Mapping Your Gothic

Given the origins of the roleplaying hobby—in wargaming and in the drawing of dungeons that the first player characters, and a great many since, explored and plundered—it should be no surprise just how important maps are to the hobby. They serve as a means to show a tactical situation when using miniatures or tokens and to track the progress of the player characters through the dungeon—by both the players and the Dungeon Master. And since the publication of Dungeon Geomorphs, Set One: Basic Dungeon by TSR, Inc. in 1976, the hobby has found different ways in which to provide us with maps. Games Workshop published several Dungeon Floor Sets in the 1980s, culminating in Dungeon Planner Set 1: Caverns of the Dead and Dungeon Planner Set 2: Nightmare in Blackmarsh; Dwarven Forge has supplied dungeon enthusiasts with highly detailed, three-dimensional modular terrain since 1996; Loke BattleMats publishes them as books; and any number of publishers have sold maps as PDFs via Drivethrurpg.com. 1985 Games does none of these. Instead, as the name suggests it looks back to the eighties and produces its maps in a format similar to the Dungeon Floor Sets from Games Workshop, but designed for use in 2025 not 1985.

Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread is a box of terrain geomorphs, some forty-six sheets of them! Each sheet is of light card, covered in plastic so that it works with both wet and dry erase markers, and marked with an eight-by-ten grid of one-inch squares. All of the sheets are depicted in full vibrant colour. Some are also marked in dotted lines which indicate lines where the Game Master can cut and sperate buildings, ruins, trees and flowers, threats and monsters. Some sheets depict single locations, locations, or monsters, such as a shop, a ruined windmill, a coffin makers, homes occupied and unoccupied, a church or temple, taverns and inns, wizards, necromancers, spiders, wraiths, gargoyles, wolves and hounds, black cats, murders of crows, chopping blocks with axes, a great tree hut, flaming skulls, and more. There is a lot of cemetery features, including statues and headstones, ground sections which have skeletal hands reaching up ready to claw at the Player Characters or pull themselves out of the earth, giant skulls and broken gates, and so on. Which sounds all great, but there is more to each of these sheets, and that is because each is double-sided.

Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread does not simply reprint the same locations, objects, and creatures on the other side. In some cases, it reprints the same location or object, but with a change in status. For the most part, this is to show the roofs of buildings, but for other pieces, the other side is very different. For example, the other side of the chopping blocks with axes shows piles chopped wood, the various creatures and monsters and NPCs are shown by day on one side and by night on the other, trees are shown with foliage on one side and without on the other, and so on. Whilst the reverse side of most building tiles show their roofs, others do depict up floors of the same building. Thus simply flipping the counters and locations over doubles usefulness of the Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread as well as helping to keep parts of a location or encounter secret until the Master Master is ready to reveal them.

Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread is obviously designed to work with a fantasy setting such as that for Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, or any number of retroclones or fantasy roleplaying games. Indeed, Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread would very well with the Curse of Strahd and Vecna: Eve of Ruin campaigns for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Of course, the most obvious use for Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread is with the Ravenloft setting, which has a particular gloomy, Mitteleuropean feel to it. This does not necessarily limit it to the mediaeval pulp horror of Gothic, since the look and feel of the locations depicted in this map could be any time from the sixteenth century to the twentieth. So not just Ravenloft, but also Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales, as well as any pulp horror adventure where the heroes might encounter vampires and the undead, venture down streets swathed in shadow and passing moonlight, and out into cemeteries to dig up bodies to check to see if they are truly dead! Chill would work very well with Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread, as would any roleplaying game with a Pulp sensibility, whether that is Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos or Achtung! Cthulhu, especially if the Investigators wanted to vampire hunting or the Nazis were recruiting! Lastly, combine with the BattleMap: Turned Earth/Graveyard pack to create the locations of uprisings of the dead and the BattleMap: City/Dungeon pack for town streets where the undead can lurk and prey on random tourists whilst the locals know better than to be abroad at night and lock their doors!

Physically, Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread comes in a sturdy which also contain a single introduction and instructions sheet. Beyond that, the rest of Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread is all maps that can be easily adjusted with the addition of the various terrain pieces and marked up and wiped clean as necessary.

Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread is an appropriately gloomy and gothic-themed box of maps and geomorphs. In comparison to other Dungeon Craft boxed sets from 1985 Games, Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread is not as vibrant (since of course, it is set in the shadows) and it does not include quite as much variety in its pieces. Nevertheless, this is a good box of maps, floor plans, and map tiles, and for the Game Master using miniatures and wanting to take her campaign into the gloom of the gothic where only the moonlight shines and vampires stalk the night, Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread is packed with everything she will need.*

* Stake not included.

