too generic to tell what this map is supposed to represent

This map looks as much like a hedge maze as an alien jungle

First off, free high res color battle mats for a dozen settings, from the folks who make their money making maps! But honestly I have all the maps I need, I bought this (on sale) because it had a dozen one-shots on a variety of of themes. There's an old saying in another hobby of mine that if you find one solid item in a book you've gotten you money worth. In this case there are at least 4 adventures I'm going to be actively recruiting folks to play. The Harry Potter-esqe "Big Bo's Up" is very clever and looks like fun even to someone who's not really a Potter fanboy. There's a nice dock-side adventure that will fit in nicely for my Dragons of Stormwreck Isle follow up, and "Not a Drop to Drink" look promising with it's puppy quest giver.

But the ones I really need to put to the table are "An Unquiet Night" where the PCs find themselves in a badly haunted bothy while traveling. A great tale to use any time you have a key member of your group unable to play and you can't really continue your story arc without them. The other is "Raising The Family Spirits" in which the main descendants of recently death duke all spend the wake talking about how they had planned to kill him but totally did not get around to it before he died of old age. The PCs have been hired to keep the peace at the wake so no one else dies. It does NOT go well.

It allows me to add a grit element to my Traveller scenarios

A beautiful map that's awesome for many scenarios, the art is excellent.

This book is awesome! Is it an adventure, a map set, a dungeon generator, or a monster manual? Such a great, although quite quirky product. I've ran this for my party, with random improvising here and there, but pretty much ran the adventure as written. Loads of fun!

Each adventure is a separate one-session one-shot. If you want a campaign, you will want to develop your own story to tie the adventures into a campaign, and will probably need to add a few more adventures so the players gain enough experience. The lowest adventure is for levels 1-3 and the highest is 7-9, so you could run a party from 3rd to 7th level with the calendar adventures, as well as Loke's "RPG Toolkit" adventures.

Very nice and well presented map. Love all the minor details that give extra narrative for your players to explore.

I have bought a number of maps from BattleMats but this one in particular is gorgeous.

Original review with pictures on RPG.net : https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/19/19139.phtml

Loke Battle Mat's "Loke Deck of Combat Twists" card deck describes itself as "150 Cards to Enhance RPG Combat Encounters" "designed to inspire and randomize events which can affect RPG encounters. You can use these cards to help plan, or draw randomly during live play." The deck consists of four categories of cards: Targeting, Environment, Wild Magic, and Tactics. Targeting cards select a target, where they've been hit, and what effect the hit had. Environment cards "are a range of perlious events which can influence and affect combat." Wild Magic are magical side effects, leaning on the whimsical side. Tactics "describe how the enemy have prepared for, or act during, the combat encounter". You can pick up these cards physically and virtually for Roll 20.

And how do you use them? Any way you want! Want to add some color to the encounter? Draw an Environment card! Not sure how the bad guys prepared? Draw a Tactics card! Unsure whom to target in the party? Draw a targeting card! Need a Wand of Wonder, miscast spell, mishievous NPC spell, or a magical trap effect? Draw a Wild Magic card!

In this review, we'll use the cards with a random encounter. Many adventures with a random encounter table will usually have a group of monsters that the party encounters — and that's it. No description of how the monsters attack, no interesting environment affecting combat. Thus, the Tactical and Environmental "Combat Twist" cards can give the GM some ideas to make combat more than just the usual "they attack".

For the random encounter, we'll use an encounter from Loke's "Wilderness Trek" random encounters PDF. The Loke random encounters are actually pretty well fleshed out, and the "Combat Twists" deck add even more memorable detail. "Wilderness Trek" was originally released as part of a KS "Wilderness Books of Modular Maps" campaign, and is now available retail as part of the "Untold Encounters" hardback and PDF on DriveThruRPG. "Untold Encounters", I should mention, also includes encounters for dungeon and towns, based on the "Dungeon Run" and "Tavern Crawl" PDFs from previous Loke KS modular maps campaigns. "Untold Encounters" is a system-agnostic supplement, with 5e support. The encounters may be used with both battle maps and "theatre of the mind" RPGs, and not all encounters revolve around combat. The encounters are well-described, and you can even select them to create your own adventure or flesh out a pre-written one.

