"Those damn tiles! Part 1 of 3"
It all started with HeroQuest.
HeroQuest was first released in 1989 in the UK and made its directorial debut in the States during the year 1991. It was a fantasy boardgame with rooms and items and characters and questsbasically D&D meets Clue. Players took on the role of one of four heroes: the Barbarian, Dwarf, Elf, or Wizard. Another player took the role of Zargon, the Game Master, who controled the forces of Chaos that the Heroes faced in hidden stone labyrinths of underground rooms or corridors. Game play was simple, and allowed the players to play as a straight board game or to incorporate roleplaying. A typical session, or "Quest", lasted between one to two hours...
"Wait a second. Barbarians? Elves? Game Master? Stone labyrinths? Typical sessions lasting hours? Don't toy with me, DM Magicthis is D&D!"
It is indeed, my little friend. It was basically a rules-lite version of D&D created by Games Workshop. So, what's so damn cool about HeroQuest?
This gameboard:
...and these miniatures:
"But miniatures are so pass! I use my imagination to work out combat!"
Sweet! Let me know what house rules you used to eliminate Attacks of Opportunity and 90% of the combat feats! Now, on to the people who do use minis during D&D.
Insert reader's responses now:
"Blah, blah, blah, DM Magic. We use a wet erase map. We've been doing it this way for years and we'll continue doing it like this because we like it!"
Do you also play D&D in the snow? Uphill? Both ways?
Or how about...
"Yeah, well, we use shoeboxes for buildings! And large stones for mountains! And our minis are garbanzo beans!"
You have much to learn, young Padiwan. Indeed, if you're the kind of DM who substitutes landscape in your D&D game with common household items, you're going to benefit most from these lessons. I'm going to show you how to create "those damn tiles" and bring your dungeons to life. Wait... just dungeons? Oh, my bad! Why not bring taverns to life? Or forests? Or city streets? How about anywhere the PCs do battle?
Okay, pop quiz hot-shot. You're a player about to delve into the Temple of Elemental Evil. Would you rather see...
A:
...or B:
Got your attention?
Good. Let's hurry up now, because we have so much time and so little to do.
Wait. Strike that.
Reverse it.
Thank you.
"What You'll Need"
- A computer. No, not the library computer. A real computer. One you can install junk on. And print from. And spill Coke on. Okay, just kidding about the Coke part. Seriously.
- A printer. Printers are cheep, but I know everyone can't own one. That's fine will not only take your saved files via their on-line site, but they'll also pint them out for you. Hell, they'll even deliver them to you if you're so inclined. Of course, if you were so inclined, you'd have the money to buy a printer. More than likely, without a printer, you'll just have to pop your tiles onto CD and print them out at your local copy shop. What, you don't have a CD burner? GOD, are you a time traveler from the past?
- Lots of ink! This stuff can eat up ink like crazy if you let it. I'll take you through some printer setup options that will reduce ink use, but I can't guarantee anything, homie. Want to become a serious DM that tiles all his adventures? Look into ink refills. I wholeheartedly recommend this site: . Both Jim and I have used this site, and it's a steal.
- A graphics program like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. Hell, you can even use Corel Draw for those of you of the Mac persuasion. Again, here we go with the money issue. Never fear, gentle reader, you can download this stuff for free. No, no... not from KaZaAfrom their respective sites. I recommend . Download its 30 day free trial and you're silver. No, you'll be better than silveryou'll be golden. All lessons will be done assuming the use of Paint Shop Pro 8, but if you're already familiar with graphics editing it shouldn't be too hard to follow along with Photoshop. If you barely know how to use a mouse... well... go play in traffic.
- Adobe Acrobat. Download it from .
- I guess it goes without saying that you'll need a keyboard. And a mouse. Oh yeah, and electricity.
- Regular paper. Lots of it. Make sure it's white.
- Posterboard. 2-ply is fine, but you may want to fool with the weight. Put 30 sheets of regular paper together and that's how thick your posterboard should be. You'll be looking at around 5 bucks a sheet. Pick up one to start with from your local paper store. I get mine from (good luck trying to find posterboard on their site, though).
