Inked Adventures' "Modular Dungeon" system is a good way to create tabletop dungeon floorplan layouts, but for me it really begins to come alive once some props and counters are added. This deceptively simple rectangular Crypt Room has its props built-in, and comes with a separate stand-up stone slab tomb door, giving a number of options for an adventuring party to explore, without making the whole feel at all cluttered. A real gem of a piece. My only question is - when can we expect the matching Inked Adventures' "Crypts, Tombs and Catacombs" pack, noted as "forthcoming" now for over a year?

Quite a specialised add-on to Inked Adventures' "Modular Dungeon" system, this stand-up "doorway" comes in two versions, one with a dark, circular tunnel-entrance arch, the other with this entranceway magically glowing, each surrounded by bones. It might be thought to work best as a free-standing object in a room, as the skeletal surrounds don't match up with any other of the Inked Adventures dungeon items currently available, but that difference would work equally well to highlight an access-route to somewhere more dangerous, when set against the "normal" dungeon walls. Although drawn as a simple square, the surround could be cut easily by hand into a curve to mirror the central arch for variety, and that centre cut out as well, either to leave open as "inactive", or to insert a different view, maybe something self-designed and printed onto transparent film. Production values are of Inked Adventures' usual high standard, the one drawback being the rather wasteful "parchment-edge" to the printout page, which will be simply discarded. Some matching bone-lined floors and walls might have been an interesting addition here to open up greater game-use options, though as it is, a decent focal-point for an adventure.

Collecting together all the key books from the erotic horror aspect to "Hot Chicks: The RPG", this is overall an excellent bundle product, if one suitable only for those mature adults able to handle the dark and at times disturbing themes involved.

Central to this package is the "Inner Darkness" supplement, which introduces and graphically details how such materials can be handled in game terms. This is a particularly fine work, tackling in places difficult and uncomfortable territory in a wholly appropriate fashion. Beyond that, I would simply concur with the positive, detailed, comments of other reviewers of this supplement. 5/5.

"The Breeding Time" is a well-designed scenario that fully embraces the "Inner Darkness" supplement's ideas. Although its maps and plans aren't even close to Dakkar Unlimited's usual CGI-standard graphic artwork, they are at least clear, neatly-drawn and functional. However, as with the other products in this bundle to include them, the NPC character sheets are all of the "second generation" style, with unhelpfully dark section header bars, which I find print out too dark and ink-hungry, as well as being less clear to read on-screen or in print than the original style ones, as found in the "Hot Chicks" core rulebook, for instance. Some of the figure artwork on these sheets prints out rather muddily as well. The storyline here easily overcomes such minor inconveniences though, and as normal with Dakkar's "Hot Chicks" adventure supplements, plenty is left open to interpretation to suit different gaming styles and campaigns. 5/5.

"Tentacle Badness" is another handy scenario supplement. Much of the text details what's happened already, so setting the scene for what the players will find, before sketching the main villain to identify what may happen next. Aside from the somewhat problematic NPC character sheets, the only real drawback with this book is the dismal plan for the factory buildings the adventure is set in, which shows neither scale, walls, internal features, or doors, and needs completely redrafting to be of any use whatsoever. 4/5.

With a delightful title straight from the cheesier end of the "sex-and-horror" movies bin, the "Vampire Sex Robot!" scenario package has a plotline that provides a neat twist to the whole vampire/sex concept, sketched-out in enough detail to be useful, without shoe-horning gamers into a single approach to the whole. There's also a lengthy, rather over-indulgent, portfolio of CGI-artwork images of the eponymous Lillith robot, which adds little to the product in game terms, but is easily ignored. 5/5.

"Inner Darkness 2: The Depravity War" expands and upgrades several NPC protagonists from a number of "Hot Chicks" supplements, helping to maintain the threat level for PCs as their abilities improve during an on-going campaign. The material generally is well-thought-out, though its utility may depend on how many of the supplements you've chosen to add to your "Hot Chicks" game, while the "Depravity War" concept has the potential to ratchet things up to a devastating level. 4/5.

"The Depravity War Companion" is a 76-page book with lots of spare artwork that didn't make the cut for the already over-illustrated "Inner Darkness 2" (itself only 56 pages long!), with some designers' notes regarding that supplement as well. Its value as a game-aid, even as an addition to ID2, is extremely limited, and it seems very much a makeweight product in this bundle. 2/5.

"Deadlier Than The Male" is a short supplement centred around ten young women characters, with full game stats and brief descriptions. These could be used as stand-alone NPCs or even PCs, but there are some short notes included describing them as having formed a loose mercenary conglomerate, The League of Dangerous Women, to tackle the darker elements in the "Hot Chicks" game-world. This is useful stuff, if a little lightweight - the League could have been more fully-developed - and seems primarily a means to showcase yet more CGI female artwork. 3/5.

