Modern Floorplans – An Average Modern High School
Author: Charles White
Artist: Krista White & Preston Dubose
Publisher: Fabled Environments
Page count: 46
Format: PDF
Available Formats: PDF
Cost: PDF-$15
**Not available until mid-February after KS backers get their rewards**

The fine folks over at Fabled Environments sent me a PDF copy of their Modern High School for me to check and review. Let me start by thanking Charles White, owner of Fabled Environments for his generosity and without further delay let’s get on to that review.

CONTENT

Where to start? This 46 page PDF is chock full of map goodness! The high school is comprised of two floors, baseball field, football field and the ever important parking lot. The PDF includes a detailed laboratory and a standard classroom. These are used as basic floor floor plans for classrooms. Furthermore, it contains two module classrooms, fixtures and furniture. Fabled Environments also enabled layering which lets owners of the product turn off and on several features like: square grid, hex grid, furniture, walls, text and cars and landscaping/parking lot. That’s a nice touch! For me, I don’t use hex grid, so I can just turn it off on favor of the square grid. The grid is set at 1″=5′. Any number of layers can be turned on or off depending on your personal preferences.

The high school is broken down in several ways to allow for more functionality. First, the vignettes are perfect for “snap shots” of particular areas designed for home printing which makes the process that much easier. Enabling you to print what you need, when you need it. Second, the larger, more robust maps are great for online play. The sports fields are also presented in several formats: with or without grids (triggered by the layering) and also as vignettes.

Parking lot, who needs a parking lot? You do! How many times have you looked at the modern maps out there and said damn, I wish they had included the parking lot? I know I have. Let’s face it, zombie attacks happen in parking lots 60% of the time according to the national study on zombie attacks. Well, this map set has you covered in this area! They included a well laid out parking lot that includes cars and landscaping, both of which can be turned off by disabling those layers.

For me, one of the coolest things it the fixtures and furniture pages. They allow you to print and cut out the fixtures and furniture pieces to customize any room in the school. They are scaled at 1″=5′ to match the grid. I really appreciate the ability to customize and make something feel like it is my own. Without doing all the work!

USABILITY

I find this product, much like the rest of the company’s catalog of maps, very useful for certain genres or games. I can see the map being a highlight of a zombie themed game or even a post apocalyptic game. This map set would be perfect as the backdrop in many of the games that encompass the Anime genre.

The larger sized maps (see example above) that encompass the entirety of the school building are perfect for use with Roll20 and Voice Over IP play. This is a feature I take advantage of with all the company’s maps that I use.

The PDF structure itself, is super user friendly. They have enabled all the right features like bookmarks to easily locate sections of the map or vignettes. The layering is a godsend….. Need I say more?

FINAL THOUGHTS

This is a great set of maps of a very cool looking school and surrounding environs. The architectural drawings are very well done and added features of the layering make this product user friendly. If you are planning to run any type of modern themed game, I would encourage you to check out this map set or any of the other map sets from Fabled Environments. They do a wonderful job!

~ Modoc