Tonnichiwa's Workshop (using cc3+)

[Tonnichiwa]

Today I begin a long journey.

31 years ago the TSR company created the Oriental Adventures book for the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons game. It was 1985, the year of the movie "Back to the Future", Prince, Madonna, and Michael Jackson were being spammed all over the radio, James Clavelle's book Shogun had been made into a TV miniseries, and Ninja's were all the rage. And if I remember correctly the only computers that were available were either the Commodor 64 (or some version of the commodore) or the IBM 286. There was no internet, cell phones, cd players, dvd players or drawing tablets.

I was 17 years old at the time and had been playing the two different versions of Dungeons and Dragons since 1980. In the new Oriental Adventures book, there was a kingdom that was called Kozakura, set in a larger setting of Kara-Tur. It was based on the Warring States period of Japan (Sengoku Jidai in Japanese) and I was immediately hooked.

Since that time, my old gaming group has disbanded and moved on from playing Dungeons and Dragons. They got lives and kids and got married and life happened.

But recently, some newer friends of mine have shown interest in some Dungeons and Dragons gaming. They used to play Legend of the Five Rings RPG from the AEG company way back in the 90's but they haven't really done any Asian style setting in their D&D games. They constantly talk about how much fun it would be to do a game of D&D based on feudal Japan or some fantasy version of it but no one has stepped up to really put that into action...until now.

After playing around with some maps, trying to create an Asian setting, I have finally decided I would just begin with that old setting from the Origional AD&D game.

But after digging out all of my old AD&D stuff I have run into a bit of a problem. Shortly after publication, TSR decided to move the Kara-Tur setting into the Forgotten Realms setting, produce a few maps for it, but then left it alone and really never went back to it after about 1990.

So resource materials and maps for the places I want to GM the players through are very sparse. So what is a GM with a mapping program like Campaign Cartographer 3+ supposed to do? Map it all out of course

So with that in mind I set to work gathering all I could find on my favorite country, Kozakura...sadly there isn't much.

There is a map of the entire country, but it doesn't go into great detail. This is the one TSR created and placed in their boxed set of the Kara-Tur setting.

EDIT: Sorry about the image, I still can't seem to figure out why it turns on it's side when I load it up to this site. It is the proper direction on my computer screen but for whatever reason it doesn't load up the right way

[Tonnichiwa]

There is also this map of Kozakura from the first module they made called Swords of the Daimyo. This only shows the province names and shapes of Kozakura.

[Tonnichiwa]

As far as individual provinces go, they only made three maps. The first one is from the first module, Swords of the Daimyo, the second is from the 2nd module called Night of the Seven Swords, and the third is from the Kara-Tur boxed set maps showing most of the southern provinces.

[Tonnichiwa]

The game that I plan on playing is actually going to be based around the idea that the players will work their way into a position of power in the country, and eventually start trying to take over the country, province by province, So in order for that to happen I have to have every single province mapped, not just the ones that were done origionally. So to that end I have set myself the task of creating every single province in Kozakura using CC3+ and the Asian mapping style.

So far I have gotten this far. I didn't want the map to look exactly like any of the ones created before because I want it to seem like the map was created by hand, not by computer, so it won't look exactly the same.

One of the things a person is able to do with Campaign Cartographer is create an interactive atlas that can be used to zoom in to a particular spot on the map in much more detail than the main map. So with each province, this is what I plan to do. This workshop is going to follow me along as I try to create and re-create all of the provinces of Kozakura. You are welcome to pull up a chair and watch the progress (and of course, comment, critique, say hi, and be sociable.)

Cheers

[Tonnichiwa]

This is one concept I have tried. basically making the mountains almost all one color and trying to go from the hills to the mountains gradually, adding in the volcano and the twin peak mountains on the upper right side. I'm not really sure if I want to do all one color on the mountains or make it more artistic by making them multi color like in my coastal map.

I'm also not sure if I want so many mountains or if I should tone it down a bit with them.

[Southern Crane]

This is one concept I have tried. basically making the mountains almost all one color and trying to go from the hills to the mountains gradually, adding in the volcano and the twin peak mountains on the upper right side. I'm not really sure if I want to do all one color on the mountains or make it more artistic by making them multi color like in my coastal map.

I'm also not sure if I want so many mountains or if I should tone it down a bit with them.

I love these Ukiyo style mountains. Did you make those in Photoshop and if so do you plan on releasing the brush sets to the public? I am currently working on my first series of maps which I am trying to make in a half-Asian/Ukiyo style as the setting is a wuxia variation.

[Tonnichiwa]

Hi Southern Crane. No, I didn't make those in photoshop. They are part of the "Empire of the Sun" set that TJ Vandel (Schwarzkreuz, on the Cartographer's Guild) made for Campaign Cartographer 3+ mapping program. They are an incredible set that I have enjoyed immensely since he made them. Having been interested in Asian style Dungeons and Dragons settings, and having very little in the way of maps for such settings for many years, this set is a godsend to me.

[Southern Crane]

Hi Southern Crane. No, I didn't make those in photoshop. They are part of the "Empire of the Sun" set that TJ Vandel (Schwarzkreuz, on the Cartographer's Guild) made for Campaign Cartographer 3+ mapping program. They are an incredible set that I have enjoyed immensely since he made them. Having been interested in Asian style Dungeons and Dragons settings, and having very little in the way of maps for such settings for many years, this set is a godsend to me.

Is it possible to use the set in Photoshop? I have campaign cartographer somewhere. I bought in 2007 but I never liked the software as much as Photoshop. From the site it looks like it comes in bitmaps, can you confirm that before I purchase?

Thanks a lot!

[Tonnichiwa]

I don't know how to use photoshop so I am not really sure if they can be used there or not. The only program I use is CC3 and CC3+. Also, while you may technically somehow be able to use them in photoshop, I think Profantasy has the rights to them. They license them to users of cc3 the same way Microsoft licenses fonts to someone using Microsoft Word. In other words, you can use the symbols but cannot re-distribute them for other people to use.

[Southern Crane]

I don't know how to use photoshop so I am not really sure if they can be used there or not. The only program I use is CC3 and CC3+. Also, while you may technically somehow be able to use them in photoshop, I think Profantasy has the rights to them. They license them to users of cc3 the same way Microsoft licenses fonts to someone using Microsoft Word. In other words, you can use the symbols but cannot re-distribute them for other people to use.

Well I own an active license for Campaign Cartographer 3 and City Cartographer; I just checked on the Pro Fantasy site. I am only intending to use this for my personal use with maps for background as I write so I would imagine that using the icons I purchase in Photoshop counts as fair use since I am not selling anything just using it as background material. Its functionally equivalent to collaging really. Since I have to talk to my lawyer anyway this week on a separate issue I'll just ask him

Thanks for the information!