Anyway, the wilderness encounters has you "Choosing a Wilderness Region" from arctic, desert, forest, mountains, plains, sea & shore, swamp & jungle, and wilderness boon (treasure). Once you select a region, you roll on a table to see how many encounters you receive (eg. for the forest, you may receive a "1x Forest Encounter, 1x Wilderness Boon"). You then roll d100 on the region's encounter table, then look up the encounter in the PDF's "Encounters A-Z" section. Each region has some information the GM can use (eg. forest canopies). The dungeon and town encounters work similarly. (For the town, you start with the ward, then roll on the ward's encounter table, then look up the encounter. The dungeon includes not just enemy encounters, but how to build a dungeon with traps and everything from the dungeon module books!)

So let's have an encounter, a forest encounter to be specific. We'll start in the "Wilderness Region" of forest, then go to the Forest chapter. On the "Forest Encounters" table and roll 12 on a d20 for "1x Forest Encounter; 1x Wilderness Boon". On the "Forest Encounters" table, we roll a 13, for "Carrion Moss Carpet" whose Description on the table is "Moss covering ground and tree trunks". Seems not-so-innocent enough. We then look up the encounter in the "Wilderness Encounters A-Z" section. The carrion moss carpet description starts, "Forest: This strange thick moss covers everything in this area, smothering trees, plants and any trails in a smothering deep red mossy blanket" along with a few paragraphs of text, including gameplay.

As for gameplay, "It is [Difficult] to travel through the moss and any Character without suitable protection will receive [Light] damage from repeated contact with the moss." Going back to the system-agnostic Mechanics section, we look up "Difficulty: Difficult" as "Difficult - These tasks are more likely to end in failure than success without some kind of assistance (magic, equipment, other Characters etc.)." For the "5e Mechanics" we see "Average Party Level: We will use the value of Average Party Level (APL) to help produce values based on the level of the Characters. APL assumes there are four Characters in a party and is the average value of their levels." and "Difficulty: Difficult: DC = 14 + 1/4 of APL round up". So a party of 11th level characters would have a DC of 14 + 11/4 = 17. We can also see that for Light Damage, the party would take 1d4 x 1/2 x 11 = 6d4 damage. If the number crunching is a bit much, just use your RPG's suggested difficulty check and damage rules.

Now that we have a "1x Forest Encounter" let's add a card from the "Combat Twist" deck. As said, Loke's "Combat Twists" deck includes an Environment set of cards. Randomly picking one results in "Rising Waters: The floor here is damp and littered with puddles. Any combat will disturb the groundwater further, causing a flood to rise around the combatants." Also, as said, "Combat Twists" is also system agnostic, so the GM is free to translate the description to game mechanics. We could use a modifier to the DC, or just read out the second sentence if the party fails or rolls close to the DC. That flood, by the way, could be the moss's digestive juices...

As for the "1x Wilderness Boon", the "Wilderness Boons" encounters read more like a treasure and miscellaneous items table. Some of the more interesting items include a "Cursed Violin", "Full Dining Set" and "Military Recipe Book". Let's make a roll of 15 to find... "Delicious Herbs". I guess that means we can harvest this semi-deadly moss for a something tasty. And, from the description, "Delicious Herbs: Wilderness Boon : Any suitably trained Character will [Simple] notice this collection of plants combine into a sauce that will make even a meal of warm mud delicious." Back to the "5e Mechanics" section results in "Difficulty: Simple : DC = 4 + 1/4 of APL round up", so our 11th level party makes a DC of 4 + 11/4 = 7 for lunch.

Well, now that lunch is over, let's have another encounter. 85 on the "Forest Encounters" is "The Noble Hunt". In "Wilderness Encounters A-Z" the description is "Desert, Forest, Mountain, Plains : High born and wearing yellow Carnations in their caps, this [Small] group of keen hunters [Standard Warrior NPC] ride after a [Large] pack of hounds [Standard Beast] through this area. They do not often stop for anyone and their hounds are prone to harassing smaller characters and companion animals." We'll have the hounds harass the halfling cook, and draw one of each of the "Combat Twist" cards.

As said, the "Combat Twist" cards may be used any way you like. We'll just draw one of each for inspiration (in secret), the same cards as the Combat Twist image above. "Wild Magic: Out of the Hat" and "Targeting: Get the Mage" might not apply, since the encounter doesn't have to have a mage or focus on one, yet. But "Tactics: Attack from Behind" would describe how the hounds attack the hireling cook, and "Environment: Trip Hazard" suggests the hounds stumbling into the moss or the pots and pans used for cooking. It's up to the GM to determine any penalties for both sides, as well as combat in a hazardous area. Conversely, you can describe the results of (bad) die rolls with the cards (eg. if you fail to hit or are hit, check to see if you fell in some still-living moss or stuck your foot in one of the pots or the campfire). Good luck, brave halfling.

