Monday, January 14, 2019

Pathfinder Map Pack: Secret Rooms [RPG]


The first thing that strikes me about Pathfinder Map Pack: Secret Rooms is that the title is something of a misnomer.  When gamers think of "secret rooms," they think about the lever in the closet that reveals a secret treasure vault or the innocuous-looking stone wall that can be pushed through to reveal the staircase down to the next level.  But what Secret Rooms has in it for tiles are just traditional dungeon fare: stone rooms, all but one of which has a visible entrance/exit.  About half of the tiles are essentially featureless rooms, and I'm a bit biased toward the set in a negative way because both of the PFS/SFS scenarios I've used it in have done so featuring tiles that aren't much more than square boxes I could have drawn myself in ten seconds.  But to be fair, some of the tiles do have other types of dungeon decor, like treasure chests, a sewer channel, a burial vault with bones in the alcoves, and some cool demon-looking statues.  Two of the tiles have squares with odd geometric patterns, which could maybe be adopted for some sort of pressure plate puzzle.

I know dungeon-themed flip-mats and map packs are Paizo's highest sellers and they've probably used up most of the good titles already, but "secret rooms" was just a poor descriptive choice.  This is simply a map pack containing traditional dungeon tiles.  There's nothing particularly good or bad with it, so I'll give it the uninspired "meh" rating.

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