Dwarven Forge Products

[Zenon]

OK, I'll chime in.

I'm a DF fan. The stuff is great.

The Pro's:

Ready to use out of the box.
Looks beautiful

The Cons:

Cost
Transportability
Only really useful if you do alot of dungeoning.
You always seem to want more!

I have the Cavern set, and it's very nice. So nice that I'm debating picking up another set (!).

Like others have said, we game at my house, so I don't have to transport the stuff.

The best place I've found to get it online is:

http://www.brsnasis.com/

20% off and shipping is only $5, no matter how much you order (and with this stuff, the shipping costs can add up). I have heard others have some issues with Bill for shipping time, but my stuff came fast and like I said, I only paid $5 shipping for about 6 sets at once.

If you decide to get some, enjoy! (and don't bother trying to use the bowtie connector to join the pieces, they stay together pretty well without them on a tabletop)

 

[MythosaAkira]

Has anyone out there used any Dwarven Forge products and can give me some feed-back about them. I can't find them in any stores around here, so I'm thinking about ordering something online.

Thanks

Not much to add beyond the fact that DF sets are very cool but costly

I did want to point out that they recently came out with an "Advanced Builders Set", which contains pieces like partial walls, partial corners, 30' long (i.e.; 6 MasterMaze squares) halls, etc. If you end up using the MasterMaze pieces a lot, this set helps make them more flexible.

If you don't want to spend the money on the Caverns set, Geo-Hex makes a cavern set as well which is considerably cheaper. The Geo-Hex set, however, is much less flexible and doesn't look as nice as the DF Caverns.

 

[MythosaAkira]

I thought that their biggest lack is from the fact that they don't have any double sided walls. I mean walls that have floor tiles on either side. That way they could be used to make up the interior walls of structures like castles and towers and stuff. That would probably save tabletop space as well. But that's only from what I've seen from the web-page. And it's possible I've missed somehting.

They don't have double-sided wall pieces, but you can just put a floor piece against a wall piece (or a wall piece against a corner piece) and accomplish the same thing.

This picture can demonstrate this better than I can describe:

What I would like to see are walls with windows, which would be nice when using the pieces for buildings and castles. Wooden floors would be cool, too. And floor pieces with trap doors. And...

 

[ThomasBJJ]

I have ALOT of Dwarven Forge stuff.

My problem with using it is that unless you set it up ahead of time (before the game), it is too hard to build it as the players explore.

Building it in advance is not a great idea either because then the players can see the layout before they are there.

 

[KenM]

It would seem to me that if you have the pieces handy and organized near the game table, should not be that hard to set up, IMO. Another DM I know uses it, and he just leaves a section or 2 on table, and adjusted it as nessary, so you don't have to lay out the whold dunegon at once.

 

[Magius del Cotto]

One more thing about DF stuff is it is really durable. I dropped one peice (accidently) from about four feet onto a bare concrete floor, and all that happened to the piece (a 3x2 floor piece from Wicked Additions 1) was a chipped corner.
As to the players seeing things before they get to them, there are two easy ways to remedy this. 1) only set up the important battle areas that you'll actually be using most of the time, or 2) Use a bunch of different pieces of paper/cardboard/whatever. Make sure that you have enough to cover the dungeon with several overlapping pieces, thus avoiding revealing more than you want to when you reveal stuff.
As to is it worth it? Most definitely.

 

[KenM]

I got a email from the DF people, they are working on wizard's lab stuff, double doors and straght cavern pieces.

 

[Zander]

I have some DF. At UK GenCon, I also took part in Isle of Woe, an RPGA adventure using DF. I agree with everyone above who said that DF was great. Unfortunately, it's also very expensive.

A cheaper but equally good alternative is Ainsty. It comes unpainted, but is very impressive nonetheless.

Ainsty and DF are not perfectly compatible in the sense that you can't link one to the other without a bit of fudging.

 

[KenM]

I like the fact that all DF stuff comes painted. It is worth the extra price IMO. I don't have time to make my own stuff, or paint it, so DF works for me. But I can see where price can be an issue. How was that isle of Woe adventure?

 

[Zander]

How was that isle of Woe adventure?

Good fun. One of the best games I had at UK GenCon. The DF dungeon was about 3'x2', perhaps a bit more and we used our own minis. Four of the five players at our table were EN Worlders (Upper_Krust, S'mon, Poilbrun and myself). We all played dwarves from the same clan. (Another table playing a different IoW scenario using DF had other EN Worlders including Beholderburger and Miho. I think Tallarn was with them too.)

I only have two regrets about it. First, you could see the entire dungeon from the start so there were no surprises about the layout. And second, the session was only two hours long, which was too short. I would have liked to have gamed for another 4 hours at least!