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Author Topic: Dungeon stackers  (Read 1929 times)

Offline Hobgoblin

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Dungeon stackers
« on: September 02, 2018, 12:41:54 PM »
Inspired by a couple of YouTube videos (here and here), I made a quick set of 'dungeon stackers' for yesterday's D&D game.

Mine are far from pretty; I only had time to paint them with black gesso and give them a very quick drybrush with green and grey paint. When I get time, I'll give them a more delicate drybrushing and add details. But I was quite impressed with how well they worked in the game, simply through occupying space, blocking lines of sight and acting as abstract stairways (i.e. ones you can actually put miniatures on with ease).

While cut foam would be much better for making convincing stonework, I used a set of Jenga-style blocks I got for less than a fiver on Amazon. I just hot-glued them together, then added a few representative grooves and cracks with a screwdriver. Again, with more time, I'd have sanded the edges down and spent more than five minutes doing the 'weathering'. As it was, though, I got some crudely effective scenery for a fiver and about an hour's total effort.

The stackers go together in various configurations: high blocks, low blocks, tall blocks, stairs, etc.

Offline fred

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Re: Dungeon stackers
« Reply #1 on: September 04, 2018, 06:36:40 PM »
Thats an interesting idea.

At first I assumed they were used as is. But when you see the other photos its obvious you can stack two together to get a cube, and from there away you go. Probably the advantage of the jenga blocks is that they are nice and uniform, which would be harder to get with foam blocks, though as you say it would be much easier to add some texture.

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Dungeon stackers
« Reply #2 on: September 04, 2018, 08:52:44 PM »
Yes, I could have made them a whole lot prettier given time. But I found them really useful in the Saturday game to give an immediate, memorable 'flavour' to certain rooms. And I really like the 'abstracted' stairs - no more precarious balancing of heavy, accident-prone miniatures!

Offline Cubs

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Re: Dungeon stackers
« Reply #3 on: September 04, 2018, 09:03:23 PM »
That's madness I tells you! I like it, I like it.

Re: stonework, I once did some very effective stone slabs using coloured pencils and a ruler to put the cracks in. It was really quick and looked the biz.
'Sir John ejaculated explosively, sitting up in his chair.' ... 'The Black Gang'.

Paul Cubbin Miniature Painter

Offline ZeroTwentythree

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Re: Dungeon stackers
« Reply #4 on: September 05, 2018, 01:01:17 AM »
I think the material/build looks convincing. As you said, maybe a little more paint and they're done. I like this idea & will keep it in mind when I eventually get to the dungeon crawl idea in the back of my mind.

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Dungeon stackers
« Reply #5 on: September 06, 2018, 12:41:33 PM »
That coloured-pencil idea is intriguing.

One guiding principle for me in doing RPG terrain is that it tends to stay on the table for far less time than wargame scenery would (as the party burns through rooms and levels). So having stuff that's representative/abstract but gives a good sense of the 'lay of the land' is much more important than having rooms look pretty. And speed is always of the essence!

I often just hand-draw room maps, leaving them more or less black and white, and I find that this actually gives more of a sense of place than commercial dungeon tiles (which always seem either too plain or too detailed).It's also quicker, I find, to scribble quick room maps than to play around with tiles to get a suitably interesting configuration.

So things like the stackers are good  both to expand the possibilities of dungeon tiles and to add a different dimension to hand-drawn maps. Oddly enough, I don't find that the painted blocks really mess up the look of the mostly black-and-white maps - possibly because there's not much to mess up in the first place!

Offline Cubs

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Re: Dungeon stackers
« Reply #6 on: September 06, 2018, 03:55:14 PM »
Ah, now that is interesting. The scenery thing I did was Balin's Tomb, or rather a simplified version of, to play games on. The bit I did the pencilling on was the floor base, which was just a big piece of card and although I actually shaped it to fit the rest of the piece, it could easily just have been a plain rectangle for putting smaller scenery pieces on. It was a piece of grey card that I sort of scrubbed dirty brown and grey colours onto using paint, pastels, even crayon. The black pencil drew the grid shape for tiles and cracks, and a white pencil delineated the edge to give it a little 3d effect. Once over with the spray varnish and it was done.

Here, I don't want to spam your thread with my own photos, but here it is.


Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Dungeon stackers
« Reply #7 on: September 06, 2018, 05:09:39 PM »
Here, I don't want to spam your thread with my own photos, but here it is.

That's not spam, that's brilliant! It's an incredibly effective illusion, and the use of the white pencil is inspired: real trompe-l'œil stuff!

I must give something like that a go. I'd bought some marbled greyish card to do the floorplans for last weekend's game (my son's birthday party), but getting the miniatures (new monsters!) and stackers ready left little time for experiments, so dungeon tiles it was.



Offline fred

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Re: Dungeon stackers
« Reply #8 on: September 06, 2018, 08:13:54 PM »
Both of those are very impressive, far too much artistic ability!

The hand drawn room is very evocative- reminds me of the style of drawings in old school gaming publications. And if that is something just scribbled quickly.

Cubs that base board works really well - blends with the 3D pieces colour and style wise very well.

Offline Cubs

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Re: Dungeon stackers
« Reply #9 on: September 06, 2018, 08:58:15 PM »
Cubs that base board works really well - blends with the 3D pieces colour and style wise very well.

Well, in fairness I painted the lot at the same time. I've remembered now that I mostly used a can of grey, a can of black and a can of white undercoat and randomly sprayed them about as well, to get a patchy coverage before going in with the scribbly stuff.