I've gone on at (great) length about the campaign. Now I'd like to ramble some more about how I crafted some of the terrain for the encounters, and how I showed them on the tabletop.
4th Edition D&D places a great importance on accurate floor plans of the encounters. Everything is measured in 5 foot squares, from movement to areas of effect. The first adventure, Keep on the Shadowfell, includes some poster maps of important encounter areas. I used these, and produced the other areas using Dundjinni, a useful bit of software that got almost continuous use when I was running 3/3.5 edition. The end results are very good, and there is a lot of freedom, especially with the various art packs available. It's not a quick product to use however, and probably because it is so detailed I find myself spending ages looking for just the right image. Printing such detailed maps takes a lot of ink as well, especially if the maps only get used once.
We did experiment with some Dwarven Forge pieces in Keep on the Shadowfell that one of the players owned, but quickly found that it was difficult to match the given maps with the pieces available. It looked good though.
After the Keep on the Shadowfell we needed some outdoor maps. I reused some of the ones from that module, and some from the D&D Miniatures games. I also made some using Dundjinni again. I already had some building plans from a previous campaign, and these got some use as well.
As we progressed through Heroic tier (levels 1 to 10) I started using Skeleton Key tiles. These became my main way of showing the encounter areas, culminating in the vast underground Caverns of Dhur with three quite distinctive levels; lava caves, natural caves, and iron plated rooms and corridors. The modular nature of the tiles makes them more flexible than designing specific maps in Dundjinni, and the art style is more printer friendly; there are lots of different sets available too. Sometimes, though, they just don't have the tile you need. Of course, when designing my own adventures I just made sure the map fitted the available tile sets.
We did experiment with a more 3D adventure using Fat Dragon card terrain to build a temple that the heroes had to defend against hordes of zombies. That worked well, but I didn't quite have the knack of building the pieces quickly and efficiently, and at that time FD used a slightly different system, essentially making Dwarven Forge-like pieces out of card, which resulted in a light weight product that easily shifted.
For the Temple of Time at the end of this arc I found a Dundjinni art pack that allowed me to make tiles in the same style as Skeleton Key. These proved very useful.
The early Paragon tier adventures again used mostly Skeleton Key tiles and home made tiles using Dundjinni, but as the story moved to the Shadow Realm I used hand drawn floor plans on one inch squared paper. This gives great freedom, and the maps are quick to draw, but is never going to give the prettiest of results.
For the finale of the Shadow Realm adventure I used the newer version of Fat Dragon pieces. These lock into a base plate of foam board and proved much sturdier. There are some restrictions on the size and shape of the rooms, but when designing a map you can easily take these into consideration, and when making up maps from published adventures I learned to give myself permission to change the map to what I could build. This might not sound like much, but it was a big step for me. The results are good, though sometimes very small rooms are difficult to move minis around in and clumsy fingers can struggle over the 2" high walls. Preparation time is quite long making the pieces, but I view it as making a bank of bits to build future maps from. Actually making up a floor plan on the fly takes a while though, and the various card pillars and walls can get damaged when rushing. The sets include furniture as well, and I started using more 3D elements in the floor plans, players seem to like this and usually find some creative way for their characters to interact with the furnishings. One early down side was the assumption that every item I put down must be of great significance. This faded over time.
The adventure in the Fae Realm had me using many more 3D elements. As the bulk of the adventure was outdoors I made quite a few trees from various sets of card terrain; mostly Fat Dragon and World Works Games. I bought WWG stuff a long time ago, but never made much of it. I found their lock system fiddly, but the various extras, such as trees and boats were good. The higher definition of textures does make them greedy for ink though. I also built a village with Saxon style houses I found on T'interweb along with these Laketown inspired pieces. The final battle took place in a dark clearing with a ruined shrine I built from Lord Zsezse Works. It's a lovely piece, though my model is now a bit battered, one day I'll rebuild it in foam board and XPS, I'm sure it would make a nice centrepiece on a battlefield or in Frostgrave.
I did another big Fat Dragon build for an urban adventure which once again looked great, was very popular with the players, but was a bit of a pain to build the pieces (being town rather than dungeon I started afresh with the set) and slow to do on the fly. We all noticed how adding the third dimension really focused the players on the options available (the set up was a street scene with three storey buildings, I wish I'd taken pictures).
The first desert adventure required a fort, I used this from Heroic Maps, which gave plenty of interesting options for a stealth mission. Once inside I used HM cave sets, and I blogged about building the pieces here.
