Dungeons of Doom

[JoeGKushner]

Gamers love maps. Some companies like SkeletonKey Games and Dark Furies catalog is filled with map based products. Others like Green Ronin, Kenzer & Company and even Wizards of the Coast have tried to fill that love, but often come up short. Well Green Ronin is at it again but this time, they’ve taken SkeletonKey Games main man Ed Bourelle and brought him into the fray.

Dungeons of Doom runs $19.95 for 80 black and white pages. After a half-page introduction and credits, and a full-page table of contents, the maps start. The maps are broken up into different regions with close up maps providing the details. We have Dungeon Kingdom, The Great Cave Lake, Fire Top Peak, Crypts & Tombs, Labyrinths, and a whole section of Player Handouts.

For example, in the Great Cave Lake, we have the overview of the lake map, dire eel tunnel map,fungus jungle map, and one of my favorite, ghoul king’s guard post, hanging from a giant stalagmite with another great map of a column of stone acting as the tower of the ghoul king with up close maps following of the segments of the ghoul king’s tower.

On one hand, this means that you’ll have to look over every section as something you might not think belongs to a region is actually there. For instance, fire top peak contains not only dwarven ruins, and mines, but also fire giant locations line a furnace and a mine.

My personal favorite is Crypts & Tombs as this section consist of different areas perfect for shorter dungeon crawls. We have things like the royal tomb and the mage’s tomb. Many of these have hidden rooms and other notes on them.

The player handouts are rough versions of the interior maps and cover several specific regions with none of the details. Perfect for handouts.

One problem is that unlike the Dark Furies books, there are no map symbols. You can pretty much figure out what everything is, but map symbols do help in that regard. The second problem is that the maps are not perforated. This means if you want to make copies, you’ve got to use a razor or destroy the spine some how. Hopefully Green Ronin will come out with a PDF version of this book so that the GM can just have a map of what he wants at the table instead of the whole book.

I personally found this to be one of the best map books of it’s kind. Unlike the SkeletonKey Games maps which are designed for actual game play use where you arrange the dungeons to your preference, these maps are larger scale and preassembled. Unlike previous attempts by other publishers, these maps are useable because most of them are on a grid and are on an appropriate scale which lets your actually use them instead of admit the artistic ability that went into making them. Not to say that these maps fall short in skill as Ed is one of my favorite cartographers and I find his work easy to look at and understand.

If you’re a GM like me who often does his work off the cuff (lazy), these maps are life savers in that they provide you with excellent maps and ideas to determining where everything goes and save a lot of time while doing it.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

It's an hour before game time and you've got nothing to run. You've got books full of monsters and treasures, but no dungeon to put them in. What do you do? Pull out your copy of Dungeons of Doom, that's what! This 96-page accessory presents an intricate series of dungeon maps by master cartographer Ed Bourelle, whose work has graced the pages of such game lines as Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed, Dragonlance, Exalted, Midnight, Scarred Lands, and Green Ronin's Arcana. Use each map individually or link them together into huge mega-dungeons. These great-looking maps are a godsend to the busy GM, making adventure design a snap. Inspiration awaits in Dungeons of Doom!

 

[Khur]

Dungeons of Doom is a 80-page book of maps for fantasy roleplaying. It's a perfect-bound volume with a color cover and a black-and-white interior. The inside is all illustrations-the maps-with the exceptions of the introduction, table of contents, and an ad on page 80 for The Black Company. Cartography guru Ed Bourelle rendered the maps and the whole shebang retails for $19.95.

The book itself is a solid piece of work, insofar as presentation goes, mostly due to Bourelle's wizardry. (A few editing errors managed to make it to print, even though the total number of words in the book is few.) Little doubt exists that maps would have been more compelling and even clearer in color. It's also true the binding could have been better engineered for the inevitable photocopying or scanning that most users will have to do. Spiral-bound or loose in a folder (like Wizards of the Coast's Map Folios) perhaps? It was nice of Green Ronin to give permission for reproduction for personal use, so one won't have to wrangle with a Kinko's employee over copyright law.

Organized into five loosely related subsections, Dungeons of Doom presents three larger environments and two themes inside which all the other maps fit. The first environment is Dungeon Kingdom, which contains 15 subsections. Second comes Great Cave Lake, with 11 subsections. And the third of the environment sections is Fire Top Peak, with eight locales. Each area often has more than one map dedicated to its contents, from broader perspectives to specific buildings or areas. The first themed section includes seven tombs, while the second contains five labyrinths.

