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View Full Version : Dungeon Tiles: Yea or Nea?



Hzurr
2010-02-18, 10:30 AM
So, in listening to the WotC podcast, and reading various forums, it seems that the use of Dungeon tiles is significantly more widespread than I expected (this could be a misconception, though). I played a session or two in a friend's game that used them, and they were kindof nice, but I'm unconvinced.

Currently, in the game I DM, we're still using battlemaps and wet-erase markers for maps; and since I can't justify buying a projector, hooking it up to my computer, and running maptools; it seems that my options are either hand-drawn battlemaps, or dungeon tiles.

Now, one of my bigger weaknesses as a DM is that I'm not the best at discribing what things look like. I can manage a story moderately well, I can plan out encounters (usually), but when it comes to a description, my skill level is a resounding "meh"; so I feel like Dungeon tiles might make battles seem more interesting since the terrain will be more featured and cool looking than my normal blue and red scribbles on a tan mat.

On the other hand, I feel that unless you really invest in Dungeon tiles, you're somewhat limited in what all terrains you can run, and that rooms could all end up looking a little...same-y, after a bit.


So....thoughts? Experiences?

Sipex
2010-02-18, 10:37 AM
I use them, relatively cheap (About 15 dollars) and extreme re-usability. Would like more.

edit: Special tiles are a pain though. Suddenly you have beds that are made of flower pots or what have you because you don't have enough beds.

I'd love a gridded white erase table.

Kurald Galain
2010-02-18, 10:40 AM
So, in listening to the WotC podcast, and reading various forums, it seems that the use of Dungeon tiles is significantly more widespread than I expected
I wouldn't count on them to be objective about that. Word on the web has it that most or all 4E-related items are selling much less than WOTC would like.



On the other hand, I feel that unless you really invest in Dungeon tiles, you're somewhat limited in what all terrains you can run, and that rooms could all end up looking a little...same-y, after a bit.
I agree. I find dungeon tiles inconvenient. They don't really add variation despite their prints, they're confusing ("this pile of bones represents a chest, and this throne is actually a pool of mud..."), they tend to slide around during gameplay, and they make you have to do a jigsaw puzzle before starting combat. A mat and marker are much faster and more flexible.

The J Pizzel
2010-02-18, 10:41 AM
I use them. They're not too expensive and the generic ones (like forests and dungeons) are very re-usable. Some of the ones with fancy artwork will get repetitious if you use them too often. I use a mix of tiles and just drawing on my grid map. Players like that so far. So, my vote is for "yea", as long of you have some funds for them. In my local shop they're only about 10 bucks for a pack. So I'll just wait till I have a spare $20 bill and go grab a couple.

Edit-

I agree. I find dungeon tiles inconvenient. They don't really add variation despite their prints, they're confusing ("this pile of bones represents a chest, and this throne is actually a pool of mud..."), they tend to slide around during gameplay, and they make you have to do a jigsaw puzzle before starting combat. A mat and marker are much faster and more flexible.

Oddly enough, even though I just wrote that I use them, I agree with Kurald that they can move around sometimes. However, I don't tend to use tiles that don't represent what's on the tile, so we don't have the other problem he mentioned. Although I can see where if your DM did, it would be very confusing. I don't recommend this. If I don't have a tile that matches what I want on the mat, I simply draw it.

Tyndmyr
2010-02-18, 11:22 AM
I have them, I don't actually use them. Problems with finding the right tiles for the right situation...(yay for finding out its on the back of a tile you already put down)...problems with them sliding everywhere, and taking too long to lay out...

It's a good idea, but in practice, it's much easier to use a grid map with wet-erase markers.

I do use a few wooden models and templates I whipped up to crudely illustrate a few things, like ships, in a way that makes sense and is easy. Flying models are set atop an empty, clear die box.

Altair_the_Vexed
2010-02-18, 11:30 AM
I use a combination of WotC Dungeon Tiles, Games Vault 3d tiles, and wet-erase battle mat scribbling.

I also use home made trees and bushes and polystyrene hills and the like for outdoor stuff.

Dungeon tiles are best for corridors and a few interiors. i tend not to lay out the whole dungeon at any time if I can help it, but put down a room at a time, and take it off when the party moves on. Otherwise, they get too clear an idea of the layout of the dungeon, and they figure out all the little hidden secrets...

ericgrau
2010-02-18, 11:35 AM
^ I'd be interested in the details for the outdoor stuff: materials, cost, how you put it together, etc. I am looking into something similar.

