Since September I've been working on a RPG campaign setting ('Streamdales'), which resulted in a booklet detailing the geography, culture, religion and politics of a certain region. I used Autorealm to make a map and then used GIMP to color it in, which resulted in a lacklustre map which was hardly readable (mostly due to my own inexperience with the tools, I'm sure).
Last Wednesday was the first session of my new campaign, and I realised that I wanted/needed to show the setting to my players in much more detail. I needed something that would allow me to map large areas, but also small villages and even individual farms, fortresses and dungeons. That's something that I could not do with the tools at my disposal at that time. I watched the CC3 tutorial videos and was blown away with the quality of the map that you could make in 'just a few' clicks. I bought the software and am currently re-drawing my map in CC3.
During the course of browsing around for info, I found this forum and the many beautiful maps that float around here. Of course I had to join the forum -- I hope to learn a lot from all of you!