Game: Battlemaps: Corridors and Hallways Vol.II
Publisher: 0one Roleplaying Games
Series: generic
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 21st, December 2003
Reviewer’s Rating: 8/10 [ Really good ]
Total Score: 13
Average Score: 6.50
It isn’t just the superb quality of 0one Roleplaying Games’ Battlemaps which makes the whole product line such an attractive option for GMs. It’s the fact that the Battlemaps are so well supported. This is a review of Battlemaps: Corridors and Hallways Vol.II. You have to wonder how many publishers would bother to offer you a collection of corridors and hallways – let alone how many publishers would do a second volume of them.
The first volume of corridors and hallways had some fairly esoteric hallways – corridors lined with statues or propped up with an abundance of pillars. It’s great to see that these “specialist” hallways continue to be supported here. We’ve new angles and steps for the pillars and statues as well as, of course, the more usual dungeons and mines.
There are four pieces of mine tunnels. There are stairs up, down and an “ending doorway” for the corridor of pillars, for the corridor of statues and for the dungeon corridors. The mine pieces are the new style for the PDF.
Technically there are more than 13 battlemaps in the PDF though. As has become the standard for the series there are three versions of each. You have the glorious full colour option that must be a terrible temptation if you actually have a colour printer capable of that level of quality. You’ve the carefully grey-scaled copy of every battlemap and the line drawing option for each one too. These printing options are another real reason why 0one’s battlemaps are such a good purchase for so many.
The PDF has an extremely functional contents page. You’ve large thumbnail images of each of the floor plans right near the top of the document. This lets you see at a glance which corridor design you want to use. It’s just a matter of clicking on the image and you’ll be whisked straight to the right page. Unlike previous Battlemaps the bookmarking is much better here and clicking on the thumbnail map actually takes you to the correct battlemap.
It’s $6.50 for these 13 tiles. That manages to be cheap and expensive at the same time. I think 50c for each battlemap tile (counting all three versions only as one tile) is great value for money. Nevertheless the battlemaps are still expensive enough and rare enough to be best used for the climatic combat scene. There are not quite enough tiles for GMs to be able to create different dungeons and environments for every game situation. I suspect we’ll get there but those $6.50 will quickly start to stack up.
I really like Battlemaps: Corridors and Hallways Vol.II. I’m neither a fan of all-out combat games and certainly not dungeon crawls – but I do like tactics and strategy. I appreciate a climatic combat scene in a night’s gaming and it’s often a very good idea to use some sort of map that some sort of miniatures to ensure that combat goes smoothly. Battlemaps are ideal for this.