A splendid collection of dungeon floorplans, items, door and hazard counters, with the option to add stand-up doors in two different formats (with or without supporting walls), the whole prepared in a delightful hand-drawn style reminiscent of British artists like Ronald Searle (who drew the original "St Trinian's" cartoons) and William Heath Robinson (who famously drew many imaginary complex machines made out of old bits and pieces, connected by lengths of knotted string, scraps of wood and so forth). The defining elements of all are no truly straight edges, and an eye for detail where needed. Here, that means things such as small texture markings on the stones and occasional irregularly cracked flagstones.

All the expected modular items are included for basic corridors and rooms, using a standard grey stone colouring, although one or two smaller rooms and stairways have cream-yellow flagstone shadings instead for variety, an effect which recurs more fully for the larger chambers. A few of the smaller rooms are more exotically-decorated still, with patterned or wood-plank floors, a nice touch, while a couple of special rooms, one on two levels, the other an Idol Chamber, provide the icing on the cake, with extra emplaced items, encouraging their use as focal points in any adventure. And to get you inside, there's even an overgrown ruin tile with stairs leading down to the first doorway.

In general, the pieces print out clearly and cleanly, though the overgrown entrance and Idol Chamber tiles have colouring a little too dark in places, not a major fault. The "worn parchment edge" border to every page is wasteful however, as it's simply going to be cut off and thrown away. Be careful in doing so, as there are a couple of compass roses, a north pointer, and some interesting curlicues among the marginalia which could have game use as well. The only real lack is an index page showing thumbnails of the set, which would have made planning what needed to be printed much easier. Even so, these dungeons are just itching to be cut-up, board-backed/laminated and above all USED!

I learnt what "Metamorphosis Alpha" was all about thanks to a review-discussion article in the first issue of "White Dwarf" magazine back in the summer of '77. Although that review was inspirational, I was already heavily committed to D&D since late in the previous year. Sadly, as a youngster with very limited funds, and D&D even then having four supplements available, MA remained just beyond reach. But I never forgot it, and some of MA's ideas, including from a further piece in "White Dwarf" 5 on adding mutated food plants and finding safe water to the game, went on to feature in my D&D campaigns. Fast-forward 36 years, and finally I have a copy of MA, thanks to the marvels of the Internet and PDF files! And it's every bit as inspirational still as I'd once hoped.

Yes, it's from a time when RPGs were in their infancy, and like the wargame rules from which they grew, it was generally expected that you'd need to amend or create some rules to plug gaps as you went along. Then as now though, a strong background setting and development can always overcome any "inconvenience" that might be thought.

I don't recall any comparable RPG set exclusively on a "generational" starship like Warden, one where if all went well (not what happens in MA, of course!), the crew and colonists were expected to continue their lives in a managed, fully-functional, enclosed ecosystem on-board, leaving it to their ancestors to reach and colonise the destination planet. Subsequently, the third and fourth editions (and presumably also the seemingly imminent fifth) changed MA's setting more towards that of a "sleeper" starship, where the crew and colonists were maintained in stasis units until arrival, and where the ship's main computer had become insane.

Weirdly, it's this alternate setting which forms the basis for the short adventure included here, albeit this is largely unrelated to the craft as detailed in these first edition rules! While both concepts have their merits, it's a little disappointing the original premise seems not to have been thought strong enough to fully support here. Similarly, instead of doing a proper revised edition, the "official errata" are simply tacked-on separately, while despite claims of grammatical and spelling corrections having been made, a more thorough check would have been beneficial in places.

I understand WardCo's energies are probably thought better concentrated on the newer editions of MA, but this primary setting shouldn't be ignored by gamers, since there are some beautiful ideas here that deserve exploration, and which won't be found quite the same elsewhere.

This starter pack for Dakkar Unlimited's "Hot Chicks: The RPG" definitely passes muster as a great way to be introduced to the system and its world, though a couple of items aren't really "essential" for beginning the game.

