GameMastery Map Pack: Slums contains 18 full-color 5 x 8-inch map tiles, stunningly crafted by cartographer Corey Macourek, that combine to form a variety of locations in the slums of a large city.
Locations include:
Muddy Street
Low Market
Crumbling Building
Wooden Shacks
Filthy Cesspool
Old Church
Rat-infested Landfill
For use with the industry’s most popular roleplaying or tabletop miniature campaigns, and useable by experienced GMs and novices alike, this product fits perfectly into any Game Master’s arsenal.
Good GMs can never have too many maps at their disposal, and Paizo’s GameMastery Map Packs provide high-quality gridded maps for use with both RPGs and miniatures games.
Curiosity made me buy this set before preview images for all the tiles were up, and I must say that I like this set a lot.
The Old Church is definitely a highlight, as is the Low Market. I even like the Muddy Road! I can place it between the market and the shacks and have a nice little town section.
The art is very good, if a little drab color-wise. Some of the locations may be less useful than others. But one day when I need that Rat-infested Landfill, I'll have it!
Rating on, compatibility, art, user friendliness, material and necessity/location.
4 of 5 for compatibility
Take a look at the Discussion to see pictures
Works quite well with wizard products such as DU2 Streets of shadown and City of Peril.
5 of 5 for art
Art is fantastic hits the location spot on the players have no questions as to where they are if you place them on this map.
4 of 5 user friendliness
These are on card stock not heavy card like dungeon tiles so you will need to tape the four parters together or have grip mat to place them on.
3 of 5 material
Card stock is easily marked and will slide with the slightest of nudges.
5 of 5 location
It always annoys me that all adventures have to be staged in 2 by 3 square halls underground.
I have had more than one thief chased threw a slum market.
this is an item you want for your adventures if your a visal gamer.
Two tiles that have essentially nothing on them, just dirty looking tiles, no thanks. This pack does fail to live up to expectations, if the title had been run down village or ghost town, I could actually see it, as slums I have to side with other reviewers who say they fail to capture the feel of high density urban living. That isn't to say that they aren't beautifully produced and easy to look at, but they really just aren't slums. And then those arrows to tell you hey this goes here, how annoying, nothing says immersive like opaque arrows on the scene.
A bit of an upgrade after some use
Dennis Baker
(RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, Contributor)
—
I have upgraded my review from 3 to 4 stars because I just enjoy these cards a lot. The fixed size format makes them immensely more usable that the irregularly sized tiles and in general the art work is quite nice. The Market area is the perfect sort of confused jumble of stalls, it's great for a lot of townie type settings.
At this point my 2 quibbles are:
The card stock is thin and tends to curve a bit over time.
The color on this particular set is quite dark and under dimmer lighting the contrast isn't high enough. The sets which have stronger contrast are much nicer IMO than this particular one.
MyOriginalReview:
I really would expect something a little more substantial than this the cards are quite thin. The art is good but not amazing. I do much prefer the standardized sides of the tiles. The tiles from wotc are all different sizes making putting stuff together a bit of a mess. I'm probably going to spray glue these to some thicker stock.
One of my favorite gaming moments was a fight in a slum. One of the PCs toppled a ramshackle shelter atop three of the thugs attacking him, while another PC was blinded by a face full of mud scooped from the street and hurled by a different thug.
Nothing about these tiles inspires that sort of creative fun. They're very boring and static locations that happen to have more holes than the rest of the town. Much weaker than the rest of this (excellent) product line.
Though I will say that these slummish homes look ragged, I think that is what one would expect in medieval times of the peasantry. Overall, I was not particularly happy with the upscale look, and not too excited to see another market ( I have flipmats for markets anyway). At least from a bird's eye view, these slums appear standard middle age stuff. I was hoping to see true poverty. The only thing I can recommend to Map Packs as a line is to create pop out Map Packs called Object Packs. At least then, I could throw in more slum into the slum pack.
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