Wow, this map is huge—60" wide by 40" tall when fully assembled! A relatively thin, rather precarious ice bridge spans a cold (but not frozen-over) river flowing by what appears to be a keep entrance. Just about any fantasy RPG could easily lead to an encounter in such a place, whether you’re using the Illfrost setting (which I know nothing about, outside of the maps) or not. In fact, just a slight trimming of the map or slight redefinition of the player’s perceptions could adjust the map enough to be used for modern games as well as fantasy—think of an expedition to Antarctic mountains of madness and the like. This could even be an alien planetscape on a largely frozen world. The map has enormous flexibility and great story potential, as well as excellent replay value. It could easily serve as a set-piece for many encounters on the edge of a snowbound/icebound village or keep. The artwork does take up the entire page, though the pages are tiled with overlap, so you shouldn’t run into any difficulty unless you’re using an older inkjet printer that leaves a generous white margin on the edges of the printed page. I didn’t go all the way to five stars for this map for one reason only: the grid sits “below” the upper plateau on all sides of the map, which makes it hard to use those regions of the map for miniatures-scale combat that assumes a square grid (D&D, Pathfinder).
|