ProFantasy Campaign Cartographer Review
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ProFantasy has a map builder tool for those fantasy map makers and dungeon masters out on the market. In this system are numerous themes and icons that can be used for map making as well as tools for world shaping. So let’s take a look into what this system all has in store and if it’s worth the money for your map making and role playing game needs.
ProFantasy Campaign Cartographer Ui
The Ui for ProFantasy Campaign Cartographer is not the most modern looking system in the world. But the amount of tools that it provides makes up for this easily. The best way I can describe this tool is a photoshop that was specifically designed just to build fantasy maps. There are so many tools that are available to uncover here.
I would actually recommend checking out their YouTube tutorials on these in order to get started as this system takes a while to start picking up. You can check out some of their tutorial videos like one that we have included here!
Once I was able to learn what the tools are and some of the other things that this tool does, I was able to really start digging deep into making maps the way I wanted that many map making websites or applications are not able to do.
Themes in ProFantasy Campaign Cartographer
There are many themes to choose from. when first starting to create a map. The feel of the map can be decided at this point. There are themes from a Lord of the Rings type map, to a Wheel of Time type map.
With each of these themes comes unique icons and features that will make any map feel unique and get any map maker to where they want to be in creating their own fantasy map.
I love the Annual Herwin Wielink map style. This one captures that Lord of the Rings map feel that I love to create. It has awesome depth to it and the icon package that comes with it is fantastic.
But just because you chose a theme does not mean that access to other icons and features goes away. We will talk about that more later on in this review.
Tools in ProFantasy Campaign Cartographer
One of the tools that stood out the most to me was the simplicity of the roads and rivers tool. This tool allows any map maker to create those natural bending rivers and roads on their maps. The format of the style of these roads or rivers can also be altered to however you like with different settings.
I was also a big fan out the black outline for all my land masses. This was something that was really easy to do with the click of a button and get the stand out feel of the land that I like to get when making my maps by hand.
Each of these tools comes with a tool tip when using them to get a good understanding of how to use them which is very helpful when learning the system early on and a good reminder once more experienced with the tool. Without these tool tips, one could easily get lost in the total amount of tools and features.
I did struggle on getting my oceans to actually fill out the outside of the map due to the way that I was creating water and ocean features. I am sure that there is a better method to accomplish this in the tool, but I have yet to find it.
So the tools are all about discovery and finding the new and better ways to do things, and this is only a challenge to find due to the large amount of tools available which is a good problem to have.
The Icons in ProFantasy
The icons that are available to choose from are aplenty. There are so many icons to choose from that I feel I have not even scratched the surface.
The icons appear in bundles and it’s possible to tab through them all when placing them on a map. Additionally, these icons are able to be rotated to fit what is being desired. I also found that the icons that get placed cycle through based on what would be a good fit for the location making the map look overall much more nuanced.
The fact that the map maker has a feature that alternates the different types of icons in the style is absolutely fantastic and is a pretty unique feature in comparison to other map making tools out there such as Inkarnate.
Icons can also be pulled in from other themes. So just because one theme was selected when building the map at the very beginning does not mean that the entire icon library is not available to choose from.
The icons are all very well done and detailed to a level that makes them fit nicely, they can be scaled up and scaled down as well as rotated on the map to fit the desired fitting on the map pretty easily.
The map surfaces can be changed with many options as well based on the climate or style of location. Users can create Artic maps, grasslands or forest maps. Each of these when selected will determine the base layer when creating land masses on the canvas.
When creating land masses as well. If a user is unhappy with the results of their coastlines, there is also a fantastic tool that allows users to pull the landmass or push it back into a desired shape.
ProFantasy Is Bigger Than You Know
ProFantasy has more than just these tools as well. So Dungeon Masters out there should look into their City Designer and Dungeon Designer was well. This review is only covering the Campaign Cartographer, if you are interested in learning about the other systems, comment below and let us know.
Is ProFantasy Campaign Cartographer Worth Buying?
The Campaign Cartographer is a pretty nice tool that requires only a one time payment to have access to these tools forever.
If you the map maker are looking for a great map tool to help create new and awesome looking maps, I would recommend this software. It has so much to offer and just takes a little time investment to learn how to use. Once that is done the possibilities feel endless.
If you are a map maker on a budget and are ok using the free software out there, this might not be for you. I would recommend checking out our list of the top 5 free fantasy making software. https://www.dickwizardry.com/articles/5-amazing-free-fantasy-map-builders?rq=Map
If you are a person that is paying for their map making premium services, I would wholeheartedly give this software a go. The price is pretty competitive and comes out to be around the same as just a year with some of those premium services out there. The benefit here is that it’s a one time up front cost to have access to a premium level of map design forever. You can find their software here: https://www.profantasy.com/
Hopefully you found this review informative, if there is something more you want us to cover or questions you may have you can comment below and let us know.
