Dangerous Dungeons: Goblins’ Lairs

Game: Dangerous Dungeons: Goblins’ Lairs
Publisher: 0one Roleplaying Games
Series: d20
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 17th, April 2003
Reviewer’s Rating: 9/10   [ Something special ]
Total Score: 10
Average Score: 5.00

Wow. How cool is this? Dangerous Dungeons: Goblins’ Lairs is a 66-paged PDF (great value at the current price of $6) and the jaw-dropping part of the download is the first 54 pages. The remaining section of the product is a collection of page after page of goblin stat blocks. They’re all sorts of goblins here, scouts, warriors, shaman and even goblin vampires. The Challenge Ratings start at ¼ and finish at 18. There are several of these high level goblins too. There’s a goblin for every occasion.

But I’m not drooling over the goblin stat blocks.

The electronic cartography market must be one of the most competitive sub-sections in the RPG industry. The quality is awesome. Awesome is the right word. The maps in Goblins’ Lairs – and that’s what you’re buying – are awesome. The success of this product isn’t entirely tied up with the usual 0one Roleplaying Games artistic talent but also with the sheer thoroughness of each set of maps; there’s one for every taste.

# Goblin Outpost

The first map in this set is the line drawn one. This style of map is entirely made up of black lines and squares. This is the minimalist map. Early D&D products had this sort of map, in blue ink, on their inside covers. This is the sort of map that you could print out on a dot matrix printer if you wanted to; this is an ink friendly map.

Both parts of the two level map fit on one PDF page.

Next in the Goblin Outpost set comes the full colour full impact map. This is the gorgeous one. Detailed texture. Clever shading. Everything you’d expect from an 0one map. There’s more though. Each location has a space for your room number. Your room number; click on the PDF, in the white circle, and type your own location code in. It prints off with your numbers in place. It’ll save with your location code in place. This fleshed out map is directly equivalent to the line map before. There’s nothing out of place.

The next version of the map is the grey-scaled full impact map. This is the one you’d print out if you wanted as high quality as possible but you don’t have a colour printer. This version also lets you enter your own location codes.

The next version of the map is in what I call 2½D or cheap 3D. By showing the maps on their corner and at a slight angle it gives the impression of 3D. (You know, early computer RPGs used this trick). In this version of the Goblin Outpost the full colour full impact maps are aligned on top of each other so you can see where the stairs connect and which cell on level 2 is below which cell on level 1.

Then you have the grey-scaled version of the 2½D aligned maps – because you might not have a colour printer.

Not bad huh? There’s nothing really missing from that, not that I can think of.

The other maps are just as complete. Sometimes there’s a different perspective for a location – the buildings have outside views, for example – but you’re never really short of anything.

# Sighting Tower

The Sighting Tower begins with the light line map. The dungeon level of the tower fits along side the three levels of the tower itself on one page. Another trick you can do with Goblins’ Lair is re-write North. Each map has a compass with North marked on it, its slightly unusual to find a compass pointing in any other direction but you can change North to East, South, Pizza, Hello Mum, or any other direction you want.

This set of maps contains the full colour full impact copy (where you can enter your own room numbers), the grey-scale full impact copy, the 2½D version and outside view of the tower and the grey-scale 2½D version with grey-scale outside view of the tower.

# Abandoned Manor

This set contains the line map, the full impact versions in colour and grey scale and the 2½D copies as well. There’s no outside view of the Manor but there’s no space on the page for it. The Manor is of sufficient size so that the components (a few levels plus a tower) just fit on one side.

# Goblin Dungeon 1st level

This huge map barely fits on one page. Players could wander around in here for a while. It comes in the line version and both full impact version. There’s no 2½D version for this map but it would be too large to angle as required anyway.

# Goblin Dungeon 2nd level

You saw this one coming, huh? Another huge map. You have the line versions and both full impact versions. Again there’s no 2½D version but the stairs on the 2nd level map do align with the stairs on the 1st level map.

# Occupied Dwarven Complex

The line maps run to the very edge of the right hand side. There’s more to come. This map is so wide that it needs two adjacent pages to display one level. Both halves of the Complex are in this single set so both line maps come together and then all the full impact maps too.

# Abandoned Cathedral

This set of maps begins with a line drawing of the horizontal view of the cathedral and not a top-down line map view. You’ve the front and side elevations. Then you have the top down line map view and the colour and grey-scaled full impact versions. You’ve a colour outside view (axonometric apparently) and a cut away view of the cathedral too. Then, of course, you’ve the grey-scaled version as well.

At this point the PDF moves on to player handouts. These are sketched maps and notes that might have been made by an adventurer in the game. You’ve colour and grey-scale copies of these full impact images. You then have colour and grey-scale blank versions of the handouts. The blank version keeps all the wonderful paper texture but lets you write (type) your own messages and notes for the PCs to find on to them. There’s an old book version, a tattered scroll version, a new book version and half a page of parchment too.

Wow. So bloody useful!

Not everything’s perfect. Although the PDF is set up to allow you to save your changes you can’t actually do this with the free version of Acrobat. That’s the one most of us have. There’s nothing stopping you using the Print Screen button to paste your altered maps into something like MS Word though.

It hardly seems worth noting the full bookmarks or the hyperlinked index either but Goblins’ Lairs benefits from both.

This is a winner. An accessory like this can aid a DM throughout the entire span of their RPG hobby. Sure; you’ll only use the maps now and then, perhaps with different gaming groups but the blank player handouts will keep on going.