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I’m working with several friends on a joint “world-building” project for a online table-top RPG we’ll be playing in soon. I’ve always been one for visual aids, and I’m planning on doing most of the cartography for the world. That said, I’m evaluating cartography software and wanted the input of some of my fellow Pathfinder fans with the experiences.
The primary software packages I’m looking at are Dunjinni & Campaign Cartographer 3. Has anybody on the boards have experience with either, or both, of these software packages? Would you mind share your experience with these packages? What are their pros and cons?
I’m working with several friends on a joint “world-building” project for a online table-top RPG we’ll be playing in soon. I’ve always been one for visual aids, and I’m planning on doing most of the cartography for the world. That said, I’m evaluating cartography software and wanted the input of some of my fellow Pathfinder fans with the experiences.
The primary software packages I’m looking at are Dunjinni & Campaign Cartographer 3. Has anybody on the boards have experience with either, or both, of these software packages? Would you mind share your experience with these packages? What are their pros and cons?
I've used Campaign Cartographer since it came in the D&D tools CD that came out for 2nd editon. I use it for making maps, floorplans, and diagrams.
PROS: It's flexable, configurable, and it's CAD-like. It has a robust macro language, has lots of add-ons (Dungeon Designer, City Designer, etc), and good support form ProFantasy. It can make some nice rendered maps using Sheet Effects. There are also lots of YouTube tutorials.
CONS: It's CAD-like. The interface can be daunting and may not be intuitive unless you have CAD experience. It's slow if you use Sheet Effects.
So basically, if you like having lots of control of your maps and are not afraid of CAD, CC3 is the way for you.
No matter what you choose, I encourage you to go to http://www.cartographersguild.com/ and check out their resources.
I use Campaign Cartographer 3, along with the City Designer and Dungeon Designer add-ons (and a couple cartographer's annuals and the like). (and I'm ninjaed by Cold Beer :) ).
Pros:
- Based on powerful CAD engine--so you can really map ANYTHING, even if the material is geared toward fantasy mapping.
- ONCE YOU LEARN how to use it, you can devise ways to make all kinds of interesting maps and effects relatively quickly. The sheets and layers system it uses makes it easy to put on pieces for a GM-only view, and then to hide that to make a "player view" (with all the data still there and re-viewable with a few clicks).
- Actively supported with absolutely some of the best customer service I have ever encountered, and I am not an easy person to please in that regard. :) They are quickly responsive (allowing time for them being in GMT) and helpful; once while dealing with a bug while they were working on improving compatibility with Windows 7, one of the programmers emailed me a beta patch for that so I could get it working on my new machine faster. There is also a helpful and supportive community and lots of tutorials.
- Comes with a nice selection of artwork; you can also add your own or buy more symbols.
- They've worked hard on making it work with most OSes (at least Windows ones, you will have to look at their sysreqs to see about other OSs, but I think it does run on Linux too?)
- You can link maps together--so say I have a world map, a city map, and a tavern map. So I can open the world map, click on the city icon and have that open the city map immediately, and then click on the tavern icon on the city map, which then opens my tavern map, etc.
- There's a free demo so you can see if you like it yourself.
Cons:
- It is based on the powerful CAD engine--and it is very easy to go into "button shock" when you first load the program. It does NOT work like raster drawing programs or other art programs, so you have to forget what you know about such things and learn it fresh. Fortunately, there are tutorials that are extremely helpful, but absolutely the most difficult thing about CC3 is just getting used to how it works and being willing to go through some tutorials to get the basics down. Most people who don't like CC3 got turned off within the first few moments of trying to work with it and didn't seek out tutorial assistance (or couldn't be bothered/they wanted something much more plug-n-play, which CC3 is not).
- It is not cheap. Mind, I think the base software is something like $40-50, and given how powerful it is, it's a good deal and fairly priced for what it is. But if you start adding on a lot of add-ons, the prices can add up to a lot.
- Some of their functions do not work as well as they should--a lot of the "smart icon" and auto-snap features will place an object the wrong way around from where I want it to be, or attach an object to something I don't want it to. So I usually have to shut those off and do things manually. You also have to be careful to watch how your sheets and layers are on or frozen, etc. as it can be easy to lose track and sometimes if you forget to freeze a layer or something, you can end up selecting something you don't want to when moving things around.
If you already have skill at doing cartography (as far as it pertains to RPGS) and visual aids by hand with pencil/pen and paper, I'd recommend not going for the software mentioned and just go with GiMP - the skills translate pretty well once you learn how to get the interface doing what you actually want it to.
I personally find that method easier to handle than using Campaign Cartographer or Dunjinni - though I do admit those are great for allowing such easy and stylish maps while not actually knowing or wanting to draw things for yourself.
I have some artistic skill (though far from professional quality) and used Photoshop and the GIMP for mapping before I got CC3. At this time, I have utterly no interest in going back--there are things the program simply can do that the GIMP can't, plus CC3's art archive is invaluable. To be fair, I often finalize handout maps in the GIMP before distributing--add little effects it's easier to do in a program like that--but I would rather start with CC3.
Now, what you prefer is your preference--there are people that just prefer their favorite raster drawing program, including professional cartographers. But I wouldn't say that CC3 is just for people who "don't know how/don't want" to draw--because I certainly do know and do want, but find the program much more useful for a lot of purposes that don't have to do with drawing talent or training.
These are my experiences with both:
Campaign Cartographer has a bit of a learning curve it makes your maps look very dnd 2.0 old school.
Dundjinni is a bit easier and there are lots of resources and sites of custom artwork that is free to use in your maps. I've used this more than campaign cartographer because it's easy to use and the results make it look pretty good. I've recreated many premade adventure maps using this tool as well.
Another resource that I use is rpgmaptools. Then I can just take a jpg of the map, adjust the grid and I have an instant battle map.
Hope that helps.