Pre-generated maps are great. I know I don’t have a lot of technical know-how, or art ability, so my attempts at maps always suck. The problem with most pre-generated maps is that they are sort of “one shot” deals. It is what it is, and once you print it is doesn’t change. Fat Dragon Games E-Z Tiles series changes that. This series of products provides a series of interlocking layered tiles that allow you to customize and print each one separately to build the perfect dungeon.

The product requires Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0 or higher to work, but that is no big deal since newer versions of Adobe Reader is free to download. It takes advantage of the pallete feature of the software. Just click on the “layers” option and then select whatever add-ons you want. A little fungus here. A rotted skeleton there. Bingo! Instance room or hallway. Just print, cut out, and place as you need to.

The product I got was the free download available at RPGNOW. It included 24 different tile files to play with. The number of add-ons in this product was limited to pile of gold, barrels, slime, fungus, skeleton, chest, and bridge and a couple of others. And the add-ons are the same imagines regardless of the tile. Some of the imagines, like the skeleton, don’t have a high contrast against the actual tiles, so when printing they don’t always come out real clear. There also is no option where the add-ons will appear. You can’t move them around.

Still, these slight limitations don’t take away from the usefulness of the product. It still allows for a lot of customization for dungeons. And considering the number of sets in this series, I can see how even just a few of these sets could handle just about any standard dungeon need a GM could have. This is one of those products that you don’t know you need until you see it, and then wonder how you ran your games without it.