Dungeon Kingdom is a loosely connected set of sites accentuating a variety of places with an underground settlement theme. The maps live up to the task. Locales range from the eminently useful kobold lair to the mysterious and intriguing crossroads with its well of peace. A multilevel cave complex might house a tribe of Shaaryan hunters in the Forgotten Realms or a band of Marguul goblinoids from Eberron. A keep, two towns, and a few other locations round out the collection, including an underground prison. The low point is an absurd clockwork gauntlet that manages to make a modicum of sense just because it's the only underground route to and from the prison. Evidently, someone wanted to prevent any one coming or going.

Great Cave Lake is even more diverse than Dungeon Kingdom. Within a yawning underground mere (more than 6 square miles) are a variety of settings ranging from a fungus jungle to the 12-floor abode of an undead lord built in a massive flowstone column. Guard posts for the same lord are set in giant stalactites around the cave. In the Great Cave Lake, one also finds the City of Serpents, a winding, three-level haven suitable for yuan-ti, serpent folk in service to the awful Yig, or even a band of snake or dragon cultists. More mysterious is the City of Spiders, which could easily be a drider enclave, a settlement for a strange breed of cave-dwelling araneas, or something even worse. Yet the Great Cave Lake manages to delve further into mystery with its unknown depth near an elemental vortex (to the Plane of Water, perhaps) and a realm of giant crystals. Inside the crystal domain lays a temple built within a massive geode and an odd prison. Dire eel tunnels found in this section lack context within the core D&D rules (no dire eels), but even these lairs could become home to some Underdark water terror, such as an aboleth or even an underground morkoth.

Fire Top Peak is, of course, a volcano. It's a fascinating place with an obvious history, with its abandoned dwarf city, mines, and shrines. The dwarf city combines the intrigue of a lost hold with the wonder of sections flooded by now-cool magma. While the city seems haphazardly planned and laid out for a race that's so typically lawful, the mines are a wonder of order and cartographic creativity. While the maps of the mines should have been labeled as to how they connect (the overview on another page isn't enough), they do look as if an underground race carefully explored the area for riches. A similar feel of careful execution exists with a fire giant settlement, access to its multiple levels provided by climbing holds inside the volcano’s main magma vent. Furnace of the Fire Giants only fails to hold the imagination when it provides what appears to be a modern machine (eruption control) to do something for which a fantasy race would use magic. Even if this apparatus is a magic item, it looks too much like a technological marvel. Fire Top Peak is finished off with a tower of brass atop which lives an efreeti. One could easily run a scenario wherein the wicked giants serve the evil genie and have driven off a large clan of dwarves. Each piece of Fire Top Peak also makes a sound capsule for a single adventure. Only the efreeti's tower falls short in this sort of evaluation, but it could be used as a launching pad to an expedition to the Plane of Fire.

The seven delves provided in the section on tombs are, for the most part, excellent. Here, the able DM has the makings of explorations into the burial customs of humans (pharaonic, barbaric, magical, and medieval), dwarves, goblins, and frost giants. The racial tombs, like other parts of Dungeons of Doom, serve to give a little insight into the cultural tendencies of each race. For example, the dwarf tomb has quarters for a live-in caretaker. A few of the sepulchers, though, might be hard to make an exciting setting out of because of easy accessibility to important areas and/or a little too much symmetry. (It should be pointed out, however, that the real world has examples of tombs built in just these symmetrical ways.)

Equally hard to weave a daring tale with, the labyrinths section is almost a critical miss. Mazes are hard to make anything more than tedious in a game that relies so much on verbal exchanges. A brief maze can be mildly entertaining, as can one that can be cleverly avoided or quickly exited through ingenuity. Thankfully, though most of the mazes in Dungeons of Doom are too complex to serve as much more than a frustration device, there are only five of them, and one of those can be navigated more easily than one might expect.

Critical Hit
These maps are great and they'll provide fodder for many adventures. Dungeons of Doom is a great tool, especially with its nuances. The settings are lively and full of hints about how the inhabitants live, which means ideas can be garnered from Dungeons of Doom that transcend the book's utility as a collection of maps. This is an unusual bonus for a mostly visual book.

Critical Fumble
The blurbs both on the back of the book and on the first page are misleading when they describe Dungeons of Doom as containing player versions of the maps. The player section contains only eight maps (the book itself containing 69 to over 80, depending on your definition of what constitutes a separate map). While one could find this out by scrutinizing the book's table of contents or by looking through it thoroughly, it's bad mojo to be less than perfectly clear in the promotional notes. The player maps themselves are the worst part of the book, and a buyer would have been better served with a few more pages of adventure sites and the like.