Mapping Your Jungle

Given the origins of the roleplaying hobby—in wargaming and in the drawing of dungeons that the first player characters, and a great many since, explored and plundered—it should be no surprise just how important maps are to the hobby. They serve as a means to show a tactical situation when using miniatures or tokens and to track the progress of the player characters through the dungeon—by both the players and the Dungeon Master. And since the publication of Dungeon Geomorphs, Set One: Basic Dungeon by TSR, Inc. in 1976, the hobby has found different ways in which to provide us with maps. Games Workshop published several Dungeon Floor Sets in the 1980s, culminating in Dungeon Planner Set 1: Caverns of the Dead and Dungeon Planner Set 2: Nightmare in Blackmarsh; Dwarven Forge has supplied dungeon enthusiasts with highly detailed, three-dimensional modular terrain since 1996; Loke BattleMats publishes them as books; and any number of publishers have sold maps as PDFs via Drivethrurpg.com. 1985 Games does none of these. Instead, as the name suggests it looks back to the eighties and produces its maps in a format similar to the Dungeon Floor Sets from Games Workshop, but designed for use in 2025 not 1985.

Dungeon Craft: Jungles of Dread is a box of terrain geomorphs, some forty-six sheets of them! Each sheet is of light card, covered in plastic so that it works with both wet and dry erase markers, and marked with an eight-by-ten grid of one-inch squares. All of the sheets are depicted in full vibrant colour. Some are also marked in dotted lines which indicate lines where the Game Master can cut and sperate buildings, ruins, trees and flowers, threats and monsters. Some sheets depict single locations, locations, or monsters, such as a ziggurat, parts of a broken statue, plateaus with caves and sinkhole, the upturned hull of a ship caught up in some trees, a inn, city buildings, and even a giant serpent. Others depict a series of hide tents, one large and several small, a handful of ruins, sections of undergrowth and some cages, a pair of pterodactyls, four patches of quicksand, and several monkeys and leopards, and last, but not least a tyrannosaurus rex, some velociraptors and some turtle warriors, and some pteranodons. Which sounds all great, but there is more to each of these sheets, and that is because each is double-sided.

Dungeon Craft: Jungles of Dread does not simply reprint the same locations, objects, and creatures on the other side. In some cases, it reprints the same location or object, but with a change in status. Most commonly, the ziggurat, the broken statuary, and ruins are depicted again, but covered in vines. Empty animal cages are full on the other side, burning tents are shown blackened and smoldering, areas of quicksand have people trapped in them and screaming on one side and empty on another, and the insides of buildings are revealed, for example, the upturned hull of a ship turns out to house a tavern. Similarly, many of the reverse side of the monsters and creatures are different, in the case of the creatures showing them at night, their colours muted, whilst the monsters on their other side are blighted or even undead. Which begs the question that every Game Master is going to want to ask after perusing the contents, which is, “Are my players ready to face a zombie tyrannosaurus?” Thus simply flipping the counters and locations over doubles usefulness of the Dungeon Craft: Jungles of Dread as well as helping to keep parts of a location or encounter secret until the Master Master is ready to reveal them.

Dungeon Craft: Jungles of Dread is obviously designed to work with a fantasy setting such as that for Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, or any number of retroclones or fantasy roleplaying games. Indeed, Dungeon Craft: Jungles of Dread was actually designed to support the first two chapters of the Tomb of Annihilation for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, whilst its companion set, Dungeon Craft: Fallen Kingdom supports the other chapters in the campaign. However, there are no game stats in Dungeon Craft: Jungles of Dread and it is an entirely systems neutral gaming accessory. Given its jungle locales, Dungeon Craft: Jungles of Dread would work well with a Pulp sensibility, whether that is Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos or Achtung! Cthulhu. It would even work with some Science Fiction roleplaying games and miniatures wargames rules, especially those that employ inches for their movement scale. All of this can be done flat on the table or used with the BattleMap: Jungle City. This is a large twenty-four-by-thirty-three inch map which provides a grid onto which the various locations, objects, and creatures can be placed.

Physically, Dungeon Craft: Jungles of Dread comes in a sturdy box which also contain a single introduction and instructions sheet. Beyond that, the rest of Dungeon Craft: Jungles of Dread is all maps that can be easily adjusted with the addition of the various terrain pieces and marked up and wiped clean as necessary.

Dungeon Craft: Jungles of Dread is a fantastically themed ‘Lost World’, ‘Valley of the Dinosaurs’, box of maps and geomorphs. For the Game Master using miniatures and wanting to take her campaign into the jungle where secrets and dinosaurs remain hidden, Dungeon Craft: Jungles of Dread is simply a good choice.