rose
and a scale bar.
The Coastline
The next step is to draw the outline of our landmass. Click the Default Landmass button in
the top left corner of the screen. The default drawing tool for landmasses starts and the
command line at the bottom of the screen asks for the first point . Draw
whatever coastline you want for your map. After creating the main landmass, add islands
and smaller continents as necessary. You can use the same default drawing tool for this, or

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 choose one of the alternatives by right-clicking the Default
Landmass button.
As it is, the simply black coastline looks a bit unspectacular. To
spruce up the map you can add some sea contours to the
coast. Click the Default Contour Line button and add a first
outline to the coast with the Default Contour Sea 01 tool.
Continue adding outlines until you're satisfied with the look. I
usually keep it to two or three outlines, otherwise the map
might look too crowded. Note that the different contour tools
are of decreasing width and it looks best if you keep to that
progression with your outlines.

Mountain Ranges
Now for some mountainous terrain on our map. Click the Minerals/Mountains catalog
button; the mountain symbols catalog loads up in the catalog
window.
Use the symbols to create mountain ranges, hilly areas and special
features like volcanoes on the map. Don't worry about ordering
the symbols correctly when placing them – the Sort Symbols in
Map command will take care of that later – but try to place the
mountains as discernible ranges, not big blobs of symbols.
Afterwards use the Sort Symbols in Map command from the Symbols menu on all symbols
to bring the mountains into the correctly overlapping order.

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Rivers and Lakes
Next up are the rivers and lakes. If you are fine with rivers that are all
the same width, simply click on the Default River button and draw
each river in one piece. Use the On modifier (F4) to connect the
river to the coastline at its mouth.
If you'd rather like your rivers to grow wider towards their mouth, Hiding the Source
right-click the Default River button instead and begin a river with Unless you want to draw the
the River Small tool at its source. Stop after drawing about a third of river ever smaller towards its
its length and continue with the River Medium tool. Use the Endpoint source, the start of the river
modifier (F5) to attach the new section of the river to the first one. can look a bit jarring,
especially if you zoom in
Again, switch to the River Wide tool after the second third of the
closely.
river and continue until you can attach the river's end to the coastline
(or wherever it ends) with the On modifier. There is an easy way to
avoid that. Simply start the
Lakes can be added after drawing the rivers with the River Lake river behind one of the
drawing tool. Right-click the Default River button to access this mountain or hill symbols on
tool. Don't hesitate to draw them right across an existing river, as the lake body will hide the the map, so that it looks like
river line, creating the impression the river flows into the lake and out again. the river starts in a valley
behind that mountain.

Vegetation
Let's continue with some forests. Click the Default
Terrain button to see a collection drawing tools
containing different forests. Use them to add the main
bodies of forests to your map.
Note that the result will probably look a bit too regular.
Load the Vegetation catalog and add single trees
and small fill symbols along the edges of the forest to
give it a more natural look. Compare the two forests
on the right to see the difference.
Also add other vegetation features like swamps,
grassland, marsh etc. to the map. For all of these both
drawing tools (under Terrain ) and symbols (in the
Vegetation catalog) are available.

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 Natural Features
We have almost finished with the natural landscape of our map. Use the appropriate Terrain
drawing tools to add deserts or wastelands, and place matching features from the
Natural Features symbol catalog on the map. The Coast/Sea catalog contains more
things you can add at this point, like reefs or iceberg symbols.

Re-sizing Symbols
All symbols in one style are
usually carefully matched to
fit each other. Therefore you Structures and Roads
should normally not need to
resize any symbols. Now it is time to look at the human-made structures on the map like cities, roads, fortresses,
etc. Open the Structures catalog and place the symbols you need. I usually start with the
If you do feel like you need
largest cities and most important locations, working my way down to small villages and
a larger or smaller symbol, I
minor landmarks.
recommend keeping the size
change to at most 50% of Afterwards connect the settlements by roads. Either simply use the Default Road drawing
the original. Otherwise the tool or right-click the button to see a selection of differently-sized road tools. Again, I find it
symbol's lines will look too convenient to work from the most important routes down to the less significant ones.
thin or too thick when
compared to other symbols.

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Text Labels
Now it's time to label the features on the map. Set the current drawing color to something
that stands out. I use red (color 166) for this map style, but of course you are free to use
whatever color you like best.
This drawing style uses the true type font "Book Antiqua" by default. If you want to change
that, you can do so through the Text Properties button. I recommend using only one font –
or two at the most – within one map, otherwise it will look chaotic.
Click the Text button and start adding labels. You can change size and angle dynamically
using the Ctrl and Shift keys, as well as adjust the text's alignment by hitting the L, C, and R
keys for horizontal alignment, as well as T, M, and B for vertical positioning.

Sheet Effects
Each style has its own sheet effects defined, and you simply need to turn on the effects by
right-clicking the Sheets and Effects button to see the map in its full glory. Left click the
same button to adjust the effects to your liking. This might be necessary if you are creating
maps that are much larger than the default size of 1000x800 miles. Simply increase the
size of effects like the Glow effect on the LAND sheet to adjust them for larger maps.

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 More Mapping Guides
If you enjoyed this mapping guide and it helped you to create a great-looking map, you
might want to check out the ProFantasy's subscription service, the Cartographer's Annual.
Now in its third year, the Annual gives subscribers new creative content each month. Each
issue comes with a mapping guide that takes you through the steps of using it; similar to the
guide you followed here.
Previous Annual years can be purchased as one bundle package like any other add-on to
CC3.