D&D Dungeon Tiles (Pt. 2): Building the Castle

The first set of Dungeon Tiles I decided to tackle were 
the Castle/ Dungeon Frame and Inserts.

 (Not sure what I’m talking about? Check out my last post. I’ll wait.) 

Elroy and I came up with 6 insert variations for the Castle Frame: 
Basic Stone Floor, Worn Stone Floor, Authentic Battle Damage™ Stone Floor, Water Pool, Acid Pool and Pit Trap. 

When I drew up the first grid, I made the squares 1”x 1” 

(because that is the scale that Black Magic Crafts uses for his D&D terrain). 

And then I showed it to Elroy . . .

He was worried that a grid at that scale 
(even though it is scaled to match the miniatures for the game) 
would have too much information per square 

to be a good fit for his type of gameplay.

So, I re-drew the grid at a 2”x 2” scale and started cutting my foam trays. 

I used a craft knife and cutting mat to cut the curved lip off the tray, 

and my 1 yd metal ruler to cut the center pieces into 2” strips, 

and those strips into 2” squares. 
I found that as I went on, the bottom edge of the foam would get little burrs, where the blade would snag on a small strip of foam and pull it along like a hangnail (later, I learned that cutting with a small sawing motion helps keep this from happening). So, I just made sure to trim those edges and keep them in mind when I started arranging my tiles. 

Before I started gluing, I used a pen and my ruler to put my 2” grid on the bare side of the tiles and frame. If you decide to make these DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP! No matter how well you measure, not every foam square will be perfectly even, and I found that my cake boards were not perfect 12”x 12” squares. On side was just slightly (like less than 1/8^th of an inch) under. 
I also used the craft knife to trim and bevel the edges on the tiles and frame, making sure to check that all of the tiles fit 

with some wiggle room in the frame. If they are too snug, 

it’s really hard to switch the tiles out without lifting up the whole piece. 

To keep the rows as even as possible and make sure the grout lines would line up no matter which insert was used, I started with the insert tiles. I wanted each tile to have 9 squares (like a tic tac toe board), so I found the center point on the top and bottom sides, measured 1” to either side and connected my points top and bottom. This gave me a 2” distance between the lines that was centered on the tile. Then I rotated the tiles to the unmarked side 

and repeated the process. 

Voila! The center square is perfectly centered.  

Time to Assemble! (Cue Avengers music . . . oh no, just me? Gotcha.)

I used a paintbrush to brush the bottom side of the foam squares with Matte Mod Podge and placed them on the tiles 

(I plan to cover the Frame and Pit Trap in the next post because they had a bit of extra math involved in the foam placement). 

I ran into a small issue as I got to work. Although the top of the foam trays was smooth, the underside had a brand imprint that made the undersides uneven once they’d been cut. I ended up keeping a couple of heavy bottles nearby to hold pieces in place if they started to lift.

Once my tiles had dried (usually less than an hour), I went back and started adding texture and details.  All of the tiles got a quick and dirty stone finish by balling up some aluminum foil and pressing it into the foam to create a slate or travertine texture. I used the craft knife to trim any foam that was too close or didn’t leave enough of a grout line to line up nicely. Then I ran a ball point pen along the grout lines to gently bevel the edges of the foam. I also used the craft knife to bevel the outside edges of each tile. This gave them a nicer, more even edge and kept them from sticking in the frame.

For the Worn Stone Floor, I drew in small, jagged cracks with the pen and used the tip of the craft knife to gouge and slice out small chunks of a few of the tiles (I think 4 out of 9 squares got minimal damage), as though the broken stones were simply left in place instead of being replaced, making this section of floor feel worn, shabby and maybe a little bit grimy.  

I exaggerated this on the Authentic Battle Damage™ tile. I gouged much larger cracks into the foam, removed corners on some tiles and used the pen to extend the gouges with branching cracks. I tried to radiate the cracks out as though they were showing impact points that traveled from one square to the rest. Every square had at least some damage on this tile, giving it an abandoned castle/ ruins feel. 

Here's the same tile after I added some bits of craft moss and tea from a cheap tea bag.

For the Acid and Water tiles, I drew in the general shapes I wanted the pools to have and then I experimented with a couple of techniques to get the shapes.

