Sunday, April 11, 2010
0one Blueprints - did you know about these?
As a D.I.Y. sort of gamer, I always favor Judges-Guild-type stuff, like the Book of Villages, or Book of Caverns, etc, that are mostly a whole lotta maps with just a modicum of exposition and maybe some random tables thrown in for good measure. This is the kind of stuff that really gets me going - I may have had more fun with the blank sheet of graph paper in Keep on the Borderlands than with the rest of it (maybe ;). So I was tickled to stumble across 0one Game's Blueprints line.
This line is nothing but old-school blue-ink maps of locations like cairns, catacombs, thieves' guilds, dark temples, and ruined cities. Each is 20-25 pages long, with 4-8 pages of that being blue maps, then the same duplicated in black & white, along with a little suggestive exposition to build off of or dispose as you see fit: "beneath the church lie the catacombs, a dark and damp corridor littered with smashed coffers and the remains of unknown people". Then you get a page of fillable lines for each map page, so you can keep notes as you flesh out your dungeon: "Room 2: Trapped Corridor: ______________." Add in an introductory page, and a page of map symbols and there you have it: the building blocks for your own adventures, all for about $1.65.
I should mention, the maps themselves are fairly customizable. They are .pdf's, and each has a "Rule the Dungeon" button which, once clicked, allows you to add or remove map symbols, grids, room numbers, and so on. I particularly appreciated the feature that lets you remove the "fill" from each map (all the inked-in areas between rooms), as I'm stingy with printer ink.
For less than $10, I picked up Caverns of Chaos (which look like KotB's Caves of Chaos on steroids, huge!), Dwarven Stronghold (a really cool gate-to-gate under the mountains series of maps), Shrine of the Frogmen (cause I love shrines, especially if there's frogs involved), Church on Skull Hill (about 3 or four adventures worth of maps in here), and The Great City (laid out very similarly to the CSIO with a nice array of available supplements and expansions).
Now, those 5 products alone could keep me busy for a long time, but 0one has over sixty of these available, plus an immense Black & White dungeon, and the 10-level Mega, Dungeon Under the Mountain (wink wink).
Very cool. I've used their floorplan/dungeon tile pdfs a few times, but I wasn't aware their dungeon maps were quite that good. Thanks for the pointer.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking of getting their Drow City: Virtual Boxed Set.
ReplyDeleteThanks Al,
ReplyDeleteI must confess I wasn't aware of these!
Off to do some shopping!
I've been tempted to order a few of those for quite some time, but have never pulled the trigger. Time crunch, more than anything. They certainly look very good and I appreciate you posting on them.
ReplyDelete0one Games does excellent "knock offs" (and I mean that with respect) - literally years worth of adventuring locales to explore.
ReplyDeleteI have several of their products...they're outstanding!
ReplyDeleteThe Caverns of Chaos look amazing!
ReplyDeleteThey make some beautiful products.
ReplyDeleteyes.
ReplyDeleteThey are really awesome. I have a bunch but haven't had a chance to use them yet.
ReplyDeleteMan, I looked at some of the free previews. Those are nice. And really good, I woudl think, for those who don't want to do up maps ex nihilo, but still want to be able to customize.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting that.