The product description sells this adventure a little short, I think. Far from being a potentially routine sunken treasure ship rescue, probably by the coast from the cover map (and because it sank in a storm), it's actually a far more intriguing, and much rarer, largely undersea adventure, in which the sunken treasure ship becomes merely one element - and not necessarily even one of the more valuable or interesting parts! There's a huge new monster, a hidden Kuo-Toa city (which seems ripe for fuller description in a subsequent Filbar product - hint, hint), a secret Elven city (ditto!), the remains of a lost civilization the recent storms have uncovered on the sea-bed, and yes, wrecks to explore, perhaps against some treasure-seeking competition.

I'd have liked a little more description of the sea-floor in places, and a separate Wandering Monster/Random Encounters table for the Kelp Forest areas - which too would have benefited from further detailing - given the deep sea setting is so unusual compared to the typical land wildernesses most GM's will be more familiar with. GM's with an eye for a sub-aqua tale though will likely be happy enough to come up with their own ideas for such things. The adventure map provided is already helpful in this regard, as are this publisher's characteristic flavour photos and drawings. I could have done with a plan view of the ship type to accompany the cross-section drawing though, as I can never remember port from starboard (which hand's left again?)...

This is a really interesting, self-contained, idea, and in some ways it's surprising it hasn't appeared sooner, as a "safe" home base for the players. And that's regardless of whether you use it as an adventure as well, since it's easy enough to simply use or adapt the Manor to better suit your gaming group without having to fight for it first.

Maybe a little more information on the nature of The Servant who looks after the Manor would have been useful - obviously a magical being, but of a very vague nature beyond that, with Hit Points, but never needing to eat or drink, and never aging. So would that be mortal or immortal? Plus if the Manor expanded significantly, would extra Servants be created as it did so (e.g. horses in a stable need as much looking after as people, and if there's a Manor full and stables too...)? Nothing an inventive DM couldn't accommodate, certainly.

Perhaps worth adding the locations of the Armored Skeletons in Corridor 3 to the map, as the description makes clear two are nearer the entryway than the third, but the doorway is about halfway along the corridor, so in which direction(s) are they?

Minor points though, which don't detract from the whole.

Everyone always wants more monsters for their RPGs, making this a welcome addition to the suite of Dungeonteller products by Blue Boxer Rebellion, presented in the company's usual, colourful, lively, beautifully-illustrated style. Maybe more than thirteen new creatures would have been better - there are at least as many again which feature in Blue Boxer's "Big Hexyland" world without description, which have still to be presented in Dungeonteller format, for example, aside from those monsters which appeared in the early drafts of the rules and monster books which didn't survive to the published versions. However, lines must be drawn somewhere, and a baker's dozen is perhaps as good a quantity as any.

The monster descriptions follow the format of the "Dungeonteller Monster Book", with similar quality, interest and quirkiness in their forms and habits apparent here too. Devils are ranked by the number of their head-horns, for instance, and start off as something a little unusual, maybe even orcward... Kobolds too are closer to their European folklorish originals than monsters of comparable name found elsewhere, as dwarfish "knockers", heard in deep mines rather than being seen, very often, and potentially problem-causing in such places. My favourite though was the Nimblewing, a large, intelligent bat which crafts magical objects, quite a contrast to the villainous role giant bats are often called to fill in RPGs.

No counters are yet available for these monsters unfortunately, yet an extra page or two with some could surely have been included here, perhaps also with markers for the three new Dungeonteller character types that have appeared since the rules were published, the Pixie, Witch and Ranger. Indeed, this might have made into a fuller game-supplement by including the character sheets for these three as well (available separately as free PDF downloads already). The fourth page of the Ranger's character sheet includes three additional creatures not yet available elsewhere certainly - the wildcat, mastiff and pack pony. On this basis, I've marked MonsterMore down a little, as not quite "More" enough for me.

Although calling itself a sequel to the original Blue Boxer Rebellion's "Big Hexyland", this is really a rather different product to that original, albeit in a similar style. Maybe a different name - "Big Hexyland Modular Expansion Set", perhaps - would have clarified things for anyone who thought this would continue the earlier Big Hexyland world in new directions, and in the same way, with text-description node maps as well as the beautiful coloured landscape ones.

