Dungeon outfitting

[kiznit]

Sometime shortly after Christmas, all of my miniatures (about two large boxes worth) were stolen out of my car.

After much lamenting, disparaging, and wondering what the heck some two-bit thief would want with a couple hundred dollars worth of half-painted D&D miniatures (I should check e-bay), I finally resigned myself and my brother and I recently started to recreate our collection, mostly out of the svgames.com Chainmail blowout sale (I'm sure you've seen the banner blinking at you - less than a buck a miniature is a pretty wicked deal!).

Anyway, I've been thinking a lot lately now about having some modular dungeon pieces to be adventuring with, a la Master Maze. Master Maze is, of course, way too expensive (I read someone suggesting that the best way to use Master Maze is to buy a set, put it in the closet and never open it, save up a month or two till you can buy another one, keep repeating this until you have 5 or 6 sets, then open them all and go nuts - but I think that's because if you open just one and see what you get for $80 dollars it's really hard to buy another one).

A 3 to 4 hundred dollar investment being way out of my league, so far I have figured out two other options:

Option one is Hirst Fantasy Architecture, with which you can make absolutely beautiful modular dungeon pieces and castles all by yourself for around $30 bucks a mold (which are infinitely reusable), you could probably end up getting 3 or 4 different molds and then you're set for life. These models are aMAZing looking, and have an infinite amount of variety to them. The problems with these is that they are incredibly time-consuming to make, which right now I'm pretty sure I can't handle.

Option two is good old Dirt Cheap Dungeons which are wonderfully inexpensive downloadable paper modules (everything from villages to landscapes to dungeon ruins) which run for only $10 bucks each (cheaper for B&W) and are fairly quick and easy to assemble (and are infinitely reprintable as well). On the other hand, we're talking cheap paper here...

Have any of you used either of these products, or know of any other alternatives? What do you think of them? I've known people to use LEGOs or even just wooden building blocks.

Tell me your stories, please. Thanks!

 

[kengar]

You might also want to check out Dungeonworks.

 

[Terry Edwards]

Dirt Cheap Dungeons or PhotoShop-made equivelants are great if your printer can handle really sturdy cardstock. Standard paper is prone to tearing, warping and especially rolling. If you don't mind puting some work into it you can paste the printed pieces onto cardboard for added strength. What I have done in the past (for the old favorite Advanced HeroQuest) is to sculpt my own interlocking dungeon sections from air dry clay, it's cheap and once you have a pattern down you can churn a full dungeon out in a dedicated afternoon. Of course I like detail so I carved cracks and such imperfections into my tiles so it took a bit longer. Another note on the clay method: Air dry tends to shrink a little so plan ahead with a slightly larger wet sculpt.

 

[Kris]

Sorry to hear about the theft of your miniatures kiznit

Anyway, as far as paper/card dungeons go - I think they are a great alternative to things like master maze and hirst arts stuff (but I guess you knew I was gonna say that - cause that's what I produce for free on my own website - see the link in my sig)

They are lightweight (and thus not gonna weigh you down to much while transporting them) - but I guess the more 3-dimensional you make them (i.e. building walls around the rooms etc.), the more prone to damage they become (which is why I have kept most of the stuff on my own site as simple 'flat' 2D representations of rooms/passages - though this is simply my preference, and no doubt many other people prefer the 3D element of other paper layouts that are available).

There is also the another downside to paper models - and that is the fact that they sure do consume a lot of printer ink


However, recently I have wanted something more, something a bit more 'solid' looking, and after careful consideration I have finally taken the plunge and ordered my first hirst arts mould (which should hopefully be on my doorstep sometime soon )

...don't get me wrong - I have heard a lot of people say good stuff about the dwarven forge stuff - and it sure does look cool from the pictures on the interenet (not to mention the fact that the packaging it comes in doubles as a carry case), but in the end the hirst arts moulds are slightly more appealing to my own tastes, as I love the idea of actually building and painting these things.

Obviously, the downside of using the moulds will probably be that the plaster dungeons will be a bit brittle and may get chipped or break entirely in transit - but I do not intend to carry these things about (as we only really game at my own house) - so for me, there shouldn't be much of a problem.

Anyway, enough of my rambling - I'll let you know how I get on when the mould arrives, and give you my initial thoughts on it... presuming of course that I can tear myself away from building plaster dungeons

 

[kiznit]

Awesome tips, guys, I really appreciate it. Keep 'em coming!

I'm actually a little more impressed with the Dungeonworks stuff than the Dirt Cheep Dungeons in terms of quality (art & detail-wise, they're both cardstock of course), and they're about $5 more.

On the other hand, at that price you might as well mix and match, because, for instance, it looks like Dirt Cheep makes a much cooler
bridge set (always an encounter essential, in my opinion), and has really cool terrain pieces.

*sigh* of course, someday I'd really like to make something like this . But I just don't have the money or the time right now. If ever.

Super nice floorplans, Kris. Good work. I don't know why I've never really gotten into using something as simple as printable floor plans (like the free ones from Dungeon Magazine), we've just been too into the whole battle-mat and wet-erase markers. Of course, I always find myself adding details - trees, rocks, etc... But I'm downloading yours and I'm going to give them a try out. They look really cool.

BTW, in danger of pimping a retailer too much, I want to give a headsup on Talon Games, who's helping me with a couple extra miniatures (25% off!) as well as having a great deal on the new 3.5 revised books.

 

[kiznit]

projected dungeons...

I thought of something else...

This may be a little geeky, but bear with me. One of the other things I was thinking about was that there's a conference room at my brother's school (UCLA) which has an overhead digital projector mounted over the table. Normally it projects onto the wall, but you can rig it so that it's pointing straight down.

If you could set up a map revealing program (I've seen a couple around on the net) maybe using some of Kris's cool floorplans or something like that, you could wire your laptop to project the map onto the table, with a little bit of futzing to get it at the 1" size. You could even just scan in your module maps and blow them up on your computer for it. Then maybe you could layer black areas over it in photoshop, and then reveal them as the characters venture through.

I vaguely recall Monte Cook (or maybe is was SeanKReynolds) writing something about an ideal digital roleplaying room, which would involve an inset map computer screen in the table that you could put miniatures on and workstations for each of the players - perhaps a dream, but this might be a step in that direction.

Just an idea. I still think I'd rather go 3-D/Modular than digital, but has anyone done something like this?