Cave Tiles - A New Way (Part 1) - Planning and Construction

If you've read many of my posts you'll know I've tried many ways of showing terrain for role playing games, especially in dungeons and similar environments.  There seems to be two ways of looking at this; either craft each piece specifically for that adventure, or find a modular system.  The former undoubtedly gives the best result, you can make sure it matches exactly what you want, but it is time consuming to make every piece for every adventure, and needs a lot of space for storage, though  I have heard of crafters who donate their terrain after use to their FLGS, especially if it is based on a commercially available adventure.
The second system is obviously more generic, and inevitably means some compromises are made, but it is the most sensible option, especially if time and space are limited.  Anyway, you can always make that odd special room as well, just make sure it fits with the generic tiles.

If you look at the stuff available commercially, either ready made or to 3D print, then small tiles representing ten foot square (usually 2") are the norm.  The main disadvantage here is the set up time for each room, but self locking systems allow you to pre build the various rooms, or at least those likely to be needed in a session, and present them when needed.  I have looked at Wylock's tiles,especially using his 'cardboard lock' system, and these seem pretty near perfect.  So much so  that I have a set already that I have used for the ruined castle in The Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure.  Now the heroes have reached Wave Echo Cave I need some way to show the caves and mines.  The obviously artificial look of the tiles I have built so far didn't work, so I had to make something new, so here are my mine and cave tiles.

I'm using Wyloch's 1.25" squares for the reasons he gives in this vid.  I decided that tiles representing 20 foot squares would work best; three of them should give the average distance most heroes can see easily in the mines, and I intend to reuse many of them, removing them when no one is on them, to give the party mapper some extra fun.  As with most of my newer stuff I am going for 2.5D.
I should also say that I have redrawn the mines somewhat to fit my tiles.  The adventure remains the same.

Each tile is based on a 5" square of corrugated card.  This project was originally designed to be quick and cheap, so relied on easily obtainable materials (my castle/dungeon tiles are more complex, I'll do a build of them sometime if anyone is interested).  I've used single corrugated card, but each base is two sheets with the corrugations at right angles for strength, and to reduce warping.

Three 5" squares of corrugated cardboard, (actually six, they are double thickness)

My first plan was to use more of the same to build up the walls, but then I thought about using polystyrene ceiling tiles.  they are cheap (though oddly hard to find these days), the right sort of thickness for a 2.5D effect and already have a nice rubble texture on the top.

Polystyrene ceiling tiles, the right hand piece shows the rather nice rubble texture

Here I'm making a dead end.  Simply cut a 5" square out of the ceiling tile, then measure the central 2.5" of one edge.  This needs to be as accurate as possible to match the other tiles.  The shape of the dead end doesn't really matter because, well, it's a dead end, but there should be enough room for a couple of heroes at least.

Now the tile is stuck to the card base using craft glue (I use Hi Tack All Purpose, available from most UK craft shops, such as Hobbycraft, and Amazon).  To help with scale and mapping, and because it's supposed to be a mine, I included pit props marking out (roughly) the central ten foot square, or in the case of this dead end, just the nearer two.  These are sections of a thick skewer cut to about 10mm and glued in holes poked into the top layer of cardboard.

The original dead end, plus another, and a corridor tile.  The pit props show up better in the corridor

Here are some more of the mine sections given a Black Magic Craft style basecoat of mod podge and black paint.  The unpainted section is one of the cave tiles I am also working on.

I'll get them painted today or tomorrow (I need them for tomorrow night, so no pressure).  It will just be a simple sponged paint job, DM Scotty style, rather like my Deadzone buildings here.

Part two, showing the finished tiles, is here.