Newer DM needs advice on Dungeon tiles

[Jhaelen]

I own copies of:
- Ruins of the Wild
- Lost Caverns of the Undermountain

Ruins of the Wild is awesome. The best set by far! And, yes, you'll want two copies of this set. This is the set that gets used almost every session. Because of the many 8x8 pieces you can set them up very fast.

Lost Caverns of the Underdark sucks. I've invested hours to come up with a good way to use these, drawing a blank every time. I've even bought a second set believing that would make it easier to use, but it doesn't help much.
I've even started designing an adventure by setting up all locations with these tiles first but it just wasn't worth the hassle. I ended up using my battlemap instead. It's actually faster to draw caverns than to try create them from these tiles.

There are way too many pieces for smallish corridors and not enough for large caves. Almost all of them a bordered by walls in odd places making them hard to use.

If you're playing 4E with its requirement for large combat areas, the set is useless.

 

[Thanee]

I would like to shore up a collection of a few sets... should I buy the newer sets? Or the older ones? I've never used these before, but I'd like to pick some up as I'm using minis in our group and they seem like a good option.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/234507-dungeon-tiles-photos.html

I'm using them for the 4E adventure path (KotSF and so on) right now, and they work very well. It sometimes takes a moment to build the dungeon section (usually because I'm totally unprepared and havn't sorted the tiles before the game session, which is really, really recommendable ), but other than that they have proven very useful so far.

Bye
Thanee

 

[S'mon]

What has worked best for me is using the tiles (Ruins of the Wild) in conjunction with a flip mat, to extend the board or highlight points of interest.

 

[Wootz]

I find them a little hard and unwieldy to use. They move around with a bump, it's difficult to set them up in a quick fashion for a surprise battle, and I'm generally unsatisfied with them.

This. I opted for a battlemat, and must say it's much funner to use (though as said before, can be a little slow in drawing out surprise encounters)

 

[Obryn]

I bought 5 sets, and used to be a booster, but literally never use them anymore.

They are too unwieldy to set up, and get jolted around too easily by bags of chips, shuffling papers, and playful cats.

I've found the time I wasted playing with the tiles isn't worth the improved "graphics," so I've switched back to my Chessex mat and pre-drawn maps on 1" presentation-size graph paper.

-O

 

[Asmor]

I own copies of:
- Ruins of the Wild
- Lost Caverns of the Undermountain

Ruins of the Wild is awesome. The best set by far! And, yes, you'll want two copies of this set. This is the set that gets used almost every session. Because of the many 8x8 pieces you can set them up very fast.

Lost Caverns of the Underdark sucks. I've invested hours to come up with a good way to use these, drawing a blank every time. I've even bought a second set believing that would make it easier to use, but it doesn't help much.
I've even started designing an adventure by setting up all locations with these tiles first but it just wasn't worth the hassle. I ended up using my battlemap instead. It's actually faster to draw caverns than to try create them from these tiles.

There are way too many pieces for smallish corridors and not enough for large caves. Almost all of them a bordered by walls in odd places making them hard to use.

If you're playing 4E with its requirement for large combat areas, the set is useless.

With Lost Caverns, I tried setting up a pre-made layout to re-construct at the table, and it was too much of a hassle. All the tiles are really unique and it's a pain to find the right one, even if you only take the ones you're using.

I've had better luck, however, just setting things up on the fly. Makes everything a bit more organic, too.

 

[Huw]

I have two sets of Ruins of the Wild and two of Streets of Shadow. Ruins is excellent, though, as others have said, you will need at least two sets to make anything big.

I was slightly disappointed with Streets - one of my sets remains unopened. You get buildings on one side and sewers on the other, so it feels like two sets halved.

For my dungeon crawls, I have Dwarven Forge

 

[Asmor]

I have two sets of Ruins of the Wild and two of Streets of Shadow. Ruins is excellent, though, as others have said, you will need at least two sets to make anything big.

I was slightly disappointed with Streets - one of my sets remains unopened. You get buildings on one side and sewers on the other, so it feels like two sets halved.

For my dungeon crawls, I have Dwarven Forge

I think Streets is one of my favorite sets. I feel like I got two complete sets for the price of one-- a street set, and a sewer set.

Having different stuff on each side of the tile is nice, but it can make it difficult and awkward to plan out things and to figure out what you need. This way, I always know what street tiles I have available, and I always know what sewer tiles I have available.

 

[Treebore]

It sounds like I do one thing that may be very different than what others do. When I use the tiles it is only for the encounter area and I only set it up when they get to the encounter area. I do not set up a big setting. I do not connect them with halls or tunnels. That is why I have my vinyl map underneath, I draw in that stuff as they explore.

The only time I set up a hall way/tunnel is when a battle occurs there.

Plus when I use tiles, like the camp set mentioned above, I often draw in the surrounding terrain, or use Heroscape terrain pieces when I think elevation should play a role in the tactics of the battle.

So the tiles are my center pieces, but I still use other stuff for the accents, mainly my vinyl battle map.

I wish I could afford Dwarven Forge. Even so they are so big/heavy/unwieldy I wouldn't use them very often, even at my own home. Especially if I owned all the sets I would want. I do buy their dungeon dressing sets, though.

 

[Jhaelen]

I was slightly disappointed with Streets - one of my sets remains unopened. You get buildings on one side and sewers on the other, so it feels like two sets halved.

Yes, I'd been thinking about getting that set, too, but didn't like the sewer half very much.

Currently, I'm using various poster maps for city encounters, like the ones from 'City of Peril' or the ones that came with adventure modules, like RHoD or the recent P1 module. I also have Paizo's Tavern flipmat.

I'm really interested how the upcoming sets will look like. 'Caves of Carnage' and especially 'Sinister Woods' sound interesting.