However, this set has its own strong appeal, and the option to turn off an array of individual terrain items on all except one of the maps, provides a fascinating customising option beyond the original Big Hexyland's "fixed" world. The maps are again wonderfully-drawn, if maybe a touch less colourfully than in the original set, though as before, they'll benefit from being printed on a home inkjet at the best quality level, and paper stock, you can muster. It's definitely worth sitting down and going through this set carefully, experimenting with the different terrain layer options, before deciding how to print any given map to fit your own world as well - or indeed to extend the original Big Hexyland world, because that's equally possible.

The labelling is the only real disappointment. There's just the option to have all the labels on or off on each map. They're also in black, so at times there's no colour contrast, and become hard to read against some terrain features. But worst is they're totally unimaginative for the most part, and serve really just to tell you which feature is which for the layers list - something you can easily work out by simply switching on and off individual map layers anyway. Even had the names been more appealing, the single "all or nothing" option of them being on just one layer, defeats any customisation of the map features. Of course, adding layers to label each feature separately would add considerably to the file size, and the complexity of configuring your own maps, so perhaps providing a single layer option to name all features using the properly contrasting label colours of the first Big Hexyland, and with imaginative names, would have been a better compromise. Maybe the labels could be omitted entirely for the hex-corner barrier mountains, as these seem most likely to be features GMs will wish to alter especially.

As noted already, one of the maps is different, "The Gnashfang Chaos". Strangely, this map is drawn with only two layers - the map and its labels - so separate features on it can't be turned on or off. Also, its labels are all imaginative, and are presented in properly contrasting black or white, as best suits the landforms they're set against. Indeed, this looks more like an escapee from the first "Big Hexyland" set. If only it had been given a node-map description page too!

A reworking of the labels, to become like those on "Gnashfang Chaos", would make a real improvement to this product. Even so, I'd still give it a four-star rating for what it is currently.

This is an interesting, pleasingly detailed, lengthy adventure designed for the "Dungeonteller Fantasy RPG" system, in which the typical party of 3-6 Dungeonteller starting characters could engage easily for several game-sessions (the designer suggests 6-10), and perhaps still longer, should the GM grasp the option to extend beyond what's provided, as the closing page of the text suggests. Placed in and beneath the town of Lastward, this product also ties-in with Blue Boxer's separate "Big Hexyland" mapped world, because Lastward features on the Quibble Marches map of Big Hexyland, a couple of game-days travel from the city of Stormgate, which city is described in the main Dungeonteller rulebook. Not to give any secrets away, this is only one of the Big Hexyland connections in this adventure.

There is a set of lovely hand-drawn perspective maps showing the entire subterranean prospect for the GM, along with a similarly-drawn, labelled view of Lastward. An unlabelled JPEG version of just the town drawing can be downloaded freely from the Blue Boxer Rebellion blog for player use. Perhaps it could have been included here too. The whole, text and maps, prints out clearly using a "normal" home inkjet printer setting - indeed the text is clear even on an ink-saving "draft" or "fast" printout - though it's probably worth considering doing higher-quality prints of the maps particularly, and maybe laminating or otherwise protecting them for repeated use, and also to allow making easily-erasable GM notes on them.

Venture Hold's format, with its numerous pages of densely-typed text and separate map pages, fits with that established for the first major Dungeonteller adventure module, "Welcome to the Plunderdome" (available as a set of free downloads from the publisher's blog, though written about a year before the RPG rules were published). However, that gives it a surprisingly drab, pedestrian appearance, by comparison to the colourful, lively, well-illustrated range of the company's other Dungeonteller products. This seems quite a mistake, as at least a few colour illustrations, with portraits of some of the key NPCs and the new monsters, scattered through it would have enhanced its look considerably. Even inserting some player-aid unlabelled drawings in black-and-white of the more important and intricate parts of the dungeon at relevant points in the text, would have helped give this a less forbidding, text-wall, appearance, as well as fitting with the other works Blue Boxer has already produced.

I'd also like to have seen a set of extractable pages featuring the new monsters here, in the standard, beautifully-illustrated, Dungeonteller format of the rule and monster books, so they could have been printed-off and stored as part of a complete set of available monsters by GMs. Their absence, and the fact there's no index to let you find the stat blocks for these creatures quickly in a printed-off version of Venture Hold, again seems a badly missed opportunity.

