This is the first in an occasional series of reviews I’ve been plotting for my blog. Behold, my first review!
I’ll be concentrating on the types of product Raging Swan Press does not publish, but which I think GMs might enjoy and/or find useful.
With that in mind, first up is the marvellously titled the Deck of Many Dungeons.
I was approached by Rob Cuninghame the other day. Rob is (at the time of writing) running a kickstarter and thought I might be interested in checking out his new product. He was kind enough to send me an advance copy of the Deck of Many Dungeons and I’ve been playing around with the cards for the last few days.
- The cards themselves feel nice and smooth in the hand and the glossy printing looks high quality to my tired old eyes. They are heavy enough that I couldn’t blow them off the table in my patented blow test.
- The cards are perfectly scaled for standard-sized minis. (Check out the pictures below for example photos).
- The artwork is good quality and nicely represents dungeon corridors.
I’ve also enjoyed dealing myself a dungeon (as it were). It’s a fun challenge to see what comes out of the deck and to design an interesting layout with the result.
My only concern about this deck is that it comprises exclusively ten-foot wide corridor pieces. It’s perfect for a minotaur’s maze or some such, but you can’t build rooms using the cards. However, all is not lost! Set II is in development as I type this and will be available as part of the kickstarter. Deck 2 deals with rooms and suchlike. Here is a graphic of some of the available cards in that deck which I did not have a chance to play with:
Adding the two sets together means you can create a much more playable dungeon.
In summary, I like this product and I could absolutely see myself using it. Combined with the second set it would be a marvellous addition to a casual random dungeon session or could be a handy plaything for a GM brainstorming his next dungeon. Also—solo players could use the tiles as the basis for their next random dungeon! Finally, the cards are tremendously portable–great for taking to a friend’s house or using at a convention.
To check out the Deck of Many Dungeons on Kickstarter, click here.
Disclaimer
I received one set of sample cards to write this review. I get nothing else for reviewing these cards. None of the links in this post are affiliate posts.
Argh – I’m bummed out that the Kickstarter is so far from its goal (as of 5/3/18) because I think this is a fantastic tool for those moments when you need something on-the-fly, or even for planned out dungeons. Maybe I’m just the meanest DM, but I’m no longer letting PCs use my maps or printing out a blank one for them to use (unless someone gave them a map before they entered) – they need to do it themselves and this would be a cool way to sort of ‘force’ them to sketch it out. Profession(Cartography), anyone?
I’m not wise in the way of Kickstarters, but I’m under the impression they often surge toward the end of their run. Hopefully, Rob will get funded and will be able to unleash the cards on the world!
I’m not giving up yet!
And even if I do fail I will try again. There’s no harm in backing a project that fails, I don’t get anything and you don’t loose anything if that happens.
Ty Raging Swan for that beautiful review, hope you have lots of fun with your deck 🙂