A week is a long time in BRP land and......

[Agentorange]

I don't know, you fall ill for a week and an entire shared world has popped into existance in your absence

More to the point I'm considering forking out some money for Campaign Cartographer, I've always rather enjoyed making maps and have been thinking about buying CC for ages. Which folks here have got it and more important what do you think of it ?

I always loved the maps done for Middle Earth Role Playing and I see that the guy who did them has done a set of symbols, colour palettes etc etc for CC that allows you to create MERP style maps in CC. I'm very tempted.....

[Shaira]

I've been a keen user of the entire Campaign Cartographer suite for the best part of ten years now, and can recommend it highly. The Campaign Cartographer 3 stuff in particular has some excellent graphics capabilities - as you mention - and you can turn out some beautiful maps. Dungeon Designer 3 is likewise equipped, and City Designer is currently awaiting its upgrade to "3rd edition", which should be just as cool.

I should mention however, just in case you're not aware, that Campaign Cartographer has a learning curve. It's a CAD program, and so deals in vector-based objects rather than the raster-based stuff you generally get in programs like Photoshop. It therefore owes a lot of its program logic to CAD - ie its command structure, dealing with layers / sheets, elements such as "multipolies" and fractal functions. If you're coming at it "cold", it can be a bit daunting, and seem counterintuitive at first.

Having said all of the above, version 3 of the software is the friendliest yet, and avoids some of the aggravatingly over-technical aspects of previous versions in favour of defaulting to the likeliest map-drawing behaviour. The tutorials are good, and the documentation sufficient (if digital...), and with the additional packages in the "Annuals" you can achieve some substantial results (I'm a particular fan of the Mercator catalogue).

Lastly, CC3 is not cheap. It's not expensive, either, especially in CAD terms, and you certainly get a lot of flexibility and versatility for your buck. If you want to make some great looking maps, either for online use (they look GREAT in programs like Klooge) or for printing, it's a great tool. I'm still using it ten years on.

Hope that helps,

Cheers,

Sarah

[tzunder]

CC is gr8 but it is a CAD package. If that seems right then go with it.
If you want a free fun alernative: try AutoRealm
http://autorealm.sourceforge.net/index.php
AutoREALM
SourceForge.net: AutoREALM
AutoREALM

[sdavies2720]

I've been a long-time user and contributor to CC2,3. It is very powerful, but definitely takes some work to get going. If that is daunting, there are simpler packages out there, and at least one group has started using CC3 symbols with another package -- getting the style of CC3 with a simpler user interface (and probably fewer features)

Steve

[frogspawner]

I should try AutoRealm first, before forking out. You might be happy with that, it does fractal lines and such - and has the added benefit I could send you the draft 'SharedWorld' version I made with it...

[Agentorange]

Thanks to everybody who commented, well....

On the one hand I'll openly admit I've had no experience with CAD software, scraped by at maths at school ( got my 'o' level but pursued it no further ) and from what people here have said there is a bit of a learning curve involved.....so I might be better off trying Autorealm

On t'other hand CC3 does seem incredibly versatile, powerful and well supported and most important of all some of the maps are absolutely beautiful.

I shall have to mull it over . but at present I can feel my credit card calling out: " use me, use me you know you want to "

I've always liked maps and it was maps in RPG's that inspired me to start doing my own, specifically the ones in MERP and the one in the back of the RQ2 rule book showing Dragon Pass and Prax. That was a real revelation to me, that whole cartographical style was something I'd not seen before and it made a huge impression.

[Trifletraxor]

CC3 rocks! Make your credit card happy!

SGL.

[sdavies2720]

CC3 will reward the work. Do the tutorials. ask questions on the user group (cc2-l on groups.yahoo.com), and don't get discouraged. Once you get the hang of it, things bop along. The application has gotten much easier to user over the time that I've been using it.

Steve

[Agentorange]

I've more or less made up my mind to go for CC3 I suspect I'll find it tough going to start with as I'm not particularly technically minded ( I think any technology more advanced than a steam engine is the work of the devil )
But the potential rewards and depth of the software seem to be worth the effort.

I do have one question though: is it possible to import scanned documents into CC3 ? I have a large hand drawn map of my own game world, and it would be nice to be able to convert it across without having to do the whole thing from scratch.

[Shaira]

Originally Posted by Agentorange

I do have one question though: is it possible to import scanned documents into CC3 ? I have a large hand drawn map of my own game world, and it would be nice to be able to convert it across without having to do the whole thing from scratch.

Hi AgentOrange,

Yup, you can do what you're asking. Basically, you can create a Layer or Sheet in your drawing, calling it something like "MAP FOR TRACING", etc. You can then import a JPG or whatever of your hand-drawn map, and it turns up in your new CC3 map. You can then hide or show this sheet and others as you trace (over the top of the trace-map sheet or layer) the coastline, mountains, rivers, place objects like towns, etc. The main fiddly bit is getting the size of the imported map to be aesthetically right - so that your mountain symbols, etc, are all more or less the right "look" sizewise. But it's not a major problem - you can fiddle either with sizing your imported map at the moment of import, or you can resize your default symbol size to match your map.

Happy mapping!

Cheers,

Sarah