I ran across the Hard Boiled series purely by accident, and I must say it is an impressive bit of work. They take full advantage of the capabilities of Adobe Acrobat to layer information on their maps. Heck you can even turn the background (that is, the underlying map itself) on and off! In this particular map pack, they even have a secret staircase you can turn on and off.

An extra addition that is amazing (though also amazingly large) is the .TIFF files they provide, allowing you to print the maps on a truly large scale and still receive the pixel definition that makes them look almost perfect. All in all, this is an amazing player aid. Over time I am gradually purchasing all of their 20th century stuff for use in an on-going Call of Cthulhu campaign, and even their "Base Sets" will seemingly come in handy.

Between the City streets, the Docks, The Shearwater, The Church (and graveyard), the Apartments, a rumored soon-to-be produced Airport, and this one, we have a steadily growing cityscape we can use to depict our adventures in urban areas in the roaring 20's and two-fisted '30's. Now if we can just talk them into doing a subway and sewers set and a skyscraper or two, we'd have just about everything we need!

DriveThru did their usual excellent job of reproducing the material and it was easy to use and download. Of course, as usual, this is merely a player aid, so I'll only give it a "4" overall due to the lack of detail that you need to fully flesh it out -- but if I could rate player aids on a different scale from everything else, this one would probably earn a "6!" :-)

I ran across these pulp styled adventure tiles the other day at RPGNOW. They are a great resource for any Pulp game. Of course they could be easily used for just about any modern/supers/horror setting as well but they're gonna be used for Pulp (specifically Dicey Tales) here at the Lair! I bought Craven Manor and The Docks set. The dock set printed up beautifully. they look like they come straight out of an old Robert Mitchum movie like Macau. The PDF's are layered for complete customization. they also include a nice set of crates and cars and furnishings. Both of these tile sets are packed with value and as your going through them your mind will just start coming up with adventures to use them with on the spot. Did I mention that the manor set has a hidden laboratory and cells for prisoners? well it does! I have plans for both of these set and for the Rumored "Airfield" set that is supposed to see release soon- till then check out what this line has to offer. Two thumbs up from The Evil DM!