Although there are a few minor typos, missing words, and so forth occasionally, of little real concern, I did spot one mildly more problematic item. A new cool power (= skill for those not versed in Dungeontellerspeak) on pages 41-42, "Summon Nightmare", is described as the same as "Summon Hippogriff" from the Dungeonteller rules, yet the actual power (rulebook page 31) is "Create Hippogriff". What the power does isn't at all clear, since from the subsequent text notes, it makes a hippogriff appear to allow the summoner to ride it and escape, yet the place it's to be used is a location that seems to have no means of getting to the outside world by a creature that can only walk or fly. This needs revising, as a nightmare, perhaps able to pass through walls magically with its rider, might be a better option here. Plus it would also allow the introduction of another new monster. This is a rare lapse, however.

Overall, this is a good scenario product which will last a healthy number of gaming sessions, and is potentially open-ended. I've marked it down because it's visually disappointing, other than the maps, so fits less well with the overall Dungeonteller product line.

Technically, this is not a pack of pre-drawn battle maps, with the exception of the last three pages, which provide respectively a bridge across a deep dungeon floor trench in two versions from different angles, and an area with two floor pits, one pit with two levels in it. Instead, it's a more generic product, with seventeen pages of components from which you can print, cut out and make up your own dungeon floor plans.

The artwork pages print crisply and cleanly even using a "normal" setting on plain paper with a home inkjet machine, and whose lines and textures (all in greyscale only) are clear and bold. It's good to see this product applying some of the lessons learnt from Blue Boxer's earlier battle map products. Indeed, as pages 8 and 9 duplicate identical pages from Blue Boxer's "More Battle Ready 25mm Dungeon Maps, Set 2", if you have both products, you can directly compare how the drawings here are much improved in this respect. Perhaps some colour, even as background washes, would have been nice too, but the drawings look splendid even without.

There's a great selection of floor and wall features and markers, including doorways, fireplaces, bookshelves, statues, pillar bases, plinths, stairs, wells, furniture and debris, plus four free-standing stone staircases intended for in-room use. There are also wall and floor pieces, all beautifully executed in the company's trademark realistic, hand-drawn style, using an isometric, so 3D-look, viewpoint. This makes the maps ideal for solo play, or if constructed into complete room views, as RPG pictures to show the players what they can see. Unfortunately, this viewpoint limits their suitability as true battle maps for group gaming, where people will be sitting around the map at all angles, as for most it will be rarely clear just what's being looked at. And clarity is key for any gaming battle map.

Overall though, a beautifully-crafted product.

If you use visual-aid flat battle maps or 3D scenery for your RPGs, you need some means of showing where the player-characters and their opponents are on those layouts. Commonly such markers are in the form of cast 3D miniature figures or 2D standee printable paper minis, but counters in various forms have their devotees too, as robust, flat-pack options to bulkier figures. This print-and-play PDF set from Blue Boxer Rebellion provides 163 monster counters, plus six more for each of the main character types, from those in the "Dungeonteller Fantasy RPG" rules and "Monster Book" volumes.

All the counters are drawn in full colour, in Blue Boxer's characteristically lively cartoon style on horizontally-elongated diamond shapes, intended to work with the company's preferred isometric battle maps for tabletop use. Counter sizes fit roughly with the creature sizes from the RPG, using four size classes for these counters, ranging from 3.5 cm/1½ inches across their longest central axis (which form the great majority), up to 19 cm/7½ inches for the dragons. They're designed with four fold-down edges per counter, so in theory you shouldn't need glue to construct them, though in practice, it's recommended a small weight, such as a washer or coin, be glued to the underside of each counter (the larger counters might need more than one, though this isn't noted in the instructions).

The counters benefit from a photo-quality print on matt photo paper when using a home-inkjet printer, as a "normal" level printout looks very pale and washed-out. Most creatures have the same illustration as used in the Monster Book, occasionally with a slight variation, and sometimes in mirror image, where more than one counter is provided for a creature type (there are ten Goblin counters, for instance, and quite a few of the other lower-level monster types have five or six counters each). This picture is set on a graded, single-hue background. Multiple monsters also have a number printed on their counters (though oddly the number "1" is missing from the Barghest, Mummy and Skeleton counters on Sheet Three, and the Delf Sentinels on Sheet Four). None are named on their counters. In general, most of the illustrations are clear enough using this format, though the colour-contrast is poor on the Skeleton counters, and especially those for the Ghouls, which look rather like disembodied skulls.

