Game: Battlemaps: Dungeon Rooms Vol.II
Publisher: 0one Roleplaying Games
Series: generic
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 22nd, August 2003
Reviewer’s Rating: 9/10 [ Something special ]
Total Score: 14
Average Score: 7.00
Here’s my theory. When Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 was published and it added “battle grid” to the list of requirements the good people at 0one Roleplaying Games leapt for joy. Why? For some time now the company has been making a name for itself producing extraordinarily high quality battlemaps. These battlemaps are, you’ve guessed it, nicely gridded.
A textual review doesn’t do full justice to the product. Check the 0one site again and nose around for the free copies, there are some and they’re worth grabbing.
You’re able to grab battlemaps off the internet because this is a PDF product. You can view these highly detailed and extremely well coloured maps on your monitor. If you don’t have a colour printer then that’s not a problem because for every colour map there’s a carefully greyscaled version. If you’re conserving ink, have a slow printer, like empty maps or are in a rush then there’s still not a problem because in this volume of battlemaps there’s a third version; a line art one.
I like PDF floor plans. A typical gaming scene could easily have player D bringing through yet another pot of coffee and player P dribbling it yet again. If I’m able to re-print my own maps at will then I’m not fussed about coffee splodges. I’m even able and willing to scribble on the maps. If the alternative is desperately trying to protect the fragile map that’s unfolded from the back of an over priced pre-written dungeon crawl then there’s no debate. I don’t have a colour printer but I’ll have the PDF spawned maps any day.
It’s easy to quickly see what’s in Battlemaps: Dungeon Rooms, Vol 2 because there’s a visual summary. This summary arranges all the maps in a /possible/ order, sketches in possible corridors and then lets you click on a hyperlink to either the colour, greyscale or line version.
We’ve a ruined pool with a great water effect. It’s just about possible to walk all the way about the full-paged map; the grid allows it. The only entrance/exit is facing what seems to be some ruined plinth.
There’s a jail with eight cells. One of the cells has been broken out of, the brick wall has a hole bashed through it and bright daylight is streaming through. It’s a great effect. The map feels like a jail rather than a dungeon, it’s brighter than a dungeon and the walls are brick rather than giant slabs of grey stone.
The Forge isn’t quite a full page, but it’s near enough. The hyperlink on the visual summary doesn’t quite take you to the colour Forge, but near enough. There’s no one in the Forge, just as well, I’d hate a map if it had people draw on it. Since the Forge is empty the items look as if they’ve been placed down and the hot coals have a smouldering glow rather than fierce burn. Yet this glow is subtle enough and your players will be twice as impressed if you are able to position a blacksmith miniature in front of it.
The guardroom is similar. It doesn’t quite fill the page and the summary hyperlink isn’t quite on target but they’re both near enough. The room is empty but the chairs and items on the table in the middle suggest someone will be back soon enough, or, if you’re miniatures are in place that the room is in use.
There’s a rather spooky staircase down. The steps lead down towards top edge, from the middle and towards a portcullis and a red glow. The staircase is nearly as wide as the double doors on the bottom edge of page that they seem to lead away from. There’s a door on the left and right edge of the page too. If you traced a line between the top and bottom doors and a second between the narrower left and right doors then you’d have an inverted crucifix pattern.
There’s a bridge room. No, this isn’t a narrow rocky arch (how they get made, I’ll never know) over a chasm or pool of lava. This map is rather more usable. A wooden bridge manages to look both rickety and well tended at the same time and leads over a page of water.
There’s a conjurer’s room and this is a two-fold design on one page. One end has a small rectangular room with tables, shelves and books but the bulk of the map depicts a round room with a large pentagram on the floor.
There’s a magic well too! A portcullis leads into a full-paged room with a little bit of rubble in it and a non-descript well at the far end. It’s perhaps a shame the map has “magic well” printed on the border but a sly DM could bluff this.
The final map uses two pages; two sheets of paper which need to be pushed together to create a single room. As you’d hope, the cartography continues right up the edge of the page to make this popular. This double-spread is for an Alter of the Spider God. The map needs two pages because one of them is pretty much entirely occupied by a large, golden, spider statue. Oh yeah. Players will know that they’re in trouble when you place this map on the table.
That’s 9 different maps for $US6. One of the maps is twice the size. There are 3 different versions for each map. I think that’s good value for money. There really is very little to fault with this product.
