New Dwarven Forge Kickstarter kicked off over the weekend...tempted, but...

God I love the look of Dwarven Forge's products and after watching Dwarvenaut, a documentary on Stefan Pokorny, I been even more wishing to support the company. But... ouch is it expensive to buy a large enough set to build a decent-sized dungeon. Even if I felt comfortable spending a few thousand on high-quality, prepainted dungeon tiles, how much replay value do you get out of them? Wouldn't all dungeons start looking the same?

Would be interested in hearing from those who've bought Dwarven Forge on whether they think it is worth the cost.

Watch some Critical Role. Matt Mercer uses them. I, however, do not have such disposable funds lol

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They are nice, but very expensive for locales of any decent size. You will cut down the cost a about 25% if you paint them yourself. Not hard, but need plenty of time and space, and a smallish amount of skill.

Also, these work much better if you have a dedicated play area. If you have very many pieces, toting them around becomes rather difficult (if not practically impossible), and setup and take down, and repacking for transport, will take a while.

One thing that I've found is that narrow passages don't work very well for D20 3.5 style fights. Wide passages are needed for players to not get bottled up. Players who are bottled up often waste actions, which is no fun for a turn by turn combat system which can have long delays between player turns. (Aside: D20 3.5 needs better options for fights in narrow places.) (The general scale is an important feature of layouts which often goes by without notice.)

The castle set has lots of wide floors which work nicely. The Mount Erinthor pack has turned out to be very useful. If I could re-order, I would order several more of the 8x8 flagstone and mountain floor pieces, plus more elevation packs. I hadn't realized how useful they are.

Thx!
TomB

I agree with you [MENTION=6796661]MNblockhead[/MENTION]. I've been tempted in the past, even created models of a similar system and had them 3D printed. But I just can't do it. The difficulty of transport, the need for variety, and the time required to setup and take-down have taken them from my wishlist.

I would rather have a game table with a TV/Monitor built in to the surface where I can display digital battle maps. Yes they are not 3D, but the ease of use, the versatility, and the diversity of settings is just too much to limit myself to something like 3D terrain.

Expensive. A poster on another forum suggested that their target audience is more interested in dioramas than rpg games, and I'll agree. DF has employees and customers are willing to shell out thousands of dollars on each KS, so DF clearly has its audience.

Hang around KS and you'll find KS selling pieces for $1. Right now, DF pieces are about $2.50 each, albeit with free postage. More money for the Reaper KS -- that Baba Yaga Hut's not going to be cheap!

Preface with a few points:
I own Dwarven Forge products.
I backed both the Dungeon and Caverns Kickstarter campaigns.
I have been running RPGs for 24 years.
I am a sucker for all things RPG.
I don't work for Dwarven Forge. (I felt I should say that after reading my post. lol)

Having said all of that I absolutely adore my Dwarven Forge tiles. I use them almost every session. I bought in to the prepainted dungeon tiles and for the caverns one I actually traded with Stefan himself a painted reaper pledge (Kaladrax, the massive Dracolich. You can see it in the town kickstarter video in the background and on top of a shelf in the Dwarvenaut. Shameless plug, I'm proud of how he turned out.) for an unpainted Caverns pledge. I'm a big painter. I painted the ice tiles myself but I regret not going down for the Dwarven Forge paint jobs on the caverns pledge. I'm no slouch in the way of painting (obviously since Stefan agreed to take my Kaladrax) but painting that many tiles is nuts. I still haven't even started my Cavern tiles yet! The pieces are solid, damn solid. They have survived the table, being thrown, my cat (the turd), and most importantly many, many game sessions. My daughter and I play with the tiles and miniatures quite frequently. She loves playing with "Daddy's Dungeon". So the fact that the paint jobs have survived her (she's 7 now) attests to the quality. Honestly you don't "NEED" a huge amount, as you can just repurpose the tiles for multiple rooms. You could always just build the encounter rooms out and not the whole dungeon. Anyway that's my two cents, they're an awesome investment.

> two cents

Considering that the DF average backer pledged a *thousand* dollars, I don't think I even have half a cent.