Strangely, the six character counters have completely different illustrations to those in the rulebook. While this provides some interesting variety, it seems a mistake, since in the absence of any names on the counters, once cut from their printed sheets, the Warrior and Dwarf could well become indistinguishable, for example, and the others will be perhaps less clear than they need to be.

Although claiming to provide counters for every monster in the Monster Book, there are no counters for two of the three types of Dangerous Mushroom (the Puffbomb and Sporegalore Torpedo) from Monster Book page 41, nor for two supplementary monsters, the Merwell Fighting Fish (page 39) and the Packs of Huge Rats (page 45), although for the latter, a normal Rat Pack counter could be simply designated as of "Huge Rats", of course. In addition, the Iso Battle Grid on which to use the counters does not feature in this PDF, an unexpected omission, given it's clearly mentioned on the product's description page.

Whether the isometric counter shape works will be a matter of personal choice. Such 3D drawings as battle maps only really function clearly when viewed from a single direction, whereas most gaming groups will likely surround a table, so this is not an ideal option for any except probably solo games or very small groups. The smaller counters here will probably still work on most square or hexagonal gaming maps, but the larger ones, notably the huge dragon counters, probably won't with sufficient clarity as to their actual location. For construction, I'd mount these counters onto thick cardboard, and ignore the fold-down counter edges, since this would make them far more durable and easier to handle for typical game use. The loose fold-down flaps will be too flimsy to survive much handling.

Overall, I'd have preferred square counters without the fold-down tabs, but I've rated the product as it's described, marked down partly because of the missing isometric board.

Given the very limited quantity of sample monsters (only six) in the "Dungeonteller Fantasy RPG" rulebook, this is an essential adjunct to that game, providing a good selection of typical fantasy RPG monster-types. Not all are quite what you'd expect however, as there are some pleasing variations, such as the rather more folklorish Goblins, who appear in somewhat shadowy, vaguely animal-like, forms, or the scarlet-skinned Orcs, creatures only summonable from another dimension for short periods (we discover why in the subsequent "MonsterMore" Dungeonteller book!).

There are some "delightful" additions too. For instance, Crypt Worms feed on subterranean corpses, then pupate into blood-sucking Deaths-Head Moths. Said Moths love to flock to light sources underground, thus making both creatures low-level irritants for dungeoneering parties, but with a workable life-cycle that also makes sense. My favourites though are the near-science-fiction/steampunk Gnomes, looking a little like fantasy-variant "Grey" aliens using high-tech gear, such as suits in which they can pass through solid rock as if it were pudding.

Every monster is attractively illustrated in colour, described briefly, and fully statted for "Dungeonteller", the images in Blue Boxer's usual bright, lively, cartoony style. The PDF benefits from being printed out on best-quality paper at the highest standard you can manage, if using a home inkjet, as a "normal" printout on standard paper will be quite washed-out and pale otherwise.

As ever, it's easy to think of more monsters which could have been added here. It's a particular curiosity that the earlier prototypes of both the rule and monster books, still (August 2015) available on the Blue Boxer Rebellion blog as free PDF downloads, contained notably more creatures than are provided here, including several types of "normal" animal (none of which feature in this book). There are some stranger omissions too - like the Lich, and the Ice Troll (as the Cave and Water Troll variants did both make the cut into this volume). Conversely, there are also quite a number of unstatted monsters, and some which didn't feature at all, in the earlier monster text which have appeared in this final work. Maybe some of the "missing" will feature in future Dungeonteller products, perhaps most likely the Lich, but monsters such as the Wolfbat (earlier text-only rules) would get my vote too!

Overall, a splendid product.

Recent years have brought a glut of games intended to entice more novices, of whatever age, to the wonders of RPGs. As others have already commented about "Dungeonteller" here though, this is one of the standout products among that crowd, and which, from my limited reconnaissance through the rules and a few try-outs so far, also seems to do what it promises, as an easy-to-pick-up system you can get playing quickly.

The rules are beautifully and colourfully illustrated throughout, using an attractive, mildly cartoon-like style, that often works to draw your eye to key text-passages, thus finding things quickly for the GM (the eponymous "Dungeonteller" here) is made a little easier. Despite the cost and effort involved, it's tempting to think of preparing a fully laminated copy of the rules for general use, and certainly, the character sheets would work particularly well that way, robust and usable with erasable markers of some sort. If so, you'll also need to do a photo-quality printout on good matt photo paper if using a home inkjet machine, as a "normal" printout came out too pale for me.

