Clever little aid. With what looks like only a few options, really does allow you to make a plethora of tiles. The ability to rotate the included sundries would expand the possibilities immensely. All of that and given the price, this is a must have gem.

A very mixed bag. The art styles represented in this product are highly inconsistent, ranging from cartoonish to almost photorealistic. You can see several varieties just on the first page. Some of the pieces don’t make sense. What, for example, is a European-style knight in platemail doing inside a sarcophagus with a Hindu elephant god carved on the lid? You do get a bunch of useful dungeon dressing counters for a reasonable price, but other publishers have done this better.

A variety of room and hallway map pieces to generate a quick dungeon. All of the rooms and sections are on an 8x8 grid, with any openings centered on the side to aid in connecting them easily. The set includes 53 different map tiles, including several rooms and hallway sections. Not all are completely "different" - one room, for example, is repeated several times with different entrance openings. Two different tiles are outdoor entrance tiles, one with snow and one without, and a couple of tiles are "room 1" tiles that show sunlight streaming in.

The artwork and colors are great. These would be good for keeping handy when an impromptu game pops up, and you don't have anything ready - a few random encounter and treasure tables, and you've got a wandering dungeon to spring on the PCs!

For the price, you get 19 pages. Of that, the first is a 'cover' shot, this is a 'sample' that the tiles can be used in. Next is recommended use, cutting them out and placing them on the good old foam board, even with a recommendation for dickblick. Also includes an e-mail and a few links to other products on that second page. Third page is an overview of all the tiles included in the set. This is a good way to get a single page overview of all the material and allows for some brainstorming.

Four through eighteen are the tiles proper. The last page is actually a stand out for doors.

In terms of style and design, they aren't really simple, but they are not overcomplicated. They are a tad bright I think with a heavy black outline, but it serves as a good way to distinguish them from others in the same venue.

The pages are labelled for ease of use. For example, we start off with a full page tile, each square equalling one inch, for most purposes in 4th ed, one square or in 3rd ed, five feet. There is a nice mix of material ranging from skeletons laying on the floor, to statues placed against walls. This allows for 'standard' dungeon dressings like stock rooms to be quickly and easily designed but doesn't limit the user as there are some 'odd' pieces like a room with a pool of lava in it.

For those who wish to use the skill test from 4th ed, or use the DC checks in 3rd ed of Dungeons and Dragons, there are four tiles that meet up to form a central area that meets over the span of four small bridges with chains hanging beneath them. This brings to mind all sorts of potential uses as players can fall off the platform only to grab the chains or things can come up from below and use the chains as weapons.

Dungeon Set 1 is a good way to get started with tiles if you've never tried them before. Use the miniature page to think about what you want and then print out what you need.

Originally Posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2011/08/04/the-gazetteer-volume-i-issue-iv/

I’ll admit, I was shocked at how big this map was. 21 MB for only nine pages of content? I’ve played some video games that are bigger than that! I’m still not sure WHY City Apartment is that big as I have other full color maps that I have reviewed which are thirty plus pages and still smaller than that. Just a head’s up on the bandwidth this thing will take up.

Only six of the nine pages of the PDF are actually parts of the map. The first and last page make up the front and back cover and the second page shows how to put all three levels of the maps (first floor, second floor, and rooftop) together. As always, there’s a plus for any map that shows how to put things together. Remember, little kids or first time gamers might purchase your maps.

City Apartment is clearly meant for a modern campaign. You could use it in anything from Call of Cthulhu to the old TSR FASERIP Marvel Super Heroes game (which I miss dearly). The map has a lot of detail to it, from the hardwood floors of the apartment to all the furnishings any apartment would have (and then some) The rugs, stoves, beds, etc all have a lot of detail to them and everything looks great. I was really impressed with the design here. The map is in full colour and is grid based, which makes it perfect for miniature usage if your campaign uses them. This means as long as you are playing in a modern campaign, you can find a use for this map.

My three complaints about the map are minor ones. The first is that the apartment isn’t very realistic. It’s bigger than most houses and very few apartments have two floors. This is more like a house or townhome than an apartment. The second is that the cost of the map is three dollars which is kind of pricey for such small content compared to other maps we’ve looked at previously. Still, considering I used to game in the second edition AD&D era, four dollars is cheap compared to what we paid for maps when I was but a lad. Hell, I remember playing fifteen or so dollars for a D&D Minis map, but that also came with an adventure, was printed on high quality foldable paper and was nicely done. So checks and balances.

The map is a bit big and pricey, but it will fit any modern campaign perfectly. It’s still worth considering picking this one up if you are playing things like Chill, a modern era d20 campaign or the like.

Thanks for the update. Now rather than just showing the same thing as the cover that is shown, it shows some samples of what can be done on the website.

i feel i have to defend this product. Despite what the other review said, it is not just the cover, more a sampler of what the website contained within can create. Although it is a bit simplistic at the moment, i hope the author will be adding to it as time goes by, hence my current rating. I would be perfectely willing to upgrade my review if there was more, but it's free so cant complain

This product consists of 53 different 8x8 map tiles to print and arrange as required to display a dungeon complex to your players. The suggestion is made that for best results the tiles should either be printed on card, or glued onto heavy card/board or foam core.

It is a very versatile set, with room entrances aligned so that virtually any tile can connect to any other one. There is a wide variety of room shapes - some simple and others quite complex - all presented with a uniform flagged flooring design: this place (whatever you decide it is) obviously was built on purpose. In some chambers, the floor comes in two shades, you may wish to treat this as two levels or leave the characters wondering what the significance might be! Some rooms have pillars or partitions, there are several with massive pits in the middle, and there are corridor sections as well as chambers. A few rooms have specialist layouts: some with mystical signs on the floor, one with a lowered centre area and steps leading down to it and the like. To increase usefulness, one tile allows transition to more natural caverns, and several entrances are provided including one to a snowy scene.

If your adventures include classic 'dungeon crawls' this will be a useful addition to your supply of visual aids, particularly if you like to use miniatures. The one thing that's lacking is an overview sheet of what's available to aid in planning out your layout.

Ok. This is my third try to review this because I keep messing up in Firefox and going to another page, missing it each time, so I'm gonna be terse:

This is great art, and there's a lot of it. My only gripe is that it's overly crypt-themed heavy, but you've got stuff that will spruce up every environment in here, beds, bookshelves, tables (complete with a very macabre setting). The art is top-notch digital stuff, so if you need to fill out a dungeon without hurting your drawing hand, look here!