Looking At Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated

Dry erase boards. Flip mats. Graph paper. Lego. Theater of the Mind. All of these are valid, tried-and-true methods of tracking movement/combat in Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs. While I've employed all of these in the past, nothing has worked better for my games than the dungeon tile.

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The new Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated sets from Wizards of the Coast provide a quick, inexpensive, and simple way to visually represent a variety of settings. Building on the release of last years D & D Adventure Grid, WoTC released three sets of Dungeon tiles on Jan 23, 2018—Wilderness, City and Dungeon.

The tiles retail for $24.99, but I purchased these for $15 apiece at my local FLGS. I have also seen them priced reasonably at Amazon and other online venues, so obtaining them won't break the bank. Let's see if they were worth the cost of admission. A simple search of YouTube will reveal plenty of unboxing videos for this set, so we won't go into that here.

Each set comes in a sturdy cardboard box—much like that of a board game—with a slip case cover. The isn't truly necessary, however, because the boxes are designed to match the theme of the set. For instance, the Dungeon set is covered with gray brick, while the Wilderness set is green and adorned with trees.

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Each set contains 16 sheets of double-sided, high-quality dungeon tiles. Each sheet contains anywhere from two to six dungeon tiles of varying size, design, and shape. Each tile has two sides, with different images. The quantity and style of the individual tiles are dependent on the set.

The Dungeon set is the most varied, with its semi-circular stairwells, it's single-tile objects, triangular and arch-shaped tiles to denote larger areas and several corridors. The Wilderness set has several large single-tile pieces, showing rivers and heavily forested areas. There are bridges, a canoe, springs, wells and more. Suffice to say this set would certainly have come in handy when I ran the "Greenest in Flames" scenario from WoTC's Hoard of the Dragon Queen back in 2015.

Moving onto the next set—The City—the Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated line shows its true value. The City tile set has everything your generic village, town, city, or heavily populated area could need. The variety and size of the tiles lend themselves well to creating these areas and blend seamlessly with both the Wilderness and Dungeon sets.

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Being able to mix and match the tiles is a nice touch. Despite some oblong shapes in the Dungeon set, the tiles fit and blend together easily. The artwork is top-notch and all of them are reversible. Overall, I now have over 100 brand new, varied tiles I can use in my D & D games and I'm quite happy with this set.

So, are the Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated worth the price? Well, it depends first on how you track movement/combat. The D & D Adventure Grid serves this purpose well, as do many other flip-mats currently on the market. Also, if you already own any of the D & D board games like Wrath of Ashardalon or Castle Ravenloft, then you already have similar tiles. I remember some of these images from older editions—and some users here on EN World have confirmed these to be reprints of various tile—so, if you have them already, these are just fancy, repackaged, and remixed versions of those older sets.

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As a Dungeon Master who didn't even start using flip mats until two years ago—I'm a dedicated disciple of the Theatre of the Mind style of play—I'm happy to have these in my collection.

Contributed by David J. Buck

 

[Jhaelen]

I found that using these as "quick build" rooms on top of a wet-erase mat for quickly drawing out corridors is a happy medium especially since trying to find the right sized and angled hallways is the biggest time sink.

Yup. I've bought a ton of dungeon tiles in the past, but with the exception of the Wilderness ones, they were waaay too fiddly to be of any use.

My preferred method became quickly to use a few of them on top of one of the poster maps that came with D&D minis and the 4e adventure modules. That way I could create a variety of interesting layouts really quick.

 

[Von Ether]

Yup. I've bought a ton of dungeon tiles in the past, but with the exception of the Wilderness ones, they were waaay too fiddly to be of any use.

My preferred method became quickly to use a few of them on top of one of the poster maps that came with D&D minis and the 4e adventure modules. That way I could create a variety of interesting layouts really quick.

I totally forgot that I had done something similar. Fold one of those maps, draw some hallways, and slap some tiles to make some quick dungeons that give you a fog of war effect and look better than my crappy handwriting.

 

[fantasmamore]

I used to use paper tape in order to combine tiles in ready-to-use "rooms" before playing. When my players entered a new area, I was just putting the pre-made area on the table. It was also very easy to separate the tiles later, due to the nature of the paper tape. However it added preparation time while it didn't really leave that much freedom - what would happen if my players went somewhere I hadn't anticipated?
I still believe that tiles give you more freedom and they are also great to look at...