First up, there's a copy of the main "Hot Chicks" rulebook, which of course is a genuine "essential". Coming quite late to the party - less than eighteen months now till the actual time, 2015, "Hot Chicks" was originally set in - I was impressed by the thought and energy put into this game. With flexibility paramount, so anything from an action movie is possible, it comes down to individual gaming groups as to how they wish to play it. Yes, it's a game for mature adults only, so encompasses all the themes that implies, but if some of them don't suit your group, you're not forced to use any of it. Adult game, adult choices. There's plenty of background detail here to spark off ideas for games from one-offs to full campaigns, in what can at first seem a dauntingly long book. If the general concepts appeal, don't let that latter put you off. While it's easily possible to copy, paste & print sections from the PDF file on a PC as normal (and do a quick spell-check and correction on the way!), or run-off selected pages complete, it may be time now for a revised edition to make using it electronically easier, given the increasing availability of lightweight tablet-style notebooks, for instance. That would also allow shifting the setting date to something a little less immediate. 5/5.

It may seem odd to find a copy of "The Hot Chicks Free Preview" included in this bundle, judged by its title alone. However, this short book includes a new alien race, the Greygore, complete with two-page character sheets to stat them up, and enough description to help you set up an opening encounter in the "Hot Chicks" game-world. There are also several human characters here who could be used as PCs or NPCs, to further help things along, making this an excellent addition. 5/5.

"Major Malfunctions #2: Mall of the Future!" is a good starter scenario to ease players into the game. Background text sketches the main features of a central-computer-run Mall, how it functions and what's really going on there, with a list of story hooks to get your players involved. NPCs are again detailed on clear, two-page character sheets, and there are five simplified plans of the Mall and its surroundings. Nothing is described in minute detail, so the GM can decide just how the adventure is to pan-out, and where the key locations are. While that does create more work, it's very much in-keeping with Dakkar's policy of retaining game flexibility. As usual, Dakkar's CGI artwork is fully in evidence, the one artistic failing being the Mall map and plans, which are remarkably basic drawings with not even a scale on any. Indeed, it's odd, given the numerous paper standee figure sets Dakkar have produced to support "Hot Chicks", that they've not branched-out into making quality printable floor-plans for structures like the Mall too. Even a detailed sample shop-unit layout or two would have been helpful here, for instance. However, the adventure's very nicely thought-through overall. 4/5.

Somewhat less immediately useful, though still interesting, "The V-701 Series" is a supplement describing a class of humanoid robots that, as the cover subtitle states, can be servants, defenders or companions. This is a showcase for more CGI artwork, often full page, with short notes on most describing the different robot types, with a few pages of further background notes, concluding with character sheets to stat-up the different models. The whole is designed to look much like a sales catalogue, a concept which here works quite well. It's also a simple matter to copy & paste selections from the text for printouts, to make the whole more manageable when running games using hardcopy. A helpful guide if humanoid robots are to feature in your campaign, expanding upon the basics from the main rulebook. 4/5.

The "GM's Screen and Quick Reference" pack is surprisingly lengthy, at 60 pages. Such screens are devices I've never liked and stopped using very early on in my RPG activities, but this one's of acceptable standard if they're more useful for you, with three bold artwork players'-side panels, whose content shouldn't offend many. Most of the book comprises collected tables from the main rulebook and several supplements, a handy compilation. 4/5.

"One Hundred and Thirty Guns for Hot Chicks!" is exactly that, described in a 20-page supplement, albeit most are simply minor variations on the basic weapon types already in the main rules. There is also a list of adventure seeds based around firearms, plus a few fresh items, notably the possibility to introduce electro-thermal weapons, ones with greater range and penetration than the usual gunpowder weapons. 3/5.

What a delight to discover this gem, republished from 1912, at last! I've been waiting forty years to learn more of the Gibbelins and Gnoles, after first learning of them in Idris Seabright's short story "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles", which drew upon this wondrous book. More famous now perhaps, certainly in the RPG community, for having been one of H. P. Lovecraft's main influences, Dunsany's tales deserve to be read and appreciated in their own right. His rich use of language adds to the unsettling feel of what may seem at first quite light fantasy stories, an uneasiness many of the endings simply confirm. Inspirational!

A second set of mostly undressed, distressed female 25mm "A"-frame paper minis from Dakkar, reprising their "Hot Chicks 4" pack in this revised format. Naturally, such figures won't be suitable for many gamers, but for those sufficiently mature and willing to work with the more adult, and at times difficult, ideas to be found in the "Hot Chicks: The RPG" supplements, these will be helpful. Well up to Dakkar's usual standards. Still waiting on some naked and distressed Hot Dudes though!

Ancient Egypt's grip on the collective imagination of the Western World seems never to have slackened in recent centuries, so much so, it's become difficult to innovate when representing such a setting in fantasy games. Jabbro Jones has, however, succeeded in bringing a freshness to the figures who can appear there with this set, all beautifully drawn in crisp contours and colours that print out clearly and brightly. An optional PDF layer lets you print an uncoloured outline set too, if you need variant colour-schemes.

