My Modular Dungeon (Hirst Arts)

[Kris]

Earlier in the year I had a bash at creating a modular dungeon using a few of the Hirst Arts moulds.

At the time I posted pic's of my progress on the H.A. boards, but seeing as how all the old posts over there got wiped-out for some reason, (and because I seem to be spending a lot of time lurking over here lately) I thought I'd share my progress with you guys.

The following link is to my page over on voidgamers - with my earliest photo's located at the bottom of the page, and my newest ones at the top. I haven't done much casting lately (as the dates on webpage will show), but I have recently finished a modular fireplace piece - so I'll try to get a pic of that up in the next day or so.

Anyway, enough of my rambling... here's the link

http://www.voidgamers.com/channel/HirstArts/b.100.html?author_name=CSP_KRIS

My favourite so far has got to be the well I made - with the little snail sitting on top

 

[pogre]

I've seen some of those pics before on voidgamers' and was very impressed! Great job!

By the way it's Hirst Arts.

 

[Kris]

Damn that 'U' key being right next to the 'I' key and damn my laziness in just copying the 'Hurst Arts' bit of my post to make the message title

Must make a mental note to reread my posts before hitting the submit button (to save on me looking an idiot quite so often ). Anyway - I've edited the first post so it reads right now (thanks for pointing out my mistake), and also thanks for the comments.

I must admit to being a fan of the pic's in your story hour - and I love how you created the sewer.

Thanks again!

 

[Kunimatyu]

These are actually the most impressive modular dungeon pieces I've ever seen on Hirst Arts.

Now, there are a lot of pieces that look neater, or have more detail(Todd Goss' stuff springs to mind), but there's nothing with a solid paintjob/details that is also truly, usefully modular. The crosspiece corners are a huge step forward, and drastically cut down on the number of pieces required for a good-looking dungeon. One of the big problems with modular dungeons is that you either end up with a lot of small pieces that take forever to set up rooms with, or you have a bunch of detailed pieces that can only be combined in a small number of ways. This approach solves both those problems.

I'm actually attempting to adapt your design to the new Egyptian molds, if you'd be interested in brainstorming a bit.

 

[colonelthread]

Wow! Those are simply beautiful! How do you find using these during play? I'm considering adding something like this, or even just 2D tiles, to my game but I'm afraid it will slow things down. It just seems quicker to me to be able to draw it on the battlemat.

 

[pogre]

I'm actually attempting to adapt your design to the new Egyptian molds, if you'd be interested in brainstorming a bit.

Just make sure you brainstorm in public, because I would love to listen in!

 

[Kris]

First of all - thanks for the kind words

I'm actually attempting to adapt your design to the new Egyptian molds, if you'd be interested in brainstorming a bit.

Yeah... sure

I have got to admit that the Egyptian moulds do look good (though I have resisted the urge to buy any more moulds for a while now - but I do have a birthday coming up ), and I just took a quick look at the bricks that are included with the basic mould (over on the H.A. site), and it should be possible to do a similar design with them

Be warned however that my pieces required a lot of the 1/2" x 1/2" x 1/4" bricks and a fair number of the 3/4" x 1/2" x 1/2" bricks (though I was able to get hold of an OOP mould that contained a lot of the first type of bricks from a UK online store - which helped out a lot).

How do you find using these during play?

I have no idea as I haven't gamed in nearly a year now - so at the moment I've just got it set up on a shelf as somewhere to display my various orc mini's.

I have however used 2D tiles a lot in the past (which is really how my website started out - as a place to share my paper dungeon tiles) and I have found them quite useful.

For example, I would much rather put a few tiles on the table to represent the current area being explored, and not have to worry about giving out the exact room dimensions etc. (for the party mapper), as I can instead concentrate on other things like describing the smells, noises, little points of interest, general atmosphere etc... etc... ...and should a battle break out, the scene is already set and out come the miniatures.

So for the way that I play - it actually speeds things up a bit (but that's just me ).