The Lost Library itself was mostly built using Fat Dragon stuff, you can see the impressive main hall here. Some of the smaller chambers were 2.5 pieces I made up from other Heroic Maps sets. All the earlier comments regarding looks vs ease of use still apply, only on a much larger scale. This build was a beast to transport around, and not practical to set up each time. I had deliberately designed the central chamber to be revisited on many occasions, this began to seem to be a bad idea! It did look impressive though, and emphasised the three dimensions, especially with flying enemies.
For the journey to Davania I build the party a boat, the Fat Dragon sailing ship. It probably wasn't necessary, but looked good. They even fought pirates in marauder ships from Dave Graffam.
The party stopped on an island where they had several adventures. For one I crafted cliffs using WWG pieces (alas no longer available) to represent a steep walled narrow inlet. Docks were provided by Fat Dragon from their Ravenfell set, and I used buildings from Darkfast Dungeon's Innsmouth supplement, which gave the shabby dockside look I wanted.
Whilst on the island the party had their first introduction to the Carnifex and their works. I wanted to give them a recognisable aesthetic and chose Heroic Maps Ancient Dungeon sets. I re-worked the way I built them, see the details here, and then gradually added to them to build a set that covered all the remaining Carnifex sites.
As the campaign progressed into Epic tier I found I was crafting more items and creatures such as the plants and constructs I did than floor plans or tiles. I did experiment with using 6" EVA foam tiles with a grid cut into the surface which I used for the Ziggurat, but while these worked well for that adventure and gave the ziggurat a particular feel, they were not flexible enough for more general use. I also made some blocks 2" high with a grid and a stone pattern on them. These represented various structures such at control points within the ziggurat allowing for a variety of levels. It also gave the architecture a coherent feel. I did have high hopes for the tiles for future use, but I'm going for something new for future campaigns. The blocks were much more successful and have turned up in a few Frostgrave games.
The final section of the campaign was set in a city under siege, and for this I went right back to flip mats and whiteboard pens. I got this set for Pathfinder (I won't tell if you don't) and they have proven ideal for drawing encounter areas on the fly. The very open nature of this adventure meant there were very few encounters planned and set in particular locations, rather a list of possible creatures that could be met, thus I drew streets, plazas or muddy battlefields as needed. It might have lost out on visual appeal, but the fact I was drawing as the minis went down emphasised the freedom the party had in choosing their path.
For the final battle I crafted a special creature and terrain piece, you can see them here.
I also crafted a few props for the players to use. I produced many handouts, but these were usually just word documents I printed out. There are some nice fonts out there to add a touch of the exotic to letters and journals.
The Mines of Gorion required a four part key which I made from dowel with card flanges and marbles set in the card. The four parts fitted together; I wanted to use magnets to hold them in place, but at the time hadn't discovered the joys of neodymium.
Certain doors in the Lost Library required medallions with specific engravings on (tied to the different faculties in the library), and the rarer the metal, the more important the door that could be opened. These were made using images I found on T'Interweb with inscriptions added in MS Paint. Different coloured card then represented the different metals, and the players had to display the medallion they were using at any time.
Finally a word on minis. I love using minis, but sometimes I don't have quite what I want. At various times I have used card minis, either from sets such as the excellent One Monk stuff, or made my own simply by finding an image and printing it with a mirrored copy to cut out. The later method lacks an obvious front or back, but its easier to find what I wanted. When I used minis I picked from my collection including old D&D prepaints, often repainted or converted, or Reaper Bones. There were a fair few mage knight minis as well, rebased and often repainted.
Each character had it's own mini, often converted for the purpose. Memnon was provided by the player (T'Other One) as he is also a keen painter, and he even had a larger mini for when his tiefling took diabolic form, otherwise I did the rest.
Well that's a lot of virtual ink on how I presented the campaign. Looking back all the methods of showing encounter areas had some good points. There were bad points too, mostly issues with time taken to set up, time taken to build prior to use, and storage. Systems that produce an encounter area that gets used once are wasteful of effort, but can produce something really memorable. Modular systems are more useful overall, but tend to be the sort of system that needs a lot of set up. If you've been following my blog, you'll know I have been working on both cave and dungeon 2.5D tiles for my 5th edition campaign. I think these will be the way forward, and I'm sure I'll be building more in the months to come.
