In Short
Gamescapes: Story Maps, Sci-fi Set 1 provides a useful resource for both science fiction roleplaying and miniature battles games. A sleeping area, corridors, and storage bays come together to form a simple research station or to become the location of a firefight in any game. Corridors do tend to all look alike, after all.In my brief time playing around with these I used some miniatures from the Star Wars Miniatures game. These maps work very well with them, and even the doors, lines of fire, and potential cover presented here can all be easily incorporated into that game. In fact, I may use these to easily set up my own custom scenarios. For RPGs these are going to work best with any game that encourages miniature use, but be aware that while the corridors are universally useful the package itself has limited use – it does well as a station or a part of some other thing (such as a starship) but at just 6 pages of actual content (8 total) there’s not a lot of variation.
Each map page is meant to be cut out and attached to other maps. For best use a consumer probably wants to print these on higher quality, sturdier paper or attach them to a piece of cardboard or something similar. While they do use quite a bit of ink, that’s to be expected with a product like this and the detail shows up remarkably well even when printed in black and white.
The Good: The maps look nice, showing off interesting little bits of detail even under less ideal printing conditions. The maps fit well with miniatures and would be a fun battle location for both minis games and RPGs.
The Bad: The maps are limited, offering only a few options. A page suggesting different configurations, scenarios, and ways to physically use the product (paper qualities, etc.) would be a great addition.
My Take
Pretty fun to tinker with, and not a bad price, I’d be much more excited if the kit had more options. I’d like it a lot more if it included quite a bit more content for only a modest increase in price.Help support RPGnet by purchasing this item through DriveThruRPG.