Gauging demand: dungeon tiles in various styles on 8x10 sheets that you cut out to whatever shape you want on the fly. Printing cost is $1 a sheet at a copy center website b/c printing at home is a pain and not without high ink costs. I've already made these. The only problem is the big file size; I'll need a file server that can handle it all as my current one is capped at 50 MB.

valadil
2010-02-18, 11:43 AM
I see them a lot in RPGA play. LFR in specific. All LFR mods are required to use dungeon tiles, which I find kinda ridiculous. It's kinda nice since this means that we play exactly what's on the tile and don't have to pretend a potted plant is a pit of acid. But it's also annoying to see the same areas come up over and over.

I don't GM with them and I don't plan on changing that. If I have an intricate enough map I'll draw it ahead of time. For instance, here's a castle (http://www.flickr.com/photos/23032168@N04/3436110433/sizes/l/) I did in my last campaign (no there isn't that much detail in terms of stuff on the map, but it was a pain to draw because I did contour lines to indicate height. The castle wall has 2 lines, so it's 20 feet up. Towers have 3 lines so they're 30 feet, but only one of those extends above the wall so there's a single line up from the wall to the tower. It worked pretty well but was a pain to draw.) I actually like drawing this sort of thing and painting minis though, so I can understand if other GMs can't be bothered.

One thing that bothers me about the tiles is that they're flat. I don't know if it's just an LFR thing, but players see the tiles as the tops of solids. ie, if there's archers on top of a house it just doesn't occur to the PCs to go inside the house. I'm trying to combat this in my new 4e game by breaking out an old childhood toy: Construx! Construx were my preferred alternative to Legos. They worked better for making 3d objects by giving you edges and vertices to connect instead of stacking 2d layers. Since I'm trying to make the game more 3 dimensional this makes sense. Oh and they have panels that are very conducive to a grid. I haven't actually used them in game yet (stupid players keep going to cons instead, making me cancel sessions) but I think they'll be a big hit. If anyone's interested, here's an ambush at a pier (http://files.sagotsky.com/construx_dnd.jpg) using construx. The pier took about 2 minutes to build. Applying the grid was obnoxious, but I only have to do that once per tile (I did this with 1/32" wide electrical tape found on Amazon, but a sharpie would do just as well.) Oh and construx are pretty damn cheap on ebay. Okay, I'll stop babbling about new and nerdy uses for my childhood toys now.

Zeta Kai
2010-02-18, 12:12 PM
One thing that bothers me about the tiles is that they're flat. I don't know if it's just an LFR thing, but players see the tiles as the tops of solids. ie, if there's archers on top of a house it just doesn't occur to the PCs to go inside the house. I'm trying to combat this in my new 4e game by breaking out an old childhood toy: Construx! Construx were my preferred alternative to Legos. They worked better for making 3d objects by giving you edges and vertices to connect instead of stacking 2d layers. Since I'm trying to make the game more 3 dimensional this makes sense. Oh and they have panels that are very conducive to a grid. I haven't actually used them in game yet (stupid players keep going to cons instead, making me cancel sessions) but I think they'll be a big hit. If anyone's interested, here's an ambush at a pier (http://files.sagotsky.com/construx_dnd.jpg) using construx. The pier took about 2 minutes to build. Applying the grid was obnoxious, but I only have to do that once per tile (I did this with 1/32" wide electrical tape found on Amazon, but a sharpie would do just as well.) Oh and construx are pretty damn cheap on ebay. Okay, I'll stop babbling about new and nerdy uses for my childhood toys now.

OMG, I love Construx. Those were my preferred building toy as a kid, & I still miss them today. I plan on ordering some for my son, so that he can enjoy them, too.

Back on-topic. I don't use premade tiles. I'm a graphic designer with a career in the printing industry (glamourous, I know), so if I have the time, I'll draw a dungeon or an encounter space in Photoshop & print it out before a session. I've done that many times, I'm always more pleased with my own results, which usually match what's in my head more than a purchased tile could. If I'm in a pinch, I'll sketch out something quickly on a dry-erase board, which is much more versatile. IMO, tiles are just a profitable sales gimmick from The Man, which doesn't work too well in practice.

Tyndmyr
2010-02-18, 12:16 PM
^ I'd be interested in the details: materials, cost, how you put it together, etc. I am looking into something similar.

Gauging demand: dungeon tiles in various styles on 8x10 sheets that you cut out to whatever shape you want on the fly. Printing cost is $1 a sheet at a copy center website b/c printing at home is a pain and not without high ink costs. I've already made these. The only problem is the big file size; I'll need a file server that can handle it all as my current one is capped at 50 MB.

