Cartography - Why the focus on Renaissance?

[Son of the Serpent]

Campaign Cartographer 3 (CC3) RPG and fantasy map making software

Campaign Cartographer 3 is the leading map making software for games (RPGs, miniatures and wargaming). CC3 gives you fingertip control of both the big picture and the small details. Want a large scale map of your adventuring world? A detailed dungeon floorplan? An historical battlefield littered...

www.profantasy.com

Here's one in CC of Rauxes that was done by a friend (later) from my original that appeared in WG8 Fate of Istus based on the appended B/W I did in Superpaint (bitd),

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Wow...is this able to be used to its fullest potential with 3/3.5 too? Those maps are amazeballs.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

A lot of it also comes from confusion in that plenty of fantasy tropes, while purporting to represent a "medieval" society, are in fact more approximating a sort of renfaire or "America with swords" motif. (Actually, Faerun is more Canada with swords, tbh).

Think about how organised religion is depicted. In the real world, neither Catholicism or Islam achieved that level of uniformity and depth until well into the early modern era. You had what we would consider religion only for the urban elite. In the smaller towns and villages religion was much like folk beliefs around a vague belief in God. It was only after the Franciscans properly converted Europe during the Renaissance that we got the Reformation, witch burnings and heresy trials.

Also very few fantasy settings get a really accurate "feel" of the proper medieval cities. The streets are too wide, the buildings and sanitation systems too modern. Keep in mind cannon and gunpowder predates most of the D&D staples (galleons, plate armour, clothing styles) yet put those in and people feel it is anachronistic.

 

[Hussar]

I'll take this one: because the mapmaking software has Renaissance-style buildings in it by default. As far as I can tell, that goes for all of them and u less you make customer buildings yourself, it's what you have.

At least, that's been my experience with the 3-5 cartography programs I've pirchased. Unsurprisingly Campaign Cartgrapher is best about it, but it's still a bit of an issue.

Yeah, I noticed that too. CC3, Inkarnate, and various other programs are all kinda using the same "toolset". CC3 is a fantastic program, but, man is that a steep learning curve. For that amount of work, I'll stick to just doing it in GIMP.

 

[aramis erak]

My question is, why are fantasy maps locked into Renaissance? Particularly urban maps.

1) Good looking maps were rare until the renaissance
1a) actual scale-present and scale-maintained maps are simply not present much before the Renaissance, so we don't have good exemplars of the look.
2) there aren't many exemplars of Antiquity, Dark Ages, nor Middle Ages maps that have survived
3) The general Tech Base of many FRPGs, including D&D 5e and pathfinder, is generally renaissance levels.
4) Visual interest: Renaissance cities have enough going on to be cool to use. Most other periods don't.

 

[Umbran]

Screw the snowflakes.

No one explicitly said that was about politics until you said this comment. At least nit that i noticed.

Mod Note:
If you are unaware of the use of "snowflake" in current political discourse off this site, please go look it up, because these days that dismissive use is an implicit political reference.

And, of course, the dismissiveness itself is problematic. You would probably do well to avoid that in the future.

Wow. Way to drag politics into a conversation boys. Shame on you. Even straight up going for the dismissive language that is in direct violation of site rules.

That does take a brass set I suppose. Or mind boggling stupidity. Those are often indistinguishable.

Right - so, you see behavior that you think is against the site rules (for politics) and what do you do? Report it, like we ask? No. You take it on yourself, and get insulting in the process. Did you intentionally make that brass/stupidity comment ironically, or was this an accidental own-goal? (That's a rhetorical question).

Folks, we have rules against going into politics, and against being rude. So, step back three paces from the brink, please and thank you

 

[aramis erak]

Wow...is this able to be used to its fullest potential with 3/3.5 too? Those maps are amazeballs.

Yes... but...
CC3 is not user friendly, unless one is used to other CAD programs. It's insanely powerful, but it comes at a cost of a steep learning curve. It's also very well supported. It can be readily used with just about anything that uses maps as it supports overlaying square, rectangular, triangular, or hexagonal grids. One can also draw zone borders, for games that don't use regular grids.

(Earlier editions were not more friendly, either. CC1 was really hard to work with.)

 

[Ath-kethin]

Id like to hear more about campaign cartographer. How big of a map can you make with it? What level of detail can you apply to it? Can it have notes attached to individual spaces (been looking for something that allows for that especially)

I am a rank novice at using the CC3+ software; my only real advantage is that it's a CAD (drafting) based program and I've been using versions of AutoCAD since 1993 or so.

But it's my understanding that most official D&D maps since the early 90s have been made using Campaign Cartographer. Mike Shley's certainly have; you can even buy add-on modules of his work to use in CC3+.

Most users, as far as I can tell, combine the CC program with others to make final maps, but that's really my impression and I have no documentation to cite for it.

 

[Ravenbrook]

I blame the Kender on the French is how I first read that and it works for me

But the Smurfs are Belgian!

 

[Hussar]

I am a rank novice at using the CC3+ software; my only real advantage is that it's a CAD (drafting) based program and I've been using versions of AutoCAD since 1993 or so.

But it's my understanding that most official D&D maps since the early 90s have been made using Campaign Cartographer. Mike Shley's certainly have; you can even buy add-on modules of his work to use in CC3+.

Most users, as far as I can tell, combine the CC program with others to make final maps, but that's really my impression and I have no documentation to cite for it.

Not really. Mike Schley hand draws his maps. That is not CC3 work. They have a toolset built by Schley for CC3 to emulate his style. If you go to places like Cartographer's Guild and whatnot, most maps are either hand drawn and then scanned, or built using art programs like Photoshop or Gimp.

 

[Tonguez]

But the Smurfs are Belgian!

Smurfs are a type of gnome, the French can keep the Kender