More could - indeed perhaps should - have been added to this package, not simply greater sets of character options, monsters, treasures, play examples and game-creation advice, but providing things like the tokens and cards suggested as useful for play, for extra equipment, gold, gems and other treasure items. It's noted on page 22 that players should make their own using index cards for these, clearly acknowledging a need the game currently fails to fulfill by the designer. Even providing a series of suitable .jpg or .png images with the rulebook would have helped people construct their own printable cards, perhaps including some for the various have-to-look-that-one-up skills ("cool powers" here). In a print-and-play PDF product, there's little excuse for such essentials to have been left out. Marker tokens for the player-characters could have been given as well (some, though oddly using different illustrations, are available, if rather unannouncedly, only in the separate "Iso Battle Counters" set from Blue Boxer Rebellion). Plus it's strange the dice-roll character generation mechanism, an optional extra not noted in the rules, is available just on the designer's blog, rather than adding maybe one more page with it here.

There are helpful extra items provided in the book though, including the complete annotated "Quibble Marches" map from Blue Boxer's "Big Hexyland" world set, from which the major city of Stormgate is featured in detail, with map-drawings and five pages of place descriptions and history, plus another three pages with a cutaway drawing and descriptive notes on the Tides Inn, likely to be the player-characters' first stopping-place in the city. Plus there are one-page tables to help GMs create plots, villains and dungeons, without resorting to random rolls.

Overall, this is a good, basic RPG rules-set, splendidly presented, if one that could be still better with a few additional tweaks and printable components.

This is one of those products you see and then just have to buy straightaway - or it was in my case! From its bright, lively colours, through the excellent detail provided for each map, including evocative name-labels like Hardscrabble Vale, The Iron Sea, Skygard, Dreadmoon and many more, the juxtaposition of beautifully-drawn terrain features, the novel use of larger-scale hexagons for different land areas, and the provision of node-maps showing how to get from place to place, with notes on who-lives-where-doing-what-to-whom-and-why, to its intended 3D-look design layout, with mountain-peaks and other uplands extending beyond the hex boundaries, this just seemed a real delight. And so it's proven in reality!

A "normal"-setting home-inkjet printout will get you clear, fully legible text pages, though rather pale hex artwork, which latter is best realised using a suitably high-quality print setting on good matt photo paper or card with such a printer. The final maps could be mounted to thicker card hexagons (so the protruding-edge terrain can overlap the adjacent hexes still), and maybe even varnished, or laminated, to give them extra durability.

The descriptive node maps should give enough snippets of information to get the creative juices working for most GMs, if necessary. Some of the creatures referred to would have benefited from a little more detail, such as the pterripus (Midwaste & Jade Coast maps) and the ivory-bearing megaphant (Plainsea - presumably a form of huge elephant). Although the pterripus - a type of flying horse - did feature in Blue Boxer's prototype rulebook for the "Dungeonteller Fantasy RPG", still available in August 2015 on the publisher's blog as a free PDF, it didn't make the cut into the published rules or monster volumes unfortunately.

Maybe some cutting outlines - just a skywash blue background shading, say - could have helped novice papercrafters work out better where to cut the irregular map edges in places. Those with a little more experience won't need them though, and it's scarcely a real fault in this overall stunningly gorgeous set.

There are two parts to this PDF package. Four pages of door and doorway markers, a plain floor area, and a page of eleven two-by-two-square room furnishing markers (comprising a circular fireplace, a well, treasure chests, a bed, debris, sacks, barrels, table and chairs, two benches, a trapdoor, and a sluiceway) form an opening do-it-yourself component, while the remaining pages present eleven individual pre-designed rooms, one per page. Everything is drawn in pencil-sketch greyscale, using an isometric (3D) viewpoint, as also in Set One. Where Set One was presented as a single, specific dungeon, with some notes on fleshing it out for RPG use, Set Two forms a more generic product.

This Set suffers some of the same problems and limitations as Set One, however. The drawings are certainly bolder and somewhat more assured, if still too faint in places to work on anything except a "photo" quality printout setting on good photo paper for most home-use inkjets. There are the same "ghostly" archways, walls and pillar bases in parts too, intended to aid clarity, but I found them sometimes confusing. The translucent cavern walls on page 14 give an impression of an Escher (so impossible) drawing, not the immediate clarity a genuine battle map needs, for example.