If you want to give out any tiles you've created in file form, I wouldn't mind hosting them on my site...I don't recall my bandwidth cap...but it's ridiculously high.

ericgrau
2010-02-18, 12:42 PM
Thank you very much, I may PM you soon. I just checked he PDFs and they are only 35 MB while the raw images are 300 MB. I'm gonna see what's going on in case I lost detail or something. In which case I'll be remaking the PDFs and PMing you for hosting. Otherwise I might handle it for now.

Tyndmyr
2010-02-18, 12:45 PM
Yeah, I checked, I've got a 1500 Gb/mo transfer cap. I doubt I'll ever touch even a fraction of that.

FoE
2010-02-18, 12:51 PM
The first time I DM'ed 4E, I actually designed my encounters using the Dungeon Tiles I had available. I haven't done that again, but it worked out OK.

Ozreth
2010-02-18, 04:25 PM
I use them every now and then, its adds some nice flavor. But I much prefer a dry erase map. I also use 3d stuff every now and then.

AslanCross
2010-02-18, 05:50 PM
I would like to use them, but frankly they don't really give me any more versatility beyond my laminated grid/whiteboard marker combo.

What I really want is the ability to make 3D maps with elevation.

Jerthanis
2010-02-18, 06:12 PM
I use a combination of both. I use dungeon tiles directly over wet-erase battlemats. I sketch out the dungeon exterior walls ahead of time, and use the small dungeon tiles for manipulatable objects like barrels to be rolled or tables to be flipped. Where I can get away with it, I design a whole room or two out of dungeon tiles directly. This is particularly useful for setpiece battles, where you know it got serious because you're walking around in a cave with glowing blue runes and skeletons all around instead of a crudely sketched series of lines and crosshatched zones.

I find it's the best of both worlds.


I see them a lot in RPGA play. LFR in specific. All LFR mods are required to use dungeon tiles, which I find kinda ridiculous. It's kinda nice since this means that we play exactly what's on the tile and don't have to pretend a potted plant is a pit of acid. But it's also annoying to see the same areas come up over and over.

I've played in LFR games that used wet erase battlemats, so that's either a recent development or Arizona doesn't conform to that rule.

Kaun
2010-02-18, 06:17 PM
I just got a big sheet of cream perspex (about 800mm by 800mm) and etched the grid into it with a box cutter. Then once you have drawn over the etches once with a white board marker they stay visible.

Basicly its just a big grided white board that i put on the floor or table and draw my battle maps onto it and then wipe them off when the fight is done.

Cost me about $30AUD and 2 hrs to make and i have been using it for over a year now.

Well worth doing.

Sir_Elderberry
2010-02-18, 07:40 PM
I see them a lot in RPGA play. LFR in specific. All LFR mods are required to use dungeon tiles, which I find kinda ridiculous. It's kinda nice since this means that we play exactly what's on the tile and don't have to pretend a potted plant is a pit of acid. But it's also annoying to see the same areas come up over and over.
This isn't true, at least the way my local group plays LFR. Yeah, ever mod tells you HOW to build the map out of tiles, but we always just draw it out anyway.

valadil
2010-02-18, 09:04 PM
This isn't true, at least the way my local group plays LFR. Yeah, ever mod tells you HOW to build the map out of tiles, but we always just draw it out anyway.

I know a couple mod authors. They are required to use tiles when writing mods. You're not expected to actually own those tiles (or figures or power cards, etc), but they're what each mod is based on. DM empowerment lets individual DMs deviate from what's written and I commend your group if you take advantage of DME more than we do.

If asked, most LFR DMs will be willing to define what's under a tile. Yes you can go under a pier or into a house. But most players (in the groups I've played with) aren't thinking in those terms because they're so used to the "top of house" tile meaning an area that requires an athletics check to get to.

dspeyer
2010-02-18, 09:17 PM
First, yes, Construx were awesome and they should bring them back. Maybe even a with-grid-lines version for D&D players.

I've found that dryerase-friendly mats are generally more convenient than tiles, unless the tiles were built for the adventure or you want to move a whole section at once. As for the latter, I recall a very fun combat on multiple ships, where the ships were moving closer and further as people jumped and shot across. Tiles would have been handy (construx would have been even better, for characters with spider climb on the outer hull).

I've also played on a whiteboard without a grid. This improves immersion and realism by getting rid of the counting squares mechanic, but means everyone whose turn it isn't draws helper lines and does trig.

Tiktakkat
2010-02-18, 10:45 PM
I have a lot of tiles, and use them semi-regularly.

Pros
They look great. Seriously, they look really freaking awesome when you get everything set up for them. You can up the impact of an encounter about 2-3 notches on a scale of 1-10 just by getting a good tile set up.