There's a mix of the living, the undead, the nearly-dead (the Scarab Swarm's latest meal!), and the never living (the Clockwork Anubis automaton), plus some of Ancient Egypt's famed treasures in the form of four golden Canopic Jars. Perhaps the only mobile things missing are some winged serpents (aside from being shown in period art from the region, the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus described them as if they were real creatures, living in trees and guarding one valley in particular). There is though a winged Hawkman available via the variant layers in either 2 or 2.5D forms, the latter with fold-out wings. And every figure has an appropriately-sized sandy base ready to print-out as well, a thoughtful touch too many paper miniature designers forget to include.

Problems? Thankfully very few. A couple of human-sized characters not standing fully upright are perhaps a little too tall (the Slave Driver leaning at an angle is vertically 35mm foot-to-crown as he stands, while the slave Worker he's driving, back bent by a burden, still stands 30mm high, for example), and several need care when cutting out by-hand, with occasionally tiny gaps to be removed. One or two would benefit from having slightly longer base tabs, as their feet overhang too much on the printed version, making for a potentially weak join to their bases (the Mummy Priest especially). It is though a simple matter to leave an extra piece of unprinted card at the tab ends where this is apparent when hand-cutting, and these are not major points.

Overall, a lovely collection of figures. Would that there were more sets showing such flair and care in both design and inventiveness!

A varied group of female non-combatant "A"-frame standees, suitable for representing near-modern city nightlife of all kinds, from the expected euphemism of the title, through nightclub patrons and dancers to a couple of ladies in full-length evening gowns. These match up with the "Hot Chicks 1" paper minis set and expand the range from there, with a suitable mix of "ordinary" standing poses, in Dakkar's typical CGI artwork style, with colours that are striking and print out well. The figure panels are 25mm tall, so both matching with Dakkar's minis range generally, and needing enlargement to fit with the commoner 28/30mm standees and scale terrain from elsewhere. The artwork quality poses no difficulties for such resizing, certainly. Another useful clutch of minis for the period from this company. Only some city nightlife Hot Dude standees are needed to complete the picture!

With their "Inner Darkness" supplement for "Hot Chicks: The RPG", Dakkar showed they weren't afraid to encourage gamers to explore adult and sometimes disturbing themes in an RPG setting, and in a sensibly mature way. This paper standee pack reinforces that approach, providing a suitable complement to their "Hot Chicks 3" figures, here, of course, distressed and mostly naked. Technically, the group matches the expected Dakkar CGI artwork quality and 25mm-scale bracket, and prints out cleanly. While of less overall utility than their clothed sisters, such well-designed standees have their uses in the right scenarios, with the right players. Following from "Inner Darkness" however, shouldn't there also be some Hot Dudes equally distressed and unclad?

Secret cults with exotic practices have long formed a staple element in roleplaying games and tabletop figure wargames of the more imaginative sort. Cast figures to represent cult members and their victims too have been around since the early days of RPGs, but for some reason paper minis seem to have lagged far behind in this respect. This small set from Skirmisher is one of the few exceptions, although it concentrates exclusively on, mostly naked, human women, drawn in the company's signature style, bold and somewhat cartoon-like.

Given its mildly salacious title, you might expect there to be some male figures too, perhaps some fish-men or man-frogs, but the closest things to anything male are the two identical, if differently-sized, standing stone pieces, carved with mystic runes and an octopus design, and which, like many standing stones, might be thought to have a phallic dimension. This seems something of a missed opportunity, particularly given the general inventiveness shown by this and other Skirmisher paper miniature sets. Even so, the eight cultist figures here make a useful "inner cabal" caught in mid-ceremony.

The full group of minis is available in colour and black-and-white versions in the PDF file, the black-and-white pieces allowing for some hand-drawn customisation, not merely in terms of colouring, but also affording an opportunity to add clothes, fresh weapons or other features as preferred. Although giving quite some extra work to achieve, this does increase the set's potential.

Construction is straightforward, either as flat, inverted "T"-shapes, following the enclosed instructions, or recutting the bases to form triangular "A"-frame standees instead. Full back and front artwork is provided for all except the three "magic circles", which are identical, flat, square counters in two sizes. One of the two smaller rings has a spreadeagled, naked victim tied face-up to it. These circles would benefit from some background surface texture, as like the "T"-form figure bases, they are plain white otherwise. While this might be added by hand with paint or felt pens, there is much very fine detail on the intricate circle designs which could be lost easily in doing so, so the absence of options for printed texturing here appears rather an oversight.

As seems uncomfortably standard with the Skirmisher line of minis, an "actual size" printout gets you standing female humans upwards of 40mm tall, much too big to fit with other typical 28/30mm figures and scale terrain, so some experimental resizing will be needed in such cases. Again, something of an oversight in the layout.

