Steffen leaving "The MAD Cartographer" (Patreon)

Hey all,

It is with sadness that we're announcing that my map making other half, my good friend Steffen, will be leaving The MAD Cartographer. Before I get into my own words and what this means for TMC/our Patreon, here's Steffen's very honest thoughts about his reasons for moving on:

Hello Patrons!

I’ve been a cartographer for over 3 years now, and the past year since I partnered up with Alex I’ve drawn about 100 maps for this Patreon. I love drawing and I’ve really enjoyed drawing these battlemaps for you all ! But I’ve still decided to retire from map making, which means the Faewild theme will be my last one.

Since I started full time map making back in August I’ve gradually fallen for a couple of traps, not keeping up with my social life, putting work in front of self care, not finding a good day-night rhythm... To put a long story short, it has been a blessing and a curse to be able to freely manage my own work time!

I aired some concerns to a friend of mine and in a very short time I was more or less headhunted by the place he works. I’ll be taking the step back to programming and right now I’m looking forward to having the colleagues physically around me and not just staring at them through the Internet.

I’m very glad I took the opportunity Alex presented me, for that I have no regrets and I’ve learned so much! There’s so many aspects of this I’ll miss and I’ll most definitely regret leaving this adventure soo early...  I’ll be in the background checking out on all the cool stuff I’m missing out on!

Speaking of background, during my stay I’ve “hidden” elephants in 12, soon to be 13 different maps. One can say it’s one for each month I’ve been here, but some months have more, some have none.  They range in size and importance on the various maps, some are hidden quite well, while some are the centrepiece of the map itself. I hope that every time you accidentally stumble onto one of these elephants, it makes you smile knowing there are more waiting to be discovered.

We couldn’t have done this without all of your support, I’m grateful of all of you and wish you good luck in your future campaigns. I also wish the best to the MAD Team and look forward to seeing where the new Foundry and Moulinette integration takes you!

Steffen

I am extremely sorry to see Steffen leave; over this last year he has been not only an inspiration who has impacted my own map style, but a confidant who I have been able to share both the highs and the lows that this kind of job brings with it. Steffen is an absolute talent and I consider myself lucky that he came on board and gave this whole thing a chance, the experience and vision he brought with him bringing some of the best maps our Patreon has seen (I've included some of my favourites that he's made over the years in the gallery which are full VTT versions that you can save). I can only wish him the best for himself and his family; and everything he does from here!

So what happens next?

Some of you may have already noticed the new "Team MAD" role on our Discord and a few new faces, some of which you may recognise. Having done this for over 2 years I've had the pleasure of working with and getting to know a whole host of talented people within this industry. I've reached out to a bunch of these talented folks who, on top of their normal Patreons, will now be all working together to start making maps for you folks using the TMC assets that Steffen and I have created (as well as making a bunch of their own)

So don't worry, the amount of content you get will not be slowing down or shift from the quality you're used to, but will contain some fresh new ideas and concepts from a bunch of extremely imaginative people! They're all stepping up to the plate to usher in this next phase of The MAD Cartographer, so for now I'd like to welcome Krane (Stained Karbon), Lukalock, Mark Drummond J, Tony (Direquest) and Zach Moeller to TEAM MAD!

Keep rollin' those 20s folks!
Alex, Steffen, Harrison & Team MAD