Gaming Terrain, Tiles, and Battlemats

[Zaukrie]

Hence the use of the word "aqua". That is water based spray paint, that does not eat styrofoam.

Also, worldworksgames has great stuff for 3D, and skeletonkeygames for 2D.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I'm a huge Dwarven Forge fan but the price is really high and you need a lot of sets to really enjoy it. Once you start you can't go back, though, and your collection will grow and grow.

I'd probably recommend sticking to wet-erase and dungeon tiles.

For dungeon tiles, get 11" by 18" black posterboard and use blue sticky tack to pre-build your rooms to use at the table. It works much better than assembling them on the spot.

 

[Thasmodious]

I'm ordering some Gaming Paper to keep on hand to draw out both specific sites that will be used over and over (like interiors of the PCs spaceship in my Savage Worlds Firefly game) and to draw several generic locations (dense wood, city street, etc.) to keep on hand for quick encounters.

My groups comfortable with battlemats and as I'm the only one who really ever spends any money on the hobby, I don't want to get into Dwarven Forge, at least not yet. The Fat Dragon stuff looks awesome though, have to check that out.

 

[pogre]

If you cannot permanently store Dwarven Forge near your gaming area I have to recommend against it.

I have around 50 sets and enjoy it very much, but I also have two huge dressers filled to the brim with the stuff. The drawers are easily accessible and easy to use in a gaming session.

I also own a ton of Hirst Arts molds. I use them to fill in the special rooms and structures for my adventures.

If I had to transport my terrain I would go with Hirst Arts, but not make any walls. Bruce has a great selection of floor pieces. You can mount them on stiff floor tiles and stack them up in a box to carry.

Painted, the floor tiles look great and probably would be more satisfying than your wet-erase battle mat. If you go this route - spend the little bit extra to use Dental plaster instead of PoP. Excalibur or Die Keen Green really stands up much, much better to continued use.

 

[Vicente]

I use paper terrain from WorldWorks Games. Their terrain quality (texturing, details,...) is awesome and it's not too hard to build. And they are preparing a really big release with TerrainLinx that has features that sound totally awesome. I really want to see what they have on their sleeve, it's really ambitious.

 

[Obryn]

While it lacks a wow factor, I rely on my easel pads for 90%+ of my encounters nowadays. I'm running the 4e adventure series, and some of those set pieces are very intricate. I can also be a little more artistic on the easel pads, since I do them ahead of time and I don't need to keep the session moving.

-O

 

[Gilladian]

I use mostly wet-erase on battlemats, but I like to make my own polymer clay props. You can see some of them here. I especially like the archery platform tree.

Duh, the link would help: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gilladian/sets/72157601082049021/

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Hence the use of the word "aqua". That is water based spray paint, that does not eat styrofoam.

Actually, I make almost all my own terrain. I've found that even the water-based paints will eat (really "dissolve") styrofoam. If you want to make your own, and you don't want to go the Hirst Arts/Dwarven Forge way, then it's possible to make good-looking terrain with insulation foam, artist's gesso (for primery), some Xacto's and hot wire cutters, and your imagination. Plaster and foamcore are also useful for certain things.

As noted in the thread, consider your storage capacity. That's the big one!

 

[jcayer]

We spent our first year using a gridded whiteboard. But it felt...uninspired. The rooms really didn't have any flavor.
I tried several products including Campaign Cartographer and the Dungeon Tiles.
In the end, I've settled on Dundjinni. I can draw stuff up relatively easily and add some nice detail(tables, cages, pits, etc). This is the stuff that my players really enjoy as they can then use it in combat, or interact with it. It really draws them in more and lets us all "see" the same thing.
Yes, it is a bit more work, but not much, and so far, totally worth it.

 

[Riley]

I use paper terrain from WorldWorks Games. Their terrain quality (texturing, details,...) is awesome and it's not too hard to build.

I'm a big fan of this company's stuff. I'm most excited about this, due to be released any day now:

WorldWorksGames :: View topic - *UPCOMING* Himmelveil #1: Streets