Untold Encounters: UE is currently out of print physically. You can find it on DriveThruRPG as a PDF. Personally, for scenarios and encounters, I prefer PDF. With a PDF, you can just print out the pages you need, rather than bring along yet another book. Of course, with Loke's digital maps, you can definitely keep your PDF digitally along with your other Loke gaming materials. fyi, While the encounters (dungeon, town, wilderness) are available as the "Untold Encounters" book, you can also find the dungeon and wilderness encounters as part of the "The Dungeon - Books of Battle Mats" and "The Wilderness - Books of Battle Mats". Happy gaming!

Another fantastic product from Loke Battle Mats, looks really easy to find relevant NPCs & monsters to fill the gaps. Love both the hard copy & the PDF as they have been lovingly put together with some amazing art work. Already rolled up some of the Untold Encounters for my Fantasy AGE group to enjoy, very easy to slip in to the existing adventure & give a bit of extra depth.

Full review on RPG.net, based on the physical book. Includes using CC&C for the D&D "Starter Set : Lost Mine of Phandelver": https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/19/19119.phtml

Castles: The castle walls should work just fine for a "close up" of a castle for encounters such as speaking with the city guards, sneaking inside the castle, an NPC encounter inside the castle walls, that sort of thing. I was sort of disappointed that I couldn't make a generic castle (with the four corner round or square towers, walls between the towers, and a drawbridge), even with the castle walls in the Town and Taverns Battle Mat Books. Miniature skirmish gamers can still use the battle mats for that attack on one side of the castle.

The room maps in the set are suitable for not just castles and NPC town locations, but as generic rooms for RPG'ings. Breaking down the more functional rooms we have:

Throne room and school. School could be used for a smaller church. Castle gate complex with drawbridge. Large dining room with kitchen, and royalty or merchant quarters. Can be used for an inn or tavern. Barracks and armory, with castle wall courtyard. Castle courtyard. Each two-page spread can be used for the outside or inside of a castle wall. Large two-story library or academic area. Single pages may be used for smaller libraries and ballroom area. Four-story wizard's tower. Single pages may be used as individual rooms, like I've done for the D&D adventure. Generic rooms. Impressive spiral staircase and master bedroom, and smaller rooms. Maze hedge. Garden or upper-class park. Sewer complex. Plus four-pages of blank tiles for your other maps.

Crypts: And, for town and other encounters, this two-volume set has churches as well! The largest church is a two-page spead, with the services on one page, and entryway, office, and smaller services area on the other. Thus, you can use this two-page spread to make smaller areas of worship. Another page has a half-page school room that can be used as another services area in a church room. In addition to the church, the set has a double-page graveyard. As for actual crypts, we've seen the large single-page one-room crypt, with the adjacent rooms that have a crypt. One volume of the books has a double-page spread with an inner hallway. One of the volumes has generic rooms with spider webs on one page, and a single webbed room that can be used as a forgotten temple or altar. The other volume has two pages of webbed ruins and caverns. Unfortunately, these two pages are pretty much the only ruins in this set, although Coast of Dread has two ruins maps, and the "Add-On - Wilderness" vinyl clings has a page of ruins.

Caverns: As said earlier, some of the cavern pages can be used for generic outdoor hilly encounters. "Castles, Crypts, and Caverns" has sixteen cavern pages, with six, I would say, usable as outdoor dry terrain. Cave entrances, underground rivers, underground lakes, cavern fungi, cavern and ruins, it's all here.

Conclusion: The books are fine for castle RPG encounters, as well as adding more generic fantasy rooms and caverns for your dungeons. Some cavern maps can be used for outdoor hill and mountain encounters. For anyone new to battle mats, I would suggest the RPG Toolkit, Box of Adventure, Book of Battle Mats (The Dungeon and Wilderness), and Big and Great Book of Battle Mats series.

Beautiful Map, appreciate the alternate format options!

Beautiful Map, appreciate the alternate format options!

Beautiful Map, appreciate the alternate format options!