Coup de Grace
Dungeons of Doom has a lot to offer for what could appear to be just a collection of maps. It completely lacks game mechanics, and it does not, therefore, fall under the purview of the OGL. The lack of mechanics (and d20 logo) is a virtue, because this map book can be used with any fantasy roleplaying game, from GURPS to HARP--oh, and D&D too. Originality takes a boost from the cleverly insinuated clues to inhabitant lifestyles in the maps. Ed Bourelle's draftsmanship is also outstanding, hampered only by the fact the drawings are all presented in black and white. This latter fact serves to weigh down the value of the collection. GMs will find Dungeons of Doom gets the creative juices flowing, though. Despite its very minor flaws, this is one book whose utility makes it a virtual must-have for overworked fantasy roleplaying referees everywhere. Navigate to your favorite gaming source and grab yourself a copy.

Score: 4.45 out of 5


This review originally appeared at d20 Magazine Rack.

 

[Psion]

Dungeons of Dooms: A Compendium of Fantasy Maps is a collection of maps of potential adventure locations for fantasy games. The maps are by Ed Bourelle of skeleton key games, whose work has also appeared in a great variety of d20 system books.

The book is published by Green Ronin. The book lacks a d20 logo and has no game mechanics or game specific material. However, many maps have grids and scales friendly to d20 system use.

Dungeons of Doom is printed as an 80-page perfect bound softcover book priced at $19.95.

The cover of the book has a colorized version of a map of a similar style to those in the interior, with a textured backdrop.

The interior maps are mostly grayscale. Most are detailed in the style that has made Bourelle’s distinctive maps famous. The maps tend to have a grid or a scale, but not both. The maps lack keys, but are generally fairly straightforward, with significant items labeled right on the map.

The maps are sorted into thematic sections. The first three such sections are thematic regions, with a large scale gridless map of the general area, and several more detailed maps depicting encounter sites within the larger regions. The major regions include dungeon kingdom, the great cave lake, and fire top peak. The last two sections are an assortment of crypts and tombs and an assortment of labyrinth. Finally, the book has a section of player handouts, depicting rougher sketches of some of the earlier maps for photocopying and handing out to players.

The dungeon kingdom region is an underdark-style cavern network with a variety of sites the players might stumble upon, such as a kobold lair, a cave town, more general any mysterious tribal and spirit caves.

The great cave lake region is an underground lake with intriguing sites situated along its shore such as a fungus jungle and a city of serpents (perhaps yuan-ti, or other d20 snakelike creatures such as inphidians from the Tome of Horrors I&II or Lion Den’s/Ronin Art’s ophiduan...). The coolest feature is at the center of the lake: the Tower of the Ghoul King, filled with descriptions of undead creatures that are thralls to said ghoul king. Makes me want to dig out my Advanced Bestiary and make a villainous dread ghoul sovereign.

The fire top peak is a variety of lairs situated on a volcano, including a dwarven ruin, a fire giant lair, and the temple of the efreet, which sits atop a brass pillar in the middle of a lake of lava.

Conclusions

If you are like me – that is, you tend to scavenge adventures more than use them as is – Dungeons of Doom should be of great use to you. It has a variety of nicely done, easily copyable, and (unlike Cartographica easily readable maps. The maps have a lot of great ideas that you can plug into your campaign circumstances and even your own system.

Overall Grade: B+

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[GameWyrd]

Ed Bourelle is one of the elite cartographers, one of the very best in the industry and his work is often found associated with d20 products. We see that here with Dungeons of Doom where he teams up with d20 experts Green Ronin. In fact if you're used to Green Ronin products then you might not even notice the d20 logo is missing from Dungeons of Doom: A Compendium of Fantasy Maps.

No d20 logo means no d20 stats. This product is simply a collection of cartography. It doesn't need stats and I'm glad for however many extra maps squeezed into the book as a result of this.

The introduction on page one is the single largest bulk of text in the whole book and is a waste of space other than to suggest the product is based on false assumption. After the introduction there's a Dungeon Kingdom map which connects the other maps in the book. The introduction text could tell us about that, make suggestions on how to link the maps together or use them individually, but it doesn't. Instead the introduction suggests that you could have lots of good ideas but, somehow, be thwarted by your inability to design a dungeon. I doubt that ever happens. I think its far more likely that would be Dungeon Masters dive on in and sketch out plans (if they need to draw anything at all) without any concern for the geography or logic of the place (just how did that ogre get down there?). The introduction, by Robert Schwalb of Green Ronin, then suggests the time saved not drawing maps can be used to devise ways to kill characters. It's a tongue-in-cheek joke, I admit that, but it grates. I'm just not a fan of the combat-skill style of game play. True, maps are often associated with combat scenes but these are maps and not floor plans. Instead the cartography in Dungeons of Doom are better suited to the worldbuilder style of roleplaying were attention is paid to creating exotic and rich worlds and creating heroic tales of adventure and tragedy in it. Worldbuilding is not about killing characters.

Bah. I like the maps but this is a US$19.95 product - it needs to be very good to be worthwhile.

