Dungeonscape reminds me in many ways of the film The Emperor's New Groove: it shares a great deal of art and text with its producers' other works, but they are executed in such a different voice that one wonders how it slipped past the managing editors. But perhaps one should expect Dungeonscape to take a radical approach to the mechanics of dungeoneering, considering one of the authors is Rich Burlew, creator of the D&D-riffing webcomic The Order of the Stick. Many gamers will divide a supplement's contents into "fluff" (flavorful description of the fantasy world) and "crunch" (the game rules that make it happen): what Bulmahn and Burlew have created here is technically 90% crunch, but with such clear purpose and utility that it seems 95% fluff. As they offer new rules for architecture, traps, monsters, and character classes, the authors simultaneously acknowledge the strange and arbitrary nature of "the dungeon" and celebrate it as the venue for D&D adventures. Where else could one get away with shark-filled acid pools? And what other book would so generously grant them? ( )