Author Topic: Campaign Cartographer Read Me  (Read 12817 times)

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Offline Defendi

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Campaign Cartographer Read Me
« on: October 30, 2007, 11:44:05 PM »
I've been asked to post the Campaign Cartographer Read Me and to make the topic sticky.  Here it is.

Campaign Cartographer is a trademark of ProFantasy Software Ltd.

Campaign Cartographer Read Me
The maps in this program were created using Campaign Cartographer 2 and 3. Because the maps are far smaller than any reasonable bitmap we might make of them, we?ve included them in this download for your printing and viewing needs. With the original maps, you can probably print clearer images than you can from our PDF (depending on the resolution of your printer). In addition, Campaign Cartographer allows you to scale the maps, giving you the ability to print out your own battlemats at miniature scale.

Maps
We?ve included two versions of each map. The one with the normal file name is the CC2 version. The one with ?CC3? at the end of the name is for CC3. We?ve included both because there is a free CC2 view and print program available online, whereas you must own CC3 to view those maps. CC3 has more features and, therefore, the maps look better. It?s the CC3 versions that are presented in the PDFs.

To get the CC2 viewer, go to the Profantasy website (www.profantasy.com). While you?re there, take a look around. We recommend the program for anyone that has to make their own maps. Make sure you open the CC2 version of the map if you?re using the viewer. The CC3 version won?t look right.

Viewing
Viewing the maps is easy with CC2. Simply open the Campaign Cartographer program, then File | Open. Find the map you want to view and double click on it. There are zoom buttons in the top right corner of Campaign Cartographer (by default). Use these to adjust your view.

The hitch comes in looking at the CC3 version. This is because bitmaps aren?t included in a CC3 map file. We used trees on the Stanor Monastery map that don?t come with CC3. You?ll need to download them to your computer to view that map properly.

Go to Steel Rat?s website (http://rpgmapshare.com). They are located in ?Mapping Objects? in the section ?Nature Objects? in the subsection ?Flora.? It?s easiest to set the screen to display 30 at once and just page through. Make a directory called ?Steel Rat? under ?Symbols? in the CC3 program folder. Under that create a ?Cover? directory with a ?Flora? directory under that. Place the tree files there. You are looking for the following files:
Baobab
Large Cherry Tree
RuralMaple01a SR
RuralMaple03a SR
RuralMaple07a SR
RuralMaple08a SR
RuralMaple09a SR
Three-Lobed Tree
Tree02
Tree03
Tree04
Tree05
trees2 SR

Square Grid vs. Hex Grid
Different games have different movement rules. All the dungeon maps in this product have two grids, a square grid where one square equals five feet and a hex grid, where one hex equals 6.5 feet (about 2 meters). To change the grid, click on the inset ?Layer? window on the status bar, it will say something like ?L:SQUARE GRID?. The L: tells you it?s the right one. This will bring up the layer dialog. Hide the layer you don?t want and unhide the one you do. They will be called HEX GRID and SQUARE GRID. You hide and unhide a layer by selecting the middle box next to that layer. An ?H? will appear in the box to tell you it?s hidden. When you close the layer dialog, you will see your grid covering the map.

Printing
Use File | Print to print your map. Most of the time, you probably want ?Everything? marked to print the entire thing, and ?Fit to Page? to place it all on one sheet. However, you might want to print across multiple sheets to make a poster map. To do that use ?tiling? to enter how many vertical and horizontal sheets you?d like to print across. We recommend you set an overlap as well, so that you can trim the edges and not have to worry about ending up with gaps.

Battlemats
At Final Redoubt Press we enjoy using Campaign Cartographer to print our own battlemats. To do this, we pull up a dungeon map and go into print. Then we set the paper distance to equal 1 (for 1?) and the drawing distance to the distance you?d prefer (5 for 5? for instance). Then we tile it to as many sheets as we think we need to cover the entire map, with about a 3% overlap. We check Print Preview to make sure we don?t have too few or too many sheets. When we have it right, we print. Then, it?s just a matter of trimming the unnecessary bits and taping it all together.

This works great for open areas, but sometimes you want to do a dungeon as well, some place where the players
won?t know the entire layout until they explore. If you don?t mind a little more work, you can do this, and it greatly enhances our games, but it might not be for everyone.

What you do is take your finished poster of a map and cut it back up into individual areas, like a puzzle. Making each room and each corridor their own piece is a good start. Most of the time we don?t worry about removing the dead areas, such as the solid stone between rooms, just cut it up in chunks. When you are cutting between two encounter areas, try to cut along the middles of walls, so that which ever way the characters approach, they won?t see bits from out of other areas.

Then during the game, you start by putting out the first room. Make sure the player can tell where the exits are, depending on how you cut, they might miss one. When they choose an exit, find the appropriate area and place it where it goes on the map. This is why even areas with nothing special about them are numbered on our maps. If you cut them up, you need to make sure everything has a number on it, so you can identify what pieces go where.
We?ve found it?s best to locate the most craft-oriented person at the table and put him or her in charge of assembling the map. They usually get annoyed if you do it sloppily, and this allows them to feel like they?re helping with the game visuals. Give them some tape and have them attach the pieces as you place them on the table.

Battlemats add great visuals to any game, especially the newer, more appealing CC3 maps. It might seem like extra work, and it is (we do all our initial taping and cutting while watching T.V.), but every player we?ve ever done this with has loved it --even when the map is big and the game pauses for five minutes because the GM can?t find #117.

Symbols
To use the included symbols, merely copy everything in this file?s symbols directory into the symbols directory in your Campaign Cartographer program.
The Echoes of Heaven:  Available for HARP and Rolemaster.  www.FinalRedoubt.com

Offline Cormac Doyle

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Re: Campaign Cartographer Read Me
« Reply #1 on: October 31, 2007, 12:14:20 AM »
PS - Profantasy (Campaign Cartographer) will be releasing a viewer for CC3 very soon (it's in beta at this time).