Although again designed to work for US "Letter"-sized paper, thus needing reduction to fit the "A4"-sized paper many gamers elsewhere will have access to, some allowance has been made for that here, so the squares are around an inch (2.3 cm) or so in maximum edge-length at times on an A4 print (albeit inconsistently applied across the full Set). This should make Set Two less problematic when used with 25mm-30mm scale gaming figures, certainly. Even so, the one-direction viewpoint isometric drawings require, means most round-the-table gaming groups will find it difficult to make proper use of this product, beyond being handy player visual aids.

There's an eclectic mixture of hallways, staircases in different forms, and set-piece rooms in the pre-drawn section. Without being comprehensive, these are useful and do have their points of interest. It's curious there are so many doorway options provided in the opening pages, yet doorways are also drawn on to the complete rooms, and that where the rooms have a specific purpose, they're also drawn as fully furnished. This seems at odds with the concept of the furnishing markers, and maybe more pages of such markers, and predominantly empty rooms, would have made this seem less of a compromised product, as if unsure whether it wants to be a set of battle maps for a defined dungeon, or a full set of pieces from which to create your own dungeon settings. The weakest is the "tavern" drawing on page 10, which is less assuredly sketched, and is far too cluttered with immovable furnishings to work as anything other than a "this is what you see" players' viewpoint drawing.

Overall, this is closer to its intended "battle-ready maps" aim than Set One, within the limits of isometric drawings, and I've rated it accordingly.

This is an interesting product, presenting hand-drawn greyscale sketches of a ten-room dungeon, with some notes to help GMs flesh it out for RPG use, including overall sketches of the dungeon, the nearby small town and its landscape setting. The drawings are largely presented in an isometric, so 3D, realistic style. In general, they're pleasing to the eye, and would work well as both GM's reference tools, and to show players what they can see at any given time.

For home-printing using an inkjet, I'd suggest using high-quality matt photo paper and at least a normal "photo" standard setting, as the drawings are rather faint, making them indistinct too often on a "normal", plain paper inkjet print, for example. The text prints clear and dark even on a "fast" or "draft" inkjet setting though, which may indicate more pre-publication testing would have been useful.

In parts, the isometric viewpoint shows its limitations, where ghostly archways and walls (sometimes apparently in cutaway), plus occasional coloured lines and labels need to feature for better clarity, while the right-hand wall of Dungeon Room 2 (page 8 in the PDF) has needed to be artificially curved "out" a little, otherwise the important blocked doorway on this wall would have been almost invisible. Also, while such a view works very well as a diagram, or for solo gaming, for a typical RPG group, where players and GM will surround the table and any visual aids on it, this style of mapping provides clarity for just one or two people - most likely not even the GM - so this pack can't really be considered a viable option for RPG battle maps, which need easy clarity for all. In addition, the drawings have been designed to fit US "Letter"-sized pages. So for many people elsewhere, for whom "A4"-sized paper is the nearest equivalent, this will leave the options either of cutting off some of the drawing edges, or reducing the image to fit the paper, which latter means the typical squares end up barely 2 cm or 9/10 inch across, likely a little too small for most 25mm-30mm scale miniature figure bases.

One further minor irritation is that the labelled town map is missing from the PDF, billed on the "Thumbnails" index page as on page 3, but that's where the Thumbnails are! It is possible to zoom in to read all-but one of the town map's labels, and then hand-copy them to a print of the unlabelled player's town map from page 18, but this seems a careless omission, again maybe suggestive that more checking was needed ahead of this product's release.

Overall, it's a nice package, useful as the basis for a small dungeon, after a little work, but I've rated it down because the isometric viewpoint doesn't really work for its billed battle map use, and the product needed a little more work before publication.

A nicely inventive set of paper minis on a woodland theme, in Arion's signature CGI style, and in their usual "dual format", with one page that can be made up into "A"-frame or flat "inverted-T" figures, while the second makes up into triangular vertical prisms, showing three views of the same character. Some are creatures you might expect, like a Wolf, a Bear, a modestly-attired Dryad and a human hunter with a boar spear (called "Wolflord" here). Others may be less familiar, such as the bark-skinned Forest King and Woodwitch, the demi-human Boarman, and a lean, spiky, lizard-like Forest Dragon crawling onto a stump.

