Dungeon tiles. yay or nay?

[Mercule]

Dungeon Tiles sounded cool for about 20 minutes. Then I realized I'd either have to completely conform what I wanted to do to what the Tiles could represent or I'd have part of a map made of Tiles and part drawn on a mat. Blech -- that'd be even worse than the whole thing drawn by hand. Even if I collected 5 of every set, I'd still feel limited (and broke).

No thanks. Save the Tiles for a D&D Minis game.

 

[grickherder]

I like dungeon tiles, but it took me a while to get into a good stride with them. The most important thing is organizing them. I ended up getting compartment containers and sorting them by size, dimension and the type of thing that was on the non-generic side of the tile. It took a few hours, but saves me lots of time in use.

I also love pre-printed maps. The ones in the D&D miniatures starter are great. As are the ones from KotS. I also have the D&D day ones.

The next step for me is to find an economical colour printing solution and start getting into some 3rd party PDF tiles and printing my own custom ones. Perhaps finding some way to stick them to a mounting board to make them the same thickness as the tiles.

 

[Wormwood]

I dig Dungeon Tiles, and I make every effort to make creative use of them. Even when a particular encounter forced me to use our wet-erase board, I use as many of the 'dungeon dressing' tiles for statues, pits, etc. as I can.

I also love pre-printed maps. The ones in the D&D miniatures starter are great. As are the ones from KotS. I also have the D&D day ones.

Oh hell yeah. In addition to my beloved DDM maps, the only 3e-era stuff that I didn't sell were the Fantastic Locations so I could use those maps.

 

[MadLordOfMilk]

I personally haven't gotten dungeon tiles, as I can't really afford them; however, I really like the concept! Keep in mind you can also drop tiles onto a battlegrid to "enhance" your dungeon, so they can actually see that fountain there, or w/e. A combination of the two could work.

Though, personally, I prefer the big pre-printed poster mats Unfortunately, I don't have that many... speaking of which, why isn't there a product out there that's just a big package of a bunch of them? Or, if there is, could anyone point me to it? I'd definitely pay for that

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I was using dungeon tiles but found them awkward to use and limiting. With 2 packs I found it hard to put together just a few rooms and corridors. And they get bumped easily. Just bought a wet erase mat and loving it.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I love them in some ways, and hate them in others.

A couple of sessions ago when my party was travelling through the Underdark I rolled up a couple of random encounters. I gave the players my 2 sets of Underdark tiles and told them to make up an encounter area.

They had a great time just creating the area the fight would be in. They enjoyed it so much that I through in another random encounter just so they could set up another one. That worked really well. While they were all sorting out the area it gave me time to just go over the stats of what they were fighting one more time.

About a year or so ago I used the Wilderness set to make another couple of random encounters. That also worked really well. The tiles really do help to set the scene more than your ordinary battlemat.

On the flip side to this, I am running the Shackled City AP. It has a lot of dungeons in it. Some of them are quite huge but there are a number of smaller ones as well. Despite owning 2 sets of each of the first 6 or 7 dungeons I still struggled to be able to recreate the dungeons. The main problem was that a number of the rooms were so big that I would have had to made them up out of 10 or more pieces. Another issue was that many of the rooms weren't square or rectangular. The tiles don't tend to work to well with odd room shapes.

So despite me wanting to use the Dungeon Tiles I found that it was going to be too much effort to make it worthwhile. On top of that, I've also found that when I do use them everyone has to be careful not to knock the tiles around. They move around a little too easily.

So in my experience I have found that the Dungeon Tiles work really well for random encounters, but not as well for dungeons.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Festivus]

I prefer the flip map, because it is more versitile and faster to set up.

This. But I have on occasion used Dungeon Tiles for the first encounter, because I can take my time setting it up.

 

[Gargoyle]

The dungeon tiles can speed up play quite a bit, particularly if you don't have time to map out an area in advance. But I like battlemats with wet erase markers for large areas or for areas that need a more custom design.

 

[Piratecat]

The dungeon tiles can speed up play quite a bit, particularly if you don't have time to map out an area in advance. But I like battlemats with wet erase markers for large areas or for areas that need a more custom design.

Mr. Garr! It's a delight to see you.

Err, and yes - big fan of the tiles here. I don't use them for every encounter, but I do like them. I also really like the dungeon dressing tiles that come in Fiery Dragon's 4e Battlebox. A dry erase battlemap also comes in the box, giving me good options from both worlds.

 

[Festivus]

I was using dungeon tiles but found them awkward to use and limiting. With 2 packs I found it hard to put together just a few rooms and corridors. And they get bumped easily. Just bought a wet erase mat and loving it.

One tip here, go to the fabric store and buy a yard of felt. The tiles stay in place, and you can rotate the entire map or slide it to one side of the table or the other without distrupting anything.