Cons
Depending on the adventure, it can take anywhere from 5-30 minutes to prepare the tiles for an encounter. This is prep time BEFORE the game.
At a game, it generally takes about 1-2 minutes to set up the tiles for an encounter. This can increase if you have prepped a lot of encounters and need to figure out just which set of tiles you should be using.
The tiles are not set in place. Even casual bumps can displace them, including something as simple as dropping a miniature or rolling a die. Moving large minis can take out a whole chunk of your dungeon.
Because of the above three, when WotC does a convention event featuring tiles, they set the thing up well beforehand, using double-sided tape and large presentation boards to fix everything in place. Pieces still get displaced over 72-96 hours of use, but that is rarely a factor for home games. Of course, setting up 2-3 4'x6' presentation boards with dungeon tiles, then selectively revealing rooms as players progress is also typically a factor home games cannot handle.
Getting past those, while there is a significant body of dungeon dressing tiles - doors, chests, piles of loot, pits, and so forth, those tiles are spread out over more than a dozen sets, are usually small (1-4 squares in size), and no decent cataloguing system exists for them. Unless you are going to make your dungeon from only one set (which is what WotC seems to do in published products), expect to add another 5-10 minutes of prep time per room.
Again going by WotC published products, expect to need 2 copies of a set to make up 3-4 encounter areas at the same time. If you want to prep a 20 room dungeon, either be prepared to reuse tiles repeatedly (adding to in-game set up times), or have 4 copies each of 5 or more dungeon tile products (reducing in-bank account size).
At the moment, the selection of very special tiles, anything other than standard stone corridors, is very limited. There are two outside/woods sets, two natural caverns sets, and one combined city/sewer set, and I doubt they are all that readily available. That means if you want to do something other than a plain dungeon, you may not be able to use them.

Pros Redux
Did I mention how good they look? Well, they look so good, that if you have the money and the time, they pretty nearly balance out the cons.

PersonMan
2010-02-18, 11:00 PM
I've used both dungeon tiles and a wet-erase mat. I like the sheer versatility and size of the mat, and it doesn't move around much, but I need to erase the terrain every couple minutes, usually.

The dungeon tiles are useful to show more...detailed terrain, and several times I prepared something based on the dungeon tiles available. Their moving is an issue, but not a very big one.

Overall, I'd probably stick with the mat most of the time, and use the tiles for specific situations.

Kabump
2010-02-19, 04:05 PM
I use them when I can. Im a highly visual person, so I just love the extra detail. I usually use a combination of the 2 though, and found a nice solution for the tiles sliding around: a clear plexiglass sheet over top of them once you have your area set up. Tends to keep them together pretty decently, and table bumps move the entire section and not individual pieces. Pretty cheap to, goto Lowes or some other hardware store and you can have a sheet made for cheap. Cant remember how much, one of my players had it made and said it was not a lot though. The plexiglass is also very nice for mult-level dungeons, if you have a few sheets you place it over your battlemat, draw the map out on the plexi using the guidelines below. Then when you need to change levels, pop up a new sheet and continue on. This keeps the mat clean, and allows easy access to the levels you have done already without having to redraw the map out. All and all a very handy tool Ive found.

Pandaren
2010-02-19, 04:11 PM
I've used both dungeon tiles and a wet-erase mat. .

Same here, two 25x30 inch mats, and one pack of dungeon tiles.

I also use poker chips, four 6x8 plastic panes, and blocks of wood when I feel like really representing everything.

Plastic planes are great, you can place over mat to use as spell area of effects, as extra detail, use above map to represent flying creatures, and, as I once used, a series of blocks, poker chips, the plastic pane, and dungeon tiles to create an escalating bridge over a chasm with creatures flying around swarming at them.

Plexiglass can also be used to represent large moving vehicles, use some marker and you can make a tank or boat.

DabblerWizard
2010-02-19, 06:23 PM
Laminated grid maps and erase-able markers for me.

Remmirath
2010-02-19, 06:45 PM
We have a folder with a bunch of tiles somewhere that we picked up cheap many years back, and I'll sometimes use them for things like corridors and rooms if I'm feeling lazy.

Elsewise, we just draw everything on dry-erase mats. Our group doesn't typically use the grid (we all find it annoying to varying degrees, and so just estimate things) so there aren't really any advantages to it for us.

We've also been known to use Legos if we really want a multi-level set, although that has some disadvantages to be sure (makes balancing the figures a bit tricky, for instance). Other times we improvise with things like computer game boxes and stacks of dice.

The tiles are probably useful if you're running stock adventures or don't have much time, but as I have lots of time and never run stock adventures, they don't work out too well for me.