DramaScape’s was founded by a team consisting of three people who have worked together at FASA Corporation, which has been releasing excellent RPG’s such as Blue Planet, Fading Suns and Earthdawn through RedBrick for a while now.
The brain behind DramaScape is Simon Powell, an artist with a very keen understanding of what a great visual should look like.
DramaScape creates maps to be used on fairly large playing surfaces, such as 30 x 32 inch or 48 x 30 inch in size. These can be printed out (or, in the near future, ordered as a finished product) with or without squares or hexes, which means they can be used for just about any RPG or miniature game using a 25 to 35 mm scale, as one square usually represents 3 feet.
So far, the DramaScape products are available exclusively through the DriveThruRPG website, which boasts an extensive range of floor maps, including 8 free ones, ranging from a medieval market and a wine cellar to a basic tavern and a futuristic junction room. In fact, there is already so much choice that a GM looking for a quick floorplan to print out in order to use for the adventure he is currently running is almost sure to find something appropriate – as long as he doesn’t want to stick to the map originally included in his scenario. Also included in most of the files are 3D renderings and maps usable for VTT play.
Obviously, most of the products that are actually sold are more extensive than the free ones. For example, while the wine cellar map is a 19-page PDF, a product like Places of Horror – Volume 1 is much more extensive, with no less than 118 pages of PDF goodness.
This accessory boasts 3 maps. The first one seems to be a monster’s lair. The floor is riddled with eggs (but GMs can easily declare those to be big pebbles) and the room is roughly circular in shape. Standing in the middle is a huge cauldron containing some kind of red fluid (blood, probably, but it might be something else entirely). Lining it are 5 statues of women holding big stones. There are several torches attached to the walls and some kind of organic-looking structure in the southeastern part of the lair. All in all, this is a promising location but GMs will have to plan using this lair in their adventure beforehand as some of the details are quite specific. In particular, the cauldron sees to warrant a specific background story or approach.
The second map shows 3 concentric squares. Creator Simon Powell has dubbed it a ‘maze’, but to us the layout seems to be too simple for this location to be called such. Skulls litter the floor, while the high stone walls are covered with moss and plants. In the middle, only those who pay attention to detail will be able to distinguish the sword stuck in the ground, while several tree trunks are far easier to detect with just a glance at the map. Graphically this is not the most beautiful map ever, but this location might be a tad easier to incorporate in an existing campaign than the first one. Also, it should be noted that most RPG maps out there aren’t nearly as detailed as the ones included in this product are.
The third map is that of a jungle with an ancient temple standing off-center. A wooden bridge lined with torches leads to a dangerous-looking pit of boiling lava. The resolution doesn’t seem to be very high as our printout did show some pixels, but it’s easy to imagine an adventure that uses this location. Personally, it made me think of the Yucatan area in Rifts, so I can easily see me using this location as a vampire hotspot.
All of these floorplans are pretty big, but why would you buy any of these with so many similar products being available on the market? Until these are also available in printed (and more expensive) versions, it’s still necessary to print out all of the maps yourselves and glue them together (or on a suitable tile).
Well, DramaScape has a fairly unique selling point: all of their maps are distilled out of a 3D computer model of the respective locations. It’s even possible to open the 3D representation, both in the PDF and in a separate file. Only when you do this do the 2D maps come to live fully. As a matter of fact, we never realized how much the image we build up out of a 2D map can differ from the image one gets after seeing the same map in three dimensions. At least, we didn’t realize until we took a look at the 3D files included in Places of Horror. Especially the room with the cauldron takes on a whole different appeal when looked at this way. The only downside is that it’s impossible to change your own reference point. Yes, you can look to the right and left, or up and down, but always out of roughly the middle of each map. This means that it’s impossible to see a large part of the maze (since it’s hidden by the center walls) and that only part of the jungle presented in the third map is visible. Still, this feature is a great addition to otherwise above-average maps, making for a much more interesting and involved gaming experience. Not only is it possible to create a tactical scene with a 2D map and some miniatures, GMs can now also show the locations in 3D to their players, using a laptop, monitor, tab of even their mobile phones. We know out of experience that players presented with good visuals of where their characters are at any given time are more prone to think about their actions and make more – tactically as well as verbally – creative choices.
To top things off, this product also includes a file that allows the maps to be opened in a format that can be used in online gaming (VTT). This means, of course, that the VTT crowd is a very important target audience for DramaScape.
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