Darcy,

I'll be honest your reply had me quite emotional. In a good way. This is the first time I've 'gone public' and, after lurking for a few years here, I decided to 'come out' on this forum. Of course my players have know for years :-)

I'm living in the Gulf region and a cofounder of the Gulf Roleplaying Community. The massive mix of people introduced me to lots of new ideas. And so I started in Campaign Cartographer. It is an awesome piece of software; however, counter-intuitive. About the same time, I began to dabble in 3d stuff as I needed a space ship for a game.

The two merged, and now I do my maps in 3d too. Don't get me wrong, I am agog at what people achieve here. Cartography is a fully time, and worthy hobby in itself. However, it is merely an adjunct to mine; namely, rpg. I soon realised I'd never be good at maps, but ok at models, and ok at renders. And so, here we are.

For me it's the joy of showing players the dungeon, and saying, 'Look. This is what it actually looks like.' After all the players should never see your beautifully made map!

I use either a projector on a screen, or, for 'real' work, I use a projector on a frame that shoots down onto a whiteboard also held in the frame.