I agree OWM is weak with raster cartography, and I have been in contact with them several times to request more raster features. I want to hand draw mountains, so I end up just exporting my landmass, drawing over top of it, and then exporting my lineart as a png into the features folder, then repositioning the pieces in OWM which is definitely convoluted. (Or if the land/water is approved I just save it in Clip). I want to do the quintessential texture sandwich, which has to be done in Clip. Some of my requests have made it into the program which is why I hold them in high esteem and recommend the program. I expect that given a decade of work everything they feel is possible that I've asked for will eventually be there, as long as it suits their vision. Of course, I also expect that it'll take ages. Their team is only one or two people as far as I've noticed. I expect the same is true of ProFantasy and similarly have no expectations of speedy changes, but slow evolution over the course of years as they implement what they have the ability to within their framework. But yes, while I recommend it as a basic mapper program, there are many things I like to do that are simply impossible in that program, and likely any mapping specific time saving program. I will be honest: to get a result I'm happy with, I have to use 2+ programs and it's definitely convoluted. However, if one of my clients asks me to change the shape of the landmass 6 steps into the design on a raster program, I have to rip apart the whole thing. I have saved hours since I included OWM in my workflow, and it's always come up when someone says "sorry but can you make the north just a bit taller and remove that island off the western coast and add a little bit of a cove there instead?"

CC3 is vector mapping only, as far as I can tell. Now I'm sure they are indeed listening, and yes, change is slow in all programs because programming is hard, and old fans want things that new artists turn up their noses at because they're used to Illustrator CC and nothing else will do... I'm not judging them for any speed of implementation. They were cutting edge once and if you don't have an Adobe sized budget things don't change at an Adobe rate, and even their programs are slow to evolve for the better and full of complicated clunk making several of them notoriously hard to learn. And they're an improvement from what came before for desktop publishing...

Now, for someone who doesn't draw or do digital art already, I think CC3 is a highly promising choice, the most amount of assets available for it... far more and better assets than OWM comes with by default... but with no way to integrate my large base of raster resources and constant confusion, it just frustrates me very quickly. Except for the city block tool. Damn... that's a brilliant tool... I honestly think that tool alone IS worth the whole humble bundle fee I paid. If you have no preconceptions of workflow, it's probably a good choice. You can, with nothing more than that humble bundle, just make a good looking map. Wonderdraft is also spoken well of but I can't say I've tried it yet. Same with Dungeon Fog. I hear a lot about it these days, and I think it's browser-based? Subscription based with World Anvil. The results are real pretty. I haven't tried it but I am impressed by its output. I mean, World Anvil is powerful all on its own, not enough to sway me to subscribe but I do respect what they've done and it seems like their dungeon mapper has some really unique features, it isn't fair to mention mapping specific programs and not give them a nod. Multi-level dungeons is some mad props DM organizational idea... which of course can be mimicked with layer folders in any raster image editing program. It's preloaded with many things... but you're stuck with those things. I really should give Wonderdraft a whirl. It is often well spoken of for a cheap mapper. But every Wonderdraft map looks like a Wonderdraft map so I suspect it has the same preloaded problem, where what you see is what you get. Great for speed but you better like the resultant style because that's what it looks like every time.

If they wanted to exclusively create raster maps, really any program will do! Gimp, Paint.net, Krita, Paint Tool Sai, Photoshop, Photo Paint, Paint Shop Pro, Painter, Photopea, Affinity... if it has layers, and the ability to do a stroke around a shape, and the ability to put down text and the ability to customize your brushes, you're good to go. For me, layer blend modes are critical. And being able to outline your selection in some way automatically, a huge timesaver. Since most raster programs do that, people can make maps in any of them, with some strange leaps in logic every now and again compared to just drawing on paper with pencil and pen.

If they just wanted to slap down some maps for their campaign and are okay with a learning curve that's about as steep as Illustrator... not as bad as Blender... I mean, why not, CC3 is on sale for less than $50, that's peanuts for a one time program purchase, and it does have a high variety of built in stamps. I'm not mad they get some of my money, it's for a good cause and they've done a lot for the development of mapping programs over the years, we likely wouldn't see programs like OWM without the inspiration of CC3.

The program does seem to be quite featured in many places. In places it does have that slick workflow I want. Populating your world with features is so fast. It removes any of the struggle someone might have had with a village map. But then it also takes 4 clicks to get to a custom color of my choosing...

I'm probably going to give Campaign Cartographer another chance. I want to like it. I know that buried under its quirks is a reasonably powerful map program. I want to be able to use what it does well, but then, that's yet another program added into my stack... I can really see using it for quicker city assembly in the future though.

Honestly, don't let me sway you, if you want to try it... I'm not angry that the program exists, they've done a lot for the digital mapping community over the years and it wouldn't be what it is today without ProFantasy. I might feel completely differently if it were my first mapping program experience and I wasn't accustomed to how one program does it, and if I weren't primed with now almost two decades of expectations of how a digital art program experience should feel when drawing. I grew up on Paint Shop Pro. You could probably make a map with it, if you wanted. I got so used to the convoluted logic used in making maps in a raster program... I like this newfangled addition of mapping specific programs... I feel like they're great for the unskilled to just dive right in, without needing to know how to draw or master a vector program with its own convoluted logic. But, I feel like the best is still yet to come. World Creator is the first program that's truly excited me for world creation (what an apt name) but I can't in good faith recommend it to the average mapper because of how expensive it is compared to all of the other programs. I feel like its intuitive erosion is an excellent step in the direction I'd like to see more of. It simply doesn't behave as needed to make a 2D map, though, but ah, to have some of those 3d dynamic modelling procedural tools in a way that also captured the aestetic of the fantasy map and managed its assets in a reasonably organized fashion... now there's a program for someone who isn't me to make in the future. Procedural erosion, man, that's what I really love.

Since I'm rambling, I forgot, there's a fun new freebie I ran into. DungeonScrawl. It does one style of dungeon only but what a cool toy. Exports SVGs, copyright is CC0 for your results. Give that a whirl to make a basic black and white traditional hatched dungeon shape. Maybe eventually they'll add furniture and it'll actually be useful but it's a fun toy now, to make a base to customize. Have fun with that!