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