Reaper Bones is "coming soon", and I drop the most money on a KS during their KS. They even have a Baba Yaga hut that's going to cost an armanachickenleg. Thankfully, I wasn't interested in the CMON Green Horde (not interested in the theme or SG's), so my KS funds aren't as devastated this year. I'm fine with the less expensive lines of game tiles and miniatures. They work and they fit in the budget.

I love playing with DF, but I do have dedicated space for it in my game room. If I had to transport it, I probably would not bother. All of my campaigns have used it and my players enjoy it quite a bit. It isn't "cheap", but I always buy the handpainted stuff. I'm a decent painter, but I spend my painting time on miniatures and other terrain.

I dropped a couple grand on this kickstarter, but if I were on a budget I would invest in Hirst Arts. With just two or three molds you can make a lot of great dungeon terrain. I love building stuff with Hirst Arts, but it does take time. Like most things you are either spending time or money!

I have a game / craft space in my home and I DM all my games at home, so toting things around isn't much of an issue.

If I were wealthy, I would probably buy it since the kids could also play with them and I might get some war-gameish use out of them (Hero Clicks or just DnD combat). But I can't justify 2000-3000 on dungeon tiles. At least not on top of my gaming budget and I'm not willing to forgo buying other hobby stuff just for this. I know I could buy smaller sets, but they don't seem all that useful/cool if you don't have a substantial number of pieces.

Playability is a concern. It is much easier to move minis around on a flat battlemap or a 2.5 D set up (search YouTube for DM Scotty Tilescapes and/or 2.5D).

Also, I don't spend all or most of my game on combat. Setting up something so elaborate seems like a lot of work and I just don't have enough game-prep time as it is.

I know that I could save money by painting, but I haven't had time to even paint most of the reaper minis I bought and now I loathe to use them because they are boring white or black or green (I base coated some and stopped there). I feel most of the unpainted minis I've purchased were a bad investment. If I bought unpainted DF terrain, I think it would be the same thing.

I've become very picky in what game aids I buy. I now generally look for and only buy items that are (1) ready to play with [e.g., no painting required], (2) easy to store, (3) look nice at the table and add to the fun, but (4) get out of the way of play. Examples are: flat miniatures by Arcknight;felt patterned battle-maps (I have a selection for different environments); quick flat or 3D terrain pieces like trees, rubble, etc.; pre-painted minis for special encounters and player characters.

What I would be interested in is terrain features, plants, furniture, wagons, rubble, chests etc. Even with hand drawn battlemaps on a Chessex mat, such things would be useful. DF should consider selling bundles of furniture, for example. These would be useful with any physical space, not just with DF terrain and may have a wider audience.

As for the expensive elaborate sets, I think they would be worth it to filmed and live-stream games like Critical Roll. They may also be worth it for professional DMs, though I don't know how many paid DMs make enough to support this kind of investment. Most profitable DMing activity would likely be on-line and using VTTs. Maybe therapeutic RPG is profitable enough to justify the expense.

I guess it is like doll houses and legos. Some have 1000s spent on the most elaborate and fancy sets. The rest of us make do with whatever miscellaneous junk we can cobble together from the cheap junk in our toy bins.

pogre said:

I love playing with DF, but I do have dedicated space for it in my game room. If I had to transport it, I probably would not bother. All of my campaigns have used it and my players enjoy it quite a bit. It isn't "cheap", but I always buy the handpainted stuff. I'm a decent painter, but I spend my painting time on miniatures and other terrain.

I dropped a couple grand on this kickstarter, but if I were on a budget I would invest in Hirst Arts. With just two or three molds you can make a lot of great dungeon terrain. I love building stuff with Hirst Arts, but it does take time. Like most things you are either spending time or money!

Click to expand...

I thought about that, but I'm finding that I just don't have the time to craft. I want to spend more time on writing adventures and just playing the game.

For published material, which I have not ran yet, but plan to, I buy the battlemap sets and print them out on a plotter printer.

When I started DMing again, I did make a DM Scotty 2.5 Cavern set. If you have time, you can make some cool terrain, very inexpensively, with great play- and replay-ability. I might try to find time to make a bunch of generic dungeon terrain using his Tile Scape tutorials.