Anyone who has ever played a contemporary game must have, at some point, visited an hotel. Whether the characters are on the move and need somewhere to stay, or a meeting place, or a hideout... hotels feature in spy tales, thrillers... even supernatural games. It is unlikely that, if you play contemporary games, that you will never have needed one. Often, you may be able to get away with using one you've visited yourself (she says, remembering a scene set in London's Langham Hilton), but if trouble comes to visit your characters (or they start some), more than a description from memory will be useful.

This one's quite interesting, as it has been produced in collaboration with Silver Gryphon Games, as a setting for one of their adventures - Shrödinger's Box. If you happen to possess a copy, you will find 3 levels of the Provincial Hotel provided in reasonable detail in its pages; but if you like mapping out your combats, it is well worth picking this product up for the added detail. Naturally, even if you don't have it, you can find plenty of uses for this rather nice hotel.

After a brief run-down, generic to all their map products I've seen, on how this map series came to see the light of day, this product opens with some flavour text: a travel writer's notes on the Provincial Hotel. Cleverly, no city name is given, so if you are not using Wellstone City (Silver Griffin Games's imaginary city setting) it will work just as well elsewhere. Then on to the plans themselves. They are designed to ultilise the capablities of the latest version of Adobe Acrobat - and if you do not have a current copy of Acrobat Reader, which is a free download, it is worth acquiring. The plans come in three formats, so that you can pick whatever is most convenient. Firstly, there are single-page overviews of each floor (these are the ones you get in Shrödinger's Box), then there are a series of pages which when laid out together give you each floor in battlemap scale, and finally - for those who have a plotter or access to one at a good copy shop or similar - the same printable on a single sheet. Moreover, before printing you can use the 'layers' technology to decide whether or not you want a grid overlay, text, furniture or the reference numbers to match the text of Shrödinger's Box.

The Ground Floor has the lobby, offices, dining room, kitchen, and other public areas as well as some suites. The Second Floor has more suites and public spaces - some of the suites are quite palatial with social areas and even private cooking facilities, and all are en suite, of course. The Third Floor, which can be repleated as many times as necessary depending on how large an hotel you need, has more rooms, but less in the way of public areas apart from corridors and utility rooms which are presumably mainly for use by the housekeeping staff (or by guests who need to launder clothes during their stay).

All is presented in a neat, architectural draft, style and it enables you to be very precise about what's where, angles, cover and all those details you need to bear in mind when violence threatens... A fine mapset for anyone needing a modern and rather nice hotel for their characters to visit.