- A wooden roller. Ceramic ones are a waste of money. If you don't know what a roller is, walk into a craft shop and ask for one. Tell them it's for "burnishing."
- Spray adhesive. I use 3M's Super 77 brand spray adhesive. Use other brands at your own risk! Any other adhesive, I have found, wears out over time.
- An X-ACTO knife. Don't cut off your fingers.
- Scissors. See above.
- Various colored felt tip pens. Black sharpies are good to start off with. If you decide you want to do grass tiles, get a green pen. Ocean tiles? Blue.
- A straightedge. That's "ruler" for the layman.
"Only Your Can Prevent Trips to the Hospital"
I don't have to say that knives are dangerous. But maybe I should?
First of all, always work in a well-lit area with good ventilation. Believe meafter 45 minutes of making tiles, that spray adhesive will have you seeing purple elephants. Take care when cutting with an X-ACTO knife: always cut away from your hand (or towards your crotch if you're Tordeques). Don't rush and make sure you're well rested before beginning any project. A 6-pack of beer should put you in that "well rested" state. Let's get to work!
"Thievery 101"
Now that you've pulled out all those craft supplies, put them away! You're not going to use them until lesson three! Allow me a moment while I throw my head back in a fit of maniacal laughter.
MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
This lesson will focus on your computer, or more specifically, using your computer to steal.
The Internet is a wonderful place. You canhonestlyfind anything you want out there if your Google-fu is strong. And, as long as you're not going to use it to make a profit, you can download it and use it. Okay, okay... that's not really stealing. Lessons on KaZaA and file sharing will have to be done privately. We're doing it by the book here at CampaignCraft!
The rest of this article assumes that you know how to download files, store them in a folder, and access those files when needed. If you don't, ENWorld has a wonderful forum for all your stupid questions.
Okay... now I have to tell you a little secretmost of my tiles are not from scratch! I know! I'm horrible! No, most of my tiles come from on-line sources and are heavily modifed. Mostly, you'll find that downloading pre-made tiles and altering them will serve your purpose just fine.
With that said, I want you to go ahead and open up your trusty browser and point it to . You're going to see a list of tiles under the header "Previous Weeks." Ahhh... sweet, sweet tiles. Download them and toss them into a folder called Files.
Okay, now that you've downloaded them all, go ahead and go through them. Don't rename them just yet; I'm going to use their current file names to reference them throughout the rest of this series.
As you can see, you can create any modest dungeon with just these tiles. I'm not saying you'll be able to recreate The Sunless Citadel (that's part 2), but you should be able to design a nice little dungeon, fort, or castle with them. Professional looking printing and burnishing them to posterboard won't be until part 3, but if you want to use them now you can try printing them out as they are, cut around the black edges, and glue them to cereal boxes./p>
BAMinstant dungeon tiles.
Join me again in two weeks for part two of this series. We're going to learn how to use Paint Shop Pro 8 (or any graphical editing program) to alter the tiles for the Sunless Citadel. When you're done, it will look something like this. (Note: See all the white edges? That's because I used cheap spray adhesive to begin with. I heartily recommend the good stuff noted above.
See you then!
Site Spotlight
Skeleton Key Games is not the only place to get great graphics to make your dungeon tiles. Here are two more sites you can loot for graphics:
- : The tiles here, in my opinion, are a little cartoony. The saving grace is that the site includes high resolution images that you can combine in a graphics program to make any tiles you want! Hey, it's all better than a wet erase map right?
- :Best. Tiles. Evar. Seriously, the tiles by Ron Shirtz are awesome. Plenty of material here to make your own tiles once you're past part 2 of this series.
DM's Corner
Ahhh... time to check the 'ol mailbag.
Greg Spelar writes:
DM Magic, 1st off, I'd like to say how envious of you I am, as you can play D&D with someone as serious about it as Jim and Rebecca are. Now I'll cut the rear-end smooching and give you my dilemma.
