Bokafesh's Never Ending Dungeon, is a rather unique product. In over thirty years of gaming, I've not seen another product with this premise – it caught my eye. That alone makes it worth the price of admission.

The premise is rather neat. The dungeon begins with a finite size, and has certain properties. By exploring new areas, the dungeon grows. A new sector is generated (choose your options, or use a combination of the charts for inspiration or go entirely randomly selected features), and it retroactively changes all the existing sectors.

The adventure/campaign can be adjusted easily for anywhere from a single session of play to as long as an extended campaign. It was designed for a ninth level party, but has adjustments for lower and higher level characters. There are a number of plot hooks to ensnare our characters into the story.

Exploration will reveal the nature of the dungeon. The characters begin within their first sector, and interact with the environment and the creatures therein. At some point, they discover the connection between this sector and the next. The next sector may be similar, or perhaps radically different, and as an example could be a trade town. The thing is, prior to going there the original inhabitants did not trade with anyone, but having visited the trade sector, there is now a bustling trade between the two sectors – and that is the way it has always been. The retroactive changes won't be immediately apparent, but upon return to a previously visited sector differences will be present and potentially drastic.

I'd probably use this product as and side quest and nest it within another product, rather than run it as an entire campaign, but you could build an interesting setting off of the basis established within and expand it in interesting directions. I especially like that previously known facts can change with exploration, and that the new reality is how things have always been, as far as all the inhabitants of previously found sectors are concerned. That definitely has potential for an interesting setting.

The PDF is 40 pages, including covers, credits and the OGL, which leaves 36 pages of content. The PDF has been divided into sections, including an introduction, several charts to randomly generate a new section (or to use as inspiration to partially randomly generate your own), some premade sectors and information on the mysterious caretakers, and then NPC statistics. The document is well bookmarked, making it easy to navigate. The scans were done well, and the text and diagrams are easy to read. The writing and editing were excellent, as the product is easy to understand, and words are spelled correctly.

The SRD on my computer and available whenever I like it, even when I'm gaming with my laptop and don't have an internet connection (in my friend's 'man cave')...

The SRD is broken up into categories. You can go to the main menu, by clicking an upper corner of the top of each document. From the main menu, you can click on a sub-category, for example: Spells or Basic Rules or Monsters.

I didn't give the fifth star, because if you're not sure which category to look in for your rule reference you have to bounce between several of them. It would be nice to have had a master index or search type feature for the whole SRD.

Still a very good purchase and one that I would not hesitate to recommend to a friend.

Still learning the software, it is comprehensive.

It comes with a set of tutorials, which teach you the basics of the program. There is a good online FAQ at: http://pub19.bravenet.com/faq/show.php?catid=2776&usernum=1607948311 Just messing around with the program, after running the tutorials a couple of times, is really helpful.

You can add your PCs and Monsters to the software. We're actually running a Gestalt game at the moment, so I've been using the class editor (copy the more complex class, and then edit in the features of the other class) to create Gestalt versions of what my players are using. Monsters can be made as PCs (Villains) but anything in the SRD is included with DM Genie, and you can input your own things too.

Groups is the method of organizing. Each encounter, is a group, which I've added the monsters to. So I can navigate to that group (drop down menu), and then add the PC Party to the mix, and start a battle. You can automate most of it, probably everything... but you can also have player input, where they give you their D20 roll and the system calculates the bonuses for whatever, say initiative. Alternatively, they can give you their modified roll and you can input that instead.

I'm leaning towards the players giving me their D20 roll, having the DM Genie do all of the rolls from my end, and then having it track all the appropriate modifiers.

If your character is encumbered, it will auto adjust everything that extra weight affects. You can add Conditions quite easily... just check boxes, basically... and it adds everything in for you. So, we can go 'Invisible', 'Medium Load', and 'Fatigued' and it add everything up correctly.

I'm still figuring out the software, but it is definitely much faster in play. And prep time is cut down too, as anything that appears in the books (SRD, anyway) can be added with a few clicks.

There are a few Yahoo Groups, with shared content (two of the three I found, have approved my membership... still waiting on the 3rd, which is likely inactive). The files are zipped, with a password that is typically along these lines: 'Four word in column two on page 39', which basically proves you own the book. Quite a few of the non-SRD books have had their details entered into a given users DM Genie, and then exported. You can import what others have exported, as well as exporting your own material.

If I could give it more than five stars, I would. Definitely worth the $25 license; plus you can try it free for a couple of months first.

The good: I printed the 66 pages, on heavy weight paper. The alignment is 11 pages horizontal, by 6 pages vertical.

The final product is extremely nice to view. It is 82.5 inches in width (1.5" under seven feet across) and a little over five feet in height.

The bad: If you don't want to tape/glue it, to a wall in your gaming room, this is a bit of a project.

I elected to use 'Backboard', and picked up two 4FT x 8FT pieces, then cut one of them into two sections 2.5FT x 8 FT and 1.5FT x 8FT. Then used very liberal quantities of (school) white glue to overlap the 2.5 FT piece across the 4FT x 8FT and 1.5FT x 8FT pieces. Then applied weight to the backboard and covered it with a tarp (did it in my driveway).

I opted to reinforce the glue (which held very well, after a week of ugly rain and cooler temperatures) with 16x 3/4" screws.

The 66 pages also needed to be cut. There was close to an inch wide border around each page. Staples, in the photo center, had a cutting machine... but the cuts aren't exactly perfect on every piece as you kind of learn to use the cutter as you go. The pieces of the map are close to square/flush with each other, but it is not absolutely perfect. It would have been nicer if they had come without the border around each piece.

I glued the pieces onto my assembled backboard. And used a tape gun to go over the 'seams' to ensure the edges were all 'down' along the backboard.

Overall: Ptolus absolutely rocks as a setting. Having this fabulous visual aid, is great.

If you've not tried the Ptolus setting, do yourself a favor and do so.

If you running Ptolus, this set of maps is a phenomenal aid to your game. It is easily the best prop our group has ever had.

This is an amazingly useful product.

Having the vast majority of the more commonly referenced rules, each on a one sheet easy to find, view and use page... Amazing.

I wish our group had found this product the first time we were playing 3.5. We've recently come back to 3.5, after several years of 4th edition. So these 'cheat sheets' are especially valuable in 'teaching' us the rules again.

I actually went to FedEx/Kinkos and had them print these up on heavy weight card stock. Definitely very worthwhile.

What can I say... this is an amazing product. I wish I had purchased a hard copy, back in the day, when that was an option.

It has taken a while to even get a feel for the campaign/city. There is so much material and in great detail too.

I'll definitely get a lot of use out of this product and recommend anyone who is on the fence to purchase this -- it is worth it. Probably the highest quality product of its type out there.

I was under the impression that there would be descriptions on creating villainesses that would fit each archetype.

Essentially, the product gets stat blocks on several (17) dark ladies. So it delivers what was promised.

I personally wouldn't have bought it, had I been able to browse the book in a store. But if you're looking for ready made female NPCs to use as villains, then you'll find a good selection.