I hope you enjoyed reading this, and hopefully got some ideas from it. If nothing else, there are plenty of links to products I have used. Please leave a comment if you agree, or disagree with anything I've said, and perhaps you have some ideas on how you would have approached this. If you are one of the players, could you leave a comment saying how it worked for you?
4th Edition D&D places a great importance on accurate floor plans of the encounters. Everything is measured in 5 foot squares, from movement to areas of effect. The first adventure, Keep on the Shadowfell, includes some poster maps of important encounter areas. I used these, and produced the other areas using Dundjinni, a useful bit of software that got almost continuous use when I was running 3/3.5 edition. The end results are very good, and there is a lot of freedom, especially with the various art packs available. It's not a quick product to use however, and probably because it is so detailed I find myself spending ages looking for just the right image. Printing such detailed maps takes a lot of ink as well, especially if the maps only get used once.
We did experiment with some Dwarven Forge pieces in Keep on the Shadowfell that one of the players owned, but quickly found that it was difficult to match the given maps with the pieces available. It looked good though.
After the Keep on the Shadowfell we needed some outdoor maps. I reused some of the ones from that module, and some from the D&D Miniatures games. I also made some using Dundjinni again. I already had some building plans from a previous campaign, and these got some use as well.
As we progressed through Heroic tier (levels 1 to 10) I started using Skeleton Key tiles. These became my main way of showing the encounter areas, culminating in the vast underground Caverns of Dhur with three quite distinctive levels; lava caves, natural caves, and iron plated rooms and corridors. The modular nature of the tiles makes them more flexible than designing specific maps in Dundjinni, and the art style is more printer friendly; there are lots of different sets available too. Sometimes, though, they just don't have the tile you need. Of course, when designing my own adventures I just made sure the map fitted the available tile sets.
We did experiment with a more 3D adventure using Fat Dragon card terrain to build a temple that the heroes had to defend against hordes of zombies. That worked well, but I didn't quite have the knack of building the pieces quickly and efficiently, and at that time FD used a slightly different system, essentially making Dwarven Forge-like pieces out of card, which resulted in a light weight product that easily shifted.
For the Temple of Time at the end of this arc I found a Dundjinni art pack that allowed me to make tiles in the same style as Skeleton Key. These proved very useful.
The Temple of Time using tiles build on Dundjinni using the Skeleton Key art pack. This is the ruined version of the temple with lots of rubble.
The early Paragon tier adventures again used mostly Skeleton Key tiles and home made tiles using Dundjinni, but as the story moved to the Shadow Realm I used hand drawn floor plans on one inch squared paper. This gives great freedom, and the maps are quick to draw, but is never going to give the prettiest of results.
For the finale of the Shadow Realm adventure I used the newer version of Fat Dragon pieces. These lock into a base plate of foam board and proved much sturdier. There are some restrictions on the size and shape of the rooms, but when designing a map you can easily take these into consideration, and when making up maps from published adventures I learned to give myself permission to change the map to what I could build. This might not sound like much, but it was a big step for me. The results are good, though sometimes very small rooms are difficult to move minis around in and clumsy fingers can struggle over the 2" high walls. Preparation time is quite long making the pieces, but I view it as making a bank of bits to build future maps from. Actually making up a floor plan on the fly takes a while though, and the various card pillars and walls can get damaged when rushing. The sets include furniture as well, and I started using more 3D elements in the floor plans, players seem to like this and usually find some creative way for their characters to interact with the furnishings. One early down side was the assumption that every item I put down must be of great significance. This faded over time.
The adventure in the Fae Realm had me using many more 3D elements. As the bulk of the adventure was outdoors I made quite a few trees from various sets of card terrain; mostly Fat Dragon and World Works Games. I bought WWG stuff a long time ago, but never made much of it. I found their lock system fiddly, but the various extras, such as trees and boats were good. The higher definition of textures does make them greedy for ink though. I also built a village with Saxon style houses I found on T'interweb along with these Laketown inspired pieces. The final battle took place in a dark clearing with a ruined shrine I built from Lord Zsezse Works. It's a lovely piece, though my model is now a bit battered, one day I'll rebuild it in foam board and XPS, I'm sure it would make a nice centrepiece on a battlefield or in Frostgrave.
I did another big Fat Dragon build for an urban adventure which once again looked great, was very popular with the players, but was a bit of a pain to build the pieces (being town rather than dungeon I started afresh with the set) and slow to do on the fly. We all noticed how adding the third dimension really focused the players on the options available (the set up was a street scene with three storey buildings, I wish I'd taken pictures).