I sacrificed one of my trays as a tester for the melting agents (dollar store clear nail polish and dollar store acetone nail polish remover) and later used the same tray to make sure the resin was foam safe. The reaction that melts the foam takes a few minutes, and the foam is really thin, 

so taking too much off was a real concern. 

The Acid tile had 2 pools of acid separated by a narrow strip of land that players would have to traverse to get across the board. I wanted a more violent looking, corrosive type of finish so I grabbed some dollar store clear nail polish and brushed it on just inside my outlines. I kept working farther into the pools and then went back over some of the areas that weren’t as deep as I wanted with a second coat before the first coat had dried. I left plenty of small projections and bumps to give the resin some additional details.

The Water tile consisted of 1 large central pool that took up most of the playable surface. I wanted it to look like the water had slowly worn down the floor, with smoother transitions and gentler edges. I brushed on the acetone (use an old brush you don’t care about if you do this, the acetone will strip the glue holding in the bristles. I had to throw the brush out after I finished), again starting at the edges and working my way in. The acetone causes a more extreme melt and took the tile down to bare board in a number of places but it leaves smoother, more rounded edges. 

Once I was happy with all the tiles, I painted a coat of the Black Magic Craft Foam Sealer, which is just Matte Mod Podge with black craft paint added.

Funny story, after I mixed my batch it bubbled up like a volcano. I know my Mod Podge was a couple of years old and has a strong vinegar smell, so maybe my craft paint was just basic enough to get a reaction. 

(Heh, heh basic. Like I’m the only one who appreciates science puns.) 

I let the tiles dry overnight. I’ll cover the techniques I used 

for painting and sealing in the next post.

 

 

Next up: The Castle Frame and Pit Trap 

D&D Dungeon Tiles: My Quarantine Crafting Experiment - a Series

 Ok, time for a show of hands . . . who here decided to try a new craft during Quarantine in 2020?

Yup. Me, too.

Now, while the on-trend craft was growing sourdough starters and making bread I went another way.

Since Hunny and I usually spend spring and summer cosplaying at local Cons and attending Renaissance Faires, COVID-19 meant that all of our events were cancelled.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this was a comparatively minor problem, especially considering the loss of life and hardships that so many have suffered. 

But it was still disappointing.

I now had all this extra crafting time to fill and costuming for the future simply hurt too much. I ended up finding crafting inspiration in a Black Magic Crafts video about crafting D&D Dungeon Tiles. The portability and frugality of this particular video gave me an idea.

A terrible, wonderful idea. Sorry. Sorry, that’s the Grinch.

Over the last couple of years, Elroy (who just turned 16, for those who have been keeping track) has gotten very into Dungeons & Dragons. He has multiple groups he plays with and thoroughly enjoys ruining Player lives as a DM (Dungeon Master). I often collaborate with him in setting up story elements, plot devices and evil DM tactics.

So, Elroy and I put our heads together.

I had a set of 12”x 12” Wilton Cake Boards that I had purchased a few years ago, intending to use them as a cheap and dirty photography reflector (I nixed the idea later as impractical). They come 5 to a package, are made of non-corrugated, sturdy chipboard and only have the silver paper on one side. 

We decided that as useful as the original reversible tiles are, making them more modular would ultimately be the better option. Instead of just making 4 or 6 of the reversible tiles, we came up with a system of terrain frames and inner tiles that could be swapped out for more gameplay options.

After much discussion, Elroy gave me a list of the types of terrain that he would find useful and some additional specialty tiles to explore in the future. He chose Castle/ Dungeon blocks, Desert and Grassy Field/ Dirt Road. Those would become the outer frames. I would cut 6”x 6” squares out of the center of each frame and the 2 remaining cake boards would be cut into quarters.

So, 5 cake boards gave me 3 terrain frames and 11 interchangeable 6”x 6” tiles. I could work with that.

On my next grocery run, I checked out the cheap foam plates from the video. 

While I was sure they would work fine, I thought the amount of foam lost to round edges when I planned mostly square pieces made me decide on rectangular foam trays instead. These ended up costing less than a dollar for a package of 30. 

I already had most of the other materials, so I picked one of the tiles and started drawing a grid.

It was time to get started.

 

Next up: Building the Castle