Do you use the interior of buildings in your games?

[magokiron]

Hi pals.

I'll start building some new scenery for my skirmish miniature adventures, and was wondering...

Do you really use the interior of the buildings?

I mean, scratch building furniture, and detailing floors, walls, adding paintings to walls, etc. is laborious and time consuming.

So... do you really use the interior of your buildings?

Is it worth the time and effort gamewise?

I have seen spectacular scenery with no interiors, but also spectacular scenery with carefully detailed interiors.

My 3 main wargaming interest ATM are: Pulp, Zombie survival and Swords + sorcery.

Please share your experiences on the matter.

Thank you all.

[tnjrp]

Intact, top-enclosed buildings are problematic if they can be entered (especially if they are multi-storey) and silly if they can't. So I must say we mostly don't use any. For urban games, we mostly make do with old Necromunda buildings and abstract the visibility into and through them as required. Admittedly this can not only make the battlefield look somewhat odd but also create some decidedly game-like situations, but it works under most rules.

It's a bit different to stage a game that takes place completely indoors but even then, multi-storey is a bit of a pain.

[Henrix]

I'm very careful with using furniture, but I really like using interiors. It makes the buildings something to play with, not just around.

A good idea is also to have a back door so it's not a dead end.

In particular for Zombie survival houses seem very suitable and almost mandatory for the genre. Where would you be without a door to block and a window/back door/cellar to bash down.

An alternative way is to have a separate place for the indoors. This has the big advantage to be easier to make a little roomier and easier to move figures around in, perhaps with a little lower walls.

[Glitzer]

Usually in scale Houses won't work with most rules, because doors will be less wide than abse size whick would make them inpassable. But I just use comon sense and everything is fine.

The big problem is playability. I always prefer to use buildings with more than one access point.

Building the furniture can be a pain in the ass, but fortunately 1-inch-scale doll house furniture (1:48) works just fine with 35mm minis (as heroic 28mm schould really be called) as ist is the same scale.

[oldskoolrebel]

I think that for skirmish games an interior is important.

To be honest you can make do without any furniature. However it does add an extra element to the game. Resin furniature can be expensive; try Ainsty, Black Cat bases or Frontline. A cheaper option is dolls house or scratch building.

Every building on this board has an interior with furniature (not necessarily finished)



You can easily see the effect that this has, bringing the board to life. It allows for the function of buildings to be made clear.




Posters I find harder to do. I've seen them done really convincingly. Grimm and Cianty have some excellent examples scattered around the forum. Any time I do it I get an ugly white line and it looks very false. Seemingly a bit of black or brown ink solves the problem but I haven't tried this yet!

Be warned you do need to build your buildings a little bigger to fit all of this in; but personally I don't think this is a problem as most buildings seem on the small side.

Cheers
Andy

[Cherno]

So far when I played All Things Zombie I used the optional building mechanics published by Two Hour Wargames. When a figure enters a building, you use a seperate grid to move the figures on besidees the main play area. All grid spaces correspond to different rooms and hallways, and the layout is planned beforehand. This means that buildings can a) be smaller and hence not take as much room and b) don't need take-off roofs or detailed interiors (or interiors at all). It's a very elegant system when you can live with a bit of abstraction in order to make it more playable.

[TwoGunBob]

Okay, I really went weird on my urban table and 90% of the buildings have interiors.


The book store...

















Truth be told, no one ever goes inside the buildings usually. The action invariably takes place outside most of the time. The interiors are cute and funny to look at but mostly go unused. Hell, people don't even use them for shortcuts usually at the game table. In retrospect I don't know if I'd go through all the work again.

[AKULA]

interiors everytime - especially for zombie games.

can be a lot of work, but also fun at the same time, and gives more of a feel for whatever sort of background you are trying to create.

 

[FramFramson]

The bases on Mage Knight figures are huge and I actually make slightly undersized buildings so that's a double-whammy against my making interiors. That said, I have added interiors for larger spaces where it might make sense to have units, like a barn or large workshop area. Those aren't true "indoors" interiors though - more like half-outdoors spaces.

[Van-Helsing]

Okay, I really went weird on my urban table and 90% of the buildings have interiors.

The book store...

What make is "The Book Store"?

[magokiron]

Thanks you all for your suggestions.

I'm thinking about this for so many factors, but one of my favourite quotes about the matter is from "The Rules With No Name":

We find that while allowing movement through buildings is fine in principle, in practice it slows up the game, and
in the worst case can result in unbearable tedium.  Normally, these rules play very quickly, but all you need is one
player who is determined to spend the whole time lurking around indoors waiting until he can manoeuvre himself
into position for a perfect ambush, and the game takes four painful hours instead of forty thrilling minutes.
So, we only allow movement in buildings if it is specifically required as part of a scenario; like posting snipers on
roofs, balconies or at windows, or going in to rob a bank.

And TwoGunBob says pretty much the same thing:

Okay, I really went weird on my urban table and 90% of the buildings have interiors.

Truth be told, no one ever goes inside the buildings usually. The action invariably takes place outside most of the time. The interiors are cute and funny to look at but mostly go unused. Hell, people don't even use them for shortcuts usually at the game table. In retrospect I don't know if I'd go through all the work again.

Back in the days I used to play a lot of M;ordheim with open access buildings, balconies, elevated platforms, etc., and we ussually place some objective markers or wyrdstone inside the buildings, but 90% of the games ended up at street level, outside buildings.

As you can see, my own experience leans to that opinion too.

I know of some very talented modellers that has made truly works of art like these:

http://www.skankgame.com/zombietown.html

And it really looks amazing and like a lot of fun, but... Is this really worth the effort?

Please, keep your opinion flowing.

Best wishes.

[Henrix]

The answer is to reward entering houses.

A local group here does some very fun zombie games with lots of interiors.
As the zombies follow a strict reaction sheet (they're all NPC's) hiding and sneaking is very important.

And any time you enter a new house you get to draw a card to see what interesting items you find. (And you can search inside buildings for them as well.)

[aggro84]

Very cool TwoGunBob!  

I designed my Styrofoam building with interior walls/ stairwells and lift off sections so miniatures could go inside.
I never bothered decorating them  with furniture though.
It really adds a extra layer of fun having miniatures be able to enter buildings.

[FramFramson]

In real life, one of the biggest advantages to entering buildings is the concealment/ambush aspect. However, in the real of the tabletop world, all players generally know where all the units are at all times - there's little fog of war and some games don't even have rules for it. So that all reduces the value of fully concealing a unit (as opposed to ordinary stuff like hiding them in tall grass or behind a wall to reduce the effectiveness of an opponent's ranged attacks).

Plus, when combat is mostly melee, it will tend to seek the most open space it can, so the participants have room to charge, maneuver, and/or flee. In this regard at least, tabletop games match what was generally true historically.

[TwoGunBob]

It was a Walthers O-scale Silver Dollar Cafe I think. I got three of them for like 75% off and made a music store, bookstore, and an arcade out of them. Wish I could find more of them at that deep a discount.