The first desert adventure required a fort, I used this from Heroic Maps, which gave plenty of interesting options for a stealth mission. Once inside I used HM cave sets, and I blogged about building the pieces here.
The Lost Library itself was mostly built using Fat Dragon stuff, you can see the impressive main hall here. Some of the smaller chambers were 2.5 pieces I made up from other Heroic Maps sets. All the earlier comments regarding looks vs ease of use still apply, only on a much larger scale. This build was a beast to transport around, and not practical to set up each time. I had deliberately designed the central chamber to be revisited on many occasions, this began to seem to be a bad idea! It did look impressive though, and emphasised the three dimensions, especially with flying enemies.
For the journey to Davania I build the party a boat, the Fat Dragon sailing ship. It probably wasn't necessary, but looked good. They even fought pirates in marauder ships from Dave Graffam.
The party stopped on an island where they had several adventures. For one I crafted cliffs using WWG pieces (alas no longer available) to represent a steep walled narrow inlet. Docks were provided by Fat Dragon from their Ravenfell set, and I used buildings from Darkfast Dungeon's Innsmouth supplement, which gave the shabby dockside look I wanted.
FD docks and warehouse, WWG watch tower, cliffs and boats, Mantic barrels
This warehouse is one of the Innsmouth buildings
Whilst on the island the party had their first introduction to the Carnifex and their works. I wanted to give them a recognisable aesthetic and chose Heroic Maps Ancient Dungeon sets. I re-worked the way I built them, see the details here, and then gradually added to them to build a set that covered all the remaining Carnifex sites.
As the campaign progressed into Epic tier I found I was crafting more items and creatures such as the plants and constructs I did than floor plans or tiles. I did experiment with using 6" EVA foam tiles with a grid cut into the surface which I used for the Ziggurat, but while these worked well for that adventure and gave the ziggurat a particular feel, they were not flexible enough for more general use. I also made some blocks 2" high with a grid and a stone pattern on them. These represented various structures such at control points within the ziggurat allowing for a variety of levels. It also gave the architecture a coherent feel. I did have high hopes for the tiles for future use, but I'm going for something new for future campaigns. The blocks were much more successful and have turned up in a few Frostgrave games.
Ozzie laying down on the job again.
The final section of the campaign was set in a city under siege, and for this I went right back to flip mats and whiteboard pens. I got this set for Pathfinder (I won't tell if you don't) and they have proven ideal for drawing encounter areas on the fly. The very open nature of this adventure meant there were very few encounters planned and set in particular locations, rather a list of possible creatures that could be met, thus I drew streets, plazas or muddy battlefields as needed. It might have lost out on visual appeal, but the fact I was drawing as the minis went down emphasised the freedom the party had in choosing their path.
For the final battle I crafted a special creature and terrain piece, you can see them here.
I also crafted a few props for the players to use. I produced many handouts, but these were usually just word documents I printed out. There are some nice fonts out there to add a touch of the exotic to letters and journals.
The Mines of Gorion required a four part key which I made from dowel with card flanges and marbles set in the card. The four parts fitted together; I wanted to use magnets to hold them in place, but at the time hadn't discovered the joys of neodymium.
Certain doors in the Lost Library required medallions with specific engravings on (tied to the different faculties in the library), and the rarer the metal, the more important the door that could be opened. These were made using images I found on T'Interweb with inscriptions added in MS Paint. Different coloured card then represented the different metals, and the players had to display the medallion they were using at any time.
Each character had it's own mini, often converted for the purpose. Memnon was provided by the player (T'Other One) as he is also a keen painter, and he even had a larger mini for when his tiefling took diabolic form, otherwise I did the rest.
Well that's a lot of virtual ink on how I presented the campaign. Looking back all the methods of showing encounter areas had some good points. There were bad points too, mostly issues with time taken to set up, time taken to build prior to use, and storage. Systems that produce an encounter area that gets used once are wasteful of effort, but can produce something really memorable. Modular systems are more useful overall, but tend to be the sort of system that needs a lot of set up. If you've been following my blog, you'll know I have been working on both cave and dungeon 2.5D tiles for my 5th edition campaign. I think these will be the way forward, and I'm sure I'll be building more in the months to come.
I hope you enjoyed reading this, and hopefully got some ideas from it. If nothing else, there are plenty of links to products I have used. Please leave a comment if you agree, or disagree with anything I've said, and perhaps you have some ideas on how you would have approached this. If you are one of the players, could you leave a comment saying how it worked for you?
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