D&D 5E How are the maps in Out of the Abyss?

[Mavkatzer]

Hi,
I don't run adventure paths as is, but I love mining them for resources. How are the maps in "Out of the Abyss"? Are they attractive? Creative? Rational (as in, the layout makes sense for the denizens)? Are the easy to use and well keyed? Do you feel you could pluck them out (with the creatures and such included) and use them in your homebrew world?
Thanks for your opinions!

 

[pukunui]

You can see the maps for yourself (and purchase high-res copies of them) on the cartographers' websites: Jared Blando and Mike Schley.

 

[Paraxis]

They are wonderful looking as always. But sadly the scale of the grid is not always 5' per square on the dungeon/encounter maps and that is very annoying to me.

 

[Jester David]

They look better than the ones in Rise of Tiamat by the same artist. He started strong in Hoard of the Dragon Queen but seemed to rush a few of the later maps. There were some stinkers in the second book.
The maps here are more consistent in quality, but there are quite a few encounters and locations lacking a map.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

I like Jared's maps; the player's version looks very usable for the OotA PbP I will be running. I'm unclear whether I can post the maps on EN World's Playing the Game and Talking the Talk sub-forums without violating copyright, however. My best guess is that such use would not be "personal" use and thus I could not use the maps for my PbP. If anyone has experience otherwise, I would like to hear from you.

 

[Paraxis]

Not sure but I would imagine posting much lower resolution maps for review articles or play by post games wouldn't upset anyone, the product for sale costs as much as it does so that you can print out a high quality map for table play. So if you used something that was 1/8th the size but still perfectly usable for play by post you should be OK, also if you just posted individual cropped images of the rooms would be another way to essentially use but not diminish the sales of the original product.

I have no idea about the legality of the above or the policy of individual play by post forums, that's just what makes sense to me.

I mean the smaller resolution versions used as previews on the artists website could easily be reused, most are probably on various peoples tumbler pages.