DungeonLinX: Lair of the Dragon God

[John Cooper]

DUNGEONLINX: LAIR OF THE DRAGON GOD
By Denny Unger
WorldWorks Games
112-page PDF, $10.00

I was contacted by Robert M. Cooper (no relation, honest!) several months ago, asking if I'd be interested in reviewing any of his company's products. (He's the marketing director for WorldWorks Games.) I kind of got the impression that they were all dungeon tiles, so I figured, "Sure, what the heck?" However, when I checked out their website (www.worldworksgames.com), I found that their products are more than just flat dungeon tiles, but 3-D cardstock props, the kind that you cut out, fold, glue, and use with your miniatures. In fact, they've even coined a term, "2.5-D," for their products, which include 2-dimensional dungeon tiles combined with 3-dimensional fold-up props. I asked Robert to send me just a couple of his products (I didn't mind checking out a few of them, but I didn't necessarily want to commit myself to days on end of cardstock construction, as I tend to lean more towards the "RPG book" side of reviews, myself), and one of the two he sent my way was DungeonLinX: Lair of the Dragon God.

Good choice there, Robert!

DungeonLinX: Lair of the Dragon God is, quite simply, amazing. Here's what you get for your ten dollars:

• Instructions (49-page PDF taking you step-by-step through the construction of the 3-D dragon, doors, and lava outlets, plus how to perform tile mounting (putting the 2-D dungeon tiles onto foamcore and cutting them in such a way that they can be connected, so they won't jostle around if you bump them during play)
• Corridors - 7"x3" corridors (3 pages, each with 2 such corridors), corners (2 pages, each with 2 corners of different styles), walled corners (2 pages, each with one corner section), crossroads (3 pages, each with one "+" shaped section), walled crossroads (1 page of one "+" shaped section), T-intersections (3 pages, each with one "T" shaped section), and walled T-intersections (2 pages, each with a "T" shaped section)
• Doors - basic doors (1 page of two wall sections, each with a wooden door and two stands to hold it upright), dragon pen doors (3 pages, 2 of the doors and one of the stands that hold it upright), and magic doors (1 page, two magic doors - one open, one closed - and the stands to hold them upright)
• Dragon (3 pages of dragon parts that assemble into an upright dragon standing approximately 3-1/2 inches high and 6 inches long)
• Lava Outlets, Empty - 1 page of a corner, 1 page of a crossroad, 1 page of straight channel, and 1 page of a T-intersection
• Lava Outlets, Full - 1 page of a corner, 1 page of a crossroad, 1 page of straight channel, 1 page of a straight channel with a bridge across it, 1 page of a straight channel with a triple-width bridge across it, and 1 page of a T-intersection
• Lava Outlets There are 3 versions: dry (1 page of a lava outlet section of wall with no lava coming out of it), complex (2-page fold-up model of a section of wall with two lava streams pouring out of it), and simple (1 page of the section of wall with the lava flows simply drawn onto the surface of the front face)
• PaperLinX Templates - blank templates to cut out the appropriate shapes of foamcore if you want to mount the dungeon tiles; there are 7" x 3" corridors (1 page, 2 straight corridors), a 7"x7" room (1 page), angle tiles (1 page, 2 right triangles), connectors (1 page of 40 flattened hourglass shapes that will hold each section together when you're done), corners (1 page of 2 "L" shaped corner pieces), crossroad (1 page of a "+" shaped piece), and a T-intersection (1 page)
• Pitfalls - 1 page of 4 different pits (lava, spikes, rotating spikes on horizontal cylinders, and poison gas)
• Rooms - basic tiles (1 page of a 7-by-7 grid), basic tiles with walls (1 page of a 5-by-5 empty room), summoning chamber (1 page of a 5-by-5 room with walls with a summoning emblem on the floor), another summoning chamber (1 page, this one is 7-by-7 because it has no walls drawn on), treasury (2 pages, one of a 7-by-7 room with a heavy trap door in the floor, and the other of the fold-out door), and another treasury (2 pages, same as above but only 5-by-5 because this one has walls drawn on)
• Temple - blood altar (1 page), lava channel (1 page), lava channel with strong bridge (1 page), lava channel with weak bridge (1 page), left lava channel (1 page), right lava channel (1 page), and corner sacrifice pits (1 page of 2 right-triangles)
• FAQ (2 pages, one on advertising and one on file sharing and piracy)
• Interactive Model Planner This free software allows you to plot out your dungeon, using the various tiles that come with this product; you can rearrange them to suit your desired layout and then print out a thumbnail view for use in-game

As you can see, that's quite a bit of material for a mere $10.00. It compares favorably to, say Wizards of the Coast's new Dungeon Tiles set (which is itself also a really nice product, filled with ready-to-use tiles of durable construction). While DungeonLinX: Lair of the Dragon God requires some assembly before use (even the 2-dimensional dungeon tiles require you to print them and cut them out), the PDF has some definite advantages: you can print off as many copies of whatever materials you want. Just because the PDF has three sheets of dragon parts allowing you to create a single dragon, there's nothing preventing you from printing off and assembling an entire army of the things! Likewise, if your dungeon plans call for several different bridges crossing the lava pits, then print off as many of those tiles as you need. With all of the standard dungeon floors covered, you could easily even forget the dragon, the lava channels, and all of that and just concentrate on the empty rooms, corridors, T-intersections, etc. and print out enough dungeon tiles to cover just about any dungeon floorplan. Wizards of the Coast's Dungeon Tiles has some really nice tiles, but if I want more of them I have to pay out another $10.00. With DungeonLinX: Lair of the Dragon God, I pay my ten bucks once and print out as many tiles as I'll ever need. But then there's also the 3-D aspect of the fold-up props, which arguably just make the gaming session that much cooler.