I've been involved in a campaign since about the middle/end of May. I'm going to try and balance giving you my dilemma while not overloading you with information on the campaign. We started on level 3, but my DM has the difficulty of the campaign set much higher. For example, in the 1st session, our group was lost in an enchanted forest. It ended up taking us about three times as long to get out as he thought we would. When I later asked him why that was so hard, he said "Oh, I thought one of you would use Dispel Magic". Mind you, we were on level 3.
The next session was fine, it was challenging, but nothing we couldn't handle. However, the next few sessions, I noticed a trend starting. I could go further in depth, but I'll give you the nutshell of it: We were being led by the nose. We were put in a situation where we either had to fight off hoards of enemies that were coming out of nowhere (I know this isn't very descriptive, but it's basically what was happening, and it wasn't a result of one of our actions). We went to the capital of the main power structure in the campaign, and the "head honcho" sent us on a quest to re-activate something, and our group was spontaneously captured. By spontaneously, I mean that our characters "suddenly fell asleep". No save, no forewarning, nothing. We awoke within an inescapable jail (and there was no way out, I even tried using Shatter, and it didn't even make a dent), where my character was told that he had to join the side that we had been fighting since the beginning, or die. Now, I'm a Cleric of St. Cuthbert. I keeled, and gave in, saying "I'll join you if you understand that my oath to St. Cuthbert is above the one to you." In retrospect, I should have said "Screw you". But what's done is done. However, my DM didn't let it end there.
After our "newfound allies" introduced themselves, we were walking around in a soldier training ground, where we were attacked by 6 hippogriffs. SIX HIPPOGRIFFS!!! That's about a CR 7. We were on level 4 at that time. After that battle ended, we stopped playing. We haven't played in about a month since then.
Ok, that really wasn't a nutshell.
How can I explain to my DM what he did wrong, why the group doesn't like the campaign, and possibly try to resurrect this campaign? I've tried telling him how we don't like it since he's made it too challenging for our liking (and D&D is about having fun, remember), but it doesn't seem to have sunk in. I really think it's over, but I wouldn't mind trying one last ditch attempt to fixing it.
Why? Because I got the coolest cleric ever.
Anywho, thanks for reading this.
Thanks for writing in, Greg. I do have some advice for you but it seems you've already hit it on the headthe point of D&D is to have fun. It's something that many people forget, although I can't imagine why. After all, D&D is a game like any other.
Now, on to the meat of the question: "How can I explain to my DM what he did wrong, why the group doesn't like the campaign, and possibly try to resurrect this campaign?"
It's good that you want to share responsibility in the campaign. Too often, I see DMs overloaded because the players become leechesthey come, they eat, they drink, they play, they go home. Then you don't see them until the next session. D&D is a group effort, and player/DM interaction should be welcome in any group.
First thing's first: cut the DM some slack. Sometimes (not all the time) but sometimes the DM knows what he's doing. Fell asleep with no save? There's a chance he rolled that save for you previously. Or perhaps, he knew the DC was higher than anything your characters could achieve. True, this is heavy handed DMing and is usually discouraged at my table. Also true, is that you should only take the dice out of the hands of the players when it would reveal something, i.e. a Spot or Listen check. As far as the "unbreakable" jail cell, anything's possiblea wall of force, outside influence, etc. Now, it sounds like you know your DM... so he's probably just being heavy handed.
I'm going to give you a bit of advice that will help you in any kind of relationship, be it girlfriend, boyfriend, mother, brother, sister, DM: be honest. Tell him how you feel in a non-confrontational manner. Make sure that you all, as a group, feel the same way. Then ask him about it before or after a game. Perhaps give him some ideas on how you, as a group, would like to see the campaign progress? Explain to him that challenges are fun, but facing death at every corner makes you want to strangle the life out of him. Perhaps even offer to take up the reigns and DM yourself.
The thing to focus on is being non-confrontational. It's important that your DM does not get into a position where he thinks he's being attacked. After all, he's there to have fun too.
Unfortunately, at this point, if your DM is not receptive to advice, you may have to resort to more drastic measures.
Drop a fireball on his house.