The current adventure in my Terramar campaign involves some wandering around in sewers. The sewers are the traditional fantasy style sewers large enough for people to walk through and walkways for easy exploring. Some Roman sewers aside, this is far more appropriate for Victorian cities, but it is expected in fantasy games (and there are reasons for it in this particular city).
Anyway, I looked at my Heroic Maps sewers, they are very nice, but a bit too advanced for my needs. I wanted more a sort of oval tunnel where the adventures will have to wade through the waste and have little room to the side.
I played around with Dundjinni, a great software tool, sadly now no longer available (if you look at the website it does give you the option to buy, but I understand it's no longer reliable, and you can lose your money). It was pretty easy to design narrow tunnels, and then some wider ones with walkways, and finally a confluence chamber for several tunnels to meet.
I printed these out ready for use, none of which really merits a blog post.
Then however we had to postpone the session for a week, so I decided to make proper tiles. I've done these types of tiles before, usually using Heroic Maps designs (see here and here for example). I tweaked the method slightly, as I am experimenting with finding the best way to do these, as I find them very useful.
I used copier paper boxes as the corrugated card is quite thin. I used three layers for each tile, with the direction of the corrugations in the middle layer at 90 degrees to the outside. Where the tiles had a sunken area, such as the tunnels with walkways, I just used two layers for the sunken sections. The printed floor plans were stuck in place on the cardboard.
Where I wanted to show the walls, I used black Foam board cut to 1/4" strips, so no painting required. Essentially I was borrowing from my previous method of using craft foam, but this gives deeper walls. Placed on a black cloth they look pretty good, and certainly gave the claustrophobic feel I wanted.
I also crafted some rooms to connect to the sewer system where some humanoid creatures live. Again I used Dundjini and the method given above. The doorways are just wide enough for the Dungeon Saga doors and in play I used various bits of Terrain Crate furnishings. As the party has not (yet) had a combat here, it helps break the assumption that as soon as the DM gets out floorplans there will be a fight.
Anyway, I looked at my Heroic Maps sewers, they are very nice, but a bit too advanced for my needs. I wanted more a sort of oval tunnel where the adventures will have to wade through the waste and have little room to the side.
I played around with Dundjinni, a great software tool, sadly now no longer available (if you look at the website it does give you the option to buy, but I understand it's no longer reliable, and you can lose your money). It was pretty easy to design narrow tunnels, and then some wider ones with walkways, and finally a confluence chamber for several tunnels to meet.
I printed these out ready for use, none of which really merits a blog post.
Then however we had to postpone the session for a week, so I decided to make proper tiles. I've done these types of tiles before, usually using Heroic Maps designs (see here and here for example). I tweaked the method slightly, as I am experimenting with finding the best way to do these, as I find them very useful.
I used copier paper boxes as the corrugated card is quite thin. I used three layers for each tile, with the direction of the corrugations in the middle layer at 90 degrees to the outside. Where the tiles had a sunken area, such as the tunnels with walkways, I just used two layers for the sunken sections. The printed floor plans were stuck in place on the cardboard.
Where I wanted to show the walls, I used black Foam board cut to 1/4" strips, so no painting required. Essentially I was borrowing from my previous method of using craft foam, but this gives deeper walls. Placed on a black cloth they look pretty good, and certainly gave the claustrophobic feel I wanted.
Narrow sewer tunnel, wider sewer tunnel with walkway ending and wider sewer tunnel
The confluence chamber
I also crafted some rooms to connect to the sewer system where some humanoid creatures live. Again I used Dundjini and the method given above. The doorways are just wide enough for the Dungeon Saga doors and in play I used various bits of Terrain Crate furnishings. As the party has not (yet) had a combat here, it helps break the assumption that as soon as the DM gets out floorplans there will be a fight.
If you want to see some of the nasties who live here, check out this post.
They look great.
ReplyDeleteThanks. Pretty simple to do now that I have got a method sorted out. Hopefully I'll get to use them again, and I now need some catacomb tiles.
DeleteThe pictures don't really show the height difference between the walkways and the sewage. It's subtle, but more obvious in real life.