If you're worried about not being adept at cardstock construction, you needn't worry there, as WorldWorks Games has you covered. Their website includes free videos covering such topics as cutting along straightedges, proper gluing techniques, coloring the edges of the cardstock with a marker (so the white edge of the cardstock doesn't show), and similar topics, ranging all the way to the fancy stuff like gluing the sheets to foamcore and using the PaperLinX system to hold everything together once assembled.

Incidentally, the "Instructions" PDF recommends using the following materials:

• Cardstock
• Glue pen (they even recommend a specific brand and model)
• Metal ruler
• Hobby knife
• Black markers

However, partly because I was curious as to whether the model would work with on-hand items and (perhaps more importantly) partly because I tend to be somewhat miserly at times and didn't want to have to spend a lot of money on this sample product, I opted to disregard the recommendations and blaze my own trail using the following alternate materials: heavy paper instead of cardstock (I wasn't entirely sure of the practicality of putting cardstock through my simple printer in any case), a tube of stick glue (it was on hand, and I'm lazy and cheap), and a pair of scissors (I can cut reasonably straight, and I'm afraid I'd be liable to cut through my own thumb if I tried handling X-Acto knives on any regular basis). The result? My dragon looks perfectly fine, although he's admittedly much lighter than he'd be had I used the cardstock, and I probably wouldn't want to use him outdoors or even next to an open window with a heavy breeze. But he stands on his own (the three separate toes on each foot was a nice touch along those lines), and the only thing really lacking by making him out of paper is that his torso is king of squooshed in in places, whereas I'm sure the cardstock would have ensured that his body didn't cave in like that. Still, I'm very pleased with the results.

I have to give creator Denny Unger very high points on originality, design, and easy-to-follow instructions. There were just a few things I noticed during the dragon construction process, like the diagrams showing where to glue the fold-over sides of the dragon's head together (which, if followed exactly, would result in a section of material with glue all over it and no other side to glue it to) that could have been a bit more exacting. There were also a few typos and misspellings here and there ("affect" instead of effect," "torsoe" instead of "torso"), but as the overall product is something that will be cut up into pieces and used as tiles and props, not read over and over again like an RPG supplement, this isn't as big a deal as it would be otherwise.

A couple of final points I wanted to make about DungeonLinX: Lair of the Dragon God:

• Despite being billed as a "dragon god," at 6 inches long, I figure he's probably around 30 feet long from nose to tail, which in D&D terms would put him in the Large-Huge range, and since he's a red dragon, that would put him somewhere in the "very young" to "mature adult" age category. Kind of a young "god," then!
• Despite his red coloration, he's definitely not patterned after the red dragon of D&D. For one thing, he stands upright; for another, he's got 8 stegosaurian spikes sticking out from the end of his tail. However, with all of the new "spawn of Tiamat" monsters from Monster Manual IV being introduced, a DM in a D&D campaign could do worse than coming up with a new "redspawn" creature that this "dragon god" could represent.
• Something not brought out in the PDF (although it might have been mentioned in one or more of the videos on the WorldWorks Games site; I didn't watch them), is the opportunity for customization that building a model of the dragon affords you as opposed to buying a similar-sized figurine. It would be easy enough to cut some rips and holes into the dragon's wings to represent previous battle damage, for instance. You could also forego the wings altogether and build a wingless version of the dragon, making it a fearsome non-dragon reptile of some sort. Or, if you wanted to make it conform a bit closer to the D&D standard for red dragons, it would be easy enough to cut off the tail spikes.
• I really appreciate the fact that the dungeon tiles come in "walled" and "non-walled" versions. I prefer the "non-walled" versions myself, but it's nice that Denny gives the consumer the option to go with what he prefers.
• Getting back to the customization aspects, the same holds true of the dungeon tiles. For example, the corridor sections are all 3 squares wide, which is 15 feet wide in a standard D&D game. Want a 10-foot-wide corridor instead? Print out as many sheets of the 3-by-7 corridors as you need, and cut them down to 2-by-7 grids. You can even keep the 1-by-7 leftover strips for when you want 5-foot-wide narrower corridors. Likewise, that empty 7-by-7 room tile can be cut down to make an empty room of any dimensions up to 7 squares, and you can make larger rooms by printing off several sheets of that page and cutting them to size.

I'm really impressed by DungeonLinX: Lair of the Dragon God. I'm not going to be reviewing each of WorldWorks Games' products in this line (just a representative sample; I'll be doing a review of a seagoing vessel sometime in the near future), but I'd recommend checking out their website and seeing what all else they have to offer. If all of their products are as well-engineered as this one, I wouldn't be surprised to see them picking up an "ENnie" or something (if they haven't already; I haven't been keeping track). I give DungeonLinX: Lair of the Dragon God a rating of "5 (Superb)" for its excellent quality and incredibly low price.