 

[jaycrockett]

I've tried everything under the sun, I think I liked the flip mats the best. I also like the poster map series they had in 3e, but those weren't very flexible of course.

These tile sets were very nice, but I found I didn't use them that much. All the little irregular shaped bits made it hard to manage and prep ahead of time.

My go to was drawing on a flip mat, and occasionally adding big tiles for buildings and things. I have a good bit of dwarven forge, but the prep time is difficult as well, especially if I weren't DM'ing at home.

I really like the skeleton key brand pdf tiles as well. You can print as much as you want, and they were of uniform size, making it easier to mange (I believe 'geomorphs' was the term originally used for such things).

 

[FreeXenon]

Honestly, WotC would be better served and so would we if they just created a site with the art and drag an droppable terrain and pieces to create maps, and then just over lay the grid.

That way we can create the maps we want using their art and then just print it out to use.
It may be a subscription site or where you just pay for the art and piece sets you want to use.

 

[rmcoen]

Like several other respondents, I mix and match these tiles with a standard beige dry-erase battlemat. Most of the time what happens is I draw the room on the battlemat, then use all the little extras from the boxes to enhance it. the last battle, for example, was in a "storage vault" with a front room, a back room, and a walled office in the middle... all drawn. But then the crates and chests and such were pieces from the Dungeon and City sets; the wizard's conjured firestorm used a 5x5 fire tile from the sets, his fountain of flame was a burning hearth tile. and the BBEG's hidden room in the back was a teleporter-circle room from the Dungeon set. the current battle scene rebuilt the BBEG's in-city "neighborhood" and manor with City tiles, the hidden spider pit on a drawn battlemat, and the PC cleric's CloudChariot with a horse-drawn cart from the City set.

Another encounter was a self-contained Astral Prison using the Dungeon set, with a Shadowfell crossing into Gloomhaven's sewers (City tile set), all using the tiles, no drawing.

I echo some of the frustrations, though - When we don't finish an encounter, and I have to take everything down only to set it up again next session (3 kids, 2 cats = no leaving it up)... frustrating timesink.

 

[TwinRavenGames]

These remind me of the first time I was playing D&D - We were using "dungeon tiles" from the Legend of Drizzt boxset - and actually worked out quite well! Not quite a dungeon tile in my mind, but they were very quickly customizable and actually presented a scene with unique and stand-out imagery (why there were ruins dedicated to Lolth in the Princesses' Tower, we'll never know...). Flip-mats are excellent, but having a backup like these are a great go-to if you have a scripted combat locale that is full of unique locations, landmarks, monsters, and imagery.

 

[GoatBoyKev]

A tv (actually a 27" monitor) with a piece of clear plexiglass on the top. I use some styrofoam blocks to keep it off the table a bit and connect a laptop to it and run MapTool on it and my DMing laptop. Then I just fog of war the whole deal as we play. If I did it again, I would get a 4k 40" TV so we'd have even more room, but this is working out just fine.

Adding a +1 to the Projector / TV table idea. My group started with a downward firing projector onto a table, which was amazing.
Now using a table built with a computer and 47" touch enabled TV in it. It's amazing and I highly recommend either.

 

[Imaculata]

I bought the original run of these and really liked the 'idea' of them - but in reality, what a pain in the butt if you don't DM at the same place as you live. You set up a great scene, then you have to disassemble it and take it to the place where you play and then reassemble it.

This is absolutely true. Fortunately I am one of those DM's who runs his games at his own home. But even then setting up a battle that involves dungeon tiles is VERY time consuming.

What I do is place them all on a thin wooden board. I then cover it with a sheet, so the player's can't see what I have prepared for them. The wooden board allows me to pick the whole thing up, with the tiles staying where I placed them, in case I want to move it all.

But once you've got it all set up, boy does it look great. I've had a couple of big battles during my pirate campaign, where I made liberal use of dungeon tiles to set up these massive battle arenas, and it looked fantastic. The players loved it.

 

[Connorsrpg]

So, I have the old ones. I don't tediously map everything out. In fact, just throw some down AFTER a fight has started. Don't map things out with them until a fight starts is the best way.

I rarely use them, but grab the odd large tiles to sit on blacks for elevated areas. I am very fast at setting up fight areas now that I have stopped stressing whether the area is exactly 40ft by 75ft for eg.

I'll often just enclose an area on a mat with blocks. So, I use these as additions to what I have. Radom grabs of some tles is sometimes fun too: rugs, thrones, braziers etc