Looking at the care involved in the artwork, it's clear this set wasn't intended simply as a throwaway one-line joke. Give the cultists some powerful magics, and your players won't think so either!

An interesting small set of paper miniatures from Skirmisher, which might be imagined as "purple people-eaters", since they're all purple-skinned and you probably wouldn't want to get too close to any! There are seven figures, four "normal"-sized humanoids, each with an octopoid head, a larger humanoid form mostly drawn like the convoluted contours of a brain, with tentacle hands and feet, a four-tentacled "land octopus" with a brain-contoured head/body, and a larger worm-like creature with four head tentacles surrounding its mouth.

Mental powers are shown on two of the humanoids as misty green shapes by their heads, while the mage has conjured a small blue crystal-shaped object in the air by its head. The two more physically combative humanoids have green metal weapons, seeming to hint at magical or psionic power in them as well. These weapons and the mage's staff are repeated as separate counters, and on a larger counter showing the complete set together.

The artwork is in Skirmisher's usual bold, comic-book style, somewhat cartoonish, leading to clean, clear printouts, and the figures can be constructed as flat inverted "T"-shapes, as per the instructions, or with their bases recut in "A"-frame standee form. If left intact, the "T"-style bases are plain white, as is the background to the four counters. Some layer options in the PDF file would have been welcome here, to add suitable base textures for these, as they can be quite jarring when used with printout 2D and 3D paper terrain. Or perhaps break out the felt-tip pens to colour them by hand.

Sadly, as also seems typical with many of Skirmisher's paper minis that I've made-up, there are some minor technical problems. An "actual size" printout produces the smaller humanoids as too tall to comfortably fit alongside most other 28/30mm scale figures and models, so will need resizing. Best to try a draft-quality greyscale test print on ordinary paper first, I found. However, you'll find that because the rogue/assassin figure has a cloud of green psionic power trails above its head, this drawing has been reduced in size to still fit the whole image into the same-height rectangle as the remaining humanoids, so ends up looking under-sized this way! This is OK to a point, as a successful rogue/assassin might need to hide in small spaces after all...

More troublesome is the mage, whose staff is held at an angle, and one side of the figure's background panel has been sloped out towards the top of the figure to accommodate this. When stood upright in either a "T" or "A" format, this makes it unbalanced, so even if you normally don't bother, this figure would benefit from having a small weight added to its base. The end of the mage's trailing robe has been cut off too, and as there was ample space on the printed page, I'm not sure why this figure's outline "box" couldn't have been made a little larger and properly rectangular like the others.

Overall, these aspects are not major, but do suggest a lack of care in the final layout. That's disappointing as these are good minis otherwise, which sparked ideas for me in how they might be employed in scenarios, and showing the kind of creativeness with an unusual group of creatures of the sort it would be excellent to see more often.

This is Dakkar's "action pack" of near-future standee female figures, to complement the calmer minis of "Hot Chicks 1". Here, you get just a single version of each miniature, most of whom are armed with guns of varying types, a few with blades, and just one or two with no obvious weapons. So unlike the more general-purpose minis of Set 1, the stances here mean the characters couldn't be anything but heroes or villains, good to go. Clothing runs from beachwear with boots through casual streetwear to catsuits and slightly over-the-top outfits, in-keeping with the movie-inspired ideas behind "Hot Chicks: The RPG".

Stylistically, the artwork is Dakkar's usual CGI-realistic, with just a couple of figures a little too "Anime", and a colour palette that gives a generally good, clear printout. Occasionally, some of the lighter tones vanish into the white card background, but this is not of great significance. The figure panels are also Dakkar-standard 25mm tall, so may need resizing if you wish to fit them with larger-scale models - of the more typical 28/30mm scale, say.

On the whole, mixed-in with the "Hot Chicks 1" set, this grouping will likely cover the female paper figure needs for most "Hot Chicks" gamers, or indeed many other near-modern ones. Be nice to have a similarly armed and action-posed "Hot Dudes" set to complement "Hot Dudes 1" too!

A glorious piece of subterranean dungeon artwork rendered in Battlemap vertical plan for tabletop use, and in isometric view with cutaway walls and archways to make you wish there was also a 3D model of the whole. The PDF Battlemap lets you toggle on or off a one-inch square grid, the only map-layer option in this product, but as almost all the floor is already conveniently flagged with one-inch square stones, that affects only a couple of small areas in the largest central chamber of the three provided. An excellently timeless temple to culminate any horror adventure in. Or perhaps finding it would be just the start...