Hi. My name is Duos, and I'm addicted to Dungeon Tiles.

[Duos Greanleef]

I love dungeon tiles. Seriously, they're the coolest thing to me. Anytime I find WotC tile packs on sale, I buy them. I haven't bought doubles yet, but mostly because I'm either not that lucky or I'm getting a new one instead. I've also bought the game mastery boat pack, and the Game Mastery Pirate bar. For real, It's a problem.

Well, now that I have such a plethora of fine dungeon tiles, I need a way to remember what I have. I can do the dig-through-each-and-every-tile-and-hope-for-the-best method, but that can take a lot of time that I would rather spend designing cool bad guys and dynamic encounters (yes, location helps that). That means spending more time on something I think should be easier.

What I'm asking is this:
Is there a program (online or offline) that can catalog my tiles and let me draw a map out of the things I own?
Alternatively: Is there an different/easier method that you know of?

Thanks in advance, Playground!

[EccentricCircle]

Dungeon tiles are indeed awesome. I have most of the more recent sets and definitely agree that you need a good filing system.

what I've done is:

Split the tile sets into large tiles >4squares
and small tiles <4 squares.

The small tiles are generally terrain and are organised based on whats on them in a series of thin plastic trays divided into multiple compartments.( thats not a great description, if it would help I can provide images.)
I have one for architecture (doors, arches, walls. pillars, statues) one for furnature, and one for outside terrain such as trees, standing stones etc. plus a couple more for keeping monster and NPC tokens.

The large tiles are then stored in larger plastic cases, organised by environment. I use the Dungeon, Wilderness and City Master sets to store the basic tiles and then have seperate boxes for Deserts, Ice wastes, Caverns, Ships and docks, Buildings, Pathfinder city tiles and Star Wars Galaxy tiles. all of the cases are clearly labeled.

That way so long as I know what environment I want its simple enough to find the right case, tip out the tiles and use the ones I need. then add appropriate details from the small features boxes.

It makes for quite a sprawling system, so I keep it in an old fashioned treasure chest in the corner of the dining room. during a game I sit next to the chest , and can pick out a case to get the tiles I need at a moments notice. Running games away from home is a bit more of a pain. but so long as you know what environement you need you can just take that and the relevant small features cases.

This is the best system i've come up with thus far. There is no perfect solution, the trick is to get the right balance between things being sorted to the extent that you can find what you are looking for quickly, but not having them so spread out that you keep getting the wrong case.

I'll be interested to hear what else gets suggested and what you decide to do. I'm forever looking for new ways to find the right tile quicker during play.

[RobD]

I'm the same way; I love me some tiles. Unfortunately, my players never want to use them, probably for this very reason.
The only solution I can think of off the top of my head would be to label/number them by category. So you could have a "town" set, a "forest" set, etc, and then just keep the different sets in separate bags/binders/whatever.
Which means I basically have nothing to offer except my sympathy. Sorry.

[Malacode]

Not the same problem, but the solution should work. Magic cards gave me this sort of headache. You need an indexing system that keeps your generic tiles separated by style and size, then a subfolder-ish thing for specific things like altars, graveyards, etc, still sticking to the style of the index. If they're onesided (Not sure about WoTC tiles, I've only seen Pathfinder and Malefaux ones used), name each one with a sticky label. Finally, do yourself a favour and list every tile you own in an Excel file, with a description and a few "tags" as a comment along with which box and where in that box the tile is. Then, whenever you come up with an encounter, open the file, hit ctrl-f, and enter the relevant tags, like "Forest", "Altar", "River", whatever. That'll let you know what you have, in what quantities, and where you have it filed. When packing up, refer to your excel file to make sure everything goes back where it belongs. Better yet, use paper placeholders or write down where you took each tile from when you first take them out.