After the Dungeon Kingdom view we move on to look at the twisty and bog standard caves of the "Tribal Cavern". The quirk of note here are the rope and plank bridges over an underground stream.

The primitive burial cave is a splodge shape with square tiles etched on it. As with all the maps there are titled sections here - Wall of Wariors, the Spirit Ward, etc, but these are little more than inspiration as there's no further comment. It's hard to justify why anyone would need professional assistance to design a cave. This is eye candy but it's unnecessary.

The ancient temple cave is little better. At least there are some straight lines and some circles to suggest columns in an area known as the altar of the old ones.

The dungeon keep is probably the first cartography in the book where the professional touch really pays off. Here we have two stories, carefully connected and not so straight forward. I like the way the back third of the top half is rather more isolated from the rest of the keep than anywhere else.

Similarly, the kobold lair is complex enough to not be easily recreated. I'm not that clear how anyone could lack the inspiration to draw some wobbly circlar shapes and connect them with tunnels but at least these professional maps have the levels drawn on the same scale and connected with steps and stairs in the right place.

There's a fungus farm - more of an idea than a map - but at least that idea is there.

We go on with a set of underground crossroads, a river town (underground), a clockwork gauntlet, cave town and prison. These work as ideas - especially something as bizarre as a clockwork gauntlet, a collection of water wheels and attached piston bridge and sharp but pointless 'wave of blades'. These don't work as paid for maps - they're pretty but I can't use them as floor plans, can't use many of them as a generic location (how often will you use a clockwork gauntlet) and don't even work as a drop in map for that combat encounter you had in mind (the cave town has pesky distractions like taverns and trading posts).

Thankfully we have more than these for our money. Dungeons of Doom is divided into sections than just the Dungeon Kingdom and the next one up to try and impress is the Great Cave Lake. The ledge introduces the elemental vortex and this is a natural environmental oddity in the region as a great whirlpool is a hugely deep underground lake beyond the ledge. Here we have dire eel tunnels, another fungus jungle, the den of the lost artificer, the ghoul king's guard posts and the tower of the ghoul king. Also down here we've the city of serpents, city of spiders, the crystal domain with crystal prison and domed cathedral. Once again the strengths here really are in the ideas. Tell me about city of spiders! I want to know who lives here... spiders? Drow? Someone else? It's even more of a mystery for the city of serpents! What's the story there? This is both frustrating and useful at the same time. I love supplements which inspire me and Dungeons of Doom manages to half inspire and half taunt me instead. As for the maps themselves - pretty, professional and something the DM could look at to remind themselves of the macro view of the scene location but not useful as a floor plan nor scene righting aid.

The Fire Top Peak has the predicted mix of dwarf locations and lava (and probably the suggestion of a fighting fantasy warlock). We've a cut-side view of the mountain to show how the sub-locations might fit horizontally and vertically. The dwarven ruins are much more complex and intricate than the cave plans and as with the dungeon keep it is an example of how it can help to have someone experienced do this hard work for you. The mine tunnels are less complex but are interconnected with the likes of ash caves, dangerous vents and pumps.

The penultimate section of DM only maps is a collection of crypts and tombs. We've a royal tomb, a pharaoh's tomb, mage's tomb, the tomb of the dwaven kings, a frost giant tomb (frost giants have tombs?), goblin grave warrens (goblins burry their dead?) and skull crypt.

There's a miscellaneous collection of labyrinths too. Ha-ha! Here we have a type of cartography that doesn't have to be on floor plan scale to be handy to the DM. It certainly doesn't matter how many bumps there are in the cavern wall between one cave and another but I it does matter how many left hand junctions there are in a labyrinth tunnel. It's just a shame that there aren't more of them.

Other than the labyrinths and floor plans there are other types of cartography which are useful to buy. Maps which you can handout to players are always useful. Unlike a DM's own copy of a plan, these maps have to be pretty and can't have any holes in them either! (how often have you, as a DM, improvised a section on the fly? - I often do). There are a handful of these handouts in the back of Dungeons of Doom.

To be honest if Dungeons of Doom had continued as it had started I would have thrown it on the floor in annoyance. I'd have bought a book of cartography which I'd be unable to use. Even the name is annoying. However, as the book goes on (supported by the unquestionable quality of the actual maps) the complexity (and need for complexity) increases and therefore so does the time saving purchase of prefabricated maps. To me, Dungeons of Doom is more successful as a source of inspiration than a source of maps though. I could have got much of this inspiration if I'd been sold a list of interesting concepts for $1.99 in PDF form though.

Although the book improves as the pages turn it is hard to imagine that anyone buying Dungeons of Dooms for cartography will be entirely happy with it. It's an expensive luxury with limited use - but it's not useless. If you're a cartography fan then I suppose it's also a quality addition to your collection.

* This Dungeons of Doom review was first published on GameWyrd.