On normal printing, many have colour schemes that are a little too dull and muddy for clarity, not a major point however, and this is a good, interesting group of minis, liable to spark off ideas for their game use.

The marketplace for ready-to-print dungeon-style floorplans is becoming increasingly crowded, and as that happens, it's growing harder for designers to make a strong impact with something sufficiently impressive and different. This first product from Nemo Works is a splendid example of what can be achieved still in this respect, to help it stand out from the crowd.

Since the early days of RPG dungeoneering, an important concept, not always remembered, has been to give dungeons MERIT - Make Empty Rooms Interesting Too. That's been excellently accomplished here in many ways, from the variant colouring and styles of the flagstones, often creating patterns or more specific floor designs, to the detailing of individual stones, where even the cracks across them have been drawn with different widths and intensities, to heighten the impression they have different depths and ages. There's a real eye for detail in aspects elsewhere too, including some beautifully crafted spider webs, scrubby moss, occasional bone and stone fragments, the odd blood splatter or smeared trail and water pool (or you hope it's only water!), old parchments, broken wood - even a snapped sword's fragments and a damaged segment of chain.

All the expected floor pieces are here - corridor sections in various shapes, rooms of different sizes (although 6x6 inch squares predominate, there are also two full page sheets of flagstone floors that can be cut to alternate forms), plain and spiral stairs, and some stand-up doorways, both closed and open (the blackened openings complete with glowing scarlet eyes!).

Half-a-dozen of the rooms are drafted as "specials", four 6x6 in area, two 6x8. The square quartet comprise: A water-filled - still filling - Sewer Room, with steps leading into the green liquid from one side, and more descending from a stone platform on the other; A room with three tombs on two levels, nicely-designed with just one corner higher; A pillared hall with a central dais supporting a large, round fire-bowl, whose style and floor-runes suggest strongly some magical or cultic purpose; and A heavily-cobwebbed Spider Queen's Lair, complete with bloodstains from a recent meal, bones, skulls and a lost sword (and sparking more ideas, what is that pale green liquid running between the stone flags in place? Are those giant uncut, sparkling rubies, balls of blood, or merely spider egg cases, in among the webs?).

The two largest set-piece chambers are another with three tombs on two levels, but here more formal, with lights, statuary and an altar, and a Throne Room, two of whose four pillars have collapsed, and whose blood-red carpet is frayed, worn and rumpled, yet the lit fires, clean book and sword by the throne show it remains in use. Even that doesn't end all the "special" places, because there's also a floor-set 6x3 lava river and a 3x3 cell room with one wall all of bars - which comes with its own narrow, barred, closed stand-up door on the doors page.

And there's still more, as each page is further filled with parts of a whole series of tokens, for rubble, trapdoors, open pits, a small pool, statues, chests, pillars (standing and fallen), locked and alarm markers, barred wells, corridor- or room-blocking crevices dropping away into darkness, bookcases, treasure and weapon piles, glowing magical symbols plus an elaborate magic circle, an altar, a table, fire-traps and a cluster of bones. While this might not be everything you could want for a dungeon, it covers a lot of territory in just fifteen printout pages!

Stylistically, the Endless Dungeons are drawn to a near-realistic level of painted clarity. Only the rooms are shown with walls, a thin veneer of stonework around all their edges, leaving the placement of doorways, and the true wall-thicknesses, in the hands of the GM, probably the better option for this aspect, if possibly not to everyone's taste.

As ever, it would be easy to think of things that might have been added, perhaps with extra variants included through the use of PDF layers, say, such as some open door archways without those red eyes, but this is simply the Basic Set after all. As more sets are promised, any such hopes could be fulfilled soon!

This is a stunning showcase package for the Lord Zsezse Battlemaps. The style is that of another free Battlemap product, "The Way to Cthulhu", so could be used alongside it, and both match their "Crypt" range of subterranean floorplans, hence the ads (with money-off vouchers!) included here. The Battlemap would benefit from being printed at the best quality level you can achieve for use in gaming, while for GM's reference there are isometric and plan views in colour and greyscale, the colour plan as an additional poster-sized, 200 dpi JPEG file included in the pack. A perfect sampler for the Lord Zsezse Crypts.