CC3 will not be particularly easy to use for a novice who is not a computer programmer (I’m not!). But the manual is a great help, and the youtube videos available on the ProFantasy website do a great job of explaining how everything works, and after about 45 minutes of watching and reading I was off and creating my first map.

 

 

The menus can be quite daunting at first, but everything is actually quite simple, whilst the plethora of symbols (small pictures) included in the software make it really easy to add towns, forests and other features to your map. The help function is also well written and more useful than your average. Each style of map includes its own set of symbols, which makes things easy, although you are free to select other symbol sets, some of which you can customise anyway, mostly in regards to colour. The developers have thought of most things, and you can do all kinds of stuff with your results to really add some style to your map with the sheet layers function. You can add effects like blurs, fades and colour changes to your creations to show off beaches, changes in water depth, or contours in the ground.

 

I’m sure I will only improve with time as I get going with the software over the weeks and months ahead; but I’m excited about creating some great looking maps and using them in my games- and fans of games like Dragon Age, Risen & Two Worlds will find this a great game in order to assist them with making fan maps and handouts for their games; MMO players can create and share maps to help with complex raids and missions; whilst players of classic tabletop RPGs like D&D and WFRP will find this an essential resource for their games.

 

 

At £30, you get quite a bit of bang for your buck. However, the dungeon floor plans in the core set are quite lacking; even with any files you can supplement the package with for free from the internet, your maps will not look as professional as those designed with the £30 upgrade, Dungeon Designer 3. For overland maps, this software is phenomenal value. For those RPG or fantasy enthusiasts who want to be able to map out towns, keeps and dungeons, more upgrades will realistically be required. I’m hoping to test these out in the future to see if they are worth as much as the core software set is by itself.

 

 

"Campaign Cartographer 3" is not quite a 10/10. You get a lot of value for your money, but to truly get the best maps, you need to purchase further content, even if you are only interested in Overland maps.

 

However, for a budding cartographer there is nothing else quite like it out there. Once you have broken into the software, creating a good standard of map becomes not only easy, but a pleasure, as you behold your beautiful creations, which can be made quickly and simply. CC3 is something that I hope to come back to with the expansions, but will keep anyone looking to create map materials (overland or otherwise) for their games busy for weeks.