Masterwork Maps: Pelgurn Tower Floor Plan Set
Masterwork Maps: Pelgurn Tower is the latest PDF on CD-ROM offering from Darkfuries Publishing. Once again, cartographer Brian Moseley has proven that his mapmaking skills are among the best there are in the world of RPGs. Maps are everywhere in game products, and most are of two varieties: either simple and easy-to-understand but not very artistic, or overly complicated--everything but the kitchen sink--overly stylized and practically useless. Not so with Mr. Moseley's maps. They are clean, easy-to-use, artistic, detailed, and in this case, very colorful.
My copy of the CD-ROM is a review copy provided by Darkfuries Publishing. This is not a play test review.
Pelgurn Tower was first described in the Darkfuries book Fantastic Fortresses: Castles and Keeps, which was nominated for two ENnie Awards in 2004. Although the tower is not described in text detail on the PDFs like it is in the book, we do get a brief history of the towers initial construction and additions over a period of a century. What is provided in the absence of a full text description is a full color, detailed, 5-floor tower floorplan (provided in 3 different grid scales) ready to be dropped onto the table of any fantasy RPG campaign or fantasy miniatures wargame.
On the CD-ROM are 6 sets of files. The first 3 file sets are PDFs of the tower in 25mm square, 30mm square, and 25mm hex grids. The remaining 3 file sets are the same grid sizes as the PDFs, but in a CMYK .psd format suitable for taking to a print shop and having printed out on single sheet, creating poster sized maps for each floor of the tower.
The tower contents are richly detailed, and there is a single page overview of the tower provided, containing a thumbnail image of each floor and a room key to the map details. The tower contains just about everything a fortified tower might need in a fantasy game--drawbridge, great hall, kitchen, storage, armory, bedchambers, barracks, crypts, vault, and even a latrine.
The floorplans themselves cover the 5 levels of the tower in rich detail and color. The five levels include: a cellar level with crypts and a vault; a ground floor storage level (2 versions--the DM's showing secret doorways and stairs, and the players' without the secret areas); a second floor with the entry way, great hall, kitchen, and armory; a third floor with bedchambers, barracks, and armory; and finally a fourth floor/roof level.
Looking over the floorplans, I instantly saw plenty of adventure opportunities for the tower--a party of adventures trapped inside during a siege, infiltrating to capture an opposing baron or steal an artifact held in the vault, storming the ruined keep of an evil death knight, swashbuckling fighting breaking out in the great hall with PCs leaping from table to table as troops come down the stairs from the barracks above, or rooftop fighting far above the ground below. The levels are all detailed to show necessary furniture and items for all these and more, but not cluttered with unnecessary details that get in the way of the adventure. The balance here is one of the finest points on the floorplans, and make them easily useable in a wide variety of scenarios.
When it comes to printing the maps, I can only speak to the PDFs in 25mm scale, as they are the only ones I printed out myself. I am sure that the other scales are of the same quality, and the CMYK .psd files are probably even richer in color and quality if printed on heavyweight poster paper. The PDFs print out in sections (for easy assembly at the table) with each floor consisting of 9 tiles. There are also an additional 3 tiles--1 containing the entry ramp and bridge, and 2 for the DM's sections of the ground floor containing the secret doors. The colors and details are crisp, with bright greens for grass, cool grey blue stone construction, wooden crates and barrels, torches along the walls, brightly colored glass bottles on wine racks, wood waiting for the fires, tables and chairs in the dining halls, food on the tables in the hall and kitchen, trophy heads on the walls (some of strange beasts), weapons and armor in the armories, beds and chests in the bedchambers, hearths, roof shingles and chimneys, coffins in the crypt, and treasure in the vault.
If your games can use a detailed tower for any of the scenarios I described above, or many other tower based scenarios you can imagine, I highly recommend the Pelgurn Tower Floor Plan Set. With miniatures set up on the floorplans, it will certainly make for a gaming session (or sessions) to be remembered. The floorplan set is available as a CD-ROM from Darkfuries website containing all 3 scale grids for $9.95, or if you only want one scale they are each available individually for $6.95 as downloads from RPGNow.com. There are previews of each grid size (containing the tower's ground floor) available on the Darkfuries website as well. If you are looking for a detailed history of what could be in the tower, I'd also recommend looking at Darkfuries Fantastic Fortresses: Castles and Keeps, which provides detailed maps and descriptions of the contents of 5 fortifications.
My rating for Masterwork Maps: Pelgurn Tower Floor Plan Set is 5 stars, due to the quality of the cartography and the usefulness of the floorplans in almost any fantasy RPG that makes use of miniatures. I plan on getting plenty of use out